Leo Frank and the Birth of the Anti-Defamation League of B'n

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL Report Diminishes Its Reputation[/large]

Source: The D.C. Observer | Washington, June 13, 1988

ADL Report Diminished its Reputation

by Leonard Larsen (Scripps Howard News Service) | June 13, 1988

WASHINGTON? The Anti-Defamation League of B?nai B?rith is a proud organization that is celebrating its 75th anniversary in fighting discrimination ? sometimes perilously, always unselfishly and frequently wading into struggles on behalf of non-Jews whose rights need a strong and honest voice.

But now in a just published ADL ?special report,? an ?Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents: The Anti-Israel Component,? the ADL clouds its own record.

Surprising, perhaps shocking from an organization whose work and ideals are so much a part of the American fabric, the ADL dangles a suggestion that free speech can be held suspect if the object of criticism is the state of Israel.

With the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories in its seventh month, with more than 200 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers, with harsh treatment of Palestinians under Israeli military rule now a settled way of life, the ADL publication clearly implies that to voice opposition to Israel?s political and military policy and to support a Palestinian viewpoint is ?anti-Semitic.

The ADL special report on ?anti-Semitic incidents,? covering the first 4-1/2 months of 1988, dwells mainly on acts that can be seen as vandalism, clear threats against Jews and their institutions and other products of thuggery and hate.

But while the ADL, in its past annual reports on anti-Semitism, has included in its audits what have been called acts of ?propaganda carried on by anti-Israel and anti-Zionist organizations,? the authors of the current special report say that a ?new anti-Semitic pattern has emerged? has emerged in ?anti-Jewish acts (which) have been linked to unrest in the West Bank and Gaza.?

Of the 88 ?episodes? in which the ADL finds such links, most are of brutish behavior that is invariably the work of bigoted fools of the night ? spray-painting of synagogues, anonymous threatening telephone calls and mailings, vandalism and verbal harassment.

Included, however, are a few incidents which, in the ADL view as ?anti-Semitic? only because they recount brutal acts of repression against Palestinians by the Israeli government.
One ADL account of ?anti-Semitism,? for example, arrives from Palm Beach, Fla., where it was reported, there had been ?distribution of pro-Palestinian literature on several occasions.?

Another incident in the ADL special report came from East Tennessee State University in the distribution of ?anti-Israel and anti-Semitic literature featuring pro-Palestinian sympathies.

From Boston, the ADL said, came more ?anti-Semitic? conduct by the person or persons who set out for public display ?pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel graffiti throughout the subway system.?

The Boston subway slogans cited by the ADL ? presumably the most vicious examples of anti-Semitism ? were ?Victory to the Palestinian People?s Struggle? and ?Down With the Reactionary Israeli-Settler State and Their U.S. Masters.?

Lumping together all the 1988 reports of ?Anti-Semitic Acts Linked to West Bank/Gaza Unrest,? the ADL describes everything ? from vandalism against synagogues to pro-Palestinian pamphlets ? as ?anti-Semitic crimes with a political twist,? and expresses confidence that ?all Americans, no matter their views on the current conflict in the Middle East, will join us in condemning such bigoted activities.?

For months, years even, efforts to equate criticism of Israel and support for Palestinians with anti-Semitsim has come from paid Israeli lobbyists. What is disturbing is that an organization so deserving of honor and respect as the ADL would now join in the tactic.

An obvious intent here is to use intimidation to silence criticism of Israel?s political and military conduct. The participation of the ADL in such work diminishes its history and tradition.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL's Foxman Was Present at Creation of Rich Pardon Plot[/large]

Source: The New York Times | March 29, 2001

..

The A.D.L. and Rich

Essay By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON. ?You never made a mistake in your life?? an angry Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti- Defamation League, shouted over the phone. ?What about when you worked for that anti-Semite Nixon??

This good man, with a record of 36 years fighting for civil rights and against bigotry, was understandably distressed at a judgment parenthetically expressed in my previous column about the need to control the influence of money in politics.

It had just been revealed that Foxman ? whose organization had received $250,000 over the years from Marc Rich ? had not only written to President Bill Clinton urging forgiveness for the fugitive billionaire but was present at the creation of the pardon plot.

Thirteen months ago, according to Foxman, he met in Paris with a former Mossad agent now on the Rich Foundation payroll who had the month before pledged $100,000 to A.D.L. Foxman came up with the idea of asking Denise Rich, the divorced wife of the man on the lam for 17 years, to intercede with Clinton for a pardon.

He knew her only from ?reading the columns,? Foxman told reporters last weekend. However, he sat across the aisle from Mrs. Rich on Air Force Two when Clinton invited both of them to accompany the presidential party to Yitzhak Rabin?s funeral. It was logical for him to presume that Rich?s former wife was on the government plane because she had some connection to the president.

That bright idea of Foxman?s led to e-mail from Rich?s top man in Israel to Rich lawyers in the U.S. Ultimately, a former Clinton White House counsel, Jack Quinn, used Denise Rich to circumvent expected Justice Department resistance to pardoning a defiant fugitive accused of the biggest tax rip-off in U.S. history.

Let me stipulate here that it is no sin to recommend mercy or point out good deeds done by unpopular targets of prosecutors. I regularly signed parole petitions for Nixon colleagues jailed after Watergate. And when prosecutor Charles Hynes led a New York Bar Association campaign to disbar a near-comatose Roy M. Cohn just before he died of AIDS, I denounced the vengeful lawyers as a pack of ghouls. I don?t knock loyalty.

But at issue here is the ease with which an unpatriotic wheeler-dealer can manipulate fine organizations and hungry politicians here and abroad into expunging all unanswered charges from his record.

Would we have known about the A.D.L. advice to Rich and intercession on his behalf if Congress had not begun an investigation? Unlikely; though he reported fully to some 40 members of the A.D.L. national executive committee on Feb. 3, for six weeks after the pardon firestorm Foxman said nothing publicly.

Not until March 9, when the Burton committee contacted him, did A.D.L. release its official letter to Clinton whining about ?Marc Rich?s suffering.? Only after cooperating with House investigators did Foxman admit publicly that it was his suggestion in Paris that led to the well- heeled Denise?s exploitation of her access to ?Number One.?

In a March 19 letter to national commission members, he explained that his pardon request was partly ?predicated on the fifteen years I knew of Marc Rich?s generous philanthropy and good deeds,? but lately ?I began to question whether a person?s good deeds should overshadow other aspects of his behavior. In hindsight this case probably should not have had my involvement as it was not directly in ADL?s clear- cut mission. . . .?

That mission is to fight bigotry. The last time Foxman muddled it was to write Clinton asking for Jonathan Pollard?s release; commission members privately slapped him down because that prosecution had nothing to do with anti-Semitism, either.

The time is ripe for the A.D.L. ? and other do-good and advocacy groups, too ? to take a hard look at the ulterior motives of their money sources. It?s time to set out written policies to resist manipulation by rich sleazebags and to reprimand or fire staff members who do not get with the ethical program.

Abe dropped by my office a few minutes ago to take back that unfair telephone crack and answer questions about who sucked him into this mess, which takes some zip out of my conclusion. We wished each other a happy Passover.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL Journalistic Status Reaffirmed by California[/large]

Date: Wed, 30 Dec 98 22:07:13 -0000

ADL's Journalistic Status Reaffirmed by California ...

NEW YORK, Nov. 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The
Anti-Defamation League today hailed a California Court of
Appeals' reaffirmation of ADL's status a journalistic
newsgathering organization and its ruling that ADL's
files are largely protected from disclosure. The ruling
came in the context of civil litigation brought by anti-
Israel activists and others.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, issued the
following statement: "We view the decision as a victory
for ADL and a victory for the First Amendment. The
California Court of Appeals' decision reaffirms our
status a journalistic newsgathering organization with the
right to protect our files. ADL is confident that the
Court's ruling, which allowed for very limited
discovery, will demonstrate that the plaintiffs' claims
are unfounded.

------ The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is
the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism
through programs and services that counteract hatred,
prejudice and bigotry.

Copyright 1998[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL's Spy Probe[/large]

Source: The Nation, published by The Nation Company, Inc., 72 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011.

[large]The ADL Spy Probe[/large]

from Alexander Cockburn?s ?Beat the Devil,? a bi-weekly column in The Nation. May 31, 1993[/justify]

[justify]ADL President Abraham Foxman

THERE have been fears that political pressure might squelch the case against the Anti-Defamation League spies being built by the San Francisco District Attorney, Arlo Smith.

But the ?San Francisco Examiner? for May 11 [1993] carried a story by Dennis Opatrny and Scott Winokur reporting that top officials of the ADL are ?the ultimate targets of the San Francisco district attorney?s domestic spying investigation.? Such officials include the ADL?s New York-based director of research, Irwin Suall. Meanwhile, the ADL?s strategy is to link critics of its spy operation with neo-Nazis and with the World Trade Center bombers.

I note here a story on the scandal in ?The Village Voice? for May 11 by Robert Friedman. Since Friedman once wrote ?The Nation? complaining I had credited another reporter for facts he had unearthed, I must say that I have a serious problem with the way he avoids giving credit to anyone but himself.

Last July, in ?Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,? Gregory Slobodkin broke the story of AIPAC?s smear operation in a story titled ?The Secret Section in Israel?s US Lobby That Stifles American Debate.? On August 4, Friedman did a ?Voice? story, ?The Israel Lobby?s Blacklist.? Nowhere in Friedman?s story was it stated that Slobodkin had already published an account of his experiences at AIPAC.

In his May 11, 1993, piece on the ADL, Friedman was still boasting that AIPAC?s ?spy operation was disclosed last summer in the ?Voice,?? which it wasn?t. And he never thanks his sources or acknowledges the efforts of people long laboring on the story, such as journalists in San Francisco or ABC-TV?s James Bamford, who discovered the Benjamin Epstein letter from which Friedman quotes without tipping his hat to the journalist who got the document first.

In fact, Friedman relies uncritically on the statements of ADL spy Roy Bullock to the FBI and to San Francisco police, as though they were proven facts. And in the end he lets off the ADL with a light stroke, courtesy of researcher Chip Berlet, who says the ADL ?is a group whose leaders, at least, consistently defend the actions of Israel against critics, which ? is entirely appropriate? and ?is a group that maintains an information-sharing arrangement with law enforcement. Again, there is nothing wrong for a group to do that.? Berlet argues that it was some malign synergy between such ADL functions that led to trouble. In effect, he OK?s the ADL?s venomous smearing of critics as anti-Semites and then makes the amazing statement that there?s nothing wrong with illegal acquisition and dissemination of privileged government information about individuals. This is the basis of the class-action suit against the ADL in California.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL's Spy Scandal Case[/large]

ADC Press Release:

Resolution of ADL Spy Scandal Case

Washington, DC. September 27, "ADL's admission that
it has spied on Arab-American, anti-aparthied and civil
rights organizations and individuals vindicates our view
that ADL has engaged in illegal activities to undermine
the work of such groups and damage the cause and
reputation of the Arab-American community" said Hala
Maksoud, President of the American-Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee (ADC).

Today in Los Angeles a final settlement was reached
and approved by U.S. federal judge Richard Paez in ADC v.
ADL, the lawsuit resulting from the illegal spying by
California offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith (ADL) against Arab-American, anti-apartheid and
civil rights activists. ADL spied on groups as diverse as
ADC, Greenpeace, the United Farm Workers Union, Artists
Against Apartheid, ACT UP, Action for Animals, the Asian
Law Caucus of San Francisco and the American Indian
Movement (AIM), as well as hundreds of individuals
including elected officials. This class-action case on
behalf of over 800 groups and individuals was brought in
federal court following disclosures by the San Francisco
Police Department that ADL's spying activities were
funded with money funneled through a secret and illegal
Los Angeles ADL bank account held in a false name and a
prominent Beverly Hills lawyer.

Under the permanent injunction issued by today, ADL
is permanently enjoined from engaging in any further
illegal spying against Arab-American and other civil
rights groups, and must provide an annual statement to
ADC's legal counsel for four years explaining the steps
ADL has taken to remain in compliance. A court-appointed
Special Master will supervise the removal of the
illegally-obtained information from ADL's files and hold
them for six to ten years for use in any other suits,
after which they will be destroyed. Information to be
removed from ADL's files includes law enforcement
surveillance reports and political intelligence, criminal
arrest records, fingerprint cards, mug shots, Social
Security numbers, driver's license numbers, license plate
numbers, vehicle registration numbers, and Post Office
boxes not legally available to the public.

Among the co-plaintiffs joining ADC in the suit are:
Mervyn Dymally (fromer congressman), Robert Farrell
(former L.A. City Councilor), Prof. Gerald Horne, the
National Conference of Black Lawyers, the National
Lawyers Guild, the Bay Area Anti-Apartheid Network, the
National Association of Arab-Americans, the Association
of Arab-American University Graduates, the Coalition
Against Police Abuse, the Committee in Solidarity With
the People of El Salvador, Global Exchange, the
International Jewish Peace Union, AIM and the Palestine
Solidarity Committee. Peter Schey, of the Center for
Human Rights & Constitutional Law, and lead counsel for
ADC, said: "The ADL leadership went far overboard when it
authorized the organization's operatives to unlawfully
gather confidential law enforcement information on
hundreds of civil rights organizations and activists who
pose no threat whatsoever to the Jewish community."[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow[/large]

August 27 2007

[large]Abe Foxman?s Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2
ADL?s Foxman?s Forges Impossible Alliance of Armenians, Turks and Boston-Area Jews[/large]

By JOHN V. WALSH

Last week CounterPunch was the only national outlet, to the best of our knowledge, to report the disturbances caused in the Boston suburb of Watertown over denial of the Armenian genocide by the national Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and its director, Abe Foxman. The brouhaha was set off by an investigation into Watertown?s participation in ?No Place for Hate,? an ?anti-bigotry? program of uncertain origin. Mirabile dictu, the program turned out to be sponsored by the national ADL which denies that the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turks from 1915 to 1923 amounted to a genocide. This was quite disconcerting to the town mothers and fathers since Watertown boasts an Armenian-American population in excess of 8000. The town council met to consider the program and the local director of ADL, one Andrew Tarsey, showed up to implore them not to withdraw from the program. Met with boos and hisses by the duly assembled Watertown citizenry, Tarsey beat a hasty retreat from the Council chambers. The Watertown mothers and fathers then unanimously voted to drop the ADL program.

The next day Tarsey, now in full rout, reversed his position, labeling the killing of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide after all. Problem is that this local ADL position contradicts the position of national ADL headed by Abe Foxman, which persists in denying the Armenian genocide. Foxman?s solution ­ fire local ADL leader Tarsey. And for good measure, he labeled the Watertown position as ?bigoted,? thus playing the ?race card.? Obviously the Watertownians must be anti-Semites, a charge Foxman cannot resist, if they will not sponsor an ADL program. However, in a challenge to Foxman, the local ADL and Jewish establishment, seeing their credibility slip sliding away here in the Athens of America, decided to affirm the Armenian genocide.

But the House of Reps. in US Congress has a resolution pending with 227 co-sponsors (a clear majority) recognizing the Armenian genocide, much to the consternation of Turkey, an ally of Israel?s and also an avid buyer of Israeli arms and an ally of the U.S. So what was Foxman to do? Like Solomon, Foxman opted for a split decision, but unlike Solomon, Foxman has tried to execute it. He said in Boston that he has reversed his decision and the ADL now considers the Armenian massacre ?tantamount to genocide.? (?Tantamount??) But in Washington national ADL will continue to oppose the Congressional resolution, recognizing the Armenian genocide. So in Boston the massacre of Armenians is genocide but in Washington it is not. What the status will be in NYC or Baltimore, Foxman has yet to decide.

The Armenians, both locally and nationally, will have none of this. They want the ADL to support the Congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide or else stand accused as genocide deniers. So now both the Armenians and the local Boston ADL are at odds with Foxman and national ADL.

Enter the Turks. They too have denounced Foxman for admitting genocide in Boston even if he has not done so in Washington. And they are angry about it. Foxman laid his original genocide denial at the feet of the Turks, saying he feared for the safety of Jewish Turks if he crossed the Turks. Friday the Turkish Foreign Ministry responded, ?The Jewish community in Turkey is part of our society, and its members do not have any reason to worry.? Clearly the Turks do not like Foxman?s accusations of anti-Semitism, any more than the Watertownians did. The Turks then one-upped Foxman, claiming that his Boston recognition of the Armenian genocide denies the special nature of the Holocaust. ?We consider the statement of the ADL as an injustice to the unique character of the Holocaust, as well as to the memories of its victims,? the Turkish Foreign Ministry in Washington said in a statement. ?We expect it to be rectified.? There you have it, Abe Foxman, Holocaust denier! So Foxman now has accomplished what has eluded diplomats for nearly a century, bringing Armenians and Turks together ­ in this case in opposition to national ADL. And he has even brought down a Turkish charge against his own proper respect for the Holocaust!

Foxman of course is little more than an intellectual bully, sliming with charges of anti-Semitism whomever dares challenge the policies of Isreal. But his defamatory, anti-defamation league is in trouble. Foxman?s actions now put the fabled and hitherto invincible Isreali Lobby on the line. The Turks certainly must have thought that the Lobby could ?deliver? Congress on genocide denial, and Foxman?s ADL is a key component of that Lobby. The Turks have already complained to Israel about the ADL?s Boston-Washington split decision. This is very important to them, having hired both Dick Gephardt, former House Majority Leader and Bob Livingston (Remember him?) former Speaker of the House at considerable cost to get Congress on their side. So the battle lines are drawn. CounterPunch will keep you posted.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL Suit Reinvigorated[/large]

Date: Wed, 30 Dec 98 22:09:45 -0000

Constitutional Law ADL Not Completely Protected By
Reporter's 'Shield' Law Some Of It's Alleged Targets Are
Entitled To Discover What The Group Found Out About Them

By Philip Carrizosa Daily Journal Senior Writer

Reinvigorating a suit that accuses the Anti-
Defamation League of illegal spying, a state appeal court
ruled Monday that at least some of the alleged targets
are entitled to find out just what ADL learned about them
and what, if anything, may be been disclosed to the
governments of Israel and South Africa.

In a 3-0 decision, the 1st District Court of Appeal
said the ADL is not completely protected by the
reporters' shield law.

"ADL is protected under the First Amendment only to
the extent its activities or those of its agents
constitute journalism," wrote Presiding Justice Anthony
Kline. "Thus allegations that ADL and its agents
privately disclosed non public information about
[persons] to foreign governments or others not acting as
ADL journalists are outside the scope of the journalist's
privilege."

While the decision in Anti-Defamation League of
B'nai B'rith in Superior Court, A090694, does not the the
17 plaintiffs in the case everything they wanted, the
ruling might give them access to a great deal of new
information currently in the hands of the ADL and San
Francisco police.

Woodside attorney Paul McCloskey, the lawyer for the
plaintiffs and a former congressman, said he was
"delighted" with the ruling because it allows the
plaintiffs to proceed with discovery.

"This sweeping claim by the defendants that they
have complete immunity from discovery laws has been
completely smashed by the courts," McCloskey said.
Although it is not clear whether the plaintiffs will be
able to learn the ADL's sources, the informati on that
will now be disclosed is "critical" he said.

But an attorney for the ADL said the ruling will
actually help the league and may pave the way for
dismissal of the suit. Stephen W. Bonse of San
Francisco's Heller Ehrman, White & McAuliffe said he
believes the discovery ordered by the appeal court will
yield no additional significant informations. "I doubt
there is anything left to be disclosed," he said adding
that the ADL WILL "absolutely not" seek review from the
state Supreme Court.

The ruling came in a discovery dispute between the
ADL and a group of 17 individuals who claim that the
Jewish civil rights organization secretly gathered and
disclosed personal information about them because of
their opposition to the apartheid policy o f the former
government of South Africa or because of their criticism
of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

The information-gathering was revealed five years
ago when San Francisco police searched the ADL's offices
after learning that one of its own officers might have
been providing confidential government information to Roy
Bullock, the ADL's local "fact fin der."

Then-District Attorney Arlo Smith later sued the
ADL, but the case was settled after the ADL paid $75,000
and agreed to a permanent injunction against obtaining
information the group could not be disclosed to it.

In the meantime, the 17 plaintiffs proceeded with
their civil suit, alleging the ADL violated California's
Information Privacy Act, which allows exemplary damages
of at least $2,500, plus attorney fees and costs, for
disclosing personal information from government records.

