ADL Charges Publisher Used Biased Headline to Promote Sale of Book

The president of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, the publishers, has twice rejected claims by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith that its advertising for a book on Meyer Lansky is anti-Semitic, the ADL reported today. ADL national chairman Seymour Graubard made public a written exchange between ADL fact-finding director Justin J. Finger and Putnam’s president Walter J. Minton. In his first letter to Minton. Finger referred to an advertisement for “Lansky,” by Hank Messick, in the New York Times of April 22 and 24 and June 2, with the headline: “Jews Control Crime in the United States.” Finger called the ad “structured upon a blatant appeal to anti-Semitism.” and added that “since Putnam’s considered the Messick book worth publishing, it likely has merits on which it could be advertised without dipping into the murky waters of anti-Semitism.” Minton replied: “There are crooked Jews in America, and if you read Hank Messick’s ‘Lansky’ you will learn something about them…I am sorry to see the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith leaping to the defense of people such as Meyer Lansky.”

The subject of the book, who calls himself a “retired businessman,” is said by federal authorities to be a longtime underworld leader. He has been in Israel for more than a year on a tourist visa, sacking Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return and refusing to the United States to face racketeering charges. Finger, charging Minton with distorting his argument, wrote the publisher; “Certainly there are (crooked Jews in America)–if the religion of a crook is relevant, which it isn’t. But your statement hardly answers our objection to the advertisement’s headline…our position being that this is a slur against all Jewish people, since it says something quite different from the more fact that there are some crooked Jews. In addition, the statement in the headline is a lie.” Finger stressed that he was not defending Lansky but “all innocent Jews who were linked to Lansky in Putnam’s insinuating ad,” which he described as an “appeal to bigotry or the language of bigotry in order to sell something.”

Minton’s first reply. Finger concluded, was “surprisingly insensitive and hostile to our natural concern about such matters.” In his brief reply to Finger’s second letter, Minton called the ADL argument “unfounded.” In making the correspondence public. Graubard said he hoped “that intelligent and responsible Americans of every faith would point out to G. P. Putnam’s Sons and its subsidiary, Berkley Publishing Corporation, that the ad and the jacket cover of the upcoming paperback are an outrageous affront.” Berkley plans to use the ad’s headline on the paperback’s cover. Graubard concluded: “If the Anti-Defamation League has been unable to make Putnam’s see the damage that will be done by the offensive cover, perhaps public opinion will make it clear…Indulgence in anti-Semitism from otherwise respectable quarters has seemingly become more acceptable these days (what with) the new, ‘anything goes’ attitude apparent in the widespread use and acceptance of pornography and obscenity.” Neither Minton nor a spokesman was available for comment today.