ADL spying-on-activists lawsuits finally settled
MichaelP
exposed in 1993 - ADL's main fact-finder was also spy for South African
regime; buddy was San Francisco cop who tutored El Salvadoran death squads
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http://www.examiner.com/news/default.jsp?story=n.adl.0401w
San Francisco Examiner, April 1, 2002
By Dan Evans of The Examiner Staff
Anti-Defamation League spying
Paper trail of deceit
On the hidden workings of the Anti-Defamation League and how three Bay
Area activists were able to uncover a spy operation that reached into the
San Francisco Police Department.
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LOCKED in a nondescript computer database, a shadowy operative named Roy
Bullock kept file upon file on liberal San Francisco Jews who disagreed
with Israeli policies.
The files included Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers,
addresses, phone numbers and group memberships. Some of the information
was sold to foreign governments, including Israeli and South African
intelligence groups.
Shockingly, Bullock was in the employ of a civil rights group whose motto
is "fighting anti-Semitism, bigotry and extremism": the Anti-Defamation
League of B'nai B'rith. Numerous targets of the ADL -- who drew parallels
to COINTELPRO, the FBI's tainted domestic surveillance program -- say the
profiling and covert activities continue to this day.
"They are continuing to gather facts," said Abdeen Jabara, a Manhattan
attorney and former president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee. "That, of course, is a euphemism for what we say is private
spying."
Not only were liberal Jews a target, but information also was kept on
labor unions, pro-Palestinian organizations, anti-apartheid groups,
American Arabs and anti-Semites. After the Federal Bureau of Investigation
broke the case in 1993, a number of these targets filed suit against the
ADL. The last lawsuit was recently settled.
The settlement in February marked the first time any of the organization's
victims were allowed to speak out. Usually, the ADL demands plaintiffs
keep quiet as a condition of any settlement.
Without those constraints, victims Jeffrey Blankfort, Steve Zeltzer and
Anne Poirier are revealing the underbelly of an organization that
previously had successfully shielded itself from condemnation. They are
using the ADL's own spy as a fulcrum.
Bullock's relationship with Blankfort and Zeltzer began when he
infiltrated a pro-Palestinian group started by the two, both of whom are
Jewish. Once inside, Bullock collected and sold information about the two
men to the ADL and, possibly the Mossad, the foreign arm of Israeli
intelligence.
Although Bullock never met Poirier, he may have sold information on her
organization to the South African government. The woman, who lives in
Berkeley, ran a scholarship program for South African exiles in the early
1990s. During the course of her lawsuit against the ADL, she discovered
the ADL's operative had sold confidential information to a South African
agent in San Francisco for $15,000.
Poirier had never done any work relating to the Middle East, and she was
astounded when she found out that the ADL had kept tabs on her. During her
nine-year court fight with the group, she found out more than she needed
to know about its operation, and now nothing much surprises her.
"They gathered information on anti-apartheid activities," she said,
"anyone the organization felt, by definition, would be against Israel
because they were too left-wing."
A FEW FILES, SO WHAT?
The fact the ADL has a file on a group doesn't imply clandestine
activities, said San Francisco regional director Jonathan Bernstein. He
resents the implication of the word spying, saying it implies people were
being followed around and trailed. That simply wasn't the case, he said,
though he acknowledged he never met Bullock.
"We have files on the NAACP because we've done collaborative projects with
them," he said. "They probably have files on the ADL, too."
In Bernstein's eyes, the group's fact-finding operations are one of its
most important missions.
Much of the time, the "missions" are nothing more than gleaning
information from media reports, he said. People employed by the ADL do
attend public meetings to keep an eye on people, just as other journalists
do.
The area's top boss, however, repeatedly sidestepped questions on whether
fact-finders employed subterfuge to get information. The fact that some of
the people being watched by the ADL were Jewish was immaterial, Bernstein
said.
Other civil rights groups, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, do
similar things on a limited scale, he said.
A representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is
headquartered in Birmingham [Alabama], could not be reached for comment.
Because the ADL has 30 regional offices, the organization is much better
equipped to ferret out anti-Semitism and other racist behavior.
"It can help us to respond to hate activity before someone gets hurt,"
Bernstein said. "That's the ultimate objective."
But are there times when fact-finding becomes a civil rights violation?
The San Francisco office of the American Civil Liberties Union, a group
one might expect to have a dim view on the tactics employed by the ADL,
refused to comment on the group's fact-finding activities. Nor would
spokeswoman Rachel Swain give a reason for the silence.
