ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 1996 TAG: 9605220062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Federal law enforcement officials told Congress Tuesday they have found no evidence of a widespread conspiracy to burn black churches in the South, despite a sharp increase in such arson attacks since early last year.
But Deval Patrick, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the Justice Department is ``actively investigating whether activity of a nationwide or even regional scale is being directed or instigated by any individual or specific group.''
Patrick and other officials appeared before the House Judiciary Committee, which convened the hearing to explore the recent rash of fires at predominantly black churches throughout the South.
John Magaw, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said his agency is investigating 25 arson fires at Southeastern black churches since January 1995 - six in Tennessee, five each in Louisiana and South Carolina, four in Alabama, three in Mississippi and one each in Virginia and Georgia.
The number of attacks at black churches nationwide averaged just three per year from fiscal 1992 through 1994, Magaw said, then jumped to six in 1995 and to 22 so far in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. He said a conspiracy was uncovered involving two fires in South Carolina, but the agency has ``not yet - and I emphasize, not yet - found any evidence of an interstate or national conspiracy.''
Black lawmakers criticized the committee for taking so long to schedule a hearing into the black church fires, particularly in light of several weeks of hearings last year into the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, and the 1992 shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the committee's ranking Democrat, said the history of the civil rights movement gives the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies ``horrible, horrible legacies'' to overcome in investigating the fires in black churches.
Conyers also urged the federal officers not to rule out conspiracy too quickly. ``We mean we haven't found a conspiracy link,'' he said. ``We don't mean there's no conspiracy. Conspiracies are hard to uncover.''
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