In response to discovery requests, the ADL asserted
that it was a journalist and qualified for protection
under the qualified journalist's privilege set forth in
Mitchell v. Superior Court, 37 Cal3rd 268 (1984). Judge
Barbra Jones, now an appeal court ju stice, ruled that
ADL, which publishes magazines and newsletters, qualified
as a journalist.

After conducting further discovery, the plaintiffs
renewed their document requests, arguing they now
satisfied the criteria of Mitchell. This time, Judge Alex
Saldamando allowed discovery into all ADL files seized by
San Francisco police as well as many of ADL's internal
files on its information gathering activities.

At first, the appeal court denied the ADL's appeal
to block Saldamando's discovery order.

But the state Supreme Court ordered the appeal court
to hold arguments and reconsider it's decision.

In its 30-page opinion Monday, the appeal court
ruled that the ADL is immune as a journalist for
violating the Information Practices Act as to all but one
and possibly three of the plaintiffs. One who taught a
class on Palestinians at UC Berkeley, is cle arly a
private figure and possibly two others are as well, the
court said.

But most of the plaintiffs have been sufficiently
involved in Middle East or South African causes to be
considered public figures and thus subject to the
journalist's privilege, Kline said.

Nonetheless, the privilege protects the ADL only to
the extent that its activities were limited to
journalism, Kline said. If, as the plaintiffs contend,
the information was disseminated to foreign governments,
"the protections of the First Amendment wou ld not be
available, because private disclosures of such
information to foreign governments could not conceivably
constitute legitimate and constitutionally protected
journalistic activity,' Kline wrote.

"Accordingly, discovery tailored to reveal whether
such private disclosures were made should be permitted"
concluded Kline, who was joined by justices Paul Haerle
and James Lambden.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL Targeted Black Congresswoman Critical of Israel[/large]


In Georgia, a Race Too Close to Call

By PHILIP SHENON, NY Times

ATLANTA, Aug. 18 -- No one would confuse the leafy suburban
streets of Georgia's Fourth Congressional District with a seaside
boulevard in Tel Aviv or with the dusty roads that crisscross the
West Bank.

But the issues of war and peace in the Middle East may be what decide
the primary on Tuesday between two African-American women battling for
the Democratic nomination for this district's seat in the House. Recent
polls suggest that the race between Representative Cynthia A. McKinney,
a five-term incumbent who has received substantial financial backing from
Arab-Americans, and Denise Majette, a former state judge supported by
pro-Israel groups, is too close to call.

"This is turning into a small proxy war -- a little, Middle East proxy
war," said Khalil E. Jahshan, executive vice president of the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington.

The group's political action committee is urging its members to support
Ms. McKinney, who is being opposed by pro-Israel groups because of her
support for Arab causes. "One can raise all sorts of legitimate questions
about McKinney's position on this or that issue, but she has been articulate
on our concerns," Mr. Jahshan said.

Ms. McKinney has received campaign contributions from Arab-Americans
around the country, including several who have come under scrutiny by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation for possible terrorist links. Some of her
contributors turned up as defendants in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed last
week in Washington by families of Sept. 11 victims; the suit accuses them
of being "enablers of terrorism."

Ms. Majette has received donations from Jews from outside Georgia,
raising almost twice as much over all as Ms. McKinney, more than $1.1
million versus about $640,000 for the incumbent. The challenger has
accused Ms. McKinney of taking money from "people who have been named as
Arab terrorists."

Ms. McKinney and her spokesmen, who did not return phone calls for
comment, have defended the contributions as legal, and have suggested
there is no need to return the money.

If Ms. McKinney loses, she will be the second House Democrat to be
defeated this year in a race in which Middle East politics, and the
influence of campaign contributions from both Arab-Americans and Jewish
Americans, have played a significant role. Representative Earl F. Hilliard,
an Alabama Democrat who has also supported Arab and Muslim concerns, was
ousted in a primary vote in June by Artur Davis, a candidate backed by
pro-Israel groups.

The races in Alabama and Georgia are seen as evidence of new strains
between African-Americans and Jewish Americans, who for decades were
seen as unshakable political allies, given their shared history of
discrimination. "Unfortunately, this is symptomatic of the tensions
between the black and Jewish communities," said Abraham H. Foxman,
national director of the Anti-Defamation League in New York, which is
traditionally aligned with Jewish and pro-Israel groups.

But, Mr. Foxman said, it made sense that Jewish Americans would want to
contribute to efforts to replace Ms. McKinney and Mr. Hilliard because
of the lawmakers' records on matters of interest to the Jewish community.

Ms. McKinney, a 47-year-old educator-turned-politician with a liberal
voting record and a confrontational style, is known in Congress for
statements that border on the outrageous.

After Sept. 11, she suggested that President Bush ignored warnings of
the attacks because a war on terrorism would be good for businesses
allied with the Bush family. Senator Zell Miller, a fellow Georgia
Democrat, described her accusations as "looney." Last fall, she
apologized to a Saudi prince whose $10 million donation of relief aid
to New York City was rejected by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani because of
the prince's assertion that American foreign policy was partly to blame
for the attacks.

Although her suburban Atlanta district is mostly black, Ms. McKinney has
a sizable Jewish constituency, and Jewish voters here are alarmed by her
support for Arab and Muslim causes. Their anxiety almost certainly grew
with the announcement that Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader
who has been accused of anti-Semitism, intended to campaign for Ms.
McKinney in Atlanta in the final days of the race.

In a recent appearance before the Islamic Foundation in Chicago, Ms.
McKinney pleaded for support. "It's just not about a Congressional
district," she said. "It's about the members of Congress who have the
courage to come to the Muslim community."

She and Mr. Hilliard were among 21 members of the House who opposed a
resolution in support of Israel's military response to Palestinian
suicide bombings.

Her list of contributors reflects her support for Arab causes. A sizable
number of the names on the contribution lists she has provided to the
Federal Election Commission are those of Arab-Americans from outside
Georgia, many of them respected lawyers, physicians and merchants.

Her opponents say they are concerned with the donations to Ms. McKinney
from several people who have come under investigation for financial ties
to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda. Among her donors is
Abdurahman Alamoudi, the leader of a Muslim organization who has
expressed support for Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based terrorist group,
and Hamas, the violent Palestinian group; he has contributed the maximum
$2,000 to Ms. McKinney's campaign. Mr. Alamoudi was among the McKinney
donors who were named in the suit last week by the Sept. 11 families.
Some other McKinney donors are connected to Muslim charities that have
been accused of raising money for terrorist groups.

In recent weeks, campaign officials have been quoted as saying that the
donations in question would not be returned. "We don't racially profile
our contributors," Ms. McKinney said in a debate this month. "All of our
contributions are legal."

Ms. Majette, 47, a Brooklyn-born, Yale-educated lawyer, has tried to
distance herself from the perception that she is the candidate solely of
pro-Israel groups. Her campaign manager, Roland Washington, said in an
interview that issues involving the Middle East would not be Ms.
Majette's focus in Congress.

"Denise is pro-peace as it relates to the Middle East," Mr. Washington
said. "But she is much more concerned with the local issues that are
driving voters to look for an alternative to the current leadership.
The campaign's focus is on economic development, infrastructure, child
care, trying to reduce the cost of health care."

Her campaign has drawn financial support from other prominent Democrats,
including Senator Miller, and from other local celebrities, including
Henry Aaron, the former Atlanta Braves star.

(c) 2002 The New York Times

[Note - Congresswoman McKinney was defeated in the Democratic primary][/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL Ties with Mossad[/large]

Source: Middle East Labor Bulletin, Vol. 4 No. 3 Fall 1993

[large]ADL?S Ties With Mossad[/large]

Considerable suspicion exists that the Anti-Defamation League not only serves as an ?unofficial? propaganda arm of the Israeli government Q a role its National Director Abe Foxman unabashedly claims Q but that it also provides information on Palestinians and Arab-Americans to the Israeli government and its intelligence service, Mossad.

The suspicions increased when a Chicago resident, Mohammed Jarad, whose named appeared in Roy Bullock?s files, was arrested and accused of being an agent for Hamas, upon his arrival in Israel to visit relatives in the occupied territories.

Also, as revealed in an interview with the FBI, former ADL Los Angeles operative, David Gurvitz, acknowledged that having ?learned from a law enforcement contact that a known member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine,? was about to travel from San Francisco to Haifa, he ?called the Los Angeles Israeli Consulate and advised the Deputy Consul General.I? Later, a Hebrew-speaking individual from the Consulate called back to confirm the information.

Both Bullock and Gurvitz, however, denied that there is any direct link between the ADL and Mossad. However, a letter written by then National Director of the ADL, Benjamin Epstein on July 7, 1961, would indicate otherwise. Epstein was writing to Saul Joftes who was, at the time, the Executive Secretary of the International Council of B?nai B?rith, the ADL?s parent organization, requesting additional funds.

?Our information,? wrote Epstein, ?in addition to being essential for our own operations, has been of great value and service to both the United States State Department and the Israeli government. All data have been made available to both countries with full knowledge that we are the source.?

Joftes, a 22-year veteran with B?nai B?rith did not believe that this was the proper business of the ADL and balked; at which point B?nai B?rith decided to fire him. Joftes turned around and sued Rabbi Kaufman, the responsible B?nai B?rith executive, and entered Epstein?s letter as an exhibit in his behalf.

In an affidavit filed in that action, Joftes stated:

?B?nai B?rithI has become an international organization engaged, by Rabbi Kaufman?s admission, in other things besides charitable religious and educational activities. It is no longer non-profit. It 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. I had tried to prevent this change. That is why Rabbi Kaufman tried to fire me.

?He was making B?nai B?rith a servant of the Israeli Government.? That was 1961.

On May 6, 1993, the ADL?s representative in Jerusalem sent a memo to National Director Abe Foxman informing him that he had attended ?a small, farewell luncheon that Shimon Peres gave for Bill Harrop (the outgoing U.S. ambassador). According to Wall, ?There were no other American Jewish representatives invited.?[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL Told to Open Files[/large]

November 17, 1998

Jewish Group Told To Open Files

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A state appeals court ruled
that a Jewish civil rights organization that was
monitoring pro-Palestinian and anti-apartheid activists
must give them information about any illegal disclosures
of their confidential files.

The 1st District Court of Appeal decided Monday that
the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai Brith is entitled to
the same protections extended to journalists, meaning it
can keep its files and sources confidential but must hand
over any materials it illegally obtained and distributed.

The ADL was appealing a judge's order to produce
internal documents concerning 17 activists who have sued
the ADL for invasion of privacy.

The activists contend the ADL illegally obtained
confidential records, such as driver's licenses and
Social Security numbers, from the state and used them to
get people blacklisted among the organization's
supporters.

The ADL, which publishes newsletters and reports on
hate groups, denies having a blacklist and says it was
merely keeping tabs on terrorists and groups opposed to
civil rights.

Some of the information the activists sought is part
of 17,000 ADL files seized by police in 1992. The ADL
later settled a civil suit filed by the city accusing it
of illegally obtaining the sensitive documents.

The appeals court said Monday that the ADL isn't
entitled to keep its files secret if it used the material
for nonjournalistic purposes, such as disclosing the
information to foreign governments or to its private
network of supporters.

Both the ADL and a lawyer representing the activists
declared victory.

The ADL's regional director, Barbara Bergen, said
the ruling ``reaffirms our status as a journalistic
organization, with the right to protect our files.''

Bergen said the terms of the court's order does not
entitle the activists to any new information because
there have been no illegal disclosures.

Attorney Pete McCloskey, a former congressman whose
wife, Helen, is one of the plaintiffs, said the
information should enable him to take their long-stalled
case to trial.

``It breaks through this almost incredible claim by
these guys that they were immune for any violation of
law,'' he said.

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL Turned Notion of Human Rights on Head[/large]

Source: The Village Voice | May 11, 1993, Vol. XXXVIII No. 19

How The Anti-Defamation League Turned the Notion of Human Rights on Its
Head, Spying on Progressives and Funneling Information to Law Enforcement

By Robert I. Friedman

ROY BULLOCK wanted to be a spy since he was a teenager in Indian and read ?I Led Three Lives,? Herbert Philbrick?s Cold War saga of penetrating the Communist Party for the FBI. Philbrick had become an American folk hero in the 1950s for building dossiers on unsuspecting colleagues. It was a time when Hollywood produced more than 30 films portraying the informer as the quintessential American patriot. In Boston, where Philbrick led three lives as an FBI informant, Communist Party member, and private citizen, the mayor even proclaimed a Herbert Philbrick Day and presented the spy with a plaque.

For Bullock, a shy young man who was coming to terms with his homosexuality in the straight-arrow ?50s, the life of a double agent was the perfect way to hide his lifestyle while fighting the Communist menace.

?I was fascinated with Herbert Philbrick,? Bullock recently told federal investigators, ?and so I thought I would try to infiltrate the Communist Part. In 1957, I went to the Sixth World Youth and Student Festival in Moscow with the American delegation. I gave them [the FBI a full report on it when I returned, along with some photos I took of some Soviet military vehicles."

Bullock was hooked. For the next two years, he worked as an unpaid informant for the FBI. But he found his true calling when he became a paid spy for the Anti-Defamation League in 1960. Now his activities are at the center of the biggest domestic spy scandal in recent American history -- a scandal that may end with the ADL's criminal indictment in San Francisco.

Over a 30-year period, he compiled computer files for the ADL on 9876 individuals and more than 950 groups of all political stripes, including the NAACP, the Rainbow Coalition, ACLU, the American Indian Movement, the Center for Investigative Reporting, Pacifica, ACT UP, Palestinian and Arab groups, Sandinista solidarity groups, Americans for Peace Now, and anti-apartheid organizations. Bullock, who even spied on the recently slain South African nationalist Chris Hani when he visited the Bay Area in April 1991, sold many of his ADL files on anti-apartheid activists to South African intelligence. Meanwhile, between 1985 and 1993, the ADL paid him nearly $170,000, using a prominent Beverly Hills attorney as a conduit in order to conceal its financial relationship with Bullock.

Last month, police raided ADL offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as Bullock's home, confiscating computer files and boxes of documents. According to court records, Bullock's files contained the driver's license and vehicle registration information, in addition to criminal histories on individuals -- much of which was allegedly stolen from the FBI and police computers. Bullock, 58, told the FBI that copies of virtually everything in his computer data base had been given to the San Francisco ADL office. "Based on the evidence," says Inspector Ron Roth, in a police affidavit, "I believe that Roy Bullock and ADL had numerous peace officers supplying them with confidential criminal and DMV information."

What's more, the San Francisco D.A. is investigating Bullock for tapping phones, accessing answering machines, and assuming false identities to infiltrate organizations. Documents seized from Bullock's home also contained evidence of his forays into Bay Area trash cans: He had the names and phone numbers of employees at the Christic Institute in San Francisco, as well as telephone message slips to staff members (including names and phone numbers of callers), office correspondence listing the names and return addresses of the senders, and inter-office memos. He also had receipts from Christic Institute's bank accounts at Wells Fargo and Eureka Federal Savings, as well as itemized canceled checks with the names of the payees, the dates, and amounts. Bullock even knew the balance in the Christic Institute's checking account.

Investigations by the FBI and police in San Francisco have revealed that the ADL has shared at least some of its spy gathering material with Israeli government officials. What's more, Israel apparently used tips from the ADL to detain Palestinian Americans who travelled there.


The ADL was established in New York City in 1913 to defend Jews, and later other minority groups, from discrimination. It led the fight against racist and fascist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, and in the 1960s championed the civil rights movement.

But there was also a darker side. In the late 1940s, the ADL spied on leftists and Communists, and shared investigative files with the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the FBI. The ADL swung sharply to the right during the Reagan administration, becoming a bastion of neoconservatism. To Irwin Suall, a repentant Trotskyite who heads the ADL's powerful Fact Finding Department, the real danger to Jews is posed not by the right -- but by a coalition of leftists, blacks, and Arabs, who in his view threaten the fabric of democracy in America, as well as the state of Israel. In the tradition of his ideological soulmate William Casey, Suall directed the ADL's vast network of informants, who were given code names like "Scumbag," "Ironside," and -- for a spy reportedly posing as a priest in Atlanta -- "Flipper."

For years, journalists and liberal members of the Jewish community knew the ADL spied on right-wing hate groups. As long as the targets were anti-Semitic organizations like the Liberty Lobby and Lyndon Larouche, no one seemed to be particularly troubled. But the Bullock case reveals that the ADL also spied on groups that have a nonviolent, and progressive orientation. This apparent massive violation of civil liberties may end with the ADL's criminal indictment in San Francisco, where the investigation began. The human rights group faces possible criminal prosecution on as many as 48 felony counts, including an indictment for gaining illegal access to police computers. Says one source close to the West Coast investigation, "It is 99 per cent certain that the ADL will be indicted."

In the wake of the San Francisco investigation, police probes of ADL spying are spreading to other parts of the country. "We have received numerous complaints about ADL [spying],? says Sam Adams, a spokesperson for the mayor?s office in Portland, Oregon.

On April 16, the Harlem-based Black United Fund of New York, and African American self-help group that Bullock allegedly spied on, wrote District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, requesting ?an immediate investigation? of the ADL. ?The ADL?s actions cause great concern, as it is a direct and flagrant violation ? at minimum ? of our civil rights?.We call upon you to join with the District Attorney of San Francisco to?bring and end to this latest form of McCarthyism.?

Gerald McKelvey, a spokesperson for Morgenthau?s office, says, ?We have no evidence before us that warrants any sort of investigation.? McKelvey adds that Morgenthau offered to assist the FBI and the San Francisco D.A.?s office on their pending investigation. ?They have not, so far, asked for our assistance.?

The ADL acknowledges sharing information on violence-prone groups with law enforcement officials. It also admits to maintaining extensive files on a wide variety of organizations, but says, in a two-page press release, ?The vast majority of ADL?s files are composed of news clips, magazine articles, books, journals, and other documents?.?

?ADL has made it clear that it does not and will not countenance violations of the law on the part of anyone connected with the agency, and the process by which the League gathers information is presently under review to insure that no laws are being violated.?

That?s what the ADL says for public consumption. But morale is so low that its employees complain of sleepless nights and crying fits. And even as other Jewish groups circle the wagons around the ADL in a show of solidarity, many do so holding their noses. More than a few Jewish officials privately say the ADL has to decide whether it is a human rights group or a secret police agency.

?The ADL is regarded both inside the Jewish community and outside the Jewish community as the definitive source of information on anti- Semitism and extremist groups,? says Daniel Levitas, the former executive director of the Center for Democratic Renewal, an Atlanta- based group that monitors anti-Semitism, racism, and hate groups. ?One of the things this scandal has done is that it has completely tainted the ADL?s credibility and reputation with regard to its objectivity. This scandal is going to be a devastating blow to the Jewish community at large because people regard the ADL as synonymous with American Jewry.?


Bullock?s talents as a snoop and his extreme conservatism meshed well with the ADL?s Cold War worldview. In 1960, he moved to Southern California where he became an ADL spy for $75.00 a week. Bullock almost always used his real name when snooping, although he once called himself Elmer Fink when corresponding with supporters of Alabama governor George Wallace. Bullock provided the ADL?s office in Los Angeles with written reports, which were transmitted to Fact Finding Department head Irwin Suall, according to court records. Under Suall?s stewardship, Fact Finding Department had become the ADL?s heart and soul. Located at ADL national headquarters across from the United Nations, the department had assembled a vast library on ?hate groups,? culling material from publications, speeches, and informants reports.

Bullock was more than adept at leading a double life. Not long after moving to California, he ingratiated himself with a woman in the John Birch Society who helped him gain access to the group?s Boston office. There, he found a file the right-wingers were keeping on the ADL. The discovery gave rise to speculation in the ADL New York office that they had somehow been penetrated by the Birchers.

Bullock focused almost exclusively on right-wing extremist groups until the early 1970s when ADL L.A. head Milton Sinn was replaced by Harvey Schechter, who encouraged him to target the left as well. A few years later, Bullock moved to the Castro District in San Francisco where he posed as an art dealer. And ADL fact finder who had infiltrated the local Arab community had just been exposed. When the ensuing scandal died down, Bullock was ordered by the ADL to penetrate the Arabs.

The ADL was especially concerned about the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, founded by the former South Dakota senator James Abourezk to combat Arab-bashing. In a page out of the CIA?s dirty tricks handbook on penetration and destabilization, Bullock joined the ADC, and then recruited Nazis into the group, apparently trying to discredit it, according to published reports.

