Claims by the Clinton Administration that a vigorous civil rights investigation is underway into the more than 30 burnings of black churches in the south are countered by investigators on the ground. Interviews with two dozen law enforcement officials working on the church burnings suggest that as yet there has been no systematic investigation into the possibility that a racially motivated terrorist campaign is involved. PNS associate editor Dennis Bernstein just returned from a second trip to the South to investigate the church burnings. Ron Nixon is associate editor of the North Carolina-based Southern Exposure Magazine.

SELMA, ALABAMA -- Stung by criticism from civil rights leaders and the Republican Congress for not addressing more forcefully the burning of over 30 black churches in the South, President Bill Clinton for the second time in two weeks has condemned the burnings and vowed "to devote whatever resources are necessary to solve these crimes."

"This is the largest civil rights investigation we have going," said Deval Patrick, Deputy Attorney General for Civil Rights, during last weekend's highly publicized meetings with ministers from the churches.

But over a dozen telephone interviews with federal law enforcement officials working on the fires in six of the affected states reveal that far fewer agents have been involved in the investigation than enumerated. And rather than systematically exploring the possibility that a campaign of racial terrorism is involved, as local black public officials and clergy fear, agents have downplayed the civil rights aspects of the burnings.

Rob Langford, Special Agent in Charge (SAC) in Birmingham, counts roughly 44 FBI and ATF agents and Justice Department officials from 12 different Southern states working on the fires as of May -- far fewer than the 200 agents recently claimed by the Justice and Treasury Department officials.

In Jackson, Mississippi, where two church burnings are being investigated, FBI spokesman Hal Nielson admitted that "only one full time agent (is) focusing on the civil rights aspects of the case." Nielson also said that there has been no systematic investigation of local white hate groups in the area such as the Klan and Aryan Faction, although such groups have been linked to some fires in other states. "It wouldn't be fair for me to say that we should talk to someone linked to a hate group every time a church is burned" in the area, Nielson said.

Ron Travis, FBI Special Agent in charge of Baton Rouge, La., is convinced that the three fires in his region are the work of a lone arsonist with no affiliations, even though he also admits that "we haven't even identified a suspect yet." As evidence, Travis cited the fact that his office has not gotten a single phone call in response to a $26,000 reward for leads on the case. "If it would have been a group of people, or juveniles, or something like that," Travis said, "you would have heard something by now."

The interviews with law enforcement agents tend to bear out the suspicions of many local civil rights activists and black public officials about the real aim of the investigations. "The problem you have here," says civil rights attorney Rose Sanders, co-founder of the Voting Rights Museum in Selma, "is that law enforcement officials in the field are attempting to diffuse this issue from what it is -- a pattern of racist acts of terrorism. They are making every effort to suggest that it is an isolated incident or one person acting on his own."

Critics are particularly alarmed by the course of the investigation in predominantly black Green County, Ala., where three churches were burned last year. As yet, a special team has turned up "no suspects, to be very honest with you," reports SAC Langford in Birmingham.

John Zippert, publisher of the Green County Democrat, a local black weekly, blames the lack of progress on the fact that agents, under orders from State Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions, have been preoccupied with "a huge investigation" of massive absentee voter fraud. Over 1,000 black residents have so far been questioned in that case, and a dozen brought before a special grand jury. Zippert and other local activists are particularly incensed that agents used the interviews to question black residents about the church burnings. "I think if the FBI ... spent as much time dealing with these fires as they are intimidating black voters, maybe we could get some answers," Zippert says.

Langford denies that the investigation into absentee voter fraud has diverted attention from the fires, and defends the double questioning as normal procedure.

But Thomas Figueres, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama specializing in civil rights enforcement, says the overlapping of the two investigations is highly unusual. "My experience was that the Justice Department just does not do that ... "

Figueres blames the lack of any positive breakthrough in the fires on "the recalcitrance and reluctance and outright hostility of some southern law enforcement agencies to enforce civil rights."

David Burnham, co-founder of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, feels the blame lies at higher levels. "The Department of Justice prosecutes fewer than five percent of all civil rights cases, in contrast to 85 percent of all immigration and 70 percent of all drug cases," Burnham says. "It's going to take more than a President standing in front of a burned black church to change the culture of an agency that has traditionally been hostile to prosecuting civil rights violations."