It's Now the ADL Spy Case

By Rachelle Marshall

The investigation of a former San Francisco policeman suspected of keeping illegal files on members of Arab-American, anti-apartheid and other political groups turned into the "ADL Spy Case" in early April, when revelations about the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League's nationwide intelligence operation became front page news in the Bay Area. Police officials who searched the San Francisco and Los Angeles offices of the organization on April 8 found evidence that ADL has employed undercover operators in at least seven major cities to gather information on thousands of individuals and groups ranging across the political spectrum, from Greenpeace, the Arab-American Democratic Club, the NAACP, the Mandela Welcoming Committee and the United Farm Workers to white supremacy and anti-Semitic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Youth for Hitler.

Although its spokesmen insist that ADL's only purpose is to "counteract bigotry and prejudice, " ADL's operatives also kept files on at least eight Jewish peace groups, Mills College, the Northern California Ecumenical Council and even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Arab Americans were a special target of the undercover operation. San Francisco Police Inspector Ronald Roth said in an affidavit released after the search that ADL had driver's license and motor vehicle registration information on some 15 percent of the members of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, as well as records on thousands of other Arab Americans.

On April 14, 19 Bay Area citizens filed a class action suit charging that ADL and two of its investigators had violated their privacy by illegally obtaining their personal records from government sources. The suit was filed by attorney Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey, Jr., a former congressman who was himself the subject of a file. One of the plaintiffs is Yigal Arens, son of former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens. Arens, a professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, is a member of the Jewish Committee on the Middle East, which favors a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "ADL believes that anyone who is American or who speaks politically against Israel is at least a closet anti-Semite," Arens said.

Other plaintiffs include Carol El-Shaieb, president of the Santa Clara County Arab-American Democratic Club; Audrey Shabbas, a Berkeley educator; and Amal Barkouki-Winter, president of the board of trustees of West Valley-Mission Community College District. "None of us is guilty of racism or Nazism or anti-Semitism or other 'isms' that ADL claims to protect us against," El-Shaieb said, maintaining that she and others were targeted solely because of their support for Palestinian causes.

ADL has employed undercover operators in at least seven major cities.

Two days after the suit was filed, Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Anastasia Steinberg resigned from the ADL board of directors, saying she was concerned about "the appearance of conflict of interest. " Steinberg had earlier prepared a report for the Santa Clara district attorney and is believed to have known about ADL's spy operation since January.

The apparently close relationship between ADL and law enforcement officials is an especially troubling aspect of the case. The San Francisco Examiner reported on April I that ADL was supplied with information by law enforcement agencies across the country, including the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and local police departments. ADL employed its own agents in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Washington and Atlanta, as well as San Francisco. Arab Americans in Los Angeles have demanded an investigation of ADL's ties with the Los Angeles Police Department, which originally refused to cooperate in the investigation of the ADL and was not asked to take part in the April 8 search by San Francisco authorities of ADL's Los Angeles office.

The case originally came to light when investigators revealed that former San Francisco policeman Tom Gerard had collected information on some 12,000 individuals and groups, much of it obtained from records he had taken home when the city's police intelligence unit was disbanded in 1990. His files contained extensive data on local Arab Americans, none of whom was suspected of criminal activity. Gerard has admitted that he shared his information with Roy Bullock, who for nearly 40 years has conducted spying operations for ADL. The two men sold some of their information to the South African government for $16,000 and may also have sold or given information to Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad.

According to a Los Angeles Times story of April 9, Bullock worked as a paid informant for the FBI as well as ADL. When the FBI learned of his dealings with South Africa, it began an investigation of him that eventually led to the discovery of ADL's intelligence network. Last fall the Bureau turned the investigation over to San Francisco authorities because it feared having to reveal government secrets if the case were tried at the federal level.

The 400-page affidavit released by the San Francisco police after the April 8 search accused ADL of "misuse of confidential government information and the invasion of privacy of over 1,000 persons. " ADL could also face up to 48 felony counts for failing to report Bullock's employment while paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past 25 years. Inspector Roth accused ADL employees of being "less than truthful with regard to the employment of Bullock and other matters. " ADL attorney Barbara Wahl claims Bullock was an independent contractor and that the organization has been unfairly scapegoated for actions committed by members of the police. But the way Bullock was paid had all the earmarks of a laundering operation.

All the Earmarks of Laundering

According to the police affidavit, Bullock received direction from San Francisco ADL Executive Director Richard Hirschaut as well as from ADL's research director in New York, Irwin Saull. But he was paid with cashier's checks drawn by Los Angeles attorney Bruce Hochman, a former head of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation Council. ADL funneled the money for these checks to David Lehrer, ADL executive director in Los Angeles, who maintained a secret bank account for the sole purpose of paying Bullock and other informants. A checkbook for the account in the false name of "L. Patterson" was kept in a locked safe at ADL's Los Angeles headquarters.

Paymaster Hochman served as a federal prosecutor until 1990 and was a member of a panel that advised Governor Pete Wilson on candidates for federal judgeships. He may have helped select Judge Bruce Einhorn, an active ADL member who is currently presiding over the deportation trial of two Palestinians in Los Angeles. Einhorn has refused to recuse himself from the case even though ADL provided information to the FBI on the defendants and six others before their arrest in 1987.

