ADL Socialist Censorship
Because, Boys and Girls, The ADL
Big Brother Knows Best What Kids Should Know
From: Kevin Alfred Strom kevin.strom@innocent.com 11/13/98
10:34
Subject: ADL Censorship.
To: kevin.strom@innocent.co
Attached, unchanged and unedited, is a Reuters article on the
ADL's latest effort to stifle free speech.
My comment:
I predict that the next step will be to push the use of this
censorship software in public library computer terminals, and
-- even more ominously -- to have it "preinstalled"
on new PCs and browsers.
As ever,
Kevin Alfred Strom.
---begin Reuters article---
ADL Filter: A ``crossing guard'' for Net hate
NEW YORK (Wired) - The Anti-Defamation League has announced
the debut of HateFilter, a software program designed to block
access to Web sites and newsgroups that denigrate individuals
on the basis of what the ADL calls ``immutable characteristics,''
such as race, religion, and sexual orientation.
The software was developed with The Learning Company, the makers
of CyberPatrol, an Internet filtering program that is widely used
in homes, schools, businesses, and libraries to block access to
sites deemed inappropriate by parents and employers.
``We are engaged in a full-blown battle against high-tech hate,''
said ADL national chairman Howard Berkowitz in a statement. ``Bigots
are seducing our children with online messages presented in full-color
animation with music and video.... Parents should be able to protect
their children from hate by keeping bigotry and prejudice out
of their homes.''
The ADL was founded in 1913 to fight anti-semitism. HateFilter
(http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/info/default.htm), which is available
as a free download on the ADL's Web site, is a customized version
of CyberPatrol (http://www.cyberpatrol.com). Like CyberPatrol,
HateFilter only blocks sites that have been added to its database
manually by monitors who scrutinize sites for objectionable content.
Neither CyberPatrol nor HateFilter sifts out sites automatically
by keyword. The appearance of the term ``breast,'' for instance,
on a breast cancer information page, will not result in automatic
blocking of the site.
HateFilter users can choose to block sites listed in the standard
CyberPatrol database-the so-called CyberNOT list-and those in
a special database compiled by the ADL.
Elizabeth Coleman, the ADL's national director of civil rights,
says ``a team of people who are on their computers all day'' is
employed by the organization to patrol the Web for sites like
the white supremacist RAHOWA Headquarters. (''Q: What starts out
as a fruit, then turns into a vegatable sic, then turns into meat?
A: Matthew Shepard.'') The ADL's database will be updated weekly.
HateFilter adds a feature to CyberPatrol's standard set: When
a site is blocked, Net surfers are offered a menu of alternative
``educational'' sites. Someone who tried to access godhatesfags.com,
for instance, would be directed to sites offering information
about homophobia.
Certain racist and anti-semitic sites are specifically designed
to attract children and young adults, Coleman says, such as the
World Church of the Creator's ``Kids' Page'' (now offline) and
sites devoted to the music of white supremacist bands. She calls
HateFilter ``a crossing guard for the information superhighway,
to protect vulnerable kids who might be home alone and come across
hate language.''
Coleman cautions that while the Internet provides unparalleled
opportunities to ``collapse distance, collapse time, and put us
in touch with one another 24 hours a day,'' the ability of netsurfers
and webmasters to hide behind anonymity and pseudonyms makes the
Net ``a very dark place-a Petri dish for hate.''
CyberPatrol has come under fire from organizations as diverse
as Reverend Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, the
Censorware Project, and Peacefire-a First Amendment youth group-for
its blocking policies.
In a report published on its Web site in December 1977, the
Censorware Project claimed CyberPatrol's CyberNOT list included
such sites as the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation (blocked
for ``FullNude'' and ``SexActs''), the Deja News Usenet archive,
and newsgroups like misc.headlines and talk.abortion. Some of
the blocked sites were removed from the CyberNOT list after the
report was published.
In June, the American Family Association found itself added
to the CyberNOT list for ``intolerance,'' indicating that the
blocked site contained language ``advocating prejudice or discrimination
against any race, color, national origin, religion, disability
or handicap, gender, or sexual orientation.'' Disputing the block,
the AFA argued that such statements as ``homosexuality and AIDS
are inseparably connected'' reflect a valid point of view, not
intolerance. The site remains on the CyberNOT list.
David Burt, who runs a site called Filtering Facts, which advocates
the use of filtering software in public libraries to screen out
hardcore pornography, thinks HateFilter is ``a good idea for parents,
but a terrible idea for a library.''
Burt says the dispute between CyberPatrol and the AFA illustrates
that ``filtering for viewpoint''-rather than for, say, clearly
sexual imagery-is ``a slippery slope.''
``Just the fact of condemning homosexuality from a biblical
perspective doesn't make a site a hate site,'' he says.
Because hate and intolerance are already filtering options
for the standard version of CyberPatrol, Peacefire coordinator
Bennett Haselton calls ADL's customized HateFilter ``a symbolic
gesture.''
Haselton points out that while the ADL's press release claims
that HateFilter is ``the first filter produced by a non-commercial
organization,'' another organization beat them to it: the Church
of Scientology, which developed blocking software to prevent its
members from reading sites and newsgroups critical of church policy.
Coleman stressed the fairness of the ADL's monitoring policies.
Two pro-Zionist sites, for instance-the Jewish Defense League
and Kahane.org-are blocked for their use of vicious anti-Arab
language.
``We do not filter out opinions,'' she says. ``Someone who
thinks homosexuality is wrong is expressing an opinion. Someone
who says homosexuals do not deserve to live is expressing hate.
The language has to reach a certain level.
``It's a very fine line.''