In 1987, the ADL sent Bullock to attend the National Association of Arab Americans annual congress in Washington. According to court documents, Bullock was told to find the source of the group?s funds. Bullock was unable to ?follow the money.? But he did such a good job at ingratiating himself that he was appointed to head a NAAA delegation that visited Congress member Nancy Pelosi. It?s not surprising that the ADL penetrated Arab organizations. But only acute paranoia explains their interest in groups like ACT UP. As far as Bullock was concerned, gay groups in San Francisco were heavily infiltrated by what he called ?gay left revolutionaries,? prompting him to write about their activities for the ADL.

Bullock soon expanded his horizons, moving into the shadowy realm of foreign espionage after Richard Hirschhaut, the head of ADL?s San Francisco office, introduced him to Thomas Gerard in 1986. Gerard was then a detective with the San Francisco Police Department?s Intelligence Unit. Gerard had worked as a demolitions expert for the CIA in El Salvador in the early 1980s, where he apparently had more than a passing interest in right-wing death squads. (Police searching Gerard?s briefcase found extensive CIA literature about torture and interrogation, photos of blindfolded and chained men, as well as passports made out to Gerard in 10 different names, including Thomas Clouseau. From a remote jungle island redoubt in the Philippines where he fled last November, Gerard told the Los Angeles Times that he will blow the lid off the CIA?s involvement with Latin American death squads if he is indicted in the ADL spy case.)

After their very first encounter in the ADL office, Gerard and Bullock had lunch at McDonald?s, ?I liked Tom right off,? Bullock later told a San Francisco police investigator whose report of the interrogation was obtained by the _Voice_. ?Tom is a very charming, roguish character, with a great deal of integrity. Let me say here, I consider Tom Gerard one of the finest policemen I?ve ever worked with, absolutely. Honest, capable, intelligent and 100 percent American.?

Before long, Bullock was providing Gerard with confidential ADL reports on various groups and individuals. In turn, Gerard gave Bullock classified police intelligence files on local Arab Americans, skinheads, and others. Bullock told the FBI that Gerard?s material ended up in his ADL reports. ?I would say 99 percent of the data that I got was name, address, and sometimes physical description. Criminal history, very rarely,? Bullock told investigators. Gerard also gave Bullock a chart that outlined a vast network of Bay Area Arab American businessmen and organizations that allegedly has ties to Middle East terror groups, as well as surveillance photos of Arab Americans receiving weapons training overseas. Bullock claims that U.S. Customs in New York gave Gerard the photos. ?It was understood that Bullock would be very careful with what he did with the information Gerard gave him, and that Bullock would not release it except to the ADL or other law enforcement officers,? says an FBI report.

There was nothing unusual about Bullock?s cozy relationship with law enforcement. By the mid-1980s, the ADL was swapping files with hundreds of ?official friends,? the organization?s euphemism for U.S. law enforcement and intelligence sources. The ADL?s relationship with the FBI?s counterterrorism office was so close that ADL?s reports on Arab American group?s covert ties to Middle East terrorists were ?must reading.?

It?s no accident that police found a 1986 classified FBI report entitled ?Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)?New York Area? while searching the ADL?s San Francisco office. In 1987, ADL spooks investigated seven Palestinians and a Kenyan studying in California universities on student visas. When the ADL discovered they were disseminating PFLP literature, it informed the FBI, which in turn took the case to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. After the INS ordered the students deported as subversives, ADL regional director David Lehrer gloated in the _Los Angeles Times_ about his office?s cooperation with law enforcement, although he?s backpedaling now. The ?Los Angeles 8? deportation is still under appeal.


While the ADL worked quietly with America?s top cops, it enjoyed similar ties with Israel?s spy agencies ? a charge that ADL leaders vehemently deny. But as early as July 7, 1961, ADL director Benjamin Epstein wrote to B?nai B?rith executive secretary Saul Joftes, requesting $25,000 for his investigators. ?Our information,? he boasted to Joftes, ?in addition to being essential for our own operations, has been of great value and service to both the United States Department and the Israeli Government. All data have been made available to both countries with full knowledge to each that we are the source.?

In 1987, the ADL came under FBI scrutiny in the wake of the Pollard spy scandal. While assigned to the Navy?s Anti-Terrorist Alert Center, where he had access to the most closely guarded U.S. secrets, Jonathan Pollard stole thousands of pages of classified documents for Israel, which, according to federal prosecutors, ?could fill a room the size of a large closet?ten feet by six feet by six feet.? Pollard?s handler was Avi Sella, an Israeli air force colonel whose wife worked for the New York ADL as a lawyer. Pollard later wrote to friends that a prominent ADL leader was deeply involved in the Israeli spy operation.

While there is no proof that anyone connected with the ADL was involved with Pollard, there is evidence that the ADL freely passes information to Israeli intelligence. In March 1993, the FBI interrogated David Gurvitz, an ADL fact finder in Los Angeles until 1992 when he was fired by Suall for illegally obtaining police information to use against a rival at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The FBI pointedly asked Gurvitz if he had ever transmitted information to Israel. Gurvitz admitted that in 1992 he had learned from a law enforcement contact that Michael Elias, allegedly a member of a radical PLO faction, was scheduled to travel from San Francisco International Airport en route to Haifa. Gurvitz phoned the deputy Israeli consul general in L.A. with the information. ?Later the same day,? according to a 15-page FBI interview of Gurvitz obtained by the _Voice_, ?Gurvitz was called back by another man, who said he was from the Israeli Consulate, and who asked Gurvitz to repeat the information about Elias. Gurvitz did not get this man?s name, but their conversation was in Hebrew so Gurvitz felt confident the man was actually an Israeli Consulate official.?

Among the 12,000 names of private citizens that police found in ADLn files in San Francisco was Mohammed Jarad, a 36-year-old Chicago resident who was arrested in Israel on January 25, for allegedly distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas, the large Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Occupied Territories. The Chicago ADL office runs at least three undercover informants who work with ?official friends? in local law enforcement, according to documents released by the San Francisco D.A. and sources close to the ADL. Given these facts, Arab American groups surmise that the ADL has passed information on Jarad to Israeli intelligence.

One technique used by the ADL to monitor the large Arab American community in the Midwest was to scan the local Arab press for funeral notices. According to sources familiar with the practice, ADL investigators in unmarked vans videotaped the Palestinian funerals, which sometimes turned into PLO rallies. Palestinians have been detained at Ben-Gurion Airport simply on the basis of having been filmed attending a funeral in Chicago, according to Suhail Miari, the executive director of the United Holy Land Fund, whose cousin was an Arab member of Israel?s Knesset.

Shortly after Jarad was arrested, the Israeli government announced that Hamas was being run from America with money and operational instructions relayed by courier or fax. Israel?s charges were played up on the front page of _The New York Times_. According to well- placed sources, Yehudit Barsky, an ADL fact finder in New York, worked closely with Israeli officials on this campaign of vilification, introducing ?friendly? reporters to ?official friends? in Chicago law enforcement.

Barsky, who is fluent in Arabic, prepared an ADL report about how Hamas is funded in America. She identified the Dallas-based Islamic association for Palestine in North America as the front organization for Hamas in the U.S.A. ?Its infrastructure functions as an interlocking network of organizations, small businesses, and individual activists,? says the February 1993 ADL report, which outlines the organization?s development, its activities on U.S. college campuses, and its ?metamorphosis? during the Gulf War. It also traces Hamas fundraising through a plethora of alleged front- groups from Plainfield, Indiana, to Culver City, California. It is doubtful that Barsky could have compiled such sophisticated data without the help of ?official friends? and ADL spies.

Barsky refused to comment. But she used to talk to Greg Slabodkin as many as three times a week when he was an opposition researcher for AIPAC, whose spy operation was disclosed last summer in the_Voice_. ?The level of cooperation was very close,? Slabodkin said during a recent phone conservation from Israel where he is in graduate school. ?If we felt our files were lacking, we contacted the ADL.?

When Sha?wan Jabarin, a 30-year-old Palestinian human rights worker in the Occupied Territories won a $25,000 Reebok Human Rights Award in 1990, Slabodkin recalls that Barsky faxed AIPAC the man?s entire police file, which she had obtained from the Israeli embassy. Jabarin had been arrested numerous times in Israel, and once confessed to being a member of the PLO after having been severely tortured. Jabarin, who received a short jail term, became an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience. Of course, to AIPAC and the ADL, Jabarin was a terrorist. Slabodkin, who was ordered to keep tabs on him when he was in the U.S. to receive his award, called a representative of Al Haq, the Palestinian human rights group that employed Jabarin, to obtain his itinerary. AIPAC even opened a file on musician Jackson Browne, who presented Jabarin with the Reebok award.

While the ADL may be able to rationalize its close monitoring of Arabs, and even left-wing gay revolutionaries, it has a far harder time explaining its obsession with spying on anti-apartheid activists. David Gurvitz told the FBI that when he started working as a fact finder for the ADL in L.A. in March 1989, ADL files already bulged with information about the Israel-South African connection and anti- apartheid groups. ?Gurvitz confirmed that the ADL did routinely collect information on persons engaged in anti-apartheid activities in the United States,? says the FBI report. While Gurvitz said there were files in the L.A. ADL office dating to the 1930s, he estimated the oldest material on anti-apartheid activities dates back to the late 1970s, paralleling Begin?s rise to power in Israel and a deepening of ties between the Jewish state and South Africa. ?In about August, 1992,? says the report of the FBI?s March 3, 1993, interview with Gurvitz, ?an anti-apartheid demonstration was held at the South African Consulate in Los Angeles. Participating in the demonstration were the Los Angeles Student Coalition and the Socialist Workers Party. Gurvitz went to two demonstration planning sessions, and a subsequent demonstration. He wrote a report for the ADL on each of the planning sessions and on the demonstration. Copies of the reports were disseminated to Bullock, among others, in care of the San Francisco ADL office.?

In 1986 Bullock learned that the consul general of the South African Consulate in Los Angeles would be speaking in Las Vegas at a meeting organized by Willis Carto, the head of the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. ?Suspecting that the Consul General did not know who Willis Carto is,? says the FBI report, ?Bullock suggested to Gerard that they might want to warn the South Africans. Gerard agreed and informed the Consul General, who canceled his appearance.?

A few months later, Gerard phoned Bullock and told him a South African intelligence officer wanted to meet them. During a rendezvous in a hotel near Fisherman?s Wharf, the South African said he was interested in acquiring information on American anti-apartheid activists. The South African, who called himself Mr. Humphries, also asked for information about groups that were advocating divestments. ?Gerard, who was present throughout the meeting,? says the FBI report, ?told Humphries that he [Gerard] had been employed by the CIA?.Humphries offered to pay Bullock $150.00 per month in exchange for information. Bullock noted that much of the information Humphries said he wanted was already in the possession of Bullock and the ADL.?

Between 1987 and 1991, Bullock sold information to South African intelligence, receiving steady raises, which he split evenly with Gerard. ?Bullock said it was his impression, though Gerard never explicitly told him so, (and Bullock never asked) that Gerard may have been telling the CIA about his and Bullock?s contacts with the South Africans,? says the FBI report. ?Gerard had said he knew the CIA ?resident agent? in San Francisco?.Once, after Gerard dropped Bullock off at Bullock?s residence following a meeting with Louie [who replaced Humphries as their handler], Gerard said he was going to go to the San Francisco CIA office.?

Al the while, Gerard may have been ?tasking? Bullock for the CIA. ?Bullock recalled that once, after he had met Gerard, Bullock went to Chicago, Illinois to conduct an investigation on behalf of the ADL,? says the FBI report. ?The target of the investigation was a group called the Palestine Human Rights Campaign. Bullock learned that a woman [name deleted] was transporting money between the PLO or the PFLP, and the United States. Bullock told this to Gerard. Gerard later told Bullock that Gerard?s ?guy at the CIA? would like to know more. Gerard asked Bullock if Bullock would go back to Chicago to gather more information on the Palestine Human Rights Campaign. Bullock, however, never did go back.?

Gerard also seems to have had a close relationship with Mossad, which may have started in 1991 when he went on an ADL junket to Israel. The ADL frequently sponsors trips for American law enforcement officials to Israel, where they are wined and dined and meet their counterparts in various intelligence agencies. According to an affidavit by San Francisco police inspector Roth, the ?all-expense paid trip [to Israel] was more or less a thank-you gift and a liaison gesture by the ADL to continue the close relationships it has with specific law enforcement officers from the United States.?

Gerard may have liked what he saw in Israel. A short time afterm travelling there, he went to Addis Ababa where he helped with Mossad?s rescue of Ethiopian Jews.

As Gerard?s relationship with South Africa deepened, he talked more openly about his exploits in the CIA. ?Bullock recalled Gerard mentioning that he had been in Algeria on CIA business, and that Gerard discussed the PLO and ?safehouses,?? says the FBI report, ?To this Louie once responded that Israeli intelligence had determined that the PLO and the African National Congress were cooperating. Gerard also spoke of having travelled with the CIA to Afghanistan?. Louie also [told Gerard and Bullock] about his adventures inside South Africa as an intelligence officer. Both Gerard and Louie traded ?war stories? and regaled each other and Bullock with tales of ?narrow scrapes.??

Although there is still much mystery about what triggered law enforcement?s investigation of the ADL, it was probably the theft of a classified FBI report on the Nation of Islam from the FBI?s San Francisco office. Police armed with search warrants recovered the report in the ADL San Francisco office. Gurvitz says he had sent a copy of it to Mira Boland, the director of the ADL?s fact finding division in Washington, D.C. Boland was preparing an op-ed piece for _The Washington Times_, in which she argued that the Nation of Islam should not receive federal funds for the reconstruction of L.A. because the group is anti-Semitic and violence-prone. (Boland, who had arranged the ADL police junket to Israel attended by Gerard, testified in a 1990 criminal trial in Roanoke, Virginia, that she had worked for the CIA for 14 months and later was a subcontractor for the Defense Department before joining the ADL. During the trial, Boland admitted to sharing information with a CIA official at an invitation- only ADL conference.)

After he was questioned by the FBI last fall, Gerard fled to the Philippines, which has no extradition treaty with America. Gerard is believed to have supplied information from police computers not only to the ADL, but to Israel and South Africa as well. The _San Francisco Examiner_ reported that Gerard may be charged with violating federal espionage laws.

Although Bullock worked for the ADL for 30 years, and Irwin Suall praised him in a July 1992 memo as ?our number one investigator,? the ADL now argues that he was a rogue agent. In its own defense, the ADL also asserts that its fact finders operate no differently than journalists. After all, ask ADL officials, don?t journalists keep files?

But the difference between the practice of journalism and the ADL?s method of gathering information couldn?t be more striking. Journalists place information in the public domain where they are held accountable for falsehoods, distortions, and libel. And for the most part, journalists don?t share their investigative files with foreign and domestic police agencies. The ADL has no such inhibition. Because many of its files are not open to public scrutiny, false information collected by ideologically biased researchers cannot be corrected. Once a proud human rights group, the ADL has become the Jewish thought police.

?The ADL says it?s a human rights group not just for Jews but for everyone,? says Chip Berlet, a highly respected researcher at the Massachusetts-based Political Research Associates, which monitors right-wing extremist groups. ?That?s fine but it can?t do that and spy on Palestinians. It?s blatantly unethical and frankly immoral.?

?My argument to people is that the ADL wears four hats. Each of the hats independently is appropriate. It is a broad-based human rights group that looks at the broad issues of prejudice and discrimination. It is a group that defends Jews against defamation. Entirely noble. Nothing wrong with that hat. It is a group, whose leaders, at least, consistently defend the actions of Israel against its critics, which again is entirely appropriate. And it is a group that maintains an information-sharing arrangement with law enforcement. Again, there is nothing wrong for a group to do that.?

?But you can?t do all four. It is impossible to do all four and not violate the bounds of ethics. There?s a built-in conflict of interest if you wear all four hats.?

ADL national director Abraham Foxman apparently sees no such conflict. In a September 1, 1992, letter to the _Voice_, Foxman complained: ?ADL has a proud 80-year record of fighting bigotry and promoting civil rights and constitutional freedoms. Any imputation of an effort or motive on our part to smear or stifle the free speech of anyone is false and baseless?

?Throughout his pieces [on AIPAC's spying], Friedman describes the dissemination of information as if it were slander, and the existence of files as a token of McCarthyite inclination. Thedepiction is misleading in several ways. Virtually every journalist, academic, politician and organization keeps files on subjects they deem relevant; tracing the logic of Friedman?s reckless charges, the Library of Congress is tantamount to the KGB. Moreover, disseminating the public record of a public figure is neither defamation nor McCarthyism.?

But many believe the ADL is increasingly in the defamation business. Ask Jesse Jackson, James Abourezk, or the leaders of the New Jewish Agenda ? all past targets of ADL smears. (At the same time, the ADL exonerated the fascist World Anti-Communist League, which assisted Ronald Reagan?s covert war against Nicaragua, a policy endorsed by ADL leaders.)

In the early 1980s, researchers Russ Bellant and Berlet asked to meet fact finding head Irwin Suall, to discuss their work on anti-Semite Lyndon LaRouche. ?Our view then of Irwin Suall was that he was this really terrific investigator,? says Berlet. ?So we introduce ourselves, say what we are up to and Suall leans back in his chair and basically runs down a dossier on each of us: about what our political activities are, who we work with, what organizations we belong to. Obviously, he was just trying to blow us away and he succeeds admirably. We were just sitting there with our mouths open feeling very uncomfortable.?

?And then he leans forward and says, ?The right-wing isn?t the problem. The left-wing is the problem. The Soviet Union is the biggest problem in the world for Jews. It?s the American left that is the biggest threat to American Jews. You?re on the wrong track. You?re part of the problem.? We were stunned. I was virtually in tears. This is not how I perceived myself. We basically stumbled out of there in a daze.?


Letters (response to Friedman?s article)

The Village Voice, May 18, 1993, Vol. XXXVIII No. 20

A LEAGUE OF HIS OWN

Robert I. Friedman?s assault on the Anti-Defamation League [The Anti- Defamation League Is Spying On You." May 11] demonstrates that he has an axe to grind and his own prejudiced and biased agenda to promote. It also demonstrates that concern for accurate reporting is far down on his list. The story is replete with inaccuracies, innuendos, and outright falsehoods, and conveys a picture of ADL so divorced from reality as to be farcical. Friedman is even wrong on such basic, easily determined facts as where ADL was founded (Chicago, not New York) and the building in which ADL?S San Francisco office is located (not the Jewish Community Federation building pictured).

ADL has done the work of fighting haters for 80 years, without ?spying? on organizations or individuals and with profound respect for the law. Our mission is to monitor and expose those who are anti- Jewish, racist, anti-democratic, and violence-prone, and we monitor them primarily by reading publications and attending public meetings. Through the years, we have published scores of reports on anti- Semitism emanating from both the left and the right. In fact, although Friedman?s bias leads him to assume the contrary, ADL?s primary concern is still the far right.

Because extremist organizations are highly secretive, sometimes ADL can learn of their activities only by using undercover sources. Friedman?s hyperbole notwithstanding, these sources function in a manner directly analogous to investigative journalists. Some have performed great service to the American people ? for example, by uncovering the existence of right-wing extremist paramilitary training camps ? with no recognition and at considerable personal risk. The information ADL obtains is placed in the public domain, and through the years ADL has established a reputation for accurate reporting.

Friedman?s article, by contrast, contains so much misinformation that it would take an article equally as long to set the record straight. A few examples: He states that an ?ADL leader was deeply involved in the [Jonathan Pollard] Israeli spy operation,? and that Pollard?s handler?s wife ?worked for the New York ADL as a lawyer.? Not true. Friedman also states: ?ADL investigators in unmarked vans videotaped Palestinian funerals.? Not true. Elsewhere, he asserts that ADL was obsessed ?with spying on anti-apartheid activists.? Again, not true. We could go on and on ? and, of course, Friedman does not reveal *his* sources.

The distortion games Friedman plays when he mentions numbers further reveal his lack of objectivity. When it comes to how much ADL paid Roy Bullock a week ? as an independent contractor, not an employee (an important distinction Friedman also fails to make) ? he includes the zeros ($75.00, $150.00), inviting the reader to see a large number. By contrast, when he observes that ADL paid Bullock ?nearly $170,000? between 1985 and 1993, he chooses not to point out that amounts to little more than $20,000 a year ? hardly an excessive sum.

