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An article with more detail that answers some of the questions posted here. It's pretty hard not to see this as a violation of our country's principles and traditions (things that we, as conservatives, should be fighting for). The guy's no terrorist, and goof-ups like this just weaken the government's credibility when they need it because they've found a real terrorist. I've generally not been a fan of the ACLU (especially when they mess around with people's religious freedoms) but that just makes it all the more embarassing that these people had to turn to the ACLU to be defended. There should have been conservative groups out there to help. Anyway, here's the article:

Mystery Cloaks Couple's Firing as Risks to U.S.

December 12, 2004
By JAMES DAO

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - May 5, the day that changed Aliakbar and Shahla Afshari's lives, began like most others. They shared coffee, dropped their 12-year-old son off at Cheat Lake Middle School here, then drove to their laboratories at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a federal agency that studies workplace hazards.

But that afternoon, their managers pulled the Afsharis aside and delivered a stunning message: they had failed secret background checks and were being fired. No explanations were offered and no appeals allowed. They were escorted to the door and told not to return.

Mrs. Afshari, a woman not prone to emotional flourishes, says she stood in the parking lot and wept. "I just wanted to know why," she said.

Seven months later, the Afsharis, Shiite Muslims who came from Iran 18 years ago to study, then stayed to build careers and raise three children, still have no answers.

They have been told they were fired for national security reasons that remain secret. When their lawyer requested the documents used to justify the action, he was told none existed. When he asked for copies of the agency's policies relating to the background checks, he received a generic personnel handbook.

Without any official explanations of why they failed their background checks, they came up with their own theory: their attendance, more than five years ago, at two conventions of a Persian student association that has come under F.B.I. scrutiny, once with a man who was later investigated by the bureau.

The Afsharis' case comes at time when immigrants from many nations, but particularly Islamic ones, are facing tougher scrutiny from government agencies.

Unable to clear their names or find new employment in their field, the Afsharis on Thursday resorted to that most American of recourses: they sued the institute and its parent agencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services, demanding back pay and reinstatement or the chance to appeal.

The Afsharis, who passed background checks when they were hired - he in 1996, she in 1997 - were not even aware of the new reviews until they were told that they had failed.

In their suit, they do not question the government's right to conduct background checks. But their lawyers contend that the Kafkaesque nature of the process - in which the rules were unclear and perhaps unwritten - has made it impossible for them to defend themselves.

"How can we expect the people of the Middle East to emulate our democratic ideals abroad when we fail to apply those ideals to people like the Afsharis here?" asked Allan N. Karlin, a lawyer in Morgantown who, along with chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union in West Virginia and Washington, is representing the couple.

The Centers for Disease Control has said the Afsharis were not singled out because of their ethnic background, asserting that other Iranians and Muslims have faced similar background checks and passed. The agency also notes that the couple, who are not citizens and do not have protected Civil Service status, could have been fired at any time.

But the agency has declined to say anything else about the case and did not respond to questions about its policies on background checks. "All I can say is the Afsharis are no longer employed by C.D.C.," said a spokeswoman, Kathryn Harben.

Federal employees have always faced routine background checks, typically when they are hired. But experts say that since the Sept. 11 attacks, checks at certain agencies, including the disease control centers, have become more frequent and tougher as the government attempts to identify potential security leaks or spies with access to classified or dangerous materials.

Those tougher checks seem to have focused on immigrants from certain countries. A C.D.C. document obtained by the Afsharis shows that the recent background checks on them were ordered because they came from a "threat" country, Iran.

But what is most confounding to the Afsharis is how the government could consider them threats in the first place. Neither had access to classified documents or worked with banned biological or chemical toxins.

Moreover, none of their research was secret, much of it having been published in scholarly journals or presented at academic conferences.

Mr. Afshari, 52, who has a doctorate in industrial engineering, built equipment to study the health effects of things like asphalt fumes, human saliva and dust particles. One of his inventions helped analyze the sound of the human cough. He also worked with commercially available lasers and ultrasound equipment.

Mrs. Afshari, 43, who has a master's degree in occupational health and safety, worked in a laboratory that researched allergic reactions to common items like latex gloves and hand cleansers.

Handling classified documents or banned toxins requires a higher security clearance than the Afsharis possessed. Indeed, neither of them had ever applied for such clearances, which entail more intensive background investigations than the standard checks conducted on most federal workers.