(Reuters/Wired)
LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE., St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, 12-21-1993, pp 06B. ADL Spy Probe I applaud the
Post-Dispatch for its Dec. 7 editorial chastising the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL) for its spying activities. Maybe the ADL got off
right before indictments were handed up not only because its obvious
government influence but perhaps as a byproduct of the current
international deals being made around the new Middle East peace
accords or the issue of pardoning convicted Israeli spy Jonathan
Pollard and his ADL-connected networks. I did wish the Post-Dispatch
had gone further in its editorial. First of all, it failed to
report or comment on the two very large multi-party class action
suits taken out by the victims of the spying against the ADL in
California. Moreover, other cities, such as Chicago, have taken
up their own official inquiries into ADL activities prompted by
the San Francisco revelations. Since it has been revealed that
the ADL had (and may still have) an active undercover spy, "Ironsides,"
for many years here, whose identity the San Francisco investigators
say they know (April 10 article), and who one may reasonably assume
had access to police and other official files, shouldn't the call
be made for a similar investigation in St. Louis? No doubt a call
from Chief Clarence Harmon or the circuit attorney to San Francisco
would reveal who "Ironsides" is, and then an investigation
could be made to determine the legality of his activity. Newspaper
reporters were prominent among those targets of the ADL espionage
- especially newspapers and reporters who disagreed with ADL positions
on the Mideast, hate crimes legislation or the John Demjanjuk
case, as have Post-Dispatch editors. I happen to know that previous
pleas to local officials to probe ADL's St. Louis activities have
been ignored. Maybe if the Post-Dispatch joined the call, things
would be different.
Anthony DeFranco St. Louis
Spy Net for Jewish Group Probed
LOS ANGELES TIMES, Newsday, 02-26-1993, pp 17.
- A private intelligence network with ties to the Anti-Defamation
League is under investigation for illegally collecting information
on more than 12,000 people nationwide, authorities say. Spokesmen
for the league, an American Jewish group dedicated to fighting
anti-Semitism and bigotry, denied any wrongdoing. San Francisco
authorities say they have confiscated files containing personal
information on a wide range of political activists, ethnic advocates,
writers and other U.S. residents. Much of the information allegedly
is from confidential government databanks and police agencies.
While some files were funneled to South Africa, most of the information
appears to have been collected on behalf of the Anti-Defamation
League. Officials of the organization, as well as its paid undercover
operatives, could face charges for gathering intelligence illegally,
authorities said. "What we're looking at is the violation
of the statute that prohibits the sale, use and dispersal of confidential
information," San Francisco District Attorney Arlo Smith
said. Officials of the Anti-Defamation League in San Francisco
and Los Angeles have cooperated with the investigation, allowing
police to search their offices without a warrant. They acknowledged
that their organization worked with police in collecting information
on people believed to be anti-Semitic or involved in hate crimes
but insisted that they did not violate the law. "It has been
a regular practice of the ADL to trade hate crime-related information
with police departments," said Richard Hirschhaut, executive
director of the organization's Northern California office. "It
has always been our understanding and our credo in conducting
our fact-finding work that we conduct our work from a high ethical
plateau and in conjunction with the law." In the past, both
the Los Angeles and San Francisco police departments have been
criticized for collecting intelligence files on activists, political
figures or elected officials. Many details of the investigation
were murky because a San Francisco judge has placed most of the
evidence under seal until charges are filed, perhaps next month,
authorities said. But the San Francisco Police Commission has
ordered the release of individual files to those who were allegedly
spied on - including Arab-Americans, supporters of the African
National Congress, Black Muslims, Irish-Americans, neo-Nazis,
the National Lawyers Guild, left-wing activists and others. "The
ADL is running this all over the country," said one source
close to the investigation. "The ADL set up this great system
for collecting information and South Africa tapped into it."
One former San Francisco police intelligence officer, who allegedly
funneled police files to the operation, is under investigation
on allegations that he sold confidential information about hundreds
of people to the South African government. After he was questioned
in November by the FBI, which began the investigation, he fled
to the Philippines. Much of the case revolves around the mysterious
figure of Roy Bullock, who has spent the past 40 years as a free-lance
investigator and undercover operative. According to investigators,
Bullock, 58, worked on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League as
well as other groups. Authorities said he worked closely with
police officers from various departments and collected such confidential
information as criminal records, intelligence files, driver's
license photographs and home addresses. Bullock could not be reached
for comment.
ADL's Illegal Spying Activities
ADL's Intelligence Network
Jane Meredith Adams, Timothy M. Phelps, Timothy M, ADL's
Intelligence Network Prosecutor: NY office gathered data on unions
and politicians., Newsday, 04-13-1993, pp 07.
By Jane Meredith Adams and Timothy M. Phelps.
Jane Meredith Adams is a special correspondent in San Francisco;
Timothy M. Phelps is a reporter in Newsday's Washington Bureau
The Anti-Defamation League's nationwide intelligence network
that gathered information on labor unions, political leaders,
journalists and many others was operated out of the ADL's New
York office, a San Francisco prosecutor said yesterday. John Dwyer,
an assistant district attorney investigating allegations that
the ADL may have illegally obtained confidential police information,
told Newsday that Irwin Suall, the league's director of fact-finding,
ran the effort from the ADL's headquarters in New York. Prosecutors
also said that undercover operatives were at work in New York
and other major American cities. Suall has been widely quoted
in the news media as an expert on racist right-wing organizations.
