NEWPORT BEACH — Brian Levin's vigilance is born of an unanswered question.

"When I was little I would ask my dad, 'Why did they let (the Holocaust) happen to Jews?' I never got an answer," said the 30-year-old Newport Beach attorney and national hate crimes expert.

Levin has devoted much of his life in a fight against hate crimes, regularly flying around the country to consult with law enforcement agencies and to testify at congressional hearings.

One question he has helped to answer is the number of reported hate crimes in the United States in 1993. Levin worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to generate the national hate crimes report, released in June, which totaled the number at 7,684.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a criminal offense against a person or property that is motivated by the offender's bias against the victim's race, religion, ethnic group or sexual orientation.

Levin will fly east at his own expense Monday to make sure the 200-person town of Ovett, Miss., doesn't push the national hate-crime statistics any higher. Two politically active lesbians who have established a food bank and reading programs in the small town have been receiving threatening phone calls and last year found a dead dog hanging from their mailbox. Levin will urge a congressional subcommittee, convening in Jackson, to strengthen hate-crime laws.

"Why would they be driven out of town other than rank bigotry?" Levin said. "The government has been powerless to protect them because the laws are so bad."

Levin's legal diligence in advocating stiffer sentences for hate crimes, which has included meetings with U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and writing briefs for landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases, has earned him a nationwide reputation in the relatively new and controversial field.

Larry Vigil, an aide to U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D-Colo.), consulted Levin for weeks in formulating the Hate Crimes Penalty Enhancement Bill. Tacked on to President Clinton's national crime bill, the measure would increase prison sentences for hate-crime offenders by as much as one-third. The bill still requires House and Senate approval.

"Brian was very, very helpful. He knows his stuff cold," Vigil said. "He's a wealth of information."

Levin's credibility didn't come easily, he said, partly because of his youth and his unusual legal fee: no charge. Initially, people would refuse to talk to him and he became accustomed to hearing phones slam.