OT: U.S. Patriots From Mideast Want to Pursue bin Laden

[Guest guest]

October 12, 2001

 

U.S. Patriots From Mideast Want to Pursue bin Laden

 

By BLAINE HARDEN

 

DEARBORN, Mich., Oct. 10 — Walter Mourad wants vengeance against Osama

bin Laden for messing with an American dream built on a firm foundation

of dry cleaning.

 

Mr. Mourad, a Lebanese immigrant, has 30 people on his payroll in four

suburban locations, two children in a Montessori school and a Lebanese

wife who says she would shoot him if he suggested she cover her head

with a scarf.

 

Profitable happiness in America, he said, is simple, " You get a lease

with an option to buy, you get a loan and you put up a humongous sign. "

 

To defend his adopted nation from foreign terrorists and to protect his

pursuit of profits from domestic intolerance, Mr. Mourad, 36, has

applied for a job at the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an Arabic

translator.

 

" It would be great if one of us Arab-American guys helped catch bin

Laden, " he said. " It would relieve a lot of the tension with ignorant

Americans. "

 

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III,

asked Arabic and Farsi speakers to come to work for the bureau. Since

then, via the Internet, the bureau has been deluged with more than

15,000 applications for about 200 jobs. There has been a similar, if

slightly smaller, flood of applicants at the Central Intelligence Agency

and the National Security Agency.

 

As much as his secular temperament makes it easy for Mr. Mourad to want

to work for the F.B.I., he said it would be wrong to assume that he — or

the thousands of other Arabic- speaking immigrants who have applied for

translating jobs — supports American policy in the Middle East.

 

" As Americans, we don't believe the U.S. government is being fair, " said

Mr. Mourad, who, like many other Arab-Americans, compulsively watches Al

Jazeera, the Arab-language satellite channel. " At a minimum, they need

to stop the killing and aggression by the Israelis. "

 

Mr. Mourad, however, said he was disgusted watching an Al Jazeera

broadcast on Sunday, when Mr. bin Laden tried to align his terrorist

network with the Palestinian movement.

 

" You cannot tell us that he is doing this for the Palestinians, " he

said. " Why doesn't he fight the Israelis like a man, instead of killing

innocent people? "

 

On Sept. 17, when Mr. Mourad heard the bureau's appeal for translators,

he grabbed his cellphone. It took him six hours to get through to a

harried operator.

 

" Do you have a tip or do you want to be a translator? " Mr. Mourad said

he was asked. He was told to apply by computer at www.FBI.gov. Since

then, he has been waiting for an e- mail answer.

 

" Every night I go to the Internet excitingly, " said Mr. Mourad, whose

English is fluent, with only an occasional hiccup to suggest that he

learned it after 1990, when he emigrated from Lebanon.

 

In addition to his three dry-cleaning shops and a fire-damage

restoration concern, he and his wife, Zoha, own a translation service.

 

There are many hundreds of would-be translators here and in the other

suburbs of Detroit, which are home to about 250,000 people of Arab

descent. This is the largest and fastest-growing concentration of Arabic

speakers in North America.

 

Dearborn has been sponging up Arab immigrants for about 100 years, with

wave after wave rolling in from what used to be Palestine, from Lebanon,

Yemen and, most recently, Iraq. This is a place where a person can have

a car repaired, a home insured, a prescription filled or teeth pulled —

all without having to speak anything but Arabic.

 

But to cash in on the booming immigrant market, it certainly helps to

speak Arabic and English as competently as Mr. Mourad, who said he

changed his first name from Wallid to maximize his earning potential.

For the same reason, he is forcing himself to learn how to play golf.

 

" I make a lot more money now than I would with the F.B.I., " Mr. Mourad

said. " But I am ready to move my family, to sell my businesses, to do

whatever it takes. "

 

For decades, federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies ignored

the huge reservoir of Arabic-English language skills in the Detroit area

and in other gateway settlements of Arab immigrants, like New York,

Chicago and Los Angeles. Now they are playing catch up.

 

" There has been an arms-length relationship between these communities

and the intelligence community, " said Richard Brecht, director of the

National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland. " This is

a missed opportunity without question. "

 

Islamic leaders in Dearborn have met with F.B.I. officials in recent

weeks and have been telling worshipers in local mosques to offer their

linguistic expertise.

 

" From the religious point of view, there is nothing to eliminate this

kind of participation, " said Imam Mohammad Mardini, who presided at Mr.

Mourad's marriage. " You are an American, and your duty is to serve your

country. "

 

Now the bureau is struggling to deal with all the Arabic-speaking

Americans who are calling at their imams' behest.

 

" We weren't expecting so many phone calls, " said Dawn Clenney, the

bureau agent in Detroit in charge of contract linguists. " It was very

nice. It was overwhelming. "

 

The bureau has managed the flood by hiring first those applicants who

have already passed background checks, for example, retired or former

government employees. So far, it has hired about 100 translators.

Applicants must be citizens who have spent at least three of the last

five years in this country. To be hired, they must also pass a

background investigation and renounce dual citizenship.

 

Mr. Mourad meets the citizenship and residency requirements. While he

waits the bureau's call, he has noticed that it is getting harder to be,

as he puts its, " an Arab-looking guy. " He has tried to inoculate

himself and his family with American flags, which are displayed at his

shops, outside his home, on his car and on his lapels.

 

Still, he said, he finds that " guys with tattoos at the McDonald's "

stare at him. He said that non-Arab customers at his dry cleaning shops,

if they see a spot on their clothes, have hair-trigger tempers,

sometimes telling him and his employees to " go back to your country. "

 

Post-attack America is particularly infuriating to Mr. Mourad because,

as he explains it, " I have never been one of those bearded all the time,

don't talk to nobody, spend all your time in the mosque Muslims. "

 

He takes an occasional drink and eats pork now and then. He was reared a

Muslim, but hardly ever goes to a mosque. Neither do his children or his

wife. Neither do his five brothers, who are all in business in Dearborn.

His mother made him go to the mosque when he was young, but he said her

heart was never in it.

 

" A good thing about my mom is she is not religious, " said Mr. Mourad,

whose father died this year and is buried in Dearborn. " My mom doesn't

speak a word of English, but she wants me to work for the F.B.I. "

 

Mr. Mourad is especially hopeful that he can help stamp out terror in

his new homeland because his family suffered a personal loss to

terrorists. In the 1980's, Tripoli, the Lebanese city he grew up in, was

dominated by a violent Islamic group.

 

" My brother-in-law, Omar Moheish, was assassinated in 1984 by the Muslim

Union for drinking alcohol, " Mr. Mourad said. " I opened the door for

them and they dragged him out of his bed and they put 30 bullets in his

chest. Believe me, it was terror. "