ONGOING COMPLAINTS
Groups have been saying for years that the ADL isn't the civil rights
organization it claims to be, but no one has been listening. Mostly, it's
because those groups have been thinly-veiled anti-Semites, such as the
Liberty Lobby, or hate groups such as White Aryan Resistance and the KKK.
But, as vile as some of these groups are, there is a significant amount of
evidence that their vitriol is not unfounded. For at least four decades,
the ADL continuously has tracked and spied on groups it considers not only
a threat to the Jewish community, but to the state of Israel.
Hussein Ibish certainly thinks so. Ibish is the spokesman for the American
Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee -- an organization that is, in many
ways, the Arab counterpart to the ADL. Though certainly at odds with many
Israeli policies, the ADC is not anti-Semitic, and plays a rather moderate
role.
"Was the ADL spying on people?" asked Ibish, quickly answering his own
question. "Certainly in San Francisco they were. We know they were
engaging in illegal activities to gain information. They, and their
operatives, were working hand-in-glove with South African intelligence and
Israeli intelligence."
Meet Mr. Spy
By his own admission, Bullock had been working off the books as a
fact-finder for the ADL since the mid-1960s. He would infiltrate not only
openly anti-Semitic groups, but also pro-Palestinian and anti-apartheid
organizations, usually under false pretenses. Bullock, who is not Jewish,
would then pass that information along to the ADL.
He received information about his targets from former San Francisco Police
Inspector Tom Gerard, who fled to the Philippines after being indicted in
1994 for illegal use of a police computer. Gerard's current whereabouts
are unknown.
Bullock, who no longer does undercover work for the organization, declined
to be interviewed for this article.
Nobody could have known about the extent of Bullock's surveillance, if
police had not seized his computer database in April 1993. It contained
thousands of files on liberal Jewish San Franciscans, Arab-Americans,
anti-apartheid activists, anti-Semitic groups, and plain ol' white
racists.
On April 8, 1993, armed with this information, police in San Francisco and
Los Angeles searched the ADL offices in those two cities. In San
Francisco, roughly 10 banker's boxes of information -- 75 percent of which
officers said was illegally obtained -- were seized.
A majority of data in those boxes confirmed police suspicions that it had
come from Bullock's computer. On that computer was information on 9,876
people, including 1,394 driver's licenses. The files were divided into
five categories: "Pinko," "Right," Arabs," "Skins," and "ANC," the last
standing for African National Congress.
Bullock also told the FBI that he had information on various labor groups.
These groups included: the San Francisco Labor Council, the Oakland
Educators Association, the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, Irish Northern Aid, the International Indian Treaty
Council and the Asian Law Caucus.
LAWSUITS GALORE
After the SFPD raid on the ADL offices, then-District Attorney Arlo Smith
filed a lawsuit against the organization to stop the spying. The suit was
settled that November. Though the ADL acknowledged no wrongdoing, the
group agreed to stop using police to get confidential information. The
league also agreed to pay $75,000 to a fund used to help stop hate crimes.
On April 18, 1993, 19 people who Bullock kept files on sued the ADL in San
Francisco Superior Court. Pete McCloskey, a former Republican congressman
from San Mateo County, was the group's attorney. His wife, Helen, was one
of the original plaintiffs.
A few months later, in October, the ADC slapped its Jewish counterpart
with a similar lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court. The ADC claimed the
ADL passed along information on the group to the Israeli government. The
ADC's suit was settled in October 1996.
The ADL agreed to pay $175,000 toward the Arab group's legal costs. The
ADL also agreed to contribute $25,000 to a foundation, administered by the
ADL and the ADC, dedicated to improving relations between Jews and Arabs.
The ADL was able to deny all wrongdoing.
JOURNALISTIC ENTERPRISE?
The McCloskey case, however, would drag on. The main point of contention
in that case was whether the ADL could be considered a journalistic
enterprise, a point won in court by the ADL.
The ADL publishes hundreds of newsletters, papers and books on a wide
range of subjects, attorney David Goldstein said. As with any other
journalistic enterprise, it contended it was not required to release its
confidential information or sources.
After a 1998 ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal, giving the ADL
journalistic protection, 14 of the remaining 17 plaintiffs -- two had died
in the interim -- dropped their cases against the ADL.
On Feb. 22, 2002, the ADL settled with Blankfort, Zeltzer and Poirier.
What held up the process, said McCloskey, was his clients' refusal to sign
a confidentially agreement. The three felt they had been viciously
wronged, he said, and wanted to publicize that fact.
