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

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Protecting Privacy Monitoring Hate[/large]

August 16, 1999 New York Times

Protecting Privacy, Monitoring Hate

To the Editor:

In "Stopping Extremism Before the Crime" (Op-Ed, Aug.
12), Abraham H. Foxman ignores Supreme Court Justice
Felix Frankfurter's observation that the history of
liberty is the history of procedural safeguards against
investigatory or prosecutorial abuses. The Federal Bureau
of Investigation's history of spying against citizens
without cause to suspect criminality confirms
Frankfurter's words. Thick dossiers were compiled that
served political blackmail more than law enforcement.

Mr. Foxman urges relaxation of balanced restraints on the
F.B.I. with the goal of shadowing every
government-perceived "hatemonger" without evidence of a
threatened crime. He warns that "hatred can still
destroy."

Yes, but the F.B.I. has destroyed as well when it has
snooped around as thought police.

BRUCE FEIN McLean, Va., Aug. 12, 1999

The writer was an Associate Deputy Attorney General,
1981-82.

==================================================

To the Editor:

Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the
Anti-Defamation League, says the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Justice Department have been
"hamstrung" and "can't act aggressively" in monitoring
extremist groups but fails to note the A.D.L.'s role in
the imposition of these guidelines (Op-Ed, Aug. 12).

In 1993 the A.D.L. was accused of illegally obtaining
California police and government records on a wide array
of political groups. The league escaped criminal
prosecution in return for paying $75,000 to groups that
fight hate crimes in San Francisco.

Mr. Foxman says "if law enforcement agencies should
overstep the line, we should very swiftly take the
authority away." Law enforcement, with the A.D.L.'s help,
indeed crossed the line, resulting in the restrictions
that Mr. Foxman now laments.

MITJA C. BAUMHACKL Brooklyn, Aug. 12, 1999[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify]Wednesday, 28 March 2001 18:54 (ET)

[large]Rabbi Calls ADL Leader Jews? ?Worst Enemy?[/large]

By LOU MARANO

WASHINGTON, Mar. 28 (UPI) ? Calling secular Judaism?s preoccupation with victimhood ?liberalism with a circumcision,? an Orthodox rabbi has given the ?Our Own Worst Enemy Award? to the head of the Anti-Defamation League.

An ADL official has dismissed the characterization.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin is president of Toward Tradition, a group based in Mercer Island, Wa., that describes itself as ?a coalition of Jews and Christians dedicated to fighting secular institutions that foster anti-Semitism, harm families, and jeopardize the future of America.? The group bestowed the ?award? upon ADL National Director Abraham Foxman on Wednesday.

?The award is given to a Jewish American who exemplifies those cultural forces that most endanger Jewish continuity, substituting unhealthy values for Judaism itself,? Toward Tradition said. ?Children thus grow up to dismiss Jewish identity as, for example, merely with an obsession with death and persecution, or as liberalism with a circumcision.?

?I think Abe Foxman means well,? Lapin said. ?But he?s deluded by liberalism, a worldview preoccupied by victimhood.?

The rabbi called attention to Foxman?s letter that appeared in the March 23 editions of the New York Times. In it, the ADL leader compared the newspaper ads by conservative activist David Horowitz ? who opposes monetary reparations to American blacks for being the descendants of slaves ? with Holocaust deniers.

?Put that together with Foxman?s statement last week about the ?big eruption? of anti-Semitism in New York, and so on, and you get the picture of a guy who?s not in close touch with reality,? Lapin said.

The rabbi was referring to a March 21 New York Times story in which Foxman was quoted as saying: ?Anti-Semitism is a disease, and we have seen a big eruption of that disease in New York.? Foxman based his remark on an ADL survey that says anti-Semitic incidents rose by about 49 percent in New York City last year.

David Klinghofer, Toward Tradition?s editorial director, questions the survey?s validity. Many of the incidents recorded are not crimes, he said, but rather ?anything anybody perceived as anti-Semitic.? The ADL ?gets paid (by contributors) according to how much anti-Semitism it finds,? Klinghofer told United Press International Wednesday.

Toward Tradition said that Foxman?s ?tireless efforts? to convince American Jews that they are beset by ?a phantom anti-Semitism,? when their own experience suggests otherwise, ?have helped to confirm many in the belief that being a Jew has to do mainly with being oppressed and hated.?