Neither he nor any other ADL official has been charged with any
crime. Suall and other ADL officials could not be reached yesterday
because its offices were closed for the Passover holiday. There
was no reply to a message left with one ADL employee. In past
statements, the ADL has acknowledged collecting information on
racist organizations but has said it violated no laws in doing
so. In an interview with Newsday, Roy Bullock, the organization's
undercover operative in San Francisco, said he was a "researcher,"
not the spy that West Coast newspapers have called him. The ADL,
with a staff of 400 and a budget of $32 million, has worked for
80 years in this country to stop defamation of Jewish people and
to educate Americans about Israel. But according to police affidavits
made public last Thursday as justification for bank and office
search warrants, Bullock, while surreptitiously on the ADL's payroll,
kept files not only on such organizations as "Youth for Hitler"
and Arab-Americans, but also on groups he called "pinko,"
including a Hotel and Restaurant Employees union local, the San
Francisco Labor Council, local weekly newspapers, gay rights and
animal rights organizations, environmental groups like Greenpeace,
religious groups like Jews for Jesus, and numerous black and anti-apartheid
groups, including the Black United Fund, the Rainbow Coalition
and the Department of Black Studies at San Francisco State University.
Arlo Smith, the San Francisco district attorney, said in an interview
that "I'm probably in the files too," because, he said,
he had given speeches to the NAACP and Arab-American groups that
the ADL kept track of. Smith said that potential crimes being
investigated include eavesdropping and disclosure and receipt
of confidential police files. Bullock allegedly obtained information
from San Francisco policeman and former CIA employee Tom Gerard,
who told a San Francisco newspaper in an interview from the Philippines
that he had gone there to escape prosecution. Bullock, 58, a San
Francisco dealer in Asian art, had a desk at the ADL but operated
a vast computer data base of 10,000 names out of his modest Victorian
apartment. In his first interview since court documents released
last week revealed his involvement with the ADL, Bullock yesterday
angrily denied that he was a spy or that the ADL was involved
in illegal surveillance. "The accusation of spying is false
and malicious," he said. "I am by no stretch of the
imagination a spy. I'm a researcher. I have worked with the ADL
for many years and consider them an honorable organization. I've
never known them to be involved in illegal activities." He
was a familiar figure to activists in San Francisco, particularly
among groups involved in Palestinian and anti-apartheid issues.
He attended meetings of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination
Council, volunteered to work in the office of the anti-apartheid
March for Peace, Jobs and Justice and, because of his stocky build,
worked security at an Arab-American march, said Jeffrey Blankfort,
editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin. Bullock later created
files on those groups. He said "99.9 percent" of the
information came from what he called "public sources,"
including the alternative weekly newspaper in San Francisco, the
Bay Guardian, on which he also kept a file. He said most of the
people he investigated turned out to be "a collection of
gas bags and hot air artists." He said information on such
ostensibly apolitical groups as the Earth Island Institute - which
was listed in the `PINKO' section, according to the court documents
released Thursday - were part of his own private files, not information
he was passing on to ADL. The revelation that ADL could be tracking
low-profile environmental groups such as Earth Island Institute
has infuriated members of those groups. Bullock said he believed
the San Francisco district attorney's investigation into the ADL's
information-gathering operation is part of an effort to impugn
the organization's credibility. "What hidden political agenda
is behind this investigation which has served no one?" he
asked.
Just Like the USSR When the Jews
Ran It, The American ADL "Bolsheviks" Made Marlon Brando
LIE in Public. For the real story of the Jewish Control of Hollywood
Brando Talked About, See Jews
Who Control Hollywood The Only Difference is that ADL Thugs
Didn't Get To Kill Him Later as they did Regularly in Stalin's
Day to Christians. For the Deaths of 100 Million Christians at
the Hands of the Jews in Russia, See Jewish
Genocides Today & Yesterday
Brando apologizes for remarks,
plans Museum of Tolerance visit
Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Copyright ©
1996 The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (Apr 10, 1996 11:00 a.m. EDT) --
Marlon Brando apologized for anti-Semitic comments about Jews
in Hollywood and plans to make a public statement at the Museum
of Tolerance, a rabbi said.
Brando called the center and "expressed
his remorse," Rabbi Marvin Hier said Tuesday. Brando will
"make a public statement regarding this matter" Friday
at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's museum, Hier said.
The 72-year-old Brando was harshly criticized
by Jewish groups after remarks last week in an interview on CNN's
"Larry King Live."
"Hollywood is run by Jews. It is owned
by Jews and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue
of people who are suffering," Brando said.
"He told me he was an early supporter
of Israel," said Hier. "I told him, 'Marlon, I never
thought you were an anti-Semite, but the words you used on Larry
King was music to the ears of racists and bigots all over the
world."'
The reclusive star of "The Godfather"
and "A Streetcar Named Desire" mentioned on the show
the various stereotypes that he said were depicted in films.
"We've seen the nigger, and the greaseball.
We've seen the chink. We've seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap.
We have seen the wily Filipino. We've seen everything. But we
never saw the kike because they knew perfectly well that that's
where you draw the wagons around," Brando said.
"I think it's a good thing but I'm not
sure it goes far enough," Abraham H. Foxman, director of
the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, said of Brando's planned
visit.
"He's not a kid going to a museum. He's
an adult who's had these views for 25 years," Foxman said
from his New York office.
"If he really has remorse, he ought to
go see his friend Larry King and tell everyone on the air,"
he added.
Brando's Friday news conference at the Museum
of Tolerance will accomplish the goal of reaching a world audience,
Hier said.
