Responding to pressure from Jewish organizations and members of Congress, the Housing and Urban Development Agency has launched an investigation into government-funded security contracts with the virulently anti-Semitic Nation of Islam.
HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros recently broke months of silence when he announced a wide-ranging investigation of the employment of security services affiliated with Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam at low-income housing developments.
Announcing his investigation in a recent letter to Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the majority leader, Cisneros confirmed that at least three public housing agencies currently have contracts with the organization’s security services.
The contracts, worth almost $10 million, are in Baltimore, Chicago and Los Angeles, Cisneros said.
The investigation has prompted action on Capitol Hill, where Spencer Bachus (R- Ala.) intends to hold hearings on the subject before the House Banking and Financial Services subcommittee that he chairs.
For more than a year, Jewish organizations and members of Congress had tried in vain to convince HUD to investigate the Nation of Islam contracts on the grounds that the group’s security companies discriminate against whites and Jews in their hiring practices.
They also said the Nation of Islam is a virulently anti-Semitic and anti-white hate group and that the organization had reportedly been proselytizing on the grounds of the housing developments.
During the past several years, in speeches and interviews, Farrakhan and his followers have repeatedly attacked whites in general, and Jews in particular.
A HUD official said the secretary chose to act this month after the department received 4,000 postcards in a letter-writing campaign initiated by the American Jewish Congress.
The official also said Cisneros was prompted to act after Dole took an interest in the charges.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who had been unsuccessful in his attempt to raise the issue with HUD, had led the effort to recruit Dole to the cause.
In his Jan. 6 letter to Dole, which was made public last week, Ciseros pledged to “undertake all appropriate action to eliminate and correct any discriminatory conduct identified in the investigation”.
He said HUD could terminate the contracts or, alternatively, sever ties between the local public housing authority and the agency. ..TX-Jewish groups that had lobbied HUD-including AJCongress, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee- welcomed the HUD investigation.
Americans “are entitled to be sure that the government is not subsidizing racial and religious discrimination”, said Phil Baum, AJCongress executive director.
In letters sent to Dole and Cisneros, Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director, was quick to praise Dole for his “successful efforts to underline the importance of this issue”.
But King remains unsatisfied.
“It is my view that these contracts are helping to finance Farrakhan’s empire of hate at the expense of taxpayers”, King wrote in a Jan. 25 letter to Cisneros.
In the letter, King calls HUD’s actions “unacceptable”.
The congressman said he was disappointed by HUD’s “inaction” in not yet uncovering other possible contracts beyond the three that he said were widely known.
Ongoing “disgraceful attacks against American Jews” by Nation of Islam leaders, King said, “leads me to wonder how you can justify continuing a taxpayer subsidy of millions of dollars to a hate group which has openly and repeatedly refused to disavow the most virulent strains of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism and racism”. King called on HUD to immediately terminate all contracts with the Nation of Islam.
Attempts to reach the Nation of Islam were unsuccessful.
King has introduced legislation that would give the secretary of HUD the authority to deny contracts to organizations “controlled by an individual or individuals who promote prejudice or bias based on race, religion or ethnicity”.
Although some Jewish groups said they support King’s initiative in principle, none has yet backed the measure.
“The bill is too broad”, one activist said, adding that the HUD secretary would have too much authority under King’s proposal .
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