What is accurate about Friedman?s story is Chip Berlet?s description of ADL?s four hats. Yes, ADL looks at broad issues of prejudice and discrimination. Yes, ADL defends Israel against critics. And yes, ADL maintains an information-sharing relationship with law enforcement regarding extremist activities and hate crimes. We see no conflict in these four activities, and we believe most _Voice_ readers won?t either.

ABRAHAM FOXMAN National Director Anti-Defamation League Manhattan


ROBERT I. FRIEDMAN REPLIES:

For the ADL to compare itself to investigative journalists is absurd. Journalists don?t spy on Arabs and anti-apartheid activists and then freely pass their files to South African and Israeli intelligence. But according to police the confessions of two paid ADL investigators, buttressed by 700 pages of court documents and interviews, the ADL does.

Indeed, the ADL spies on groups that are neither anti-Semitic nor violent. Police confiscated ADL files on hundreds of mainstream groups ranging from ACT UP to Peace Now. Respected intellectuals and Middle East scholars who disagree with the ADL?s political views have ended up on ADL blacklists, their reputations smeared. ?Private organizations have no business paying operatives inside police departments or having spies,? says an April 17 editorial in the _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_, condemning ADL spying.

On April 10, police armed with search warrants raided ADL offices in San Francisco and L.A. after concluding that ?ADL employees were apparently less than truthful? in voluntarily turning over documents during an earlier search, according to San Francisco police inspector Ron Roth?s sworn affidavit. Roth also asserts that Bullock was a ?paid employee for the ADL.? If so, by failing to pay taxes on $170,000 of income paid to Bullock, the ADL could face a total of 48 felony counts, according to court papers.

The ADL may also face felony charges for illegally obtaining confidential information from police computers. As for errors: The ADL was founded in Chicago, and moved to New York in 1947. But it was an original tenant in the San Francisco building shown in the _Voice_ photo, moving out a few months ago. I never wrote that an ?ADL leader was deeply involved in the [Pollard] Israeli spy operation.? I reported that Pollard himself made the charge. And in court papers, Pollard?s own lawyer said that the wife of Pollard?s handler worked for the ADL. If I have a bias, it is on the side of the First and Fourth Amendments.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL Urges Bush to Blacklist Nation of Islam From Faith Plan[/large]

Source: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency | February 21st 2001

ADL Urges Bush to Blacklist Nation of Islam from Faith Plan

By Sharon Samber

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 (JTA) ? As religious groups prepare for the expanded role they will soon be able to play in providing social services, the Anti-Defamation League is trying to make sure that one group will not take part.

The ADL recently met with John DiIulio Jr., director of President Bush?s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives ? which opened Tuesday ? and urged that the Nation of Islam be excluded from the program.

DiIulio ?showed great understanding and sensitivity,? said Jess Hordes, director of the ADL?s government and national affairs office. Representatives of the faith-based office could not be reached for comment. Bush?s plan to provide government funding to faith-based organizations ? to run programs such as homeless shelters or drug abuse programs ? is raising questions about how to define ?religious groups? eligible for federal money.

Stephen Goldsmith, an adviser to Bush on faith-based initiatives, said earlier this month on CBS? ?Face the Nation? that religious groups would be evaluated just like other groups, and grants would be awarded based on their performance.

An organization that preaches hate or violence won?t qualify, Goldsmith said.

Asked who determines whether a group preaches hate, Goldsmith admitted, ?These are not easy questions.?

The ADL has registered several complaints to Bush?s faith-based plan, saying that ways must be found to ensure that there is no religious discrimination in hiring and that secular alternatives are available to religious programs. The ADL?s counsel, Michael Lieberman, who attended the meeting with DiIulio, said the government should not be in the business of deciding who is a hate group and who is not, and therefore the phrasing of legislation to implement the initiative will be crucial.

The ADL plans to work with members of Congress to craft legislation establishing safeguards that protect the integrity of religious organizations and ensure that beneficiaries of social services are not subjected to proselytizing. In a letter to Bush last month, the ADL said one of the safeguards should be ?ensuring that extremist, terrorist or hatemongering groups are not able to receive government money.?

Bush ignited a furor last year when he said that the Nation of Islam is based on universal principles, and therefore should be allowed to compete for government funding

He later retracted his statement, saying he confused the Nation of Islam with the larger Muslim faith.

In a letter to the ADL last March, Bush explained his confusion and said he was familiar with Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam?s leader, and his ?history of hateful and anti-Semitic comments.?

?I do not believe that any government funding should go to organizations like the Nation of Islam that spread hatred,? Bush said in his letter.

The Nation of Islam could not be reached for comment. Farrakhan long has been criticized for his inflammatory rhetoric, which includes calling Judaism a ?gutter religion? and praising Hitler as a great man. He also has referred to Jewish businessmen in black communities as ?bloodsuckers.??

The ADL and other Jewish organizations periodically issue reports on racist and anti-Semitic statements from Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. The ADL has tracked Farrakhan since 1984, when he made anti-Semitic and racist remarks while working on Jesse Jackson?s presidential campaign.

The Nation of Islam was on the ADL?s radar screen even decades before that because of the group?s anti-Semitic views and hate-filled teachings, according to Gail Gans, director of the ADL?s Civil Rights Information Center.

Under Farrakhan?s leadership, however, the group?s membership and bigotry has grown, Gans said.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]ADL Wants Senate to Censor Internet[/large]


STATEMENT OF THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ON ?HATE? ON THE INTERNET
BEFORE THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY SEPTEMBER 14, 1999

Hate on the Internet: The Anti-Defamation League Perspective

Concerns about online extremism are not new. In January 1985, the Anti-Defamation League released a report entitled Computerized Networks of Hate. Years before the Internet became a household word, that report exposed a computerized bulletin board created by and for white supremacists and accessible to anyone with a modem and a home computer. Aryan Nations, a paramilitary group affiliated with the ?Identity Church? pseudo-theological hate movement, sponsored the bulletin board and named it ?Aryan Nation Liberty Net.? The project was the work of two individuals: Louis Beam, then a Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations leader, and George Dietz, the man behind the largest neo-Nazi publishing mill in the United States.

This bulletin board was a forerunner of extremism on the Internet. Computerized Networks of Hate detailed five ways the ?Aryan Nation Liberty Net? served the white supremacist movement, all of which remain important to extremism on the Internet today. First, the bulletin board was designed to draw young people to the hate movement with appealing propaganda. Second, the network helped stir up hatred against the ?enemies? of white supremacy. Third, the bulletin board was a means to make money. Fourth, the system offered the potential for circulating secret, coded messages among extremists, and finally, it bypassed embargoes that nations outside of the United States placed on hate literature.

Though Computerized Networks of Hate noted little to suggest that Aryan Nation Liberty Net represented a great leap forward in the spread of anti-Semitic and racist propaganda, it warned that ?complacency? about this development ?would be unwise.? At the time, Beam wrote that the bulletin board was a ?patriotic brain trust? and boasted that ?computers are now bringing their power and capabilities? to the white supremacist movement. ?The possibilities,? Beam remarked, ?have only been touched upon.?

The same month that ADL released Computerized Networks of Hate, white supremacist Stephen Donald (Don) Black was released from prison. While serving just over two years, Black had learned to use computers. In 1981, Black was arrested with a group of nine other neo-Nazis and Klansmen in Slidell, Louisiana, and charged with plotting to invade the Caribbean island of Dominica, overthrow its government, and turn it into a ?white state.? He was convicted, and following an unsuccessful appeal, he surrendered to Federal marshals in December, 1982.

In the years following his release, Black gradually withdrew from white supremacist activism, eventually becoming a computer consultant. However, he did not disavow his racism. It was Black who would launch Stormfront, the first extremist hate site on the World Wide Web, a decade after ADL reported on ?Aryan Nation Liberty Net.? ?There is the potential here to reach millions,? Black said of the Internet. ?I think it?s a major breakthrough. I don?t know if it?s the ultimate solution to developing a white rights movement in this country, but it?s certainly a significant advance.?

Initially, Black could find only a handful of other Web sites that reflected his anti-Semitic, racist message. Today, hundreds of bigotry-laden sites promoting a variety of philosophies have joined Stormfront on the Web. The propaganda presented by these sites, from subtle to heavy-handed, is aimed at influencing both attitudes and behavior.

Though it is not always easy to draw a connection between online speech and violence, extremist groups with histories of violence have extensive Web sites. Additionally, extremists have used the Internet to comment favorably on violent acts. One Web site calls John William King, convicted murderer of James Byrd, an ?American Hero? and asks readers to ?give thanks to God? for King?s act. Another site?s ?Memorial? to gay murder victim Matthew Shepard claims he ?got himself killed? because of his ?satanic lifestyle? and ?will be in hell for all eternity.?

Many extremist sites target the young. Hate groups such as the World Church of the Creator have posted Web sites filled with simple propaganda devoted specifically to wooing children. Bigotry-laced hard rock and the Internet have proved a natural match for racist Skinheads trying to capture the minds of teens.

While deeply disturbing, the growth of hate and extremism on the Internet simply mirrors the expansion of Internet use. What began as a small computer network used primarily by scientists and academic researchers has become a mass medium. Computers and Internet access are in workplaces, homes, schools and libraries, and prices for both are falling rapidly. For many Internet users in the United States, going online costs nothing. Large numbers of U.S. workers have free access to the Internet at their offices. Many U.S. residents use free Internet access at their local public libraries, and educational institutions regularly connect their students to the Web free of charge.

Most Internet Service Providers willingly ?host? their customers? World Wide Web pages; in return for a user?s access fee, they provide nearly unlimited use of the hardware and communications lines necessary for creating a site on the Web. Some Web-based services, such as Tripod and GeoCities, host Internet users? pages free of charge. All of the above provide free, easy-to-use Web development tools, making it simple, even for those who know nothing about computer programming, to create their own Web pages.

Beyond low cost and availability, the Internet provides a new type of information distribution, since time and distance are compressed. Information posted there is available instantaneously, 24 hours a day, from anywhere on the planet. The World Wide Web creates the illusion that all information is present in the user?s computer at the instant it is needed. Accessing information has never been easier. What?s more, the Internet has done more than that, for it has turned every user into a potential publisher. It has never been easier for any individual to broadcast his or her ideas to the world.

A worldwide collection of computers linked by high-speed phone lines, the Internet displays remarkable versatility, sometimes resembling a letter, on other occasions a telephone, and still other times a television. Like a printed letter, the Internet provides a way to communicate directly with others, near or far, but on the Internet, ?E-mail? (electronic mail) is delivered nearly instantaneously (E-mail arrives so much more quickly than standard printed correspondence that users of the Internet sometimes call traditional letters ?snail mail?). Furthermore, E-mail users pay nothing for the transmission of messages; their accounts are charged a flat fee for service, if they pay for their accounts at all.

Like a telephone, the Internet provides a way to communicate in ?real time? with others. A person using a chat room or Internet Relay Chat channel to converse with friends can engage in a fast-paced conversation, for friends? words appear on the screen mere seconds after they?ve been typed. Like television, the Internet can ?broadcast? information to vast audiences. Millions of Internet users can view the same World Wide Web site simultaneously, and Web sites, like television programs, are able to transmit text, sound, photos, and moving images. The growth of the Internet represents a revolution in communication as significant as that begun by the development of the printing press in the 15th century. Yet the time needed for its impact to be felt has been drastically telescoped. What took centuries is now taking place in a matter of a few years.

Even before Stormfront appeared on the Web, extremists had begun exploiting other ways to use the Internet, and these practices continue today. Lively conversations take place on numerous extremist Internet Relay Chat channels. The USENET, a collection of thousands of public discussion groups (or newsgroups) on which people write, read and respond to messages, attracts hundreds of thousands of participants each day, both active (those who write) and passive (those who simply read or ?lurk?). Newsgroups have been compared to community bulletin boards. Haters of all sorts debate, rant, and insult their opponents on newsgroups with titles such as alt.politics.white-power and alt.revisionism.

Electronic mailing lists (or ?listservs?) flourish as well. Such lists are like private ?bulletin boards? available only to subscribers. While some lists keep their subscription information confidential, most are easy to join. Postings to some of these lists are moderated (i.e., monitored by the list operator who applies certain standards of acceptability), but others are entirely unregulated.

In fashioning their lists, extremists and racists create an ?electronic community? of like-minded people. Before the Internet, many extremists worked in relative isolation, forced to make a great effort to connect with others who shared their ideology. Today, on the Internet, bigots communicate easily, inexpensively, and sometimes anonymously with hundreds of fellow extremists. Online, extremists reinforce more easily each other?s hateful convictions.

Extremists also use E-mail, which allows them to communicate with one another directly, their missives ostensibly hidden from public view. In fact, E-mail is not truly private: computer-savvy individuals can intercept and read private messages. Some users, nervous about eavesdroppers, now use cryptographic programs. Cryptography converts written material using a secret code, rendering it unreadable by anyone who does not have the means to decode it. With encrypted E-mail, extremists have found a secure forum in which to exchange ideas and plans.

E-mail can also be used to spread hate propaganda. With a mailing list and a message, hate mailings can easily reach the mailboxes of large numbers of people. Enterprising haters have managed to mass-mail hate materials to tens, hundreds, or even thousands of unsuspecting people without revealing their identity.

Though purveyors of hate make use of all the communication tools the Internet provides, the World Wide Web is their forum of choice. In addition to its multimedia capabilities and popularity with Internet users, the Web allows bigots to control their message. Organized haters complain about civil rights activists who critique their manifestoes in USENET newsgroups and other interactive forums. In contrast, haters can refuse to publish critical messages on their Web sites, just as a TV station can refuse to broadcast another station?s opinions over its airwaves.

Furthermore, it is impossible for someone surfing the Web to know if any particular organization, other than one with a national reputation, is credible. Both the reputable and the disreputable are on the Web, and many Web users lack the experience and knowledge to distinguish between them. Increasingly, Web development tools have made it simple for bigots to create sites that visually resemble those of reputable organizations. Consequently, hate groups using the Web can more easily portray themselves as legitimate voices of authority.

Don Black

Since its creation, Stormfront has served as a veritable supermarket of online hate, stocking its shelves with many forms of anti-Semitism and racism. In its first two years, Stormfront featured the writings of William Pierce of the neo-Nazi National Alliance; David Duke; representatives of the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review and other assorted extremists. By 1997, Black?s site became home to the Web pages of other extremists, such as Aryan Nations and Ed Fields, racist publisher of The Truth At Last, a hate-filled newspaper. He also posted new reprints of white supremacist articles and essays, such as The Talmud: Judaism?s holiest book documented and exposed. Meant to inflame Christians by characterizing the Talmud as primarily anti-Christian and filled with ?malice,? ?hate-mongering? and ?barbarities,? this particularly scurrilous tract willfully distorts and misrepresents an important religious document while demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of its history, complexity, and role in Jewish religious practice.

Some of Black?s recent efforts have involved the expansion of Stormfront: enlarging its collection of links, adding an interactive chat room, and housing additional racist Web sites. One of these sites, Our Legacy of Truth, offers the text of works such as ?Proof of Negro Inferiority? by Alexander Winchell and Adolf Hitler?s Mein Kampf, as well as Willie Martin?s ?1001 Quotes By and About Jews.? This pernicious compendium of quotations strings together mistranslated remarks made by Jews, statements of well-known non-Jews taken out of context, and the ravings of anti-Semites, so as to give readers the impression that Jews are constantly striving for global control. Another site now housed by Black, White Singles, serves as a free dating service for white supremacists. ?Women and men listed on WS [White Singles] are heterosexual, white gentiles only,? its Home Page declares. Well over 200 men and women have registered for this service, many of them submitting pictures of themselves for viewing by prospective mates. A third new site at Stormfront, White Nationalist News Agency (NNA), posts the text of articles from the Associated Press and other reputable news sources, seemingly without legal permission. Attached to these articles are the racist and anti-Semitic comments of Vincent Breeding, NNA editor and National Alliance activist of Tampa, Florida.

Beyond his additions to Stormfront, Black has begun to help other white supremacists by hosting their sites without publicly admitting that he is doing so. Unlike sites such as The Truth at Last or White Nationalist News Agency, which are housed by Black and are in effect part of Stormfront, it is not readily apparent that he services these other sites.

Adrian Edward Marlow of Suisun City, California, maintains one of these sites, White Pride World Wide.10 In fact, Marlow owns Black?s Web server, the computer that contains his Web site and makes it available to Internet users. Black rents this server from Marlow and controls it electronically from a remote location: his home in West Palm Beach, Florida.11 Marlow also uses his own server to co-host white supremacist sites with Don Black.

Not surprisingly, White Pride World Wide is advertised on Stormfront and links to the mailing lists and chat room at Black?s site. The rest of the site reflects Black?s values as well: it includes ?1001 Quotes By and About Jews,? Madison Grant?s racist tract The Passing of the Great Race and transcriptions of Louis Beam?s speeches. Like Stormfront, White Pride World Wide also houses other racist Web sites, such as Verboten (a German-language extremist site) and women.wpww.com (a site created by and for white supremacist women).

Black hosts a site named Blitzcast, which Stormfront and White Pride World Wide recommend for those seeking online, racist audio ?broadcasts.? Using free audio software easily downloadable from the Web, visitors to Blitzcast can listen to the speeches of American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, the weekly radio addresses of National Alliance leader William Pierce, and the ravings of anti-Semitic Jew Benjamin Freedman. Also appearing at Blitzcast is Frank Weltner, who uses the pseudonym ?Von Goldstein Mohammed? and runs Jew Watch, yet another site hosted by Black.

Jew Watch organizes its anti-Semitic materials much in the same way a popular Web directory might group more benign information. Weltner presents accusations that Jews were behind the terrors caused by Russia?s Communist regime in ?Jews, Communism, and The Job of Killing Off the USSR?s Christians.? ?Jewish Genocides Today and Yesterday? describes an alleged Jewish plan to deport non-Jews from the U.S. in 1946. ?90% of All United States News-papers Are Owned and Run by Jews? repeats the oft-heard charge that Jews run the media, and ?The Rothschild Internationalist-Zionist- Banking-One World Order Family? claims that Jews control the world of finance. Adolf Hitler?s writings, transcripts of Father Charles Coughlin?s anti-Semitic radio broadcasts, and the text of Henry Ford Sr.?s bigoted International Jew are all available at Jew Watch as well.

When Marlow created Web sites at more than ten domain names that resembled the names of major daily newspapers, another misleading Web venture involving Black garnered attention. In October 1998, Marlow linked these sites directly to Stormfront. Consequently, Web users looking for news about Philadelphia at ?philadelphiainquirer.com,? for example, ended up visiting Don Black?s site, not the Philadelphia Inquirer Home Page (which is located at phillynews.com). Other newspapers affected included the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Atlanta Constitution, and the London Telegraph.

As Black?s site has grown and he has aggressively continued to promote it, an increasing number of Web users have been visiting Stormfront. Black told the Associated Press that the number of contacts to Stormfront doubled during the domain name incident, to 2,000 per day. According to Black, Web surfers have accessed Stormfront more than a million times since its debut.

Web users visiting Stormfront right now will likely find a bold advertisement in the lower left-hand corner of their screens. By clicking on it, they arrive at the Web site for perhaps America?s best-known and most politically active racist: Black?s mentor, David Duke.

David Duke

Like Don Black, David Duke first became an active racist as a teen-ager. Soon after, as a student at Louisiana State University, he founded the neo-Nazi group White Youth Alliance. After his graduation, Duke founded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and launched a publicity blitz that boosted its membership.

Duke?s days as a Klan leader ended abruptly in 1980, after he was accused of trying to sell his group?s membership list. Duke left the Klan to establish and head the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), which he himself confirmed was simply a Klan without robes. Though Duke shed his official role in the NAAWP when he became more politically active, he continued to maintain ties to the group and its agenda continued to parallel his.

Running as a Republican, Duke won a Louisiana State Legislature seat in January 1989, despite scrutiny and opposition from national Republican leaders. While in office, he continued to sell neo-Nazi literature. While claiming that he had repudiated racism, Duke made statements such as ?Jews are trying to destroy all other cultures.? Duke won 43.5 percent of the vote in an unsuccessful 1990 U.S. Senate race and 700,000 votes in a 1991 race for the governorship of Louisiana.