ADL - A History
of Disinformation and Intimidation
AlAkhbar News Service http://www.iap.org/news/Al-Akhbar/199603/19960322.3.html
Radio Islam
http://www.abbc.com/islam/english/toread/adl.htm
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which describes itself as
a civil rights organization, has been in the forefront of an ongoing
attempt to label legitimate American-Arab and American-Muslim
charitable, political, and informational organizations as fronts
for terrorism. This attempt is part of a long-standing ADL policy
of discrediting any individual or organization opposed to Israel
or supportive of Palestinian rights. The ADL's strong political
loyalty to Israel as well as its acknowledged ties to Israel's
external intelligence agency in addition to its past practices
of spreading disinformation and intimidating those who have spoken
out against Israeli policies should however serve as a warning
about the ADL and the nature of its claims.
When the ADL was founded in 1913 it defined its mission as
opposing the defamation of the Jewish people. Over the years,
the organization won respect for its active support of civil rights
and its opposition to segregation and white supremacist groups.
However after the founding of the State of Israel and the 1967
Middle East War, the ADL significantly altered the way it defined
its mission. In a 1974 ADL publication entitled "The New
Anti-Semitism," then-ADL National Director Benjamin Epstein
argued that any "criticism of Israel reflects insensitivity
to American Jews and constitutes a form of anti-Semitism."
This change in the way it defined its mission meant that the ADL
would no longer be engaged in merely civil rights work but would
rather take on a very strong political stance in defense of Israel.
The main goal of the ADL became to counteract any criticism of
Israel and to promote Israel's interests regardless of other considerations.
Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, for example, the ADL was in
the forefront of an effort to keep documents underscoring Israel's
sinking of an American naval ship confidential. Such efforts cannot
be understood in the context of the ADL's former civil rights
agenda. Similarly, in November, 1994, ADL's Executive Director
Abraham Foxman personally appealed to President Bill Clinton to
commute the prison sentence of Jonathan Pollard, an intelligence
analyst for the U.S. Navy who sold what the New York Times described
as "suitcases full of military intelligence" to Israel.
Foxman's appeal to President Clinton can only be understood in
light of the ADL's new mission of promoting Israeli interests.
The fact that the ADL has become a pro-Israel interest group
is, of course, not in itself problematic. The entire United States
political system is based on the freedom of interest groups to
compete with others in promoting their often conflicting agendas.
However the ADL has overstepped the bounds of legitimacy on a
number of levels. The organization has engaged in illegal domestic
spying activities, has worked with foreign intelligence agencies
to undermine the rights and endanger the lives of American citizens,
has undertaken disinformation campaigns slandering and intimidating
numerous academicians, politicians, journalists, church officials,
and Arab-Americans.
ADL's transgressions were most notably exposed in January 1993
when San Francisco newspapers broke the story of ADL's extensive
domestic spying network. The San Francisco Police Department discovered
that under the cover of fighting anti-Semitism, the ADL had gathered
and sold to intelligence agents of the Israeli and South African
governments information on thousands of American individuals and
groups. In addition to nearly all Arab American organizations,
those whom the ADL targeted included House Armed Services Committee
Chairman Ron Dellums, former Congressman Pete McCloskey, Los Angeles
Times correspondent Scott Kraft, the board of directors of public
television station KQED, the Rainbow Coalition, a number of labor
unions, Greenpeace, as well as numerous other journalists, professors,
members of Congress, and activists who the ADL suspected had "anti-Israel"
leanings. The information which the San Francisco police department
confiscated from the ADL offices included illegally obtained confidential
police material. The manner by which the ADL obtained such information
as well as the fact that they sold it to foreign governments are
both felonies.
The ADL's ties to the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence
agency, had been known even before the scandal broke out in 1993.
During the court proceedings concerning a 1970 lawsuit against
the ADL, an internal letter was disclosed in which ADL's Epstein
bragged about the close intelligence relations between the ADL
and Israel. Furthermore, in his 1988 autobiography, ADL general
counsel Arnold Forster described the close connections between
the ADL and the Mossad. The Mossad connection is especially disturbing
because of the Israeli intelligence agency's long record of engaging
in political assassinations of opponents of Israel throughout
the world.
Like the Mossad, the ADL has not been content with just gathering
information on those who have spoken out against Israel or in
favor of Palestinian rights. The ADL has also actively engaged
in discrediting them through disinformation campaigns which are
aimed at both distorting the records and intimidating those opposed
to Israel. While in the 1970's and 1980's, the ADL often falsely
labeled such individuals as being connected to the PLO or in the
pay of Arab Gulf states, since the 1990's, the ADL has begun labeling
them as being connected to Islamic terrorist organizations. The
ADL's allegations, while couched in a matter-of-fact style, nearly
always falls far short of providing any real evidence. However
such allegations have had far-reaching effects. After the ADL
accused seven Palestinians and a Kenyan woman in California with
ties to a PLO terrorist group, for example, the eight individuals
were arrested and deportation proceedings were begun. When it
was later discovered that no real evidence existed against the
eight individuals except for the fact that they had distributed
anti-Israeli magazines, the media sharply criticized the government.
One of its first salvos in the disinformation war was its 1975
report entitled "Target U.S.A.: The Arab Propaganda Offensive,"
in which the ADL distorted the images of nearly all mainstream
Arab-American groups. The ADL followed up that report with its
most controversial book of all: Pro-Arab Propaganda: Vehicles
and Voices, an enemies list of 31 organizations and 34 individuals
which was published in 1983 and was largely aimed at countering
opposition to Israel from University professors and student organizations.
The publication intentionally takes statements of those on the
list out of context, accuses them of Anti-Semitism, and falsely
accuses a number of academic scholars of being part of a PLO support
network or of having been paid by Gulf Arab countries. The report
calls upon Jewish leaders in Universities throughout the country
to boycott and intimidate those appearing on the list. Those who
appeared on the list later found themselves ostracized by the
academic community with some losing their jobs or denied promotions.
