Truman Urged to Order Investigation of Activities of Arab Office in United States

President Truman was urged today to institute an official investigation into the activities of the Arab Office in Washington “in order to discover whether these activities do not constitute flagrant violations of the laws of the United States.”

The suggestion was made in a memorandum submitted to the President by the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League. The memorandum emphasized that the Arab Office “is engaged in conducting, along with more-or-less affiliated pan-Arabic agencies in the United States, a wide-spread subversive propaganda campaign involving the incitement of religious and racial strife and the dissemination of propaganda of totalitarian bias.”

The investigation, the memorandum urged, should also determine whether the activities of the Arab Office in this country have been financed through credits originally secured for war-time purposes under Lend-Lease or similar arrangements, either directly from the American Government, or indirectly through the treasury of a third country.

Estimating that the expenditures involved in the subversive propaganda campaign conducted by the Arab Office “have already run well above a million dollars,” the Anti-Nazi League gives an outline of its findings selected “from a much larger volume of available evidence,” in which it charges that a high Arab official, Anwar Bekir Nashashibi, has on occasion joined forces with groups associated with Gerald L. K. Smith and with the National Blue Star Mothers of Pennsylvania, in the promotion of anti-Semitic and other inflammatory propaganda in Philadelphia, New York and elsewhere. Also involved in these activities were executive officials of the Arab Office.

Other charges showing close contact between Arab leaders in this country and anti-democratic groups are made in the memorandum. An extended brief on this subject, with full documentation attached, is being prepared by the Anti-Nazi League for submission within a few days, the memorandum states.

The League also charges that various Arab organizations in this country, under the general dominance of the Arab Office, are conducting subversive propaganda activities not only in New York and in Washington, but also in Chicago, Detroit, Toledo and in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and California. “This whole wide-spread campaign has received the vigorous support of the so-called subversive press in America,” it emphasizes.