With the settlement, each of the three plaintiffs received about $50,000.
None of the three, or McCloskey, believes the ADL will stop their spying
ways.
"It was settled partially out of fatigue," said the attorney. "Everyone
figured it might be best if we all just moved on."
Even if the case had continued, said Goldstein, there is a debate over how
much the three plaintiffs could prove they had been injured. Most of the
contested information consisted of Social Security and driver's license
numbers, which are hardly difficult items to find.
Nine years later, McCloskey is still angry about the case and wants the
federal government to revoke the group's tax-exempt status.
Since they obviously are working in conjunction with the Israeli
government, he said, they should register as such. Referring to themselves
as an education group, said the attorney, is simply a sham. continue
Winning wasn't easy, but fight after is harder -- Acerbic battle leaves
sour taste.
AFTER nearly a decade of fighting the Anti-Defamation League in court,
attorney Pete McCloskey is as bitter as a man who consumed a gallon of
vinegar.
The former Republican congressman from San Mateo, who recently won a
settlement from the civil rights group for three Bay Area residents, is
still tending to emotional wounds he endured from the ADL simply for
defending his clients' rights.
"They come after anyone that disagrees with them," he said of the
organization's tactics to paint him as an anti-Semite.
The decorated retired Marine, who represented his San Mateo County
district in the House of Representatives from 1967 to 1983, is anything
but an ideologue. He was one of the few Republicans who opposed the
Vietnam War and fought with President Nixon on numerous occasions.
While he vehemently denies any ties to anti-Semitic or neo-Nazis groups,
some of the avenues he chose to express his views have not helped his
case.
ANTI-SEMITIC NEWSPAPER
While in Congress, McCloskey granted an interview in 1982 with the
anti-Semitic newspaper Spotlight. And in May 2000, he gave a speech at a
conference of the Institute of Historical Review, a Holocaust revisionist
group.
McCloskey spoke to the Spotlight because, he believes, one should speak to
people they disagree with as much as people they agree with. The newspaper
was the publication of the now-defunct Liberty Lobby.
Though he acknowledged the newspaper's subscribers were primarily
right-wingers and racists, ascribing him similar views are ridiculous, he
said.
"Not a year didn't go by during the years I was in Congress that the
Spotlight didn't blast me as being a liberal Republican," he said.
In the Oct. 11, 1982 edition of the paper, McCloskey said Republicans were
far better politically positioned than Democrats to push for a Palestinian
state because GOP candidates were not as beholden to Jewish money to get
elected.
"The battle will be for public opinion in the United States, whether the
Congress will be willing to back Reagan and stand up to the Jewish lobby
in this country," he said.
However, he also stated in the interview that he disagreed with 90 percent
of the group's views, and suggested that peace in the Middle East would
only be realized when the United States gave equal merit to both Arab and
Israeli viewpoints.
DISAGREEMENT
As for his connection to the Institute of Historical Review, McCloskey
said he respected the group's determination to question historical
records. He said he strongly disagreed with the group's view on the
Holocaust, but supported its right to say it.
In a letter last year to the group's president, Mark Weber, McCloskey
spoke of his visits to death camps and his conviction that "there was a
deliberate policy of extermination of Jews, Poles, gypsies and homosexuals
by the Nazi leadership."
McCloskey also suggested Weber's group give up its views about the
Holocaust, and instead focus on what he called the ADL's distortions of
truth, one of them being its claim McCloskey was a Holocaust denier.
"It was like when Bush went down to Bob Jones University, and his
political opponents tried to identify him with Bob Jones," he said,
referring to the conservative South Carolina school that, until recently,
prohibited interracial dating. "It's ridiculous."
"The primary view of the ADL is that Jews should not be stereotyped or
guilty by association," he continued. "Yet you see them trying to
discredit people by virtue of their association."
One of his clients, Steve Zeltzer, acknowledged he wasn't entirely
comfortable with McCloskey going to the Institute of Historical Review
convention. Still, he said, he supports the right of free speech, even if
he strongly disagrees with the content.
"I wouldn't have done it, and I was opposed to him going," Zeltzer said.
"I wouldn't attend one of their conferences. They have a right to say what
they want to say, but I don't support their positions."
Another client, Anne Poirier, said she had not heard about her attorney's
attendance at the conference and so couldn't comment on it.
"One thing I know for sure, though, is he's not an anti-Semite," said the
Berkeley resident. "I'll go mano-a-mano with anybody that says so."
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