S.C. Whittaker, the former chairman of the Political Science Department
at Rutgers University admitted, for example, that political reasons,
rather than academic ones, prevented Dr. Eqbal Ahmad from obtaining
a regular teaching appointment after his name appeared on the
ADL list. Dr. Noam Chomsky, who also appeared on the list, says
that since the book was published, protesters have appeared at
every one of his speaking engagements and have distributed distorted
ADL reports containing fabricated quotes that he was alleged to
have made in an attempt to intimidate him and his listeners. On
Nov. 30, 1984, the Middle East Studies Association passed a resolution
protesting the "creation, storage, or dissemination of blacklists,
enemy lists" or surveys that call for boycotting individuals
or intimidating scholars. Similar intimidation campaigns have
been waged by the ADL against reporters and journalists who have
criticized Israel.
Throughout the 1980's, the ADL also accused liberal church
officials, church groups, and religious organizations which called
for peace and justice for all in the Middle East as being connected
to the PLO. The Reverend Don Wagner and the Presbyterian Church
had especially been accused by the ADL of having connections to
the PLO, though no evidence was ever presented backing up such
contentions. On the other hand, after a 1994 report on the religious
right, the ADL was accused by religious conservatives of going
after people for their political views and of taking numerous
quotes of religious leaders out of context. Also on May 25, 1994,
the ADL's Jerusalem office released a sensationalist story which
appeared the next day in the New York Times and other newspapers
which alleged that the Vatican had admitted to being responsible
for the Holocaust. The Vatican later totally denied the story.
The ADL's blatant misrepresentation of facts was sharply criticized.
The ADL's credibility has been severely shaken by its long
record of disinformation. While the ADL has every right to continue
advocating pro-Israel policies, its real agenda should be exposed
and it must be made to end the illegal spying, harassment, and
intimidation of political opponents. More importantly, U.S. law
enforcement agencies, the media, and political circles need to
see the ADL for what it is: a pro-Israel group more than ready
to distort the truth to further the Israeli agenda. While in retrospect,
it now seems very clear that the ADL's wild allegations against
alleged PLO support networks in the 1980's were baseless, it must
be remembered that at the time they were seen as credible and
led many people to lose their jobs and others to be imprisoned.
The ADL's current crusade against alleged Islamic terrorist networks
is almost identical to its earlier one against so-called ties
to the PLO. Both campaigns are based on general stereotypes and
fears and are devoid of evidence and fact. To repeat such allegations
without further investigating them, as some in the media have
done, is unprofessional and unethical. To act upon them, as some
law-makers and law-enforcement agencies have done, is dangerous
and threatens the freedoms and civil liberties Americans have
grown to expect.
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Is
the Anti-Defamaton League of B'nai B'rith Spying on You?
by Bill Hughes
(Published in the Baltimore Sentinel, September, 1993 issue.)
http://home.earthlink.net/~liamhughes/thought.html
Are you being watched? Is information about your First Amendment
activities being sent covetly to alien intelligence agencies?
Have secret files been compiled on you? A major scandal, centered
around ex-San Francisco Police Inspector Tom Gerard, a shadowy
character named Roy Bullock, and the Anti-Defamation League of
B'nai B'rith (ADL) suggests that American liberals, and others,
may be under surveillance. Evidence seized by the police indicates
that numerous progressives activists, newspapers, elected officials,
and labor unions-are the targets of a domestic snooping operation.
Its legality, and scope, are now being tested and examined in
a civil rights case filed in a state court in San Francisco. Gerard
has been charged in San Francisco with theft of government property
and conspiracy. He is suspected of having collected privileged
material on many residents and organizations in the Bay Area.
He turned the information over to Bullock. Gerard was introduced
to Bullock in the San Francisco office of the ADL. An antique
dealer, Bullock, has been the ADL's top "investigator"
for more than three decades. The ADL paid him over $170,000 between
1985 and 1992 for his cloak-and-dagger work. Bullock liked to
pick through the garbage of his victims, and once infiltrated
an Arab-American delegation that visited Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
in her Washington, D.C. Office. (Pelosi is the daughter of Baltimore's
late Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro, Sr.) According to a Los Angeles
Times article (04/09/93), Bullock worked as a paid informant for
the FBI, as well as the ADL. On April 8, 1993, police carried
out a five hour raid of the ADL offices in San Francisco and Los
Angeles. They discovered the ADL had copies of computer files
on 12,000 Americans and more than 950 groups. According to police
reports and court documents, Bullock acknowledged he obtained
the information from Gerard, who traded police files, criminal
histories and license plate numbers in exchange for Bullock's
data on so-called extremist groups. It is feared by some that
this confidential information may have been filtered to spook
networks in Israel, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Gerard
had tied earlier in his career to the CIA. The ADL boasts of keeping
its eye on extreme right-wing groups, like the Skinheads, the
Klu Klux Klan, and Aryan Nations. Their role in this mess indicates
they may have reached too far in search for "Anti-Semites."
Police found files on the African National Congress: the ACLU:
Irish Americans; the United Auto Workers; AIDS activist groups
like ACT-UP; Mother Jones magazine; Pacifica News Network; Lesbian
Agenda for Action; Greenpeace; Christic Institute; Rep. Roy Dellums
(D-CA); the National Lawyers Guild; NAACP; CISPES; Carpenters
Local 22; Jews for Jesus; and many Arab and Palestinian individuals
and organizations. The ADL had denied any wrongdoing in the growing
scandal. Gerard has pleaded "not guilty" and released
on $20,000 bail. Bullock has not been charged. The probe is continuing.
