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Publication date: 04/01/2002
Adversaries go inside ADL's spying operation
This is the first of a two-part series 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. Today: Paper trail of deceit.
By Dan Evans
Of The Examiner Staff
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, 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.
E-mail Dan Evans at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>2<<<
Publication date: 04/02/2002
Winning wasn't easy, but fight after is harder
This is the last of a two-part series 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. Today: Acerbic battle leaves sour
taste.
By Dan Evans
Of The Examiner Staff
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."
E-mail Dan Evans at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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