The American Jewish Committee?s annual study for 1999 reported that anti-Semitism is the main concern of 62 percent of American Jews, up 5 points from 1998. This belief pertains ?notwithstanding the strength of democratic institutions and legal protections in the United States,? AJC President Bruce M. Ramer said at the time.

The study, which was summarized in a June 9, 1999, story in the Washington Times, also revealed that American Jews give a low priority to religious observance and believe recalling the Holocaust is the key to being a Jew.

In its story, the Times quoted Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, humanities professor at New York University, who believes Jews are ?absolutely free and equal? in America.

?I deplore the survey results,? Hertzberg said. ?When you say: ?Remember, we have enemies,? it simply feeds a neurosis. I maintain that Jewish life is not fear, but affirmation.?

Toward Tradition?s National Director Yarden Weidenfeld also said that traditional Judaism, as taught by Lapin, celebrates life. Foxman?s approach constitutes the real threat to American Jewry, Weidenfeld told UPI in a Wednesday phone interview, because young American Jews who associate their religion with death and misery are more likely to marry Gentile partners. The real danger is assimilation, Weidenfeld said.

ADL Assistant National Director Ken Jacobson dismissed Toward Tradition and its positions. ?At some level, I might not want to dignify the comments,? he said in a phone interview on Wednesday. ?I don?t really think that Rabbi Lapin and his organization represent anything significant in the Jewish community.?

But Jacobson quickly overcame his reluctance. He denied that Foxman?s letter likened Horowitz to Holocaust-deniers because Foxman did not assert that Horowitz denied the existence of slavery.

?We were concerned about the denigration of blacks and the slave experience that was implicit in the Horowitz message? opposing reparations, Jacobson told UPI. ?It?s only like ? the Holocaust denial theme in the sense that, in both issues, there are things that were offensive, and a newspaper isn?t obligated under the First Amendment to print every ad.?

Jacobson was referring to student editors of campus newspapers. Of course, the First Amendment constrains only government, not newspapers or advertisers. In response, Weidenfeld said the students? ignorance of the Constitution ?is their problem? and has nothing to do with Holocaust denial.

Toward Tradition said it picked Foxman ?from among other representatives of the Anti-Semitism Industry? because of his role in former president Clinton?s pardon of fugitive tax evader Marc Rich.

Citing Friday?s Newsweek report, the group said: ?After the ADL received a $100,000 check from the Rich Foundation, Foxman wrote to Bill Clinton urging the pardon.? In doing so, Foxman ?joined other leading Jewish liberals who had benefited from the billionaire?s largesse. The ensuing scandal was a comfort to true anti-Semites who say that Jews buy and sell justice,? Toward Tradition said.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Foxman said the previous day that he was wrong to have lobbied for Rich.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Ralph Nader as David Duke?
The ADL Wants You to Think So[/large]

By JOSH FRANK
Counterpunch, August 21 / 22, 2004

ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 20TH, THE Washington Post reported that the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has branded Ralph Nader a "bigot", which is a
furtive way of saying they think the independent candidate for president is
a vile anti-Semite. Nader has come under attack from the ADL and their
executive director Abe Foxman for suggesting that the US should proceed in
a new direction regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

"The days when the chief Israeli puppeteer comes to the United States and
meets with the puppet in the White House and then proceeds to Capitol Hill,
where he meets with hundreds of other puppets, should be replaced. The
Washington Puppet Show should be replaced." Nader said in Washington DC
forum titled "The Muslim Vote -- Election 2004".

Nader's crack at Ariel Sharon for being the "chief Israeli puppeteer", and
his jab at George W. Bush for being Sharon's "puppet", didn't sit well with
the pro-Zionist defense organization. Nader's comments provoked a rejoinder
from the league which stated, "[Nader's] image of the Jewish state as a
'puppeteer,' controlling the powerful US Congress feeds into many age-old
stereotypes which have no place in legitimate public discourse."

Of course Nader wasn't speaking of Israel's control over all US policies,
but simply the US's special relationship with Sharon's occupying
government. But as usual, the penalty for condemning the Israeli military
establishment amounts to nothing less than being labeled a filthy Jew-hater
-- for which it seems Ralph Nader is not even immune.