Abraham Foxman, the head of the ADL, lashed out at the San Francisco
district attorney for "trying us in the media, " according
to an interview he gave to the Northern California Bulletin, a
local Jewish weekly. Foxman said the ADL would continue to monitor
people or groups that "pose a threat to Jews" and defended
the organization's probe of the African National Congress on grounds
the ANC "were violent, they were anti-Semitic, they were
pro-PLO, and they were anti-Israel." (See The Washington
Report on the Middle East magazine,08/93). The ADL was founded
in 1913 for the declared purpose of defending Jews against "defamation."
For the most part, their record over the years has been a laudable
one. During the Reagan years, however, the ADL made a noticeable
turn to the Right. Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal, a respected author
and anti-Zionist, said, "What exactly constitutes anti-Semitism
was to receive continually different interpretations. With the
creation of Israel in 1948, the meaning of the word was broadened
and eventually, totally distorted." (The Washington Report
on Middle East Affairs, 07/93). Irwin Suall presently runs the
ADL's "fact finding" division out of their national
office at the United Nations Plaza in Manhattan. It operates in
all 50 states and has 31 regional offices, and it works closely
with state and federal police forces. It has over 400 employees
and an annual budget of around $32 million. In a memo dated July,
1992, Suall praised Roy Bullock as "our number one investigator."
He was also quoted as saying that the real enemies of the Jews
are on the "American Left." (Robert I. Friedman's 'The
Enemy Within', Village Voice, 05/11/93). On April 8, 1993, a detailed
report on this brouhaha was presented on ABC's "Nightly News"
before a national audience estimated at over 18 million. This
expose first ran in the print media in the San Francisco Examiner
and was later taken up by the Los Angeles Times. Alexander Cockburn
has been doing a running and biting commentary on it in the pages
of The Nation. In his riveting account of the affair, Friedman
made this damning statement: "Once a proud human rights organization,
the ADL had become the Jewish Thought Police." The ADL sharply
disagrees with that assessment. They see themselves as an altruistic
human rights organization dedicated to watching out for the kooks
and fringe groups in our society. Ex-US Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-CA)
has filed a class action lawsuit in a California court against
the ADL, charging invasion of privacy. His name also appears in
the data base, along with that of his wife. McCloskey has been
a persistent critic of Israel's brutal suppression of the 1.8
million Palestinians languishing in the occupied West Bank and
Gaza. The son of the former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens,
Yigal Arens, is also a plaintiff in the suit. Arens supports a
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "The
ADL believes,"said Arens, "that anyone who is an Arab-American
or who speaks politically against Israel is at least a closet
anti-Semite." (See also, The Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs, (06/93). The civil suit claims that the ADL collected
information on opponents of Israeli and South African government
policies and passed it on to those countries. The ADL has denied
all the charges in the suit and has promised a vigorous defense.
It says it does not condone illegal methods of obtaining information.
Bullock had his computer-based data divided into four categories:
"Right Wing", "Pinkos", "Arab and Skinhead"
organizations. About 4,000 of the files are on Arab-Americans;
the rest are on groups and individuals as diverse as the Assembly
of Jesus; Boycott Coke; Black United Fund; the Weatherman Underground;
and the United Farm Workers. Bullock admits to selling some of
his ADL files on anti-Apartheid activists to South African intelligence
agents. He also had ties to a group of informants across the country
with code names, like "Scumbag", "Ironside",
and "Flipper". Attorney Marc Van de Hout of the National
Lawyers Guild, which is listed in the ADL's files, said, "I
am a Jew myself, and when I see the breath of the organizations
in these files that the ADL has conducted surveillance on, it
is very clear that they have sort of lost touch with reality in
terms of organizations that are engaged in real anti-Semitic activity."
(See Washington Report, 08/93). As Doug Struck's recent insightful
reporting in the Baltimore Sun amply demonstrates, the Israeli
crackdown in the occupied territories has resulted in gross abuses
of human rights, including the "torture of Palestinian prisoners."
Americans should have the right to complain about Israeli wrongdoing,
about their huge annual raids on our national treasury ($11.3
billion in 1993), or their controversial trial of John Demjanjuk,
without ending up in a file of the ADL or under surveillance.
I think it is wrong for the ADL, or any other private group, to
appoint itself as the pseudo-guardian of our civil liberties.
The ADL, however, like any other defendant, is entitled to its
day in court and to present its side of this mounting controversy
to an objective fact finder.
The
ADL: The drive to outlaw free speech and thought
top of page Question: What does
the current media campaign to outlaw the private ownership of
semiautomatic weapons by U.S. citizens have to do with the rapidly
growing corpus of legislation dealing with "hate crimes"?
Answer: Success of the first is necessary to insure compliance
with the second, and both are the creatures of a quasi-governmental
secret-police agency of whose existence most Americans are unaware.
There is underway in America a vast, well-oiled, heavily financed
campaign to limit sharply the rights of Americans under the First
Amendment to their Constitution and to eliminate altogether their
rights under the Second Amendment. It already has scored notable
successes in rolling back the most basic American freedoms. It
is gearing up now for a drive to achieve total victory in this
decade.
The principal instrument in this campaign is a secret-police
agency more sinister, more cunning, and infinitely more malevolent
than the Soviet Committee for State Security -- the KGB -- ever
was. Its initials are ADL.Those initials stand for Anti-Defamation
League, an innocuous-sounding name wholly out of keeping with
the character of the organization.
To understand its significance we must look into its origins.
The ADL is the action arm of B'nai B'rith, the international Jewish
secret society, whose Hebrew name means in English "Sons
of the Covenant." The "covenant" referred to is
the one supposedly entered into between the ancient Hebrews and
their tribal deity Yahweh more than 3,000 years ago.