After an unsuccessful Presidential bid in 1992, Duke retreated from the political arena but continued to concentrate on raising his media profile. He tried his luck as a radio talk show host in 1993, but his controversial program, the ?David Duke Conservative Hotline,? proved unpopular. Two years after Duke failed to raise the $7,000 needed to continue broadcasting his program, he established The David Duke Report Online, a less costly venue for disseminating his views.

David Duke has embraced the Internet as a key to the future of the white supremacist movement. An article featured prominently at his site, ?The Coming White Revolution ? Born on the Internet,? outlines his high hopes that the Internet will ?facilitate a world-wide revolution of White awareness.?

Concerned that the ?non-white birthrate,? ?massive immigration,? and ?racial intermarriage? will ?reduce the founding people of America into a minority,? Duke boasts at his Web site about the ?genetic potential? of ?our people,? stressing the ?innate intellectual & psychological differences? between whites and Blacks.

In another piece posted at his site, ?Race and Christianity,? Duke writes, ?I truly believe that the future of this country, civilization, and planet is inseparably bound up with the destiny of our White race. I think, as the history of Christianity has shown, that our people have been the driving force in its triumph.?

In November 1998, Duke renamed and redesigned his site. The site, now simply called David Duke, pictures Duke amid colorful images of an American flag, the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore, and the White House. A ?David Duke Biography? portrays the former Klan leader as a respectable citizen, listing the awards and degrees he has received and pointing out that he is a ?publicly-elected Republican official? (Duke currently serves as the Chairman of the St. Tammany, Louisiana, Republican Parish Executive Committee). Duke?s site also sells his autobiography, My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding; Duke promises to personally autograph all copies of the book ordered from the site.

Though Duke?s site does not possess the depth or breadth of a site like Stormfront, his well-known name may attract curious, potential extremists browsing the Web. This is particularly troublesome considering Duke?s expressed belief in the Internet as a white supremacist recruitment tool and his recent offline activities.

After years spent denying his racism in order to advance in politics, Duke has once again openly embraced the white supremacist movement. In a July 1997 article published by The Tallahassee Democrat, he acknowledged that his politics were becoming ?more radical? in reaction to what he referred to as a ??growing undercurrent? of white frustration.? Most disturbing are his speeches given in 1997 and 1998 at four separate events sponsored by the National Alliance, a group the Anti-Defamation League has identified as the single most dangerous organized hate group in the United States today.

The National Alliance

The National Alliance (NA) was originally established as the ?Youth for Wallace? campaign in support of the failed 1968 Presidential bid of Alabama Governor George Wallace. After Wallace lost, the group was renamed the ?National Youth Alliance.? In 1970, William Pierce, a former American Nazi Party official, joined the group, and in 1974 (around the time that David Duke founded his Knights of the Ku Klux Klan), Pierce took the reins and dropped the word ?Youth? from the organization?s name.

Now in his mid-60s, Pierce still leads the group out of a compound in West Virginia. Using the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, he authored the novel The Turner Diaries, which details a successful world revolution by an all-white army, and the systematic extermination of Blacks, Jews, and other minorities. Many extremists regard The Turner Diaries as an explicit terrorism manual, and the novel is believed to have inspired several major acts of violence, including the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Pierce continues to encourage violence, viewing it as the ultimate solution to what he terms ?the Jewish problem.? His weekly radio program, American Dissident Voices (ADV), is rife with incendiary speech. Between his novels and his broadcasts, Pierce provides bigots with both an ideological and a practical framework for committing acts of mass destruction.

The National Alliance is currently the largest and most active neo-Nazi organization in the nation. In the past several years, dozens of violent crimes, including murders, bombings and robberies, have been traced to NA members or appear to have been inspired by the group?s propaganda. At the same time, the organization?s membership base has experienced major growth, with its numbers more than doubling since 1992.

The NA?s current strength can be attributed to several factors: its willingness to cooperate with other extremists (such as David Duke); its energetic recruitment and other promotional activities; its vicious, but deceptively intellectualized propaganda, and a skillful embrace of the Internet.

A former physics professor at Oregon State University, Pierce was quick to understand the potential power of the Internet. Today, the NA?s site is one of the best-organized and most informative hate sites on the Web. It promotes Pierce?s Nazi-like ideology: biological determinism, hierarchical organization, an emphasis on will and sacrifice, and ?a long-term eugenics program involving at least the entire populations of Europe and America.?

In the section of its site entitled ?What is the National Alliance?,? the NA calls for the creation of ?White Living Space? purged of all non-whites and demands the formation of a government ?wholly committed to the service of [the white] race and subject to no non-Aryan influence.? On the site, this section is reprinted in Swedish, Dutch, and German, as are French and German translations of The Turner Diaries and the text of selected ADV broadcasts in Swedish.

Also included on the NA?s site are Pierce?s anti-Semitic screed ?Who Rules America? (a particular favorite among online bigots) and articles from the NA?s print publications, Free Speech and National Vanguard. These documents contain familiar themes: America is in decline, its vital essence polluted by non-Aryans, and only the revolutionary program of the NA can save it.

The NA Web site also features an online version of the NA?s National Vanguard Books catalog, which offers an extensive selection of racist and anti-Semitic books, videotapes, and cassettes. These items are divided into categories such as ?National Socialist Revolution?; ?Race: Science and Sociology?; and an especially long list of materials concerned with ?Communism, Zionism, Feminism, and the Jews.?

Visitors can order books from the National Alliance by downloading a user-friendly order form from the NA site, printing it out, and sending it to the NA with payment. Additionally, ?any White person (a non-Jewish person of wholly European ancestry) of good character and at least 18 years of age who accepts as his own the goals of the National Alliance? can apply for membership using the Web, by downloading and printing out a membership form and mailing it to the group. Users can also find items relating to a particular topic by plugging in key words to the site?s search engine; over 250 items turned up when searching for the term ?Jews.?

NA sympathizers have also increased the group?s exposure by using public Internet forums, sending unsolicited E-mail messages, and disrupting USENET newsgroups. In the ?Reviews and Commentaries? section of the Web site for Amazon.com, visitors are invited to comment on books they have read. In at least two reviews (no longer at the site), NA supporters promoted their organization?s message. Reviewing The Turner Diaries, one of these sympathizers urged other readers to ?contact the author?s organization, the National Alliance, and get involved in the struggle for self-determination and freedom for our people.? Another commentary lamented that whites who ?just sit on their butts all day and allow the Jewish takeover of the U.S. to continue unchallenged really need to read the chapter called the ?Day of the Rope.? Everyone else who wants to fight needs to join the [NA].?

In October 1994, thousands of people in four states received an unsolicited E-mail message containing NA propaganda from an untraceable address. An action like this is considered a serious breach of ?netiquette? (responsible Internet use). The NA disavowed this act but noted its interest in sending unsolicited messages in its newsletter.

A similar transmission of another National Alliance piece occurred in 1995, on the eve of the Jewish High Holy Days, and again in February 1998, when hundreds of people received an unsolicited E-mail message containing the transcript of Pierce?s ADV program entitled ?Bill, Monica, and Saddam.? In it, Pierce claimed that by writing about the Monica Lewinsky affair, the ?Jewish media bosses? harmed President Clinton, who ?would do whatever they told him to do,? but ?had screwed up so many times that he had become a liability for them.?

Those sympathetic to the NA have also targeted specific institutions, such as Southwest Texas University. In April 1998, three Black students there were charged with raping two white students at a dormitory party. The campus NAACP chapter voiced opposition to the charges and criticized school administrators for a ?rush to judgment.? In response, a National Alliance supporter sent 16,000 unsolicited E-mail messages to students and faculty calling on the NAACP to apologize to ?victims of rape? and all white women. ?The truth is,? the E-mail read, ?White people in this country are under attack by an ever-growing population of black criminals.?

NA sympathizers have also posted thousands of messages to USENET newsgroups, seeing them as a way to broadcast their message widely. In its July 1995 Bulletin, the NA encouraged ?the Alliance?s seasoned cybernauts? to spread its Web site address ?as widely as possible.?

In a 1996 speech to the NA?s Cleveland unit, Pierce described the NA?s organized effort to dominate discussions in USENET newsgroups. He outlined the operations of an ?Alliance Cybercell,? a group of NA supporters active in USENET newsgroups. ?We have organized members working as teams, not identifying themselves as Alliance members but going into these discussion groups and virtually taking them over,? Pierce explained. These cell leaders ?decide what discussion groups they want to get into?analyze the situation, analyze the types of propaganda that have been presented by the other side and we go in there and just tear them apart.? Though Pierce encouraged online NA supporters to shift their recruiting activities from public debate to private discussions, one still finds NA members descending on USENET newsgroups and other public forums where they believe they might find sympathizers, spewing their hateful propaganda and inviting people to visit the NA Web site.

NA members correspond privately via E-mail not only with potential recruits, but also with each other. The organization claims to have established a ?Rapid Response Team (RRT),? a group of NA volunteers who are contacted via E-mail to respond to special situations. According to the NA, this team serves many purposes, from gathering information to quickly alerting other NA members in their area when an ?emergency? arises.

National Association for the Advancement of White People

While David Duke has recently allied himself with the National Alliance, his NAAWP has also jumped on the Internet bandwagon. Duke once described the NAAWP as ?a perfect foil for me.? Around 1990, soon after his successful run for the Louisiana State Legislature, he resigned from leadership of the group, but he still remained active behind the scenes. Duke?s campaign treasurer, Paul Allen, became the NAAWP?s leader, and the office for Duke?s unsuccessful 1991 gubernatorial campaign served as the group?s headquarters. The NAAWP has described Duke as ?former NAAWP President and still, best friend to the organization,? and Duke?s Web site proudly identifies him as ?founder and former National President of the NAAWP.?

The NAAWP portrays itself as a non-profit ?white rights? organization that defends white interests and rights in the same fashion that the NAACP works for the ?Advancement of Colored People.? Unlike some groups that proudly embrace the label of ?racist,? the NAAWP is more subtle in its hate. As early as 1985, the NAAWP encouraged its followers to mute their white supremacist views and ?never refer to racial superiority or inferiority, only talk about racial differences, carefully avoiding value judgements.? The NAAWP North Carolina chapter Web site responds to the question ?Is the NAAWP a ?hate group??? with a firm ?absolutely not.? At the national NAAWP site, a group leader writes, ?I don?t condemn black people. I want the best for them, both from a compassionate Christian-point-of-view, and because if they escape from the cycle of poverty, drugs, and crime, then we too will be better off.? According to the NAAWP Michigan chapter, ?the NAAWP doesn?t stand for hating anyone, and more importantly it never has. It?s about building a new, better society. A homogeneous community where everyone contributes, everyone benefits, and all share a common set of values and cultural beliefs.?

The NAAWP, like David Duke, has tried to hide its hate, but its racist and anti-Semitic views, like those of its founder, are evident. NAAWP News, the group?s newsletter, has regularly published articles with titles like ?Anti-Semitism is normal for people seeking to control their own destiny?; ?Jewish control of the media is the single most dangerous threat to Christianity,? and ?Why most Negroes are criminals.?

On its Web sites as well, the NAAWP shows its true colors. ?Tired of Black History Month, Martin Luther King Day, Miss Black USA, Black Entertainment Network, The United Negro College Fund, [and] Affirmative Action?? asks the NAAWP Arkansas chapter site. The Hawaii chapter?s site calls gays ?the worst predators on [sic] our children? and declares, ?the Jesse Jacksons of this World just want White Women around to Pimp for Money and Drugs and to make the White Man Pay.?

The National NAAWP Web site offers particularly clear examples of the bigotry that underlies the NAAWP?s talk about ?white rights.? It presents an anti-Semitic essay by National Alliance member Kevin Alfred Strom with the comment, ?this essay is a real call to all arms for all the races and nations of the world to rise up against these hypocrites, deceivers and tyrants ? the j*ws [sic].? The site also posts another essay by Strom, ?The Beast as Saint,? which purports to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a plagiarizer and a patron of prostitutes. A third document at the site, ?Jews, Jews, Jews,? offers ?proof that the Jew really does control the media? in the way of a list of ?Jewish CEOs.

Ku Klux Klan

NAAWP members sometimes attend rallies organized by an older, better-known hate group: the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). For more than 130 years, the Klan has provided a model for extremists by actively practicing and promoting bigotry, intimidation and violence.

The strength of America?s oldest hate group has fluctuated, peaking and receding at various times in American history, coinciding with the rise and decline of social and economic discontent in the nation. The economic, political and cultural changes in the South after the Civil War, the dislocations in the early 1920s and the struggle for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s all fueled Klan growth.

In recent years, as a result of the counteractions of law enforcement and civil rights groups, changing fashions in the extremist movement, and internal power struggles, the Klan has lost much of its clout. David Duke?s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which fell into decline when Don Black went to jail, underwent a major split in 1994. Other large, national Klans active in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s have also disintegrated. For instance, a 1987 Southern Poverty Law Center legal victory effectively dismantled the United Klans of America after its members lynched a Black teen-ager, Michael Donald. A 1993 court order disbanded the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan after group members pelted civil rights activists with rocks and bottles during a brotherhood march in Forsyth County, Georgia.

Still, in the 1990s, Klan members remain active and violent, planning terrorist bombings and burning Black churches. In April 1997, three Klan members were arrested in a plot to blow up a natural gas refinery near Fort Worth, Texas. Three more men with links to the Klan were arrested in February 1998 for planning to poison water supplies, rob banks, plant bombs, and commit assassinations. In a July 1998 court judgment, the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, its South Carolina state leader Horace King, and several other Klansmen were held responsible for their roles in a conspiracy to burn down a Black church.

Like other white supremacist groups, the Klan has turned to the Internet as a means to revitalize their movement and attract a new cadre of supporters and activists. ?Up until last month, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Realm of Florida was very small,? writes Brian K. Bass of his Klan group. ?But now we have a website up, and our numbers are growing dramatically. We picked up 6 new members in just the last two weeks, and have other applications under consideration. I feel that this is due to the website.? On the Web, some Klan factions favor the toned-down rhetoric associated with the NAAWP and other hate groups trying to appear mainstream. The first Klan page on the Web belonged to a group that adopted this strategy: Thom Robb?s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Robb?s site presented a ?kinder, gentler? Klan that teaches white racial pride but professes to be neither anti-Black nor anti-Catholic. Whites ?have a right to be proud of their race? the site explains, adding that the popular image of a racist Klan is a lie deliberately spread by the liberal media.

Nonetheless, Robb?s site relied on traditional Klan themes: whites are victims of intolerance who face racial extinction from a horde of Blacks and foreigners eager to intermarry and destroy American culture and religion; America should belong to Americans, not Asians, Arabs or Jews. Furthermore, early incarnations of Robb?s site reprinted the ?Franklin Prophecy,? a vile, anti-Semitic speech falsely attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

Today, Robb?s Klan site reflects even stronger efforts to appear respectable, particularly in stating, like Duke, that the Klan?s goal should be ?political power.? This ?political power? is to be used to combat ?anti-white and anti-Christian propaganda? and ?to promote ?White Christian civilization.? Robb remains dismissive of the Klan?s violent image, claiming his group ?is well known through out [sic] law enforcement for being non-violent.?

Some Klan members are not content with this toned-down language. One unabashedly bigoted Klan with more than a few Web sites, the Knights of the White Kamellia was founded in Louisiana in 1993. This group seeks to ?maintain and defend the superiority of the White race,? maintain ?a marked difference between the White and Negro race,? prevent the government ?from falling into the hands of the Negro and or the ungodly,? and educate ?against miscegenation of the races.?

Many other Klans are also now on the Web. Web users can find a membership application for the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, perhaps today?s most vocal and active Klan, at that group?s Web site. A few sites use the old Klan moniker ?Invisible Empire,? among them America?s Invisible Empire of Alabama and Pennsylvania?s Invisible Empire KKK. Smaller regional groups, such as the Southern Cross Militant Knights and the Northwest Knights, are active on the Internet as well.

While the Klans on the Web represent different factions and espouse various viewpoints, their Web sites are formatted in similar ways. Most Klan sites contain a membership application, a list of upcoming rallies, a statement of principles, an explanation of customs (such as cross burning), and a spurious account of Klan history. At many sites, the three latter items are adaptations, if not direct appropriations, of the materials originally posted at Robb?s Klan sites. In fact, Robb threatened another Klan group with legal action for posting a document that Robb claims belongs exclusively to his Klan.

Furthermore, some Klan sites link to other Klan sites with which they are not affiliated. For instance, the North Georgia White Knights Web site links to many chapters of the Knights of the White Kamellia, the New Order Knights, and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The site for America?s Invisible Empire links to the Web pages of the Northwest White Knights and Knights of the White Kamellia, among others. Such links, as well as the similarities between KKK sites, demonstrate the bonds among the different Klan factions, despite their infighting.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify]Identity Church Movement

The Identity Church movement, a pseudo-theological manifestation of racism and anti-Semitism on the far right, first came to light in the U.S. during the late 1970s and early 1980s, though its roots lie in the late years of the last century, with the British movement known as Anglo-Israelism.

Anglo-Israelism held that white Anglo-Saxons are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Adherents to this doctrine believed that England and the U.S. are the true Israel in which Biblical promises to the ?Chosen People? are to be fulfilled. The Identity movement takes the position that white Anglo-Saxons ­ not Jews ­ are the real Biblical ?Chosen People;? that Jews are the descendants of a union between Eve and Satan; and that the white race is inherently superior to other races. Identity believers assert that Blacks and other nonwhites are ?mud people,? on the same spiritual level as animals, and therefore without souls.

A nationwide movement, Identity has filled dozens of ?churches? with its hate. Additionally, Identity has become the ?religion? of choice for many hate groups, including Aryan Nations and the Posse Comitatus, in addition to some factions of the Ku Klux Klan.

Numerous Identity ?churches? have established a Web presence in recent years, among them America?s Promise Ministries, Stone Kingdom Ministries, and Kingdom Identity Ministries. Many of these organizations have made good use of the Web to market their pamphlets, books, and videotapes to their supporters. America?s Promise Ministries offers Web users a vast online catalog of books, pamphlets, audio tapes, and video tapes filled with their racist beliefs. Along with a section full of online Identity books and book reviews, the Stone Kingdom Ministries Web site lists hundreds of ?Bible Studies on Audiocassettes? for sale. Among bumper stickers, decals, charts, and other merchandise, the Kingdom Identity Ministries Web site retails Identity-based books written for children. Also at the Kingdom Identity site, Web users can enroll in a correspondence course, which consists of studying almost 300 pages of Identity materials, to receive a ?Certificate in Christian Education.?

With links to these ?churches? at its Web site, the bimonthly newspaper The Jubilee of Midpines, California, serves as a national umbrella publication for Identity believers. Like the Web sites for those groups, the Jubilee site puts the power of the Web to use to raise funds. In addition to selling books and videotapes that the Jubilee guarantees ?you won?t find in the B. Dalton bookstore,? visitors to the Jubilee site can sign up for subscriptions to the newspaper?s print edition; buy advertising in its print or online versions, and purchase inexpensive, long distance telephone service that will benefit The Jubilee.

While some Identity ?churches? focus on the Web?s commercial potential, paramilitary Identity groups such as the Posse Comitatus and Aryan Nations have used it to encourage action.

Posse Comitatus

William Potter Gale created an Identity group named Posse Comitatus, which means ?power of the county? in Latin. Other Posses unaffiliated with Gale sprang up in its wake, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s. Loosely affiliated bands of armed anti-tax and anti-Federal government vigilantes and survivalists, these Posses believed that all government power is rooted at the county, not Federal, level.

Because they are convinced that the Federal government is controlled by ?enemies? (usually Jews), Posse adherents resist paying taxes as well as other duties of law-abiding citizens. Aspects of the Posse?s ideology, most notably its fierce hostility to Federal authority, reverberate among today?s militia and common law court activists.

In the 1970s, Posses attracted Klan members and other anti-Semites (among them David Duke), and in 1983, these groups gained nationwide attention when active Posse member Gordon Kahl murdered two Federal Marshals in North Dakota and became a fugitive. When Kahl died in a shootout with Arkansas law enforcement officers, Posses and other Identity groups made him a martyr.

In 1991, James Wickstrom, an Identity minister and Posse leader based in Michigan, was convicted of plotting to distribute $100,000 in counterfeit bills to white supremacists at a 1988 Aryan Nations event. He was released from prison in 1994 and today runs a Posse Web site with fellow Identity ?Pastor? August Kreis of Pennsylvania.

