DETROIT — Amid heightened tensions between the FBI and American Muslim communities nationwide, Andrew Arena, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Detroit Division, recently sat down for an interview with Allan Lengel, editor of ticklethewire.com, a news website that covers federal law enforcement.

Detroit District FBI Special Agent in Charge Andrew Arena     PHOTO: Khalil AlHajal/TAAN

Here are excerpts from the interview, in which Arena addresses local views and concerns on Hizbullah, and the state of FBI relations with the Arab American community.
A full version of the interview, including discussion on scam artists who pose as FBI agents, false informants who try to get their neighbors in trouble, the effectiveness of the information the FBI collects in Detroit operations, corruption in Detroit politics and more, is available at www.ticklethewire.com.

The questions were edited for clarity:

Lengel: There are a lot of people traveling back and forth between here and the Middle East, including Lebanon, and there’s often suspicion of fundraising for designated terrorist groups. What’s your sense about fundraising here?

Arena: Obviously, the area is certainly primed for fundraising activities. We’ve looked at some organizations. Obviously you look at some of the fundraising cases we’ve been looking at recently. A lot of people in the community, they’ll say ‘if I give money to ABC charitable organization and you come and shut them down, am I going to be held accountable? Am I going to jail?’ We tell them it’s all in your heart and your mind. What do you think you did? We’re not going to prosecute and investigate somebody who honestly thinks they’re giving money to a charitable organization and they just got scammed. But we’re not going to give you this dispensation if we can prove that you knowingly gave money so al Qaeda can buy equipment to blow up, to attack U.S. troops or you knowingly gave money to Hizbullah so they could buy rockets to lob into Israel.

Lengel: Do you get a lot of questions about Hizbullah in the Arab American community?

Arena: You’re talking about some folks who come over from Lebanon who still have relatives there and travel back and forth. And obviously their view of Hizbullah is different than ours. Sandra (FBI agent Sandra Berchtold) and I were at this function a few weeks ago and she called me over and she said ‘I don’t know how to answer this one.’ There were these young men there and what they wanted to know was: Is it illegal if we listen to Hizbullah songs? And I said to them ‘no, there’s freedom of speech, you can listen to whatever you want.’ And they were like, ‘well what if we go on like a pro-Hizbullah website site and look at stuff, is that illegal?’

‘No you can look at whatever you want as long as there’s not child pornography on that website.’ I said ‘now I’m going to answer the next question. When you hit the button and send money, you push the button with your credit card information to send money over, you’ve crossed the line.’ There’s a line between support and material support. When I meet with certain groups, the discussion many times turns to Hizbullah and ‘you know they’re really not a terrorist organization.’ ‘That’s not my call guys, I’m not a policy maker. They’re a designated terrorist organization. I’ve got a job to do.’

Lengel: Are they understanding?

Arena: I think they understand my role, they understand not just me but of the FBI. This is our job, this is our responsibility, it is what it is.

Lengel: It seems after 2001 the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office here made a big push to improve relations with the Arab American community. But it seems in the last year there’s been a strain with incidents around the country like Los Angeles and Minneapolis. Have you felt the strain here in this community?

Arena: I think there’s always going to be a certain level of distrust. And I think that even prior to 9/11 we had recognized we needed community outreach to many groups, the Arab Americans being one. One of the things I learned is there is an inherent mistrust of the federal government, of the FBI and other federal agencies by this community. I was having a discussion with some folks a few weeks ago from Iraq and they said you know you’ve got to understand some of it’s cultural. In Iraq the equivalent of FBI was Saddam’s secret police. When they came to your house, somebody left and you never saw them again.

Lengel: You do have informants.

Arena: That’s what I tell them. We develop them in public corruption (cases), we develop them in mortgage fraud, we develop them in street gangs, that’s an accepted practice and tool of law enforcement. But we don’t target buildings. We don’t target mosques because they’re a mosque.

I use this example: I’m a Roman Catholic. If a Catholic priest is on the pulpit saying ‘Give money to the Irish Republic Army and go train,’ hell yeah we’re going to care. If your imam is preaching the Qur’an and preaching peace, I have no right under the U.S. Constitution, it’s illegal. Someone’s going to go to jail and it’s going to be an FBI agent and I’m going to lose my job. We don’t do that. I was talking to somebody the other day and he said we know who the informants are. Well how would you know they’re informants? Well they told us. If they’re telling you they’re an informant, they’re not an informant.

Lengel: Do they believe you or is there skepticism?

Arena: It’s hard to say. We just keep pushing along. I go to all the meetings. I looked the other day. In the last six months, I’ve been to 41 community outreach events that focused primarily on the Arab American community.

Lengel: Are people receptive?

Arena: Most of the feedback I get is very positive. They’ll say ‘hey look there are these issues but at least you come.’ Osama Siblani, who’s the (publisher) of The Arab American News, he always says, ‘Andy is at everything. The FBI is at every event. You show up and you never dodge the questions.’ Recently the issues with CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) came up and the allegations we were sending informants into mosques. I was honest with them, ‘yeah we have informants. Yeah we develop them all the time. We’re not sending them willy nilly into every mosque. If we sent an informant into a location, there’s a reason. We have to have predication. We don’t send them on fishing expeditions.

Lengel: In terms of the relationship in the last year, has it taken a step backward?

Arena: I don’t want to say we’ve taken a step backwards or we’ve lost any ground. I think it’s basically thrown up some roadblocks that we’ve had to move past. When these issues come, my position here is to meet them head on, to go out and discuss them, to do interviews. If someone makes an allegation that this office tried to recruit someone to go into a mosque illegally, I’m not going to sit there and not say anything, because then it becomes the truth and that’s one side of the story. And if we didn’t do it, I’m going to stand up and adamantly deny that and I’m going to give them the reason why. There’s been some issues in the last year we’ve had to stop and address.