Standing fearlessly behind his claim, Nader told Amy Goodman of Democracy
Now! that, "The truth here is that there is no balanced determination. The
U.S. government never connects with the deep and broad Israeli peace
movement They put 120,000 people in the square in Tel Aviv recently. You
would think that the U.S. government was not a puppet it would support the
deep Israeli peace movement -- which has been in touch with the Palestinian
peace advocates and has worked out more than one accord So, there should be
a debate. The two candidates Kerry, and Bush, are both pro-Israeli military
government."

Even if some progressives detest Ralph Nader's decision to run this year,
pro-Palestinian advocates must admit that it is gratifying to finally hear
such arguments made in the public arena -- for these criticisms have been
political faux-paus for far too long. And certainly Nader is right to point
out that little will change regarding the US and Israel if Kerry defeats
Bush in November. As Kerry exclaimed to a Georgetown University crowd in
January 2003, "Israel is our ally, the only true democracy in a troubled
regionAmerica has always been committed to Israel's independence and
survival. We will never waiver."

Ralph Nader isn't notorious for backing down from a fight, and hard-line
Zionists are always quick to throw the first sucker punch. So you can bet
this will not be the last of the anti-Semitic accusations hurled at Nader
by the ADL or other pro-Israel factions. It seems their only response to
allegations of the US's critical support for the brutal Israeli government,
or one's compassion for the Palestinian plight, is to label such
individuals as malicious Jew-hating-bigots. It just shows how insignificant
the ADL's charges have become. Ralph Nader is not David Duke. Even if they
want you to think so.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Rightist Rally Hears Speech From Giuliani[/large]

Rightist Rally Hears Speech From Giuliani

FORWARD STAFF

OCTOBER 26, 2001

JERUSALEM ? NEW YORK'S MAYOR Giuliani spoke by telephone this
week to a right-wing rally here at which speakers called for the
dissolution of the Palestinian Authority and several speakers urged the
mass expulsion of Palestinians from Israel's occupied territories.

The rally, staged by the Council of Settlers of Judea, Samaria
and Gaza, was billed as a memorial for slain Tourism Minister Rehavam
Ze'evi.

Drawing a boisterous crowd of 80,000 mainly Orthodox Jews to
Jerusalem's Zion Square, its themes included stepping up the war against
terrorism and banishing Yasser Arafat from the territories. At least four
speakers, including a leader of Ze'evi's Moledet Party, Knesset Member
Benny Elon, called for the "transfer" of the Palestinians from the West
Bank and Gaza to the 22 other Arab nations as demonstrators brandished
signs that described Mr. Arafat and Osama bin Laden as "twins."

Mr. Giuliani spoke to the crowd by live telephone hookup from New
York, reportedly at the invitation of Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert.

"New York and Jerusalem are closer than ever before," Mr.
Giuliani told the crowd, adding that the two cities have "the same
values." "Both the United States and Israel are seeking to defend and
perpetuate the same values of democracy, freedom, respect for the law and
human life," he said.

According to a close adviser and former aide to Mr. Giuliani,
Bruce Teitelbaum, the mayor had no knowledge of the contents of the
speeches or the tenor of the rally. He "simply wanted to express his
solidarity with the people of Israel at this very difficult time and to
explain to the Israeli people that the United States is fighting terrorism
and that it is important to eradicate terrorism forever, wherever it exists."

"I'm certain the mayor would reject the notion of the forced
expulsion of anyone from Israel," Mr. Teitelbaum added.

Last year, while Mr. Giuliani was running for the U.S. Senate
against then-first lady Hillary Clinton, Mrs. Clinton was repeatedly
criticized by Mr. Giuliani's supporters for appearing at events where
sponsors or fellow-speakers took extreme anti-Israel positions. In each
case Mrs. Clinton had denied being familiar with the background of the
people in question.

This week, however, most observers appeared to accept Mr.
Giuliani's ignorance as sufficient explanation for his participation
alongside advocates of a view most Americans consider repugnant. "If one
mayor asks another to address a gathering, there is no reason to have any
doubts," said the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham
Foxman. He added that ADL views the notion of "transfer" as "undemocratic,
contrary to Jewish tradition and Jewish history."