At his Posse Web site, Kreis calls ?the occupying forces? of the ?zionist [sic] or jewish [sic] occupied government? the enemies of ?We the People? and describes them as the reason that the government has ?grossly overstepped its bounds.?

Kreis and Wickstrom also use their Web site to editorialize about current events. Written by Kreis, ?Villain or American Folk Hero?? voices support for alleged abortion clinic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. Kreis claims that ?those who call themselves Identity? and ?a growing consensus of conservative Christians? believe Rudolph has ?done the will of?God.?

In justifying Rudolph?s alleged actions, Kreis stresses that ?it is?an inarguable matter of Scriptural mandate that those involved with [abortion] have committed capital murder ­ a crime punishable by DEATH!? Kreis maintains that ?several hundred [Jewish Occupational Government] agents? are chasing Rudolph to ?execute him? on the spot, and he urges ?the proud European White folk living in this country? to ?rise up against this tyrannical, parasitic [Jewish] communist government.? Perhaps Rudolph engenders greater sympathy among this group because he himself may be an Identity believer: in 1984, he and his family spent several months at the Schell City, Missouri, Church of Israel compound run by Identity preacher Dan Gayman.

With regard to the brutal murder on October 23, 1998, of Dr. Barnett Slepian of upstate New York, likely targeted because he performed abortions, Kreis and Wickstrom comment, ?Not much needs to be said. The justice in the ?putting to DEATH? of this jewish [sic] abortionist says it all!?Pray that other True Israelite Warriors across this land continue to rid our country of these murdering bastards!?

Aryan Nations & The Order

A contemporary of Posse Comitatus co-founder William Potter Gale, Wesley Swift was a Klan organizer who served as an aide to Gerald L.K. Smith, for many years America?s most notorious peddler of anti-Semitism. During the 1950s, Swift was a leader of a Los Angeles church called the ?Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation.? When Swift died, ?Rev.? Richard G. Butler proclaimed his ?Church of Jesus Christ Christian? (CJCC) the direct successor to Swift?s church. In the early 1970s, Butler formed a new group around his church: Aryan Nations (AN). Since then, he has held court at a 20-acre AN/CJCC compound in Northern Idaho, anticipating the creation of an exclusively white ?national racist state? in the Pacific Northwest.

At its Web site, AN preaches that God?s creation of Adam marked ?the placing of the White Race upon this earth?; and that ?the twelve tribes of Israel? are ?now scattered throughout the world? and are ?now known as the Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Teutonic, Scandinavian, Celtic peoples.? As a corollary, all non-whites are seen as inferior, but it is the Jews who are singled out as the special object of AN?s ?theologically? based hatred.

AN vilifies Jews as ?the natural enemy of our Aryan (White) Race. This is attested by scripture and all secular history. The Jew is like a destroying virus that attacks our racial body to destroy our Aryan culture and the purity of our Race.?

Citing the Book of Revelation, AN envisions a ?battle? being fought ?between the children of darkness (today known as Jews) and the children of light?the Aryan Race, the true Israel of the bible.? According to AN, there will ?soon? be a ?day of reckoning,? in which ?the usurper will be thrown out by the terrible might of Yahweh?s people, as they return to their roots and their special destiny.?

In this struggle between the Jews and ?the children of light,? AN claims that the Jews have a surrogate: the United States Government, often referred to as ?ZOG? (Zionist Occupied Government). In 1996, AN posted to its site an ?Aryan Declaration of Independence,? which declared, ?the history of the present Zionist Occupied Government of the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations? [all] having a direct object ­ the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.? Holding ?the eradication of the White race and its culture? as ?one of its foremost purposes,? this ?ZOG? is accused of relinquishing the ?powers of government to private corporations, White traitors and ruling class Jewish families.?

AN perceives itself as literally surrounded by enemies: vigorously fighting back is not only a solution to its problems, but a duty. According to AN, those whites who resist ?ZOG? are ?chosen and faithful,? and the white ?Racial Nation has a right and is under obligation to preserve itself and its members.?

Although primarily an Identity group, AN embraces a neo-Nazi philosophy. Richard Butler himself has praised Hitler, and at the AN Web site, which announces, ?WE BELIEVE in the gam-ma?di?on?a cross formed of four capital gammas?in the figure of a swastika,? he is pictured giving the raised stiff-arm Nazi salute.

One of the most ambitious Identity Web sites, the AN site contains a membership application, a substantial book catalog, an online ?Literature Archives? of hateful texts, and a long list of links to other hate sites.

AN is no stranger to violence. During the early 1980s, several of Butler?s followers joined members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance and some Klan splinter groups to form a secret organization called The Silent Brotherhood, also known as The Order, which planned to overthrow the U.S. government.

To raise money for its planned revolution, The Order engaged in a crime spree involving murder, counterfeiting, bank robberies, and armored-car hold-ups. Ostensibly, the group?s activities ended with the death of its founder and leader, Robert J. Mathews, in a shootout with Federal agents in December 1984 and the incarceration of many of its members. Yet The Order has taken on a new life on the World Wide Web, serving as inspiration for today?s Identity adherents and other white supremacists.

Hosted by the same Internet Service Provider as the AN Web site, the 14 Word Press Web site is devoted to the work of David Lane, an imprisoned member of The Order. Lane?s best-known legacy is the ?14 words?: ?We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.? Despite the fact that Lane is a convicted felon serving a 190-year sentence in a high-security prison, his writings, including pieces from his monthly Focus Fourteen newsletter, can reach millions through the Internet. Among his columns, many of which are offered at the 14 Word Press site, is a sympathetic letter to convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Neo-Nazis

The symbols associated with Hitler?s Nazis are attractive to bigots on the Web because they suggest anti-Semitism in an immediate, forceful way to the general public.

Like Identity ?churches,? neo-Nazis use the Web to market merchandise, selling items emblazoned with the instantly recognizable symbols of Hitler?s Nazi party. Naming itself for the Shutzstaffel, the elite section of the Nazi Party that ran Hitler?s extermination camps, the online store SS Enterprises specializes in selling Nazi-related paraphernalia, including newly-designed T-shirts, pins, patches, hats, stickers, flags, belt buckles, arm bands, and helmets bearing swastikas, the initials ?SS,? a German eagle, or an iron cross. Also available are Nazi patches, pins, rings, and hats designed during Hitler?s era. Like the T-shirt a music fan might buy at a rock concert, one shirt reads ?Adolf Hitler European Tour 1939-1945,? listing the nations that Hitler invaded during those years. Other white supremacist T-shirts sold by SS Enterprises feature racist slogans such as ?If we knew they were going to be this much trouble, we?d a picked our own damn cotton!!? or depictions of Klansmen behind phrases like ?Boyz N? the Hood.? Another shirt depicts a ?Black Family Tree?: a tree with nooses hung from it, seemingly ready for a Klan-style lynching.

At Our Hero?s Library Web site, twentysomething neo-Nazi Tom Smith proudly displays a picture of his ?Aryan hero,? Adolf Hitler, flanked by animated, swirling swastikas. Hosted by Don Black?s Stormfront, Smith?s site features numerous Hitlerian essays covering topics such as eugenics and ?Aryan? culture. Amidst photos of Jews with their eyes blacked out, he lists Jewish ?powerlords? and posts a Jewish ?surname index.? ?Before buying anything always check to make sure the company is not j*wish [sic],? Smith writes. Seeing Jewish conspiracies everywhere, he calls Bob Dole, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan Jewish ?marionettes?; blames Jews for schoolyard violence in Arkansas, and declares them responsible for the conflict between Ireland and Britain. ?The J*w has been and is always very aware of the conflict amongst non-j*ws, and is tireless in his pursuit of trying to profit from the internal feuds of his enemies,? Smith writes. ?When these feuds are not [innate] in and of themselves, the j*w creates new feuds via his presence in each of the opposing countries to create a new profit-scenario for himself.? Also available at Our Hero?s Library are downloadable copies of Smith?s extensive messages to USENET newsgroups, the Internet?s system of electronic bulletin boards.

Other neo-Nazis on the Web represent more established organizations and have been active in the white supremacist movement much longer, since the days of American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Following Rockwell?s assassination by a disgruntled party member in 1967, Matthias (Matt) Koehl took over his American Nazi Party, renaming it the National Socialist White People?s Party. In 1970, NSWPP member Frank Collin started his own group, the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA), made famous by its attempts to march through the predominantly Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois in 1977. Another former NSWPP member, Harold Covington joined the NSPA in the mid-1970s. At that time, Gary ?Gerhard? Lauck, who went on to found the NSDAP-AO (a German acronym meaning National Socialist German Workers Party ? Overseas Organization), was also a member of Collin?s group. Covington took over the NSPA in 1980, after Collin was sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually abusing children. In 1982, Koehl dropped the name NSWPP in favor of the name ?The New Order,? and Covington?s NSPA disbanded. In 1994, Covington founded a new group using the old name once used by Koehl: NSWPP. Today, Covington and Lauck both have a presence on the World Wide Web.

Harold Covington was one of the first neo-Nazis on the Web, establishing a site as early as 1996. Covington?s original site defined National Socialism as ?a world view for White People? and listed guiding principles such as ?Racial Idealism? and ?The Upward Development of the White Race.? The site listed ?Ten Basic Principles of National Socialism,? which urged ?Aryan? racial purity and conquest of the world. Covington lauded Rockwell at length and provided links to other white supremacist sites.

?Gerhard? Lauck has also been online for many years. In the early days of cyberspace, Lauck?s materials were circulated on a closely guarded computer network named the ?Thule Network,? a bulletin board system similar to the ?Aryan Nation Liberty Net.? In order to gain access to the network, prospective users had to pass a loyalty test and a background check. According to some estimates, over 1,500 neo-Nazis in Germany had access to Lauck?s propaganda via the ?Thule Network,? which remains active today.

In 1995, Danish authorities, acting on international warrants, arrested Lauck and agreed to extradite him to Germany, where he was sentenced in 1996 to four years in prison for inciting racial hatred by disseminating anti-Semitic and racist material. Lauck was released in March 1999 and deported to the United States.

While he was in jail, Lauck?s Web site featured the headline, ?Free Gerhard Lauck!? The site said about Lauck?s arrest and imprisonment: ?these illegal and reprehensible acts by the anti-White authorities are a direct assault upon ALL pro-White organizations. YOU are under attack now! If International Jewry is allowed to kidnap Gerhard Lauck their next step will be to systematically silence all pro-White leaders, organizations, and members worldwide one by one.?

Like other neo-Nazis, Lauck has expressed intense approval for Hitler and hatred for Jews. He has stated that ?anything that is bad for the Jews is good for us? and told a Danish audience that ?the Jews were treated too nicely in the concentration camps.? Yet buried among the Nazi-themed books sold at his Web site were a group of texts that question whether the Holocaust took place, bearing titles like ?Auschwitz: Truth or Lie?? and ?Did Six Million Really Die??

Holocaust Denial

Why would an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi such as Gerhard Lauck deny that the Holocaust took place? A July 1996 message from fellow neo-Nazi Harold Covington to his National Socialist White Peoples Party E-mail mailing list provides some possible reasons. Covington comments, ?take away the Holocaust and both the National Socialists and the Jews become very different people, almost reversing roles.?

Viewing the Holocaust as a ?seemingly bottomless gold mine in the form of ?reparations? which has financed murderous Israeli aggression in the Middle East and numerous anti-White Jewish institutions,? Covington wonders: ?without the Holocaust, what are the Jews?? His answer: ?Just a grubby little bunch of international bandits and assassins and squatters who have perpetrated the most massive, cynical fraud in human history.?

Likewise, Covington thinks the general public would be ?stunned with admiration for the brilliance of Adolf Hitler?29 if it believed the Holocaust did not happen. Paraphrasing prominent Holocaust historian and Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt, he declares that ?the real purpose? of Holocaust denial is ?to make National Socialism an acceptable political alternative again.?

Since 1979, when Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a sizable Holocaust denial movement has surfaced. Holocaust deniers make the mendacious claim that the account of Nazi genocide universally accepted by legitimate historians is false, either in its entirety or in most of its central facts. To support this claim, they distort and even fabricate history.

Unlike Harold Covington, most in the Holocaust denial movement try hard to mask the anti-Semitism underlying their claims. Instead, hoping to make their views seem respectable, they pretend that their sole goal is to ?correct? the historical record. Posing as historians and cloaking themselves in ersatz scholarship, the deniers claim that the Holocaust is a Jewish fabrication, not the product of Nazi hatred.

Holocaust deniers? thousands of pages of propaganda on the Web, presented as academic fact or in the guise of free and open ?debate,? take particular advantage of many Web users? difficulty distinguishing between reputable and disreputable Web sites.

When ADL first reported on Holocaust denial Web sites in 1996, only three existed: Greg Raven?s IHR site, Bradley Smith?s site for the Committee for Open Discussion of the Holocaust Story (CODOH), and the Zündelsite, which promotes the work of Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. Today, these sites are still among the most significant manifestations of Holocaust denial on the Web, but have been joined by more than a dozen others, as well as numerous sites with Holocaust-denial materials alongside other hateful propaganda.

Institute for Historical Review

The California-based IHR, which split with Willis Carto in 1993, remains the world?s single most important outlet for Holocaust-denial propaganda. While the IHR seeks to gain credibility by working under the guise of scholarship and impartiality, many of its staffers and Editorial Advisory Committee members often participate in pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish activities. Current director Mark Weber was an activist in the National Alliance during the 1970s, and editorial advisor Robert Faurisson was convicted three times of violating French hate-crime laws because of his anti-Semitic activities. Other active participants in IHR include David Irving, the leading Holocaust denier in England, and Ernst Zündel, Canada?s most notorious neo-Nazi.

From 1996 to 1998, IHR Associate Director Greg Raven housed extensive IHR materials at his ?personal? Web site, which he claims is ?not supported, sponsored, or financed by the Institute for Historical Review.? Raven?s ?personal? site continues to exist, though he moved all of his IHR materials to a separate, ?official? IHR site in March 1998.

The IHR Web site contains hundreds of online ?revisionist? pamphlets, books, and articles, as well as a complete index of the JHR. Among IHR?s leaflets, one finds ?Auschwitz myths and facts,? which claims that ?Auschwitz was not an extermination center? and that ?the story of mass killings in ?gas chambers? is a myth.? Many JHR articles are reprinted in their entirety, including ?Is The Diary of Anne Frank genuine?? Additionally, IHR publishes the full text of a few books at its site, such as Did Six Million Really Die? by British ?revisionist? Richard Harwood.

Bradley Smith and CODOH

Formerly the ?Media Project Director? for IHR, longtime Holocaust denier Bradley Smith joined current IHR leader Mark Weber in founding the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) in 1987. On his Web site, Smith presents himself as an intellectually honest gadfly with no ax to grind.

Smith works hard to create the image of a man who wants to encourage reasonable debate among reasonable people. His admission that ?the Hitlerian regime was antisemitic [sic] and persecuted Jews? seems meant to show that it is intellectual honesty, not anti-Semitism, that leads him to deny that ?the German state pursued a plan to kill all Jews or used homicidal ?gassing chambers? for mass murder.?

For many years, Smith has been at the center of the deniers? college outreach program. He first drew public attention when about 70 college newspapers published his Holocaust denial ads, which he still regularly sends to campus editors, in the early and mid-1990s. All of these ads are reprinted at the CODOH Web site.

At first, Smith?s ads featured long essays that outlined the deniers? position, such as Mark Weber?s ?The ?Jewish soap? myth.? Smith?s first widely published ad stated ?the figure of 6 million Jewish deaths is an irresponsible exaggeration, and?no execution gas chambers existed in any camp in Europe which was under German control.? This ad went on to note that the ?purpose? of accounts of the Holocaust is ?to drum up world sympathy and political and financial support for Jewish causes, especially for the formation of the State of Israel.? Another early CODOH ad claimed ?The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum displays no convincing proof whatsoever of homicidal gas chambers.?

Upset about the high cost of these lengthy ads, Smith soon realized the power of the Internet. He began to place brief, inexpensive ads in school papers that merely listed his Web site and E-mail addresses. Not only did these ads cost less money, they also hid Smith?s agenda. In addition, Smith tried to draw his readers? attention with misleading slogans such as ?Ignore the Thought Police? and ?Judge for yourself.?

Smith?s savvy marketing technique was tailor-made for students, many of whom are comfortable with the Internet, predisposed against authority, and willing to challenge received wisdom. Students responding favorably to these deceptive ads would realize Smith?s intention to deny the Holocaust only after visiting the CODOH Web site, where they would receive his message without mediation.

Once at the CODOH site, students are targeted further. They are urged to distribute CODOH leaflets on their campuses and fight what Smith calls the ?Campus Thought Police? (that is, legitimate Holocaust historians). Also, students are offered a set of links and asked to ?choose a major? such as ?Mathematics,? ?Science,? or ?Politics.? By clicking on a ?major,? they are linked to Holocaust denial articles specially tailored to their areas of interest. Also presented is an innocuous-sounding section titled ?Hot Links to Higher Learning,? which contains links to a variety of Holocaust denial sites; Smith classifies such sites as ?Social, Political and Historical Activism & Commentary.?

The CODOH Web site today contains a vast amount of Holocaust-denial information. Visitors to the site can look for any one of over 1,000 separate documents using one of the site?s eight search tools, such as its index of articles by subject and its chronological list of additions.

Particularly troublesome are the sections titled ?War Crimes Trials? and ?The Tangled Web: Zionism, Stalinism, and the Holocaust Story.? ?War Crimes Trials? offers articles that attack the objectivity and legal validity of the post-war Nuremberg Trials, where much information about the Holocaust first became public, and where the basic history of the genocide was first established. ?The Tangled Web? suggests that Jews were responsible for Bolshevism in the Soviet Union while linking Zionism to Fascism. CODOH manages to present Jews as both International Communist conspirators and ultra-nationalist bigots who willingly cooperated with violent anti-Semites.

Zündel and Rimland

Another longtime ?revisionist,? Ernst Zündel has been the leading Holocaust-denial propagandist in Canada for more than two decades. In the early 1970s, Zündel penned pro-Nazi materials under the name Christof Friedrich, including the book The Hitler We Loved and Why. In the late 1970s, ads for his Samisdat Publishers Ltd. in George Dietz?s neo-Nazi Liberty Bell magazine (based in West Virginia) offered Holocaust-denial books for sale, and Zündel wrote articles for Liberty Bell and another Dietz publication, White Power Report. In the early 1980s, the German government named Zündel as one of the world?s largest distributors of neo-Nazi material.

Mid-1995 marked the debut of the Zündelsite. Though Zündel, a German citizen, lives in Canada, the site has been hosted by an Internet Service Provider in California. Zündel has denied that he operates the Zündelsite. Rather, he claims, the site is run by his ?webmaster,? Dr. Ingrid Rimland of California. Currently, the site is called ?Ingrid Rimland?s Zündelsite? and declares, ?the Zündelsite, located in the USA, is owned and operated by Dr. Ingrid A. Rimland, an American citizen.? Regardless of who actually maintains the Zündelsite, its agenda is clearly that of its namesake.

From its first appearance on the Internet, the Zündelsite made its Holocaust denial agenda unambiguous, challenging assertions that there ?was a Fuhrer order for the genocidal killings of Jews, Gypsies and others?; disputing the fact that gas chambers were ?designed for the express purpose of targeting groups of human beings,? and refusing to believe that ?the numbers of victims claimed to have been killed are anywhere near the number of people who actually died in concentration camps of whatever cause.? The site rejects claims that ?World War II was fought by the Germans to kill off the Jews as a group,? arguing that these are ?deliberately planned, systematic? deceptions ?amounting to financial, political, emotional and spiritual extortion.?

Early editions of the Zündelsite provided readers with Zündel?s writings on ?revisionism,? including the text of his newsletters, book reviews and editorials. The site today focuses mostly on other sources of Holocaust denial propaganda, though it continues to sell audio and video tapes featuring Zündel.

The Zündel site contains an archive of daily ?ZGram? E-mail messages sent by Ingrid Rimland to the site?s supporters; almost a thousand messages are archived, dating back to early 1996. A passionate admirer of Zündel, Rimland shares his views on the Holocaust, seeing it as an extortion ?racket? run by Jews for the purpose of financing Israel and humiliating Germany and Germans.