Its terms are spelled out in Deuteronomy, the fifth book of
Moses. The Jews pledged their allegiance to Yahweh in return for
his promise to take them as his "chosen people" and
to give them dominion over all the lands and the other peoples
of the earth: "Every place whereon the soles of your feet
shall tread shall be yours." (Deut. 11: 24) B'nai B'rith
sees as its task the taking of all necessary measures for this
promise to be fulfilled.
The ADL itself was organized in the United States as a subdivision
of B'nai B'rith in 1913, and its ostensible purpose was to counter
the "defamation" of Jews, whose public image was even
worse then than now. The ADL went about its work in characteristically
heavy-handed fashion, bullying and intimidating those who said
or published anything the organization considered incompatible
with Jewish interests, and lobbying legislators and other public
officials to obtain legislation or rulings which would advance
Jewish aims. If a prominent businessman, educator, or politician
made a public statement the Jews did not like, the ADL would attempt
to persuade him to retract it, hinting at economic or political
reprisals if he refused. If intimidation failed, the ADL often
would turn to defamation, feeding derogatory statements about
the target to newspapers under Jewish control or friendly to Jewish
interests until he was thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the
public.
Typical of ADL efforts in the period prior to the Second World
War was its attempt to ban a book, Conquest of a Continent, by
Madison Grant, the noted naturalist and president of the New York
Zoological Society. The book was published in 1933 by Charles
Scribner's Sons and bore an enthusiastic introduction by Professor
Henry Fairfield Osborn, the most prominent American paleontologist
of his day. In the book Grant outlined the racial history of North
America and argued for the reform of immigration laws in order
to keep America primarily Northern European in its racial composition.
Jews are hardly mentioned in the book, and in no way can it
be considered a "defamation" of them. Jewish policy
then as now, however, was to change the European racial character
of the United States by cutting off the flow of immigrants (other
than Jews) from Europe and increasing the flow from the non-White
world.
Consequently the ADL mounted a campaign with publishers, asking
them not to review the book or mention it in any way in their
own publications, and with booksellers, asking them not to handle
the book. A form letter dated December 13, 1933, mailed from the
national headquarters of the ADL (then in Chicago), and signed
by the then-director of the organization, Richard E. Gutstadt,
notified publishers that Grant's book "is extremely antagonistic
to Jewish interests" and added: "We are interested in
stifling the sale of this book."
Grant's book is only one of many which received the same attention
from the ADL. As time passed the organization's censorship activity
became more sophisticated and more effective. Defamation of offending
authors, speakers, or public officials became a more often used
weapon. In line with this defamation activity the ADL's undercover
investigative capabilities were greatly expanded. A network of
unpaid Jewish agents all across the country reported to ADL headquarters,
where dossiers were built up on tens of thousands of American
citizens. Information from these dossiers, which might contain
everything from basic biographical and employment data to rumors
about marital difficulties or drinking problems, was used to fabricate
defamatory news releases on anyone the ADL wanted to discredit.
By the early 1940s the ADL had strengthened its position as
an information source for the news media -- the result in part
of the increased number of Jews in controlling positions in the
media. It also had established informal relationships with a number
of local, state, and Federal police departments. It often was
the case that when the Federal Bureau of Investigation was interested
in the affairs of a person involved in patriotic or "right
wing" activity, the ADL already would have a dossier on him
as someone actually or potentially hostile to Jewish interests
and would happily share the dossier with the FBI. Sometimes the
ADL would initiate the contact: if its informants had provided
information to headquarters suggesting that an alleged "anti-Semite"
might not have paid enough income tax or might have an unregistered
firearm hidden in his attic, a tip would be given to the appropriate
police agency.
In the past half-century the ADL's links with the media and
with law-enforcement agencies have grown enormously. Today virtually
all the controlled news media routinely print anything given to
them by the ADL, as if it had come over the Associated Press wire,
and they routinely go to the ADL for commentary whenever any news
story is being prepared on a person known to oppose Jewish policies.
Likewise, the ADL has become the standard source to which government
investigative agencies turn whenever their target is such a person.
In the latter case the flow of information goes in both directions:
not only does the ADL have the opportunity to peek into the government's
confidential investigative files, but its agents are even invited
to accompany the FBI when raids or arrests are being made on a
target of interest to it.
The biggest development for the ADL in the postwar period came
as a result of the Jews' land-grab in the Middle East and the
formation of the state of Israel. The coordinating center for
B'nai B'rith's activities moved from New York to Jerusalem. Investigating,
defaming, and intimidating Americans who did not agree with the
Israel-first foreign policy of the U.S. government became one
of the ADL's chief concerns. Patriots who protested Washington's
failure to take reprisals in 1967 when the Israelis deliberately
rocketed, strafed, and torpedoed the USS Liberty, killing 34 Americans
and wounding 171 others, were denounced as "anti-Semites"
by the ADL. In 1974, when NATIONAL VANGUARD editor William Pierce
sued U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger in an effort
to halt the flow of U.S. weapons and military supplies to Israel,
the ADL jumped into the suit on the side of the government as
an amicus curiae.
As early as 1971, in sworn testimony in the U.S. District Court
for the District of Columbia, a top B'nai B'rith official, Saul
Joftes, formerly director general of the B'nai B'rith's Office
of International Affairs, admitted that B'nai B'rith "engages
in international politics and more often than not does the bidding
of the government of Israel. Its leaders make frequent trips to
Israel for indoctrination and instructions." The issue at
stake in the court case was whether or not B'nai B'rith's U.S.
affiliate -- and the ADL -- should be prosecuted for failing to
register as agents of a foreign power under the U.S. Foreign Agents
Registration Act of 1938.
The fix was in, however; by the 1970s the ADL and B'nai B'rith
had become "untouchables." Not only did they escape
prosecution, they continued to operate as tax-exempt "religious
and charitable" organizations.