Paradoxically, federal law grants people who apply for such clearances more rights than the Afsharis were given, experts say. Under cold-war-era regulations, people who fail such clearances can request internal documents explaining the reasons and are entitled to hearings where they can present a defense.

"What we have here is a brand-new, ad hoc, secret system," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties group, referring to the checks that led to the firings.

Friends and former colleagues say the Afsharis, though practicing Shiites who shun alcohol and worry about the permissiveness of American society, are anything but religious firebrands.

Mr. Afshari, a gregarious, chatty, bearlike man, was known to bring kosher turkeys to Thanksgiving dinners at Jewish homes and spend weekends repairing colleagues' cars for nothing. When his daughter, Azadeh, now 22 and a first-year student at West Virginia University's dental school here, decided to stop wearing a head scarf a few years ago, he did not protest, friends said.

The Afsharis' two eldest children, who were born in Iran but consider themselves Americans, have become well-known figures in Morgantown. Azadeh was a dean's list student, a campus government leader and a finalist for homecoming queen last year. Her brother Hamed, 21, a senior at the university, is also an honor student and a member of the student government. Their youngest child, Amin, 12, was born in America.

Robert C. Creese, a professor of engineering who was Mr. Afshari's doctoral adviser at West Virginia University, described Mr. Afshari as a pacifist who was appalled by the devastation wrought by Iran's decade-long war with Iraq. Mr. Afshari's younger brother was killed by mustard gas in that conflict.

"I fear a serious mistake has been made by C.D.C.," Dr. Creese said in one of nearly two dozen letters delivered to the agency that former colleagues have written to protest the Afsharis' firings.

The Afsharis contend that their only link to the student group under federal scrutiny, the Muslim Students Association (Persian Speaking Group), is that they took their children to national conventions in Chicago in December 1998 and Washington in December 1999.

Senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including the former director Louis J. Freeh, have said the group, sometimes referred to by the Farsi name Anjoman Islamie, is made up largely of anti-American fanatics, maintains close ties to the government of Iran and has been used as a front for Iranian intelligence. But it is not on the State Department's list of banned foreign terrorist organizations, and it operates openly in the United States.

The Persian student group is independent of the larger Muslim Students Association, a mainly Sunni group.

To the Afsharis, the conventions were an opportunity to speak Persian, eat Iranian food, attend workshops on Islam and meet other Iranian-Americans at a time of the year when many Americans were celebrating Christmas.

"We loved it because it was a chance to meet kids from our culture," Azadeh Afshari said. "We pushed our parents to go."

Mr. Afshari said the F.B.I. became aware of his family's trips to the conventions after an agent interviewed him in late 2001 about an Iranian friend, a graduate student who had been active in the association. The man, Shahab Ghasemzadeh, was deported for immigration violations last year, Mr. Karlin, the Afsharis' lawyer, said.

In a statement to an immigration court last year, an F.B.I. agent said Mr. Ghasemzadeh "may pose a long-term threat" to the United States because of his association with Anjoman Islamie. As evidence, the agent said Mr. Ghasemzadeh had attended the group's conventions (he went to one of them with the Afsharis), and had helped Iranian-Americans vote in Iranian elections.

It remains unclear if Mr. Afshari's friendship with Mr. Ghasemzadeh was the reason he failed the background check. But if it was, the Afsharis' lawyers say, his firing would be a case of guilt by association and a violation of the First Amendment rights they enjoy as legal permanent residents.

"This looks suspiciously like the witch hunts of the 50's, this time targeted against Muslim Americans," Ms. Martin of the Center for National Security Studies said.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Afshari's unemployment benefits ran out. He has not found work, and the family is now living on savings and credit cards. Mrs. Afshari has begun dental school with Azadeh but says she does not know if they can afford the tuition.

Mr. Afshari has become sullen and withdrawn, his children said. Though his father in Iran is ill, Mr. Afshari has decided not to visit him, fearing he will not be allowed to return to the United States.

"Everybody has a sense of pride about their parents," Hamed Afshari said, breaking into tears. "And then someone disrespects them like that and it hurts so bad because there is nothing you can do."

The case has also affected the Afsharis' friends, who say they remain mystified and angry about the way the couple has been treated.

"I've told Ali's story to a lot of people," said Travis Goldsmith, a computer engineer who worked with Mr. Afshari. "They don't believe that this could happen in this country."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/national/12shiite.html?ex=1103888439&ei=1&en=c7117e49305774eb