Both Zündel and Rimland lived through the defeat of the Nazis, and both lament it. Rimland holds high hopes that Holocaust ?revisionism? will help revive the image of Hitler as a man who made Germany ?the most progressive and advanced Nation of its time.? In her view, teaching the facts of the Holocaust is emblematic of a systematic assault against people of German descent. ?Holocaust teaching,? she writes, ?is?child abuse. It is adult abuse. It is ethnic abuse. I want to go on record that it is soul-abuse.? Additionally, unlike many other Holocaust deniers, who go to great lengths to deny the anti-Jewish sentiment that fuels their views, Rimland has openly voiced her approval for anti-Semitism, calling it ?a responsible and, indeed, unavoidable response to relentless provocation against the gentile culture and tradition conflicting with a Jewish culture and tradition.?

The Zündelsite also reprints a book originally published by Zündel?s Samisdat press: the infamous ?Leuchter Report.? Despite the fact that he has publicly acknowledged his lack of scientific credentials, Fred Leuchter claimed to have taken scientific ?samples? from death camp gas chambers that prove they could not have been used to exterminate people. Notwithstanding the discredited nature of Leuchter?s work, deniers like Zündel still pass his report off as fact, and the IHR continues to market it as ?essential revisionist reading.? Also posted at the Zündel site is the fallacious ?Rudolf Report,? by German ?scientist? Germar Rudolf, which defends Leuchter?s work. Rudolf also claims to have taken ?samples? from masonry in gas chambers and found no trace of poison gas.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify]Ahmed Rami

One high-profile Arab Holocaust denier is Swedish-based Moroccan exile Ahmed Rami, creator of the Radio Islam Web site. Once a lieutenant in the Moroccan military, Rami reportedly played a leading role in a failed 1972 coup d?état and fled, gaining political asylum in Sweden. In 1987, Rami began using a public access Swedish radio station to broadcast Radio Islam, ostensibly a public relations program for Sweden?s Muslims but in fact a vehicle for unvarnished anti-Semitism.

Rami has rationalized his bigotry as support for Palestinian causes. While he has become a source of embarrassment for serious Palestinian activists, Holocaust deniers have unabashedly and enthusiastically associated with him. Rami spoke at the 1992 IHR conference and has often been praised by Ingrid Rimland, among others.

Off the air from 1993 to 1995, Rami?s program returned in 1996, the same year that he established the Radio Islam Web site. From the start, Rami?s site offered visitors anti-Semitic material in English, French, German, Swedish and Norwegian. Early versions of the site described the ?so-called ?holocaust?? as a tool used by ?Zionists? to win ?sovereign rights to oppress and vilify other people,? namely Palestinians. These ?Zionists,? according to Radio Islam, have a monopoly over ?information services in the West? and bribe Western politicians to support them in their ?Anti-Arab and anti-Moslem racism? and ?hatred against everything German.?

Today, visitors to the Radio Islam site are greeted with a statement that seems to deny Rami?s extremism: ?No hate. No violence. Races? Only one Human race.? Yet his site has become even more bigoted than ever and demonstrates the implicit connection between Holocaust denial and other forms of anti-Semitism. Radio Islam promotes a myriad of anti-Semitic works in addition to those of Holocaust deniers such as Robert Faurisson, Greg Raven, John Ball, and Bradley Smith.

The Radio Islam site continues to portray the Holocaust as part of a Jewish conspiracy to draw the world?s attention away from ?the ongoing Zionist war waged against the peoples of Palestine and the Middle East? and ?Zionism?s totalitarian and racist backgrounds.? To support this theory, it provides numerous anti-Semitic texts that allege Jewish conspiracies for political domination, such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Expanding on the anti-Semitism expressed by its denial of the Holocaust, Radio Islam equates ?Jewish Racism,? envisioned as Jewish prejudice against Muslims, with ?Jewish ?Religion,?? as outlined by the Talmud. Visitors to Radio Islam can read ?The Truth About The Talmud? by Michael A. Hoffman II and Alan R. Critchley, which asserts that Jews are impelled, by religious law, to mistreat and attempt to dominate non-Jews. The Nature of Zionism by Vladimir Stepin, also available at the Radio Islam site, declares that Zionism rests on three basic beliefs: that Jews are ?God?s chosen people?; that all others are ?merely two-legged animals (goys),? and that ?Jews have both the right and the obligation to rule the world.?

Furthermore, according to Radio Islam, the Jews are not the ?chosen people? for they are not ??descendants? of the mythic Jews of the Bible.? Rather, today?s Jews are ?descended from Mongolians and other Asiatic peoples who had adopted ?Judaism? as their ?religion? over 1,000 years ago and had become know as ?Jews.?? Often advanced by Identity believers, this theory alleges that most, if not all, Ashkenazic Jews descended from the Khazars, an obscure Turkic people whose leaders converted to Judaism in the eighth century. While Identity adherents employ this theory in order to bolster their assertion that Anglo-Saxon whites are actually the biblical Church of Israel, Rami uses it to demonstrate that the ancestors of the Jews were not from Palestine, implying that Israel has no right to exist.

World Church of the Creator

In 1973, Ben Klassen announced the birth of the Church of the Creator, publishing a 511-page book entitled Nature?s Eternal Religion. In it, Klassen wrote, ?we completely reject the Judeo-democratic-Marxist values of today and supplant them with new and basic values, of which race is the foundation.? Sharing the Identity movement?s view that non-whites are subhuman ?mud people,? Klassen believed ?that which is good for the White Race is the highest virtue? and ?that which is bad for the White Race is the ultimate sin.? ?Rahowa,? an acronym for ?Racial Holy War,? was Klassen?s battle cry and remains a rallying point for ?Creators? today. The heart of his ?religious creed? was ?total war? against Jews and non-whites, ?politically, militantly, financially, morally and religiously.?

Under Klassen?s leadership, Church of the Creator grew slowly but steadily. That growth stopped abruptly two decades later, in 1992, when George Loeb, a Church Reverend, was convicted of first-degree murder for killing Harold Mansfield Jr., an African-American Persian Gulf War veteran. In 1994, Mansfield?s family, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, won $1 million in damages from Klassen?s Church. Klassen appears to have anticipated this lawsuit, as he tried to rid the group of its assets and committed suicide in 1993.

Continuing legal problems forced Klassen?s successor, Richard McCarty, to dissolve the group. In two separate incidents in California, police averted potential bombing sprees that were to be directed at Jews, Blacks, and homosexuals. In both cases, the would-be terrorists were closely affiliated with branches of Klassen?s Church.

Church of the Creator was reborn in 1996 with the emergence of the young, charismatic Matt Hale as its leader. Following Hale?s ascension as Pontifex Maximus (an ancient Roman title designated for the Church?s supreme leader), the Church of the Creator became known as World Church of the Creator. Aggressive pamphleteering ensued; new local chapters were created, and membership has grown. Since Hale?s ascension, Creators have been arrested in Florida for attacking an African-American boy and his father.

Additionally, WCOTC spawned dozens of sites on the World Wide Web, probably because most of its members are young and computer-literate. While Klassen was in his 70s when he led the Church, Hale is in his 20s, and he has taken his Church onto the Web with a vengeance.

At the group?s main site, a document entitled ?Expanding Creativity on the Net? (referring to the racist, anti-Semitic ?religion? practiced by WCOTC) outlines Hale?s plan for an ?Internet Blitzkrieg.? Calling the WCOTC central site ?one of the finest White Power pages out there,? Hale asserts that the Internet ?has the potential to reach millions of White People with our message and we need to act on that immediately.?

?We call on all Creators and White Racial Comrades to go to [Internet discussion groups] and debate and recruit with NEW people,? he declares, ?post our URL everywhere, as soon as possible.?

Updated frequently, the WCOTC Home Page features books for sale, articles about WCOTC, editorials by Hale from The Struggle newsletter, and Hale?s weekly ?Voice of The Struggle? audio-on-demand broadcasts. The site makes WCOTC membership easy, providing a membership form, dozens of ?contact points? in the United States, and a lengthy membership manual that covers topics from a WCOTC ?Wedding Ceremony? to ?Dealing with Law Enforcement.?

According to this manual, ?the inferior mud races are our deadly enemies, and the most dangerous of all is the Jewish race.? Creators are urged to ?relentlessly expand the White Race, and keep shrinking our enemies.? Also spreading anti-Semitism, the ?Jew Watch? section of the site contains the full text of Henry Ford?s hate tract The International Jew. The online version of FACTS That the Government and the Media Don?t Want You to Know, a pamphlet widely distributed by WCOTC, claims that Jews control the media, promotes the myth of a ?Kosher Food Tax,? and reprints spurious anti-Semitic documents purportedly penned by Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

Connected in a ?Creator Webring? (which links WCOTC sites, one to the next, in a virtual circle), the World Church subsidiary sites serve a variety of purposes, though they share significant content with the group?s main site. Many World Church sites have been housed at WCOTC.COM, which claims to be ?dedicated to hosting all the WCOTC Web Pages all over the White World.?

A formerly active World Church site highlights WCOTC?s aggressive recruiting techniques: World Church of the Creator Kids! With a site like this, easily accessible to young Web surfers, the danger to impressionable youngsters posed by hate?s reach on the World Wide Web becomes evident. The WCOTC Kids! site (subtitled ?Creativity for Children!?) utilized enticing graphics to lure young Web users. For instance, the site posted a picture of a white family next to the phrase, ?The purpose of making this page is to help the younger members of the White Race understand our fight.? While many of the documents at the site were copied directly from the WCOTC membership manual, one ­ ?What It Means To Be A Creator? ? is an adaptation of a membership manual piece, ?The Essence of a Creator.? The children?s version of this hateful tract simplified and tones down its language, making its racist ideology easier for children to understand.

Also available at the Kids! site were ?Coloring Pages? and ?Crossword Puzzles.? Children were urged to ?have fun? solving these puzzles while helping ?educate? themselves ?in the Creed of Creativity.? Kids are encouraged to E-mail the site so that Creators can ?answer any questions? they might have about the crosswords. It is suggested that youngsters print out and color illustrations bearing calligraphic, medieval designs, apparently upheld by WCOTC as artistic accomplishments of the ?white race.?

At the White Berets Web site, a drawing of white men holding guns and a WCOTC flag is set against a green, camouflage background. It describes the Church?s ?security legions,? composed of ?White Berets? and ?White Rangers,? who are charged with providing ?security services for members and Church property.? Though these uniformed militants are urged to ?abide by the law of the land,? they are instructed to own a handgun, practice ?martial arts,? and school themselves in ?police communications.?

The White Berets site also links to a ?Frequently Asked Questions? pamphlet about racist Skinheads (violent, shaven-headed youths). In fact, the ?White Berets? pictured at the site are themselves racist skinheads: they have shaved heads, wear suspenders, and sport combat boots. WCOTC has courted racist skinheads since the 1980s, a few WCOTC sites are specifically designed to target that element of the white supremacist ?movement.?

Visitors must click ?OK? in a window that declares ?Whites Only? before entering the Skinheads of Racial Holy War site, where they are greeted by a drawing of a giant WCOTC ?White Beret? crushing a tiny, Hasidic Jew in his closed fist. The Web site for the SS Bootboys, who are referred to as the WCOTC ?Church Band,? also reflects a skinhead theme. This group of skinhead musicians, which has been active in the San Francisco area since the mid-1990s, plays what it calls ?WP metal? [white power heavy metal music]. In addition to racist and anti-Semitic articles by William Pierce and Don Black, the SS Bootboys site provides Web users with audio recordings of the group?s songs to download, such as ?Coon? and ?White Patriot.?

Along with these WCOTC skinhead sites, Resistance Records, a racist Skinhead rock-and-roll record label, has long had a site on the Web. Resistance was founded by three Church members, and its former president, George Eric Hawthorne, has been described as ?a top honcho in the Church of the Creator.? While the Resistance Records site was one of the first racist skinhead sites on the Web, there are now dozens of sites that promote skinheads and their hate-filled brand of rock music.

Racist Rock

The skinhead phenomenon originated in the early 1970s, when groups of menacing-looking, shaved-head, tattooed youths in combat boots appeared on the streets of England. For some, the racist and chauvinistic attitudes held by these gangs developed into a crude form of Nazism with a penchant for violence, exemplified by frequent, racially motivated attacks on Asian immigrants (?Paki-bashing?) and homosexuals (?fag-bashing?).

In the years that followed, the Skinhead movement spread from England to the Continent and beyond. Racist Skinheads are found today in almost every industrialized country whose majority population is of European stock, though not all Skinheads are racists. Skinheads are almost uniformly white youths in their teens and twenties, who respond to the movement?s seductive sense of strength, group belonging and superiority over others.

Generally, neo-Nazi Skinheads? views have varied. Some believe in orthodox Nazi ideology, while others adhere to a mixture of racism, populism, ethnocentrism and ultranationalist chauvinism, along with a hodgepodge of Nazi-like attitudes.

Their numbers have grown substantially since Neo-Nazi Skinheads first appeared in the United States during the mid-1980s. Predictably, this growth has been matched by violence: since 1987, racist Skinheads have committed at least 43 murders in the United States as well as thousands of lesser crimes such as beatings, stabbings, shootings, thefts, and synagogue desecrations.

In addition to World Church of the Creator, Skinheads in the U.S. have also linked up with other established hate groups, such as Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan, and Tom Metzger?s White Aryan Resistance (WAR). On November 12, 1988, three members of a skinhead gang in Portland, Oregon, killed an Ethiopian immigrant, Mulugeta Seraw. In a suit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center and ADL, it was later shown that Metzger and his son John had incited these Skinheads to murder Seraw. A jury awarded Seraw?s family $12.5 million in damages, one of the largest civil verdicts of its kind in U.S. history.

A major aspect of Skinhead life is devotion to bands that play ?oi? white power music, a hard-driving brand of rock and roll whose lyrics pound home a message of bigotry and violence. Music is the Skinhead movement?s main propaganda weapon and its chief means of attracting young recruits. Skinhead use of the Internet has almost exclusively focused on racist music. Bigotry-laced hard rock and the Internet have proved a natural match in being used by white supremacists trying to capture the minds of youngsters.

Bigoted music companies sell their hateful music on the Web. The Tri-State Terror Web site peddles Aryan vs. Alien by the group Mudoven, which features a cover photo depicting corpses from Nazi concentration camps. According to that site, over 900 copies of this release have already been sold. Also available there are Racially Motivated Violence by Angry Aryans and Murder Squad by Blue-Eyed Devils, which displays a photo portraying three lynched Jews on its cover.

The huge Plunder and Pillage Web site serves as two fans? tribute to white power music. These lovers of racist rock, who go by the names ?Plunder? and ?Pillage,? give their fellow fans the latest news on new releases and concert appearances of Skinhead bands; reviews of the latest white power records; reports on recent concerts; lyrics from various albums and transcripts of their interviews with over a dozen music groups. The Plunder and Pillage site also provides racist rockers a historical perspective in ?Oi! The Classics,? which features reviews of and sound clips from early ?oi? albums that have ?earned a spot in every skinhead?s record collection.?

The Skinhead who maintains The White Pride Network registered his site under Ian Stuart?s name in order to hide his identity. At his site, he goes by the name ?Micetrap.? Though he cloaks himself with a pseudonym, Micetrap doesn?t hide his hateful views. Claiming to ?have been involved in the skinhead movement for many years,? Micetrap declares the Holocaust ?the biggest financial scam in history? and glorifies the Skinhead movement as ?a sub-culture built for pissed off Pro-White youth to rebel against the ZOG system.?

Formerly known as Whitepower, The White Pride Network features Micetrap?s reviews of the latest racist rock records and houses the page for ?Patriot Video Services,? which stocks video tapes of white power bands performing. In addition to music-oriented pages, The White Pride Network pays tribute to Hitler; posts some of William Pierce?s allegations of Jewish media control, and contains a ?Skinhead Cyber Tattoo Parlor,? which pictures racist designs etched in ink on Skinheads? arms, backs, and skulls. Micetrap also encourages his supporters to become active, offering to sell them E-mail addresses and space for Web sites, connecting them with each other in his ?Personal Ads & Pen Pals? section, and giving them advice on how to use Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

Though not a Skinhead, Alex Curtis also uses the Internet as a tool to bring together and motivate the ?youth of the Aryan Struggle.? Along with racist Skinheads and WCOTC devotees, Curtis, who is still in his mid 20s, represents the new, young face of white supremacy on the Web.

Alex Curtis

Alex James Curtis, an anti-Semitic and racist activist based in San Diego, is a rising star among bigots on the Web. Originator of the Lemon Grove (San Diego) Ku Klux Klan, Curtis has described himself as a history student at San Diego State University.

The Nationalist Observer Web site is the online version of the print publication of the same name, which was founded by Curtis in 1996. Curtis is the editor of this online edition, posting his ?Lead Editorials? from the print edition as well as content available exclusively online. Curtis also includes transcripts of his telephone hotline message; an archive of hateful articles by propagandists such as David Lane of The Order and neo-Nazi Matt Koehl, and a catalog of racist audio and video tapes. Additionally, readers can find Curtis? ?White Power Manual,? which suggests white supremacist propagandizing strategies and offers assistance to aspiring hatemongers.

Curtis believes Jews have corrupted the white race, using the media to convert whites into ?comfort-loving cowards? who ?sit passively? as Jews and minorities seize power. His Nationalist Observer ?Tribute to Jewry? consists of a picture of ?Jew York City? being destroyed by an atomic bomb under the caption ?The quickest way to exterminate 6 million vermin!?

Curtis thinks the answer to whites? problems is separatism. ?Racial separation seeks the preservation of life, whereas racial integration is the realization of the death of peoples,? he writes. According to Curtis, white supremacists should not regard themselves as U.S. citizens, but as members of the white race who should concentrate on ?moving into separatist areas or assisting in dismantling the system.? He envisions a ?race-centered? state in which ?citizenship and residency will be explicitly stated as restricted to those of pure White ancestry.?

He feels that only the elite of the white supremacist movement should participate in creating this state. ?We believe the Aryan struggle to be an elite one,? Curtis writes on the Nationalist Observer Home Page. ?We don?t promote democratic or mass appeals. We support the unity of our movement and the revolutionizing of our spirit into a combined force to take back control of our Race?s destiny, by any means necessary.?

Unity among white supremacists is central to Curtis? vision. He sees many different white supremacist movements as part of a single ?White Nation.? ?We go by names such as White nationalists, White separatists, Skinheads, National Socialists, Ku Klux Klansmen, and Identity Christians, or others,? Curtis writes, ?but these people who put White Racial survival as their highest priority are members of the White Nation.?

Homophobia Online

Many racist and anti-Semitic Web sites also contain anti-gay propaganda, but some Web pages, in particular C.N.G. (Cyber Nationalists Group) and S.T.R.A.I.G.H.T (Society To Remove All Immoral Godless Homosexual Trash), focus their hatred primarily on gays and lesbians. Perhaps the most vile and best-known anti-gay Web site is God Hates Fags, which is maintained by Benjamin Phelps, grandson and compatriot of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) leader Fred Phelps.

Incorporated May 15, 1967 as a not-for-profit organization adhering to Calvinistic Baptist beliefs, WBC (which is located in Topeka, Kansas) is well-known for picketing the funerals of AIDS victims and others it perceives as homosexual or connected to homosexuality. God Hates Fags contains an archive of photos depicting Fred Phelps and his supporters picketing, carrying signs bearing slogans such as ?No Fags in Heaven?; ?Thank God for AIDS,? and ?2 Gay Rights: AIDS and Hell.? According to God Hates Fags, WBC has ?conducted some 10,000 such demonstrations during the last five years at homosexual parades and other events,? including the funeral of slain University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.

The site reprints dozens of flyers promoting its activities, including a few regarding Shepard. One states: Matt Shepard now believes the Bible. He checked into Hell Oct. 12 [1998] where the worm that eats on him never dies and the fire is never quenched?Not the wealth of the world, nor an act of Congress, nor a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, nor all the prayers of mankind, nor any power on earth ­ can buy Matt Shepard a drop of water to cool his tongue or ease his pain ­ or ease his sentence a day short of eternity.

Citing the Book of Romans, WBC asserts that the Bible deems gays and anyone who supports them ?worthy of death.? The group believes the activities of gays and their supporters encourage God?s anger against humankind. Addressing homosexuals, WBC states, ?it was your ilk who brought destruction on Sodom, and it will be your ilk who fuels God?s wrath to the point that there will be no remedy.?

