Hezbollah may be threat in the U.S., FBI warns

On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah told thousands of fist-waving mourners in a videotaped eulogy in Beirut that the killing of Mughniyah merited a violent response because it occurred outside the "natural battlefield" of Israel and Lebanon. "You have crossed the borders," he said, in a reference to Israel and supporters of the Jewish state. "With this murder, its timing, location and method -- Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, let the whole world listen: Let this war be open."

The FBI and Homeland Security did not give local and state law enforcement agencies specific instructions in the bulletin.

FBI officials said that was because each local jurisdiction should step up security in ways that it considered appropriate in and around government buildings, Jewish institutions and other potential targets.

The senior FBI counter- terrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the bureau's efforts against Hezbollah, said the bureau was focusing its intelligence-gathering efforts on the Detroit-Dearborn area of Michigan, New York, California and several other U.S. locations with large populations of Lebanese and Muslims.

One prominent Lebanese American cautioned against an overreaction. Osama Siblani, president of the Arab American Political Action Committee in Dearborn, said Nasrallah's threats were directed at Israel, not the United States.

Siblani also said that though many Lebanese in the United States supported Hezbollah's political and social welfare efforts, "they would not tolerate or support any activities of Hezbollah inside the United States. This is our home."

Siblani said: "I think the FBI is expected to do whatever they can to make our country safer. They are trying to do their job.

"But if they start rounding up people because they are Lebanese, that is collective punishment, and we will not tolerate it."

In the past, Hezbollah has not launched any attacks in the United States. The two FBI officials and other experts said Friday that they believed that was because the organization had raised so much money here from supporters of its political and social services efforts in Lebanon that it did not want to risk stepped-up enforcement actions.

But the calls for retribution by Nasrallah and other prominent supporters of Hezbollah have been unusually strident, if not unprecedented, according to current and former FBI officials who have followed the organization over the years. They are equally concerned, they said, about retaliation from others who merely sympathize with Hezbollah.

"My understanding has always been that Hezbollah would never strike in the United States unless they believed that we participated in an operation against them," said Bob Pertuso, a former FBI special agent assigned to the Detroit Joint Terrorism Task Force from 2000 to 2004 who specialized in Hezbollah investigations. "So if they believed we assisted in the operation against Mughniyah, I would say they would strike in the United States."

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josh.meyer@latimes.com