At a press conference on April 16, ADL attorney Wahl and two national officials of the organization denied that ADL had financed illegal spying operations but acknowledged that a review of its "fact finding activities" was underway "to ensure that we continue to operate in an appropriate and altogether legal manner. " Wahl also said ADL had no knowledge of Bullock's dealings with South Africa and "wouldn't have liked that if we had known." But when she was asked why Bullock had spied on assassinated African National Congress leader Chris Hani during a 1991 trip to Los Angeles, she replied, "I have no comment. " Despite international sanctions against South Africa, Israel has long had close military and commercial ties with the apartheid regime, so it would not be out of line for an ADL employee to spy on anti-apartheid activists.

In view of the accumulating evidence against ADL, the case took a surprising turn on April 24 when members of the San Francisco Police Commission, which has been charged with reviewing the intelligence-gathering operation against local citizens, said the commission's investigation would be limited to Gerard and not extend to Bullock and the ADL. Commissioner Clothilde Hewlett told the San Francisco Examiner that "to go beyond Gerard is not within our jurisdiction," but others close to the investigation suggested the commissioners had come under pressure from ADL and its supporters. Police Chief Tony Ribera admitted that a prominent Jewish city official, Chief of Protocol Richard Goldman, had called him to say that many Jews were feeling "anxiety" about the case.

Christine Toteh, vice president of the Arab-American Democratic Club, suspects a whitewash. "Obviously this police officer, Gerard, was sharing information with a private investigator, Bullock, and a private organization, the ADL," she commented. "They're going to put the fall on Gerard but he was just a peon in this thing." Toteh also pointed out that at least one member of the commission, Katherine Feinstein, is a member of ADL. Arab Americans and others are now wondering whether people who may have been spied on by Bullock for ADL can gain access to ADL files.

The full-scale investigation by the San Francisco district attorney of Gerard, Bullock, and the ADL is expected to continue, but given ADL's skill at covering up its operations, plus the sensitive issue of widescale police involvement, it will be several months, if ever, before all the facts are revealed. Meanwhile the case has exposed a disturbing characteristic of mainstream Jewish organizations.

A Disturbing Characteristic

For much of its 80-year history, ADL was in the forefront of American human rights groups, defending the rights of all minorities. But in recent years, ADL, like other prominent Jewish groups, has made the defense of Israel's interests its top priority. As a result, much of its effort now goes toward silencing critics of Israel, through tactics such as blacklists, spying, and pressure on the news media, that directly contradict ADL's original principles. (ADL's identification with Israel is so strong that the head of ADL's Society of Fellows in San Francisco, Norman Schlossberg, asserted in the Northern California Jewish Bulletin that "the police invasion of the ADL offices during Passover week reminds one of the Yom Kippur war. ")

Under the leadership of research director Nathan Perlmutter in the 1980s, ADL came to regard as anti-Semitic anyone who opposed Israeli policies or, by extension, the military and foreign policies of the proIsrael Reagan administration. In his book The Real Anti-Semitism in America, Perlmutter included under this new definition church groups and others who opposed U.S. military interventions abroad, claiming the "real" anti-Semites are those who "give war a bad name and peace too favorable a press."

By insisting on uncritical support for Israel, mainstream Jewish leaders have also come into conflict with people who oppose violations of human rights wherever they occur and who see the Palestinians as victims of oppression. Cornel West, director of Princeton's Afro-American Studies Program, discussed the rift between Blacks and Jews in the April 14 edition of The New York Times. Among its causes, he wrote, is the fact that "Blacks often perceive Jewish defense of Israel ...as an abandonment of substantive moral deliberation. When mainstream American Jewish organizations supported the inhuman policies of Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir they tipped their hats toward cold-hearted interest-group calculations."

The list of ADL's targets of suspicion indicates that the need to defend Israel at all costs leads inevitably to the creation of a broader and broader array of perceived enemies—in effect to institutionalize paranoia. During a recent broadcast on the ADL case over a San Francisco public radio station, several people called in to say that ADL's spying was justified because it "protected the Jewish community" from possible terrorism. In response, ACLU attorney John Crew reminded listeners that "the pursuit of goals, however laudable they seem, doesn't mean you can throw out the law, or that it doesn't apply to you. " The exchange carried echoes of the 1950s, when right-wing zealots tried to silence dissent in the name of national security.

The attempt to label groups and individuals as suspected wrongdoers can have a chilling effect on legitimate political activity, especially when loss of a job or a promotion could be at stake. An April 16 news story in the San Francisco Chronicle described the subjects of Bullock's spying activities as "political extremists, racists, and anti-Semites." In fact, these labels apply to only a handful of the thousands of individuals listed in Bullock's files. The rest, including hundreds of law-abiding Arab Americans, Blacks and Asian Americans, have nevertheless come under suspicion. It is no wonder that Maha Jaber, San Francisco chapter coordinator for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, concluded, "It's scary."

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of New Jewish Agenda, she writes frequently on the Mideast.