"You try to find out to the best of your ability what will be
said, but there is nothing to stop someone to get up at the microphone
and deciding to go beyond the script," said the assistant executive director
of Americans for Peace Now, Lewis Roth. "However, it is also incumbent on
individuals speaking at political events in Israel to make sure that the
tone and content of the events are consistent with mainstream thinking about
various issues."

The speech was the second time in recent weeks that Mr. Giuliani
has injected himself into the Middle East conflict. Two weeks ago, he
rejected a Saudi prince's $10-million donation toward relief for the World
Trade Center attack after the prince suggested the attack stemmed from
American support for Israel. The mayor's move at the time was applauded by
many American Jewish organizations.

"Transfer," or mass relocation of Palestinians from the
territories, is a controversial doctrine that kept Ze'evi on the margins
of Israeli politics for years, despite his reputation as a military hero.
The doctrine continues to win little support in the general public, though
it is said to enjoy significant backing in the settler community, which is
nearly unanimous in opposing any peace plan that would give Palestinians
sovereignty in the territories currently under Israeli control.

This week's rally was intended by the settler movement as a
combination show of strength, memorial to Ze'evi and protest against
what settlers view as government inaction in the face of Palestinian terror.

One rally participant, Heather Samuels, a native of Memphis,
Tenn., said she attended the rally to mourn Ze'evi's death, to oppose
the dialogue with the Palestinian Authority and to encourage Israel's
government to use military means to resolve the year-old intifada, "just
as President Bush is" in his war against terrorism.

Others, however, used the rally as an opportunity to spread
messages of their own. One Moledet volunteer was seen distributing
stickers calling for the arrest of the "Oslo criminals," as rightists often
refer to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and his allies. The volunteer, who
declined to give his name but said he was from the West Bank settlement of
Karnei Shomron, wondered aloud how the United States would react if the
"black population of America was to rise up against the whites and fire
mortars at New York. That would be the end of them. Now we have to do the
same."

A deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Larrisa Gerstein, a political ally
of Mr. Ze'evi, told the Forward she saw the rally as evidence of a
"resurgence of the right, that was always strong. But more than the
strengthening of the right, I see the building of national unity,
unconnected with politics, that addresses our survival. The only way to
ensure [Israel's survival] and to commemorate the deaths of the 657 people
killed since the signing of the Oslo agreement is to see Oslo to the grave."

Many on the left, however, downplayed the importance of the
rally. "I am surprised that they had less than 100,000," said Peace Now
spokesman Didi Remez. "As an absolute show of strength it was pretty
small." He predicted that the return of the Israeli government to
pre-Oslo policies of confrontation with the Palestinians would galvanize
Israel's floundering left. "Most people see us sliding down a slippery path
to another Lebanon, and that is what we must prevent," he said.

Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of
America, placed Mr. Giuliani's speech in line with his support for
Israel and dismissed any connection between the mayor and the issue of
population transfer.

"The issue of transfer is an issue for the government of Israel
and the people of Israel to discuss, not for the mayor of New York
City," Mr. Klein said.

Mr. Foxman, while agreeing that "our responsibility is not to
respond to demonstrations and people in the street," said that American
Jewish groups need to respond if the issue of population transfer is
addressed.

The rally showed the anger many Israelis feel in the wake of the
Ze'evi assassination. As demonstrators held a sign declaring "Muslims
are Nazis," Mr. Elon criticized Prime Minister Sharon for sending a message
to Washington that Mr. Arafat is Israel's partner, while declaring in
Israel that he is the enemy.

Mr. Olmert, for his part, devoted his speech to expressions of
unreserved support for the settler movement. He called the settlers the
"commandos of Israel, the very foundation of Israel's strength," who act as
Israel's defensive outpost against those who oppose its right to exist
"both within and without." He ended his speech by declaring that Israel
will "never leave any part of Jerusalem."[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Safire: 'Abe Should Resign'[/large]

Safire: 'Abe Should Resign'

By RACHEL DONADIO, FORWARD STAFF


ANTI-DEFAMATION League director Abraham Foxman found himself at
the center of a storm of criticism this week after his attempt to
apologize for his role in the presidential pardon of Marc Rich led
to new protests, including calls for his resignation.

Mr. Foxman, one of the most prominent of the figures who wrote to
President Clinton on Mr. Rich's behalf last year, said last week in
a statement and at a press conference that his pardon letter had
"probably" been a mistake.

The pressure for Mr. