[lbo-talk] NYT: Guilt by association and contemporary blacklist

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Dec 12 20:22:55 PST 2004


[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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