The Anti-Defamation League, which is being investigated for possibly illegal surveillance activities, has struck back at its accusers, contending they are trying to deflect attention away from misconduct in their own ranks.
San Francisco police seized documents in ADL’s Los Angeles and San Francisco office two weeks ago, and law enforcement officials said the Jewish organization, founded to fight racism and anti-Semitism, may face multiple felony charges on eavesdropping and other illegal activities.
ADL has remained silent for months as rumors abounded that it used illegally obtained police records in the operation of a national “spy network.”
But the ADL has now started to counter the accusations, maintaining it has not broken any laws and that if confidential material reached its hands, then violations within the law enforcement intelligence community itself should be the real focus of police concern.
The authorities say they suspect illegal acts were carried out in connection with an alleged national intelligence network that kept tabs on more than 950 organizations and as many as 12,000 individuals, many of them involved in right-wing, white supremacist or Arab-American activities.
No formal charges have been issued in the case, although a police affidavit released in connection with the searches outlined the suspected violations.
“There has been an orchestrated effort to paint us as villains in an affair in which ADL is a bit player,” Barbara Wahl, a Washington-based ADL attorney, said in an interview here.
“The real issue is what has been going on in the (San Francisco) intelligence community, who is keeping track and have they been following their own guidelines?” she said.
ADL ACKNOWLEDGES PAYMENTS
ADL involvement in the highly publicized case goes back to an investigation last fall of Tom Gerard, then a San Francisco police inspector, who has been accused of giving confidential police intelligence files to Roy Bullock, a private investigator.
In transcripts released by San Francisco District Attorney Arlo Smith, Bullock describes himself as a “spy master” who had been working for the ADL since 1954. During that period, Bullock also allegedly supplied information to the FBI and the South African government.
Wahl acknowledged for the first time that Bullock had for many years funneled information to ADL and has been regularly paid, up to $550 a week, through an intermediary.
But Wahl and Melvin Salberg, a New York attorney who is ADL’s national chairman, emphatically denied the existence of a spy network or that ADL had been an information conduit for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service or the South African government.
Wahl sought to draw a sharp distinction between the vast amounts of information gathered by Bullock for a variety of clients or for his personal interest, and the much smaller flow of information he supplied to ADL.
ADL insists there is nothing sinister about maintaining files on groups or individuals.
“About 99 percent of the information (in the files) is from public sources,” such as publications and fliers, said Wahl. “We have the best clipping service you ever saw.”
“We do not have a friends list, a foes list or a watch list,” she added.
But Wahl acknowledged that some of the information Bullock received from law enforcement agencies or collected for his own purposes may have been included in the reports he passed on to ADL.
On some points, the ADL representatives declined to answer reporters’ questions. Asked, for instance, whether ADL employed persons to infiltrate organizations and write reports on them, Wahl responded that it was not appropriate to comment.
But Salberg did confirm that the national ADL office had been aware of the employment of Bullock in San Francisco.
CLASS-ACTION SUIT FILED
Wahl rejected charges that ADL had failed to supply police with promised documents, necessitating an intensive police search of ADL offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles on April 8.
“Nothing can be further from the truth,” she said, maintaining that ADL had cooperated fully with law enforcement officials.
Wahl also explained why ADL had refrained in past months from responding to the three-month barrage of charges and reports in newspapers here.
“We bit our tongues and stayed quiet because we were told by (District Attorney) Smith that ADL was not a target in the investigation centering on Gerard and Bullock,” she said.
Smith now says formal charges are expected to be filed against ADL.
Last week, former U.S. Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-Calif.) filed a class-action suit against ADL, claiming invasion of privacy and seeking $2,500 in statutory damages for each person on whom ADL obtained confidential police information.
McCloskey, a frequent critic of Israel, was joined by 19 plaintiffs, among them Yigal Arens, son of former Israel Defense Minister Moshe Arens. The younger Arens is a computer scientist at the University of Southern California.
Wahl described the suit as “riddled with errors” and containing “gross legal deficiencies.”
Salberg said that ADL will take its case to the press and public and that “we will come out stronger than before.”
He reported receiving firm messages of support from civil rights and Jewish organizations, among them the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
“The work of ADL is vitally important, even if it did something incorrect. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water,” said Mark Spiegel, chairman of the Jewish Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation Council here.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
