[It gets sadder and more outraging as it goes on]
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/national/12shiite.html
The New York Times December 12, 2004
Mystery Cloaks Couple's Firing as Risks to U.S.
By JAMES DAO
M ORGANTOWN, W.Va. - May 5, the day that changed Aliakbar and Shahla
Afshari's lives, began like most others. They shared coffee, dropped
their 12-year-old son off at Cheat Lake Middle School here, then drove
to their laboratories at the National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health, a federal agency that studies workplace hazards.
But that afternoon, their managers pulled the Afsharis aside and
delivered a stunning message: they had failed secret background checks
and were being fired. No explanations were offered and no appeals
allowed. They were escorted to the door and told not to return.
Mrs. Afshari, a woman not prone to emotional flourishes, says she
stood in the parking lot and wept. "I just wanted to know why," she
said.
Seven months later, the Afsharis, Shiite Muslims who came from Iran 18
years ago to study, then stayed to build careers and raise three
children, still have no answers.
They have been told they were fired for national security reasons that
remain secret. When their lawyer requested the documents used to
justify the action, he was told none existed. When he asked for copies
of the agency's policies relating to the background checks, he
received a generic personnel handbook.
Without any official explanations of why they failed their background
checks, they came up with their own theory: their attendance, more
than five years ago, at two conventions of a Persian student
association that has come under F.B.I. scrutiny, once with a man who
was later investigated by the bureau.
The Afsharis' case comes at time when immigrants from many nations,
but particularly Islamic ones, are facing tougher scrutiny from
government agencies.
Unable to clear their names or find new employment in their field, the
Afsharis on Thursday resorted to that most American of recourses: they
sued the institute and its parent agencies, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human
Services, demanding back pay and reinstatement or the chance to
appeal.
The Afsharis, who passed background checks when they were hired - he
in 1996, she in 1997 - were not even aware of the new reviews until
they were told that they had failed.
In their suit, they do not question the government's right to conduct
background checks. But their lawyers contend that the Kafkaesque
nature of the process - in which the rules were unclear and perhaps
unwritten - has made it impossible for them to defend themselves.
"How can we expect the people of the Middle East to emulate our
democratic ideals abroad when we fail to apply those ideals to people
like the Afsharis here?" asked Allan N. Karlin, a lawyer in Morgantown
who, along with chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union in West
Virginia and Washington, is representing the couple.
The Centers for Disease Control has said the Afsharis were not singled
out because of their ethnic background, asserting that other Iranians
and Muslims have faced similar background checks and passed. The
agency also notes that the couple, who are not citizens and do not
have protected Civil Service status, could have been fired at any
time.
But the agency has declined to say anything else about the case and
did not respond to questions about its policies on background checks.
"All I can say is the Afsharis are no longer employed by C.D.C.," said
a spokeswoman, Kathryn Harben.
Federal employees have always faced routine background checks,
typically when they are hired. But experts say that since the Sept. 11
attacks, checks at certain agencies, including the disease control
centers, have become more frequent and tougher as the government
attempts to identify potential security leaks or spies with access to
classified or dangerous materials.
Those tougher checks seem to have focused on immigrants from certain
countries. A C.D.C. document obtained by the Afsharis shows that the
recent background checks on them were ordered because they came from a
"threat" country, Iran.
But what is most confounding to the Afsharis is how the government
could consider them threats in the first place. Neither had access to
classified documents or worked with banned biological or chemical
toxins.
Moreover, none of their research was secret, much of it having been
published in scholarly journals or presented at academic conferences.
Mr. Afshari, 52, who has a doctorate in industrial engineering, built
equipment to study the health effects of things like asphalt fumes,
human saliva and dust particles. One of his inventions helped analyze
the sound of the human cough. He also worked with commercially
available lasers and ultrasound equipment.
Mrs. Afshari, 43, who has a master's degree in occupational health and
safety, worked in a laboratory that researched allergic reactions to
common items like latex gloves and hand cleansers.
Handling classified documents or banned toxins requires a higher
security clearance than the Afsharis possessed. Indeed, neither of
them had ever applied for such clearances, which entail more intensive
background investigations than the standard checks conducted on most
federal workers.
Paradoxically, federal law grants people who apply for such clearances
more rights than the Afsharis were given, experts say. Under
cold-war-era regulations, people who fail such clearances can request
internal documents explaining the reasons and are entitled to hearings
where they can present a defense.
