Police Investigating Motive of Man Who Had Arsenal in Brooklyn

Police are investigating whether a man who collected an arsenal of pipe bombs and weapons in a Brooklyn Heights apartment was planning to bomb synagogues around the city, police sources told The New York Sun yesterday. The man, whom police identified as Ivaylo Ivanov, 31, told police during questioning yesterday that he had been building the bombs to use while fishing, the sources said. But police were doing forensic tests on Mr. Ivanov's computer to check whether he planned to target synagogues after it was discovered that the man was responsible for painting a series of swastikas in Brooklyn Heights in the fall that set off a spike in hate crimes around the city.

Seven pipe bombs were found in his apartment, and drill equipment used to build bombs was also found, police said.

Mr. Ivanov had been a prime suspect in the bias incident, and police had been inside his apartment several times in recent months — even enlisting him as a confidential police informant in a ploy to check his handwriting against anti-Semitic slurs scrawled on leaflets left along the block in September.

In that incident, 23 swastikas and derogatory statements against Jews were found along Remsen Street in a single night.

On visits to Mr. Ivanov's home as recently as a month ago, police said they did not notice any clues that he was stockpiling weapons or building bombs in the small one-bedroom apartment he shared with a nationally renowned AIDS researcher. A legal paintball gun discovered on one visit initially attracted officers' attention but was later dismissed as harmless, police said.

Mr. Ivanov came under police scrutiny again, however, after he flagged down police officers early Sunday morning and told them strangers shot him. In later interviews with detectives, it emerged that he accidentally shot himself. In checking his apartment for other possible victims, police officers found the operable pipe bombs with fuses and powder lying in open view. They also found ammunition, a crossbow, several firearms, and bulletproof vests.

Later, police said Mr. Ivanov disclosed that he had disposed of the gun he shot himself with, a .25 caliber automatic pistol, in a hiding place on the Brooklyn Promenade.

A friend whom Mr. Ivanov had called and asked to retrieve the gun handed over the weapon to police and was cooperating, police said.

Mr. Ivanov was charged with criminal possession of a weapon late Sunday evening, and yesterday he confessed that he had also painted the swastikas. He was charged yesterday afternoon with 23 counts of aggravated harassment and criminal mischief for the bias incident.

Police said Mr. Ivanov told officers that he was born in Sicily and raised in Bulgaria, and that he appears to be unemployed.

The AIDS researcher, Michael Clatts, had not been located by police as of yesterday evening.

Mr. Clatts teaches at the University of Puerto Rico and is currently conducting a study on HIV in Vietnam for the National Development and Research Institutes, a Chelsea-based nonprofit organization.

He is also listed as an associate professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, although a spokeswoman, Randee Sacks Levine, said he does not teach at the school and is not on the payroll.

Police have said Mr. Clatts has been out of town for an extended period that he is not being considered a suspect.

Mr. Ivanov's dog, Ruka, a German shepherd whose name means wolf in Bulgarian, was taken by police to the pound, neighbors said.

Penny Kaufman, who lives downstairs from the two men and who accompanied police to the apartment on Sunday when they first found the pipe bombs, said she was shocked to hear that Mr. Ivanov was connected to the anti-Semitic incident.

"He seemed like your average punk kid, but that thought never crossed my mind, and I'm saying this as a Jew," Ms. Kaufman said. "I'm aghast."

Police were looking into whether Mr. Ivanov had any ties to terrorists, but officials said yesterday that he seemed to fit the typical description of a hate crime perpetrator: a young white man acting alone.

The September incident appeared to spur a spike in bias incidents around the city against both blacks and Jews, and culminated in two physical assaults against Jewish young people. The last occurred Friday night, when a Jewish teenager walking alone in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, allegedly was attacked by a group of African-Americans shouting anti-Semitic slurs.

But at events marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. yesterday, local officials and religious leaders remarked on the unity that the black and Jewish communities in particular seemed to be showing in response to the incidents.

"That's really the challenge of Martin Luther King Day: to keep aglow the light of understanding and caring," Rabbi Marc Schneier of the New York Synagogue said after speaking at the Reverend Al Sharpton's annual event. "We've come a long way."