Reflecting a conspiracy-oriented outlook, WBC declares that gays have an ?agenda? they are trying to impose on an unsuspecting public. This agenda involves ?desensitizing the public,? convincing people ?to affirm their filthy lifestyle,? and turning them away from Christianity. WBC believes, homosexuality is no longer classified as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association only because gays used ?guerrilla theater tactics? at that group?s convention for two successive years. WBC also believes that gays ?infiltrate the house of God to try to make themselves look holy,? and calls religious congregations that welcome gay members, ordain gay ministers, or perform gay marriages, ?fag churches.?

While WBC?s anti-gay activities have received much press coverage, its anti-Semitism has gone largely unnoticed. According to God Hates Fags, The only true Jews are Christians. The rest of the people who claim to be Jews aren?t, and they are nothing more than typical, impenitent sinners, who have no Lamb. As evidence of their apostacy [sic], the vast majority of Jews support fags.

In 1995, WBC picketed a synagogue in Kansas because it was holding a commemoration for victims of the Holocaust, including homosexuals.

?Militias? and ?Common Law? Courts: ?Patriots? Online

In mid-1994, bands of armed right-wing militants calling themselves ?militias? began to appear in several states. Often spouting mistaken interpretations of early American history to justify their actions, militia members are united in their obsession with ?protecting? Americans? Constitutional rights, which they claim the Federal government has trampled. A variety of activists make up the militia movement. There are those militia adherents who merely discuss the Constitution and perceived Federal intrusions. Others trade conspiracy theories at gun shows. At the extreme are members of heavily armed paramilitary units.

?Common law court? adherents declare themselves exempt from the laws of the United States. Using pseudo-legal theories based on selective ­ and often bizarre ­ interpretations of the Bible, the Magna Carta, state and Federal court decisions, and the U.S. and state constitutions, these activists present a serious threat to the rule of law by using phony liens, money orders, and documents in an attempt to defy the authority of legitimate courts.

Militia activists and common law court adherents refer to themselves as ?patriots.? Like anti-Semites and racists, these ?patriots? have a fondness for historical distortions and conspiracy theories (such as the contention that the Federal Reserve runs the United States). Elements of overt anti-Semitism and racism have frequently surfaced in the ?patriot? movement, which has been inspired by the activities of the Identity group Posse Comitatus.

Though many ?patriots? deny the movement?s racial and religious bigotry, its intolerance is apparent on the Web. For instance, though the Patriot Knowledge Base Web site states that ?the enemy? is ?not the Jewish masses,? it posts the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, one of the world?s most widely circulated anti-Semitic works. Similarly, the U.S.A. The Republic page links to the vicious Identity site God?s Order Affirmed in Love while claiming ?We Are Not Anti-Semitic.?

Even though militia membership dwindled following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, militia members continue to plan bombings and robberies. Meanwhile, new militia-oriented Web sites continue to appear. Likewise, despite the fact that legitimate authorities have cracked down on unlawful common law court activities, common law court advocates persist in threatening violence and common law Web sites are still active. Currently, there are more than a hundred ?patriot? sites on the Web.

Common law Web sites often post legal jargon out of context and link to reputable law sources, leading readers to misinterpret actual law. For instance, Dr. Tavel?s Self-Help Legal Clinic, called ?The Disneyland of the web for patriots and freedom fighters!? by the extremist publication Spotlight, links to online records of state and Federal rules, procedures, and laws. Visitors are encouraged to interpret this information based on fallacious common law principles and then use it in a court of law, even when under oath as part of a jury. The Legal Clinic posts a document entitled ?The Citizens Rule Book ? Jury Handbook,? which encourages jurors to judge cases based on their own understanding of ?natural, God-given, Common or Constitutional Law?: You ­ as a juror ­ armed merely with the knowledge of what a COMMON LAW JURY really is and what your common law rights, powers and duties really are, can do more to re-establish ?liberty and justice for all? in this State and ultimately throughout all of the United States than all our Senators and Representatives put together. WHY? Because even without the concurrence of all of your fellow jurors, in a criminal trial, you, with your single vote of ?NOT GUILTY? can nullify every rule of ?law? that is not in accordance with the principles of natural, God-given, Common or Constitutional Law.

Numerous common law sites also promote anti-government activists as ?sovereign citizens? answerable only to God and thus immune from state or Federal jurisdiction. Some offer a racist twist to this formulation, arguing that there are two classes of citizens: ?Sovereign? white citizens, whose rights are God-given, and ?Fourteenth Amendment? citizens, non-whites whose citizenship is granted only by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Militia Web sites express paranoid fantasies about a power-hungry government trying to impose tyranny on its citizens, a government often portrayed as a pawn of the United Nations or the vaguely defined ?New World Order.? False depictions of militia members as the true defenders of liberty and democracy abound.

For instance, one Militia of Montana Web site declares that group ?an educational organization dedicated to the preservation of the freedoms of ALL Citizens of the State of Montana and of the United States of America.? Yet the militia held ?the tyranny of a run-away, out of control government? responsible for usurping those freedoms.

The ?Articles of the Alliance Of the Southeastern States Militia? claim that group?s members ?stand against all enemies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, both foreign and domestic.? The group appears to consider the government one of these ?enemies?: it pledges to actively resist whatever it feels constitutes ?unconstitutional use of our armed forces?against the America people? and promises to ?fight the New World Order, and any of its proponents, to the bitter end.?

Many militia Web sites provide resources to help their readers become more active. For example, the Citizen Soldier Web site contains a ?Militia/Survivalist? post exchange page, which links to the Web sites of weapons suppliers, as well as military manuals that cover topics including ?combat training.? The Minnesota Minutemen Militia site allows supporters to ?enlist? online by filling out a simple form. The American Patriot Network and California Militia Web sites, among others, feature real-time chat rooms in which ?patriots? can communicate with each other, and the United States Theatre Command Web site maintains the ?Eagleflight? electronic mailing list, which often contains messages urging violent action from various militia members across the nation.

Militia and common law court propagandists on the Internet have openly expressed sympathy for ?patriot? activists on trial for committing, or planning to commit, acts of violence. These sites lend credence to the anti-government movement by focusing on those who have actually come face to face with the government. Militia and common law Web sites have provided biased accounts of trial proceedings involving North American Militia of Southwest Michigan member Bradford Metcalf and the Montana Freemen, among others.

On November 18, 1998, members of the Montana Freemen, a group of common law court adherents notorious for their 81-day standoff with the FBI in 1996, were convicted on criminal charges including bank and mail fraud and armed robbery. During the trials that led to these convictions, the Fully Informed Grand Jurors Alliance (FIGJA) Web site, maintained by Georgia common law guru Elder Burk Hale and former Militia of Montana member Kamala Susan, kept Web users abreast of the latest happenings ?at the request of family and friends of the ?Freemen? prisoners.? Erroneously citing laws in support of the Freemen?s cause, Hale posted photos of Freeman Ralph Clark, who he alleges was ?tortured? by his jailers, as well as ?Common Law Affidavits? written by other incarcerated Freemen.

On the same day as the Freemen decision, Bradford Metcalf was convicted of conspiring to possess machine guns; threatening to assault and murder Federal employees, and plotting to damage and destroy Federal buildings using explosives. As with the Freemen case, anti-government Web sites, such as Patriots Under Siege and Caged Patriots: An American Disgrace, kept militia sympathizers updated on the trial?s progress and voiced support for its defendant.

In April 1996, Oklahoma Constitutional Militia leader Ray Lampley, his wife, Cecilia, and their friend John Baird were convicted of plotting to bomb ADL?s Houston office, the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama, welfare offices, abortion clinics, and gay bars. Also the leader of the Universal Church of God in Hanna, Oklahoma, Ray Lampley has expressed intensely anti-Semitic and anti-government views and visited Elohim City, an encampment on the Oklahoma-Arkansas border associated with the Identity movement.

Writing on the Web about the Lampley trial, Indiana-based militia figure Linda Thompson declared that the trials of Lampley and other militia figures were fixed by what she sees as a corrupt Federal government that pays informants to help convict anti-government activists:

At the defense table, the jury will see the ?nut? or target and his ?co-conspirators? and the jury will hear the babbling and crazy ?confidential? tapes played, as they look at the ?nut? and his ?friends? while the ?good-guy informant? tells them how all these folks were planning to do nasty terrible things. The ?good-guy informant? of course will be backed up by ?good-guy law enforcement? who will parade a lot of evidence, whether it is relevant or not, to support this public bastion of integrity, their informant, emphasizing how good his work was. The Ray Lampley case is a good example of this that most are familiar with. Two weeks prior to his arrest, Ray Lampley told a group in Tulsa, ?If you want to have freedom in this country, you are going to have to shed somebody?s blood for it.? He also suggested that he had been attempting to acquire bomb-making materials. ?I only wanted one bag [of ammonium nitrate fertilizer,]? he said, ?because I realized that one bag is enough to blow up several Federal buildings if you know the right thing.?
Where did Lampley learn the ?right thing? that told him ?one bag is enough? to blow up several buildings? According to law enforcement authorities, he likely retrieved this information from bomb-making manuals. Several of these are available on the Internet.

Bomb-making formulas

In November 1995, Ray Lampley, Cecilia Lampley, and John Baird began construction of a bomb with the help of the bomb-making manual entitled ?Homemade C-4.? When the FBI arrested the conspirators, law enforcement agents recovered the bomb-making manuals Anarchist?s Cookbook and Homemade Weapons, in addition to the ?Homemade C-4? text, from the Lampley residence.

Many of these bomb-making instructions are available online. Numerous pages devoted to terror manuals are currently present on the Web, and explosives enthusiasts regularly post information at USENET newsgroups.

Additionally, some white supremacist sites, such as Death 2 ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government), have posted bomb-making instructions. Covered with Nazi and World Church of the Creator symbols, this site urged its readers to ?Kill the jew [sic] pig before it?s too late? and proclaimed its support for ?black on black violence.? Death 2 ZOG contains downloadable copies of bomb-making manuals such as ?Jolly Roger Cookbook,? ?The Big Book of Mischief,? and ?Anarchy Cookbook.?

William Powell?s legendary Anarchist?s Cookbook, first published in 1971, has inspired many Web pages. Though Powell?s book has not been available on the Web in its entirety, a number of Web pages contain works named after it, such as ?The Anarchist Cookbook IV,? otherwise known as the BHU Pyrotechnics Cookbook. Explosive-related sections of this document, which is widely available on the Web, include ?Making Plastic Explosives,? ?Napalm,? and ?Revised Pipe Bombs 4.14.? ?The Anarchy Cookbook IV? also contains instructive information about lock picking, computer ?hacking,? and robbing Automated Teller Machines.

Many versions of another popular online manual, the Terrorist?s Handbook, include a disclaimer that warns, ?don?t try anything you find in this document!!! Many of the instructions doesn?t [sic] even work.? Yet these directions are posted nonetheless, instructing readers how to construct ?High Order Explosives? such as ?Ammonium Nitrate,? ?Dynamite,? and ?TNT? as well as ?Molotov Cocktails,? ?Phone Bombs,? and other destructive devices. Significantly, this Handbook also includes a ?Checklist for Raids on Labs,? concluding that ?in the end, the serious terrorist would probably realize that if he/she wishes to make a truly useful explosive, he or she will have to steal the chemicals to make the explosive from a lab.?

According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Federal agents investigating at least 30 bombings and four attempted bombings between 1985 and June 1996 recovered bomb-making literature that the suspects had obtained from the Internet. In these investigations, the possession of bomb-making literature has been taken by law enforcement authorities as strong circumstantial evidence that this literature has been used to plan crimes.

Like other extremist material on the Internet, bomb-making manuals are readily accessible to children. In fact, these tracts have already been accessed by eager, impressionable youngsters. The Washington Post has described discussions among 14-year-olds about ?which propellants are best to use, which Web sites have the best recipes and whether tin or aluminum soda cans make better bomb casings.? Furthermore, children have used recipes found on the Web to create and detonate bombs. For example, two 15-year-old boys from Orem, Utah, landed in a juvenile-detention center after they constructed a pipe bomb using online instructions. Similarly, three high school students in Ogden, Utah, who ignited a bomb at a Jehovah?s Witnesses church later told police they learned how to make the device from a Web page devoted to the Anarchists Cookbook.

Responding to Hate on the Internet

As an organization dedicated to the eradication of bigotry in all its forms, the Anti-Defamation League has long been concerned about the propagation of racism, anti-Semitism, and prejudice on the Internet. After all, this medium allows extremists easy access to a potential audience of millions. In numerous reports, the League has detailed the ways bigots are using the Internet to promote and recruit for their cause, communicate more easily and cheaply and reach new audiences ? particularly the young.

Practically and legally, combating online extremism is enormously difficult. The First Amendment?s protection of free speech shields most extremist propaganda, and Internet Service Providers, the private companies that host most extremist sites, may freely choose whether to house these sites or not. When providers choose not to host hateful sites, these sites migrate easily to the computers of services without such restrictions. Furthermore, the size of the Web, which contains hundreds of millions of distinct pages, complicates efforts to identify extremist material. Hundreds if not thousands of Web pages, some of which are not listed by search engines, contain bomb-making formulas.

What follows are answers to 10 frequently asked questions regarding regulation of hate on the Internet.

Why can?t the government ban use of the Internet to spread hateful and racist ideology in the United States?

The Internet is probably the greatest forum for the exchange of ideas that the world has ever seen. It operates across national borders, and efforts by the international community or any one government to regulate speech on the Internet would be virtually impossible, both technologically and legally.

In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of freedom of speech to all Americans, even those whose opinions are reprehensible. In a number of recent decisions, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed that our government may not regulate the content of Internet speech to an extent greater than it may regulate speech in more traditional areas of expression such as the print media, the broadcast media, or the public square. While courts may take into account the Internet?s vast reach and accessibility, they must still approach attempts to censor or regulate speech online from a traditional constitutional framework.

What kind of hate speech on the Internet is not protected by the First Amendment?

Internet speech that is merely critical, annoying, offensive, or demeaning enjoys constitutional protection. However, the First Amendment does not provide a shield for libelous speech or copyright infringement, nor does it protect certain speech that threatens or harasses other people. For example, an E-mail or a posting on a Web site that expresses a clear intention or threat by its writer to commit an unlawful act against another specific person is likely to be actionable under criminal law. Persistent or pernicious harassment aimed at a specific individual is not protected if it inflicts or intends to inflict emotional or physical harm. To rise to this level, harassment on the Internet would have to consist of a ?course of conduct? rather than a single isolated instance. A difficulty in enforcing laws against harassment is the ease of anonymous communication on the Internet. Using a service that provides almost-complete anonymity, a bigot may repeatedly E-mail his victim without being readily identified.

Blanket statements expressing hatred of an ethnic, racial, or religious nature are protected by the First Amendment, even if those statements mention individual people and even if they cause distress in those individuals. Similarly, denial of the Holocaust ? though abhorrent ? is almost never actionable under American law. The Constitution protects the vast majority of extremist Web sites that disseminate racist or anti-Semitic propaganda.

Has anyone ever been successfully prosecuted in the United States for sending racist threats via E-mail?

There is legal precedent for such a prosecution. In 1998, a former student was sentenced to one year in prison for sending E-mail death threats to 60 Asian-American students at the University of California, Irvine. His E-mail was signed ?Asian hater? and threatened that he would ?make it my life career [sic] to find and kill everyone one [sic] of you personally.? That same year, another California man pled guilty to Federal civil rights charges after he sent racist E-mail threats to dozens of Latinos throughout the country.

Has anyone ever been held liable in the United States for encouraging acts of violence on the World Wide Web?

Yes. In 1999, a coalition of groups opposed to abortion was ordered to pay over $100 million in damages for providing information for a Web site called ?Nuremberg Files? which posed a threat to the safety of a number of doctors and clinic workers who perform abortions. The site posted photos of abortion providers, their home addresses, license plate numbers, and the names of their spouses and children. In three instances, after a doctor listed on the site was murdered, a line was drawn through his name. Although the site fell short of explicitly calling for assault on doctors, the jury found that the information it contained amounted to a real threat of bodily harm.

Can hate crimes laws be used against hate on the Internet?

If a bigot?s use of the Internet rises to the level of criminal conduct, it may subject the perpetrator to an enhanced sentence under a state?s hate crimes law. Currently, 40 states and the District of Columbia have such laws in place. The criminal?s sentence may be more severe if the prosecution can prove that he or she intentionally selected the victim based on the victim?s race, nationality, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. However, these laws do not apply to conduct or speech protected by the First Amendment.

May commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) prevent the use of their services by extremists?

Yes. Commercial ISPs, such as America Online (AOL), may voluntarily agree to prohibit users from sending racist or bigoted messages over their services. Such prohibitions do not implicate First Amendment rights because they are entered into through private contracts and do not involve government action in any way.

Once an ISP promulgates such regulations, it must monitor the use of its service to ensure that the regulations are followed. If a violation does occur, the ISP should, as a contractual matter, take action to prevent it from happening again. For example, if a participant in a chat room engages in racist speech in violation of the ?terms of service? of the ISP, his account could be cancelled, or he could be forbidden from using the chat room in the future. ISPs should encourage users to report suspected violations to company representatives.

The effectiveness of this remedy is limited, however. Any subscriber to an ISP who loses his or her account for violating that ISP?s regulations may resume propagating hate by subsequently signing up with any of the dozens of more permissive ISPs in the marketplace.

May universities prevent the use of their computer services for the promotion of extremist views?

Because private universities are not agents of the government, they may forbid users from engaging in offensive speech using university equipment or university services. Public universities, as agents of the government, must follow the First Amendment?s prohibition against speech restrictions based on content or viewpoint.

Nonetheless, public universities may promulgate content-neutral regulations that effectively prevent the use of school facilities or services by extremists. For example, a university may limit use of its computers and server to academic activities only. This would likely prevent a student from creating a racist Web site for propaganda purposes or from sending racist E-mail from his student E-mail account. One such policy ? at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana -stipulates that its computer services are ?provided in support of the educational, research and public service missions of the University and its use must be limited to those purposes.?

Universities depend on an atmosphere of academic freedom and uninhibited expression. Any decision to limit speech on a university campus ? even speech in cyberspace ? will inevitably affect this ideal. College administrators should confer with representatives from both the faculty and student body when implementing such policies.

How does the law in foreign countries differ from American law regarding hate on the Internet? Can an American citizen be subject to criminal charges abroad for sending or posting material that is illegal in other countries?

In most countries, hate speech does not receive the same constitutional protection as it does in the United States. In Germany, for example, it is illegal to promote Nazi ideology. In many European countries, it is illegal to deny the reality of the Holocaust. Authorities in Denmark, France, Britain, Germany, and Canada have brought charges for crimes involving hate speech on the Internet.

While national borders have little meaning in cyberspace, Internet users who export material that is illegal in some foreign countries may be subject to prosecution under certain circumstances. An American citizen who posts material on the Internet that is illegal in a foreign country could be prosecuted if he subjected himself to the jurisdiction of that country or of another country whose extradition laws would allow for his arrest and deportation. However, under American law, the United States will not extradite a person for engaging in a constitutionally protected activity even if that activity violates a criminal law elsewhere.

What are Internet ?filters? and when is their use appropriate?

Filters are software that can be installed along with a Web browser to block access to certain Web sites that contain inappropriate or offensive material. Parents may choose to install filters on their children?s computers in order to prevent them from viewing sites that contain pornography or other problematic material. ADL has developed a filter (ADL HateFilter?) that blocks access to Web sites that advocate hatred, bigotry, or violence towards Jews or other groups on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or other immutable characteristics. HateFilter?, which can be downloaded from ADL?s Web site, contains a ?redirect? feature which offers users who try to access a blocked site the chance to link directly to related ADL educational material. The voluntary use of filtering software in private institutions or by parents in the home does not violate the First Amendment because such use involves no government action. There are also some commercially marketed filters that focus on offensive words and phrases. Such filters, which are not site-based, are designed primarily to screen out obscene and pornographic material.

May public schools and public libraries install filters on computer equipment available for public use?

The use of filters by public institutions, such as schools and libraries, has become a hotly contested issue that remains unresolved. At least one Federal court has ruled that a local library board may not require the use of filtering software on all library Internet computer terminals. A possible compromise for public libraries with multiple computers would be to allow unrestricted Internet use for adults, but to provide only supervised access for children.

Courts have not ruled on the constitutionality of hate speech filters on public school library computers. However, given the broad free speech rights afforded to students by the First Amendment, it is unlikely that courts would allow school libraries to require filters on all computers available for student use.[/justify]