"What we have here is a brand-new, ad hoc, secret system," said Kate
Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil
liberties group, referring to the checks that led to the firings.
Friends and former colleagues say the Afsharis, though practicing
Shiites who shun alcohol and worry about the permissiveness of
American society, are anything but religious firebrands.
Mr. Afshari, a gregarious, chatty, bearlike man, was known to bring
kosher turkeys to Thanksgiving dinners at Jewish homes and spend
weekends repairing colleagues' cars for nothing. When his daughter,
Azadeh, now 22 and a first-year student at West Virginia University's
dental school here, decided to stop wearing a head scarf a few years
ago, he did not protest, friends said.
The Afsharis' two eldest children, who were born in Iran but consider
themselves Americans, have become well-known figures in Morgantown.
Azadeh was a dean's list student, a campus government leader and a
finalist for homecoming queen last year. Her brother Hamed, 21, a
senior at the university, is also an honor student and a member of the
student government. Their youngest child, Amin, 12, was born in
America.
Robert C. Creese, a professor of engineering who was Mr. Afshari's
doctoral adviser at West Virginia University, described Mr. Afshari as
a pacifist who was appalled by the devastation wrought by Iran's
decade-long war with Iraq. Mr. Afshari's younger brother was killed by
mustard gas in that conflict.
"I fear a serious mistake has been made by C.D.C.," Dr. Creese said in
one of nearly two dozen letters delivered to the agency that former
colleagues have written to protest the Afsharis' firings.
The Afsharis contend that their only link to the student group under
federal scrutiny, the Muslim Students Association (Persian Speaking
Group), is that they took their children to national conventions in
Chicago in December 1998 and Washington in December 1999.
Senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including the
former director Louis J. Freeh, have said the group, sometimes
referred to by the Farsi name Anjoman Islamie, is made up largely of
anti-American fanatics, maintains close ties to the government of Iran
and has been used as a front for Iranian intelligence. But it is not
on the State Department's list of banned foreign terrorist
organizations, and it operates openly in the United States.
The Persian student group is independent of the larger Muslim Students
Association, a mainly Sunni group.
To the Afsharis, the conventions were an opportunity to speak Persian,
eat Iranian food, attend workshops on Islam and meet other
Iranian-Americans at a time of the year when many Americans were
celebrating Christmas.
"We loved it because it was a chance to meet kids from our culture,"
Azadeh Afshari said. "We pushed our parents to go."
Mr. Afshari said the F.B.I. became aware of his family's trips to the
conventions after an agent interviewed him in late 2001 about an
Iranian friend, a graduate student who had been active in the
association. The man, Shahab Ghasemzadeh, was deported for immigration
violations last year, Mr. Karlin, the Afsharis' lawyer, said.
In a statement to an immigration court last year, an F.B.I. agent said
Mr. Ghasemzadeh "may pose a long-term threat" to the United States
because of his association with Anjoman Islamie. As evidence, the
agent said Mr. Ghasemzadeh had attended the group's conventions (he
went to one of them with the Afsharis), and had helped
Iranian-Americans vote in Iranian elections.
It remains unclear if Mr. Afshari's friendship with Mr. Ghasemzadeh
was the reason he failed the background check. But if it was, the
Afsharis' lawyers say, his firing would be a case of guilt by
association and a violation of the First Amendment rights they enjoy
as legal permanent residents.
"This looks suspiciously like the witch hunts of the 50's, this time
targeted against Muslim Americans," Ms. Martin of the Center for
National Security Studies said.
Two weeks ago, Mr. Afshari's unemployment benefits ran out. He has not
found work, and the family is now living on savings and credit cards.
Mrs. Afshari has begun dental school with Azadeh but says she does not
know if they can afford the tuition.
Mr. Afshari has become sullen and withdrawn, his children said. Though
his father in Iran is ill, Mr. Afshari has decided not to visit him,
fearing he will not be allowed to return to the United States.
"Everybody has a sense of pride about their parents," Hamed Afshari
said, breaking into tears. "And then someone disrespects them like
that and it hurts so bad because there is nothing you can do."
The case has also affected the Afsharis' friends, who say they remain
mystified and angry about the way the couple has been treated.
"I've told Ali's story to a lot of people," said Travis Goldsmith, a
computer engineer who worked with Mr. Afshari. "They don't believe
that this could happen in this country."
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