Silencing and discrediting Americans who disapproved of U.S.
taxpayers' money being used to support Israel's wars of expansion
in the Middle East was not the only ADL activity in the postwar
period. The organization worked hard and effectively to advance
other Jewish goals: the opponents of increased non-White immigration
were attacked, aid was given to the pulling down of the barriers
against racial mixing, new restrictions on the rights of citizens
to keep and bear arms were supported. The ADL played a significant
role in every facet of B'nai B'rith's program to demoralize, dilute,
disorganize, and disarm White Americans -- all in the name of
the fight against "bigotry."
When, during the madness of the 1960s, the Jews finally succeeded
in pushing through a new immigration law designed to bring more
non-Whites into the United States, the ADL crowed about its success.
The November 1965 issue of the ADL Bulletin, the group's internal
publication, carried an article by the director of the ADL's law
department, Sol Rabkin, who was present at the signing of the
new law by President Lyndon Johnson. (Also present at the signing
was Benjamin R. Epstein, then the national director of the ADL.)
Under the heading "The restrictive national origins quota
system is finally abolished -- after a forty year fight,"
Rabkin boasted: "The Anti-Defamation League is proud of the
educational role it played in helping to bring this about."
The same issue of the ADL Bulletin had a notice of the appointment
of the director of the ADL's Washington office, Herman Edelsberg,
to the government post of executive director of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, where he could work more effectively to
force the racial mixing of employees in shops and offices all
across America. In this regard it is interesting to note that
the ADL actually has two "equal opportunity" programs.
One -- that headed by Mr. Edelsberg in 1965 and by others since
then -- is to give Blacks and other minorities precedence over
Whites in hiring and promotion for blue-collar and clerical employment.
The other is to oppose Black demands for precedence in admissions
to law schools and medical schools, and for hiring and promotion
in certain professional occupations where Jews are heavily over-represented.
By the mid-1970s B'nai B'rith had had very substantial success
in virtually every phase of its campaign to undermine White society
in America. It still was moving aggressively on a dozen fronts:
introducing resolutions to require "Holocaust" indoctrination
for Gentile children in the public schools; demanding the rewriting
of school textbooks and the reworking of school curricula to make
them appropriately "multi-cultural" and eliminate what
the ADL complained was the "principally white, Protestant,
Anglo-Saxon view of America" presented by older texts and
curricula; pushing Christian churches, both Protestant and Catholic,
to make even further changes in their doctrines, so that their
teachings about Jews would consist of nothing but the most fulsome
praise; lobbying the government to punish American companies refusing
to trade with Israel; asking for more restrictive anti-gun laws;
etc.
These ongoing programs were only a part of the ADL's activity,
however. The late 1970s saw a slowing of the frantic social change
which had kept America in turmoil for nearly two decades. Much
of that turmoil had been planned and instigated by B'nai B'rith.
Even before the beginning of the 1980s and the relative stasis
of the Reagan era, B'nai B'rith was planning new programs to head
off any White backlash which might undo the changes it had wrought
in American society. A new emphasis on secret-police activity
characterized these programs.
At an ADL banquet in Palm Beach, Florida, early in 1975, as
reported in the March 1975 issue of the ADL Bulletin, ADL Chairman
Seymour Graubard boasted that the "ADL, to the limits of
its financial ability, is expanding its intelligence operation
. . ."
The building of dossiers on the opponents and potential opponents
of the Jews' plan for America was no longer enough, however. During
times of economic prosperity the old tactics of defamation and
intimidation might be sufficient to keep the goyim in line, but
a severe and prolonged economic decline could stiffen the spines
of White Americans to the point where they no longer would be
frightened into silence by the ADL's power of the smear. It became
prudent, in the view of the leaders of B'nai B'rith, to enlist
the police powers of government in order to silence and disarm
their critics before any substantial backlash developed. To this
end the ADL launched a new legislative lobbying campaign of ominous
import.
The ADL's lawyers drew up a series of "model statutes"
to be introduced by the organization's agents into the Congress
and state legislatures. Some of these ADL-designed statutes are
aimed at a more rapid phasing-out of citizens' rights to keep
and bear arms. The ADL always has been a leading advocate of gun
control -- much more so than the public has realized, because
often while other gun-control organizations are out front holding
press conferences and making headlines, it is the ADL pulling
the strings for them behind the scenes. Beginning in the 1980s,
however, there was a new urgency to the organization's efforts.
The rationale used by the ADL now is that new, sweeping anti-gun
laws are needed to protect law-abiding citizens from "right-wing
terrorism." The ADL Bulletin has warned that "arms and
stores of ammunition are being collected in uncounted numbers,
and extremists have made clear that they are ready to use them."
To back up this claim that armed White "extremists"
are a growing menace the ADL has fed a steady stream of alarmist
reports to the controlled news media. An excellent illustration
of the way in which the ADL has carried on its anti-gun campaign
is provided by its "model anti-paramilitary training statute,"
designed to prevent White patriots from acquiring or providing
instruct
PEACENOTWAR MAKEFRIENDNOTENEMY FEAR ALLAH NOT MAN.ISLAM MEANS PEACE.ISLAM FOR ALL. MUSLIMS ARE NOT TERRORIST AND TERRORIST ARE NOT MUSLIM.PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT ALL PICTURES AND TEXT IN THIS BLOG ARE TAKEN FROM THE WEB UNDER FAIR USE TREATY AND FOR MY PERSONAL COLLECTION.IF THEIR OWNERS DO NOT LIKE THEIR PICTURES OR ARTICLES APPEAR IN THIS BLOG,PLEASE CONTACT ME TO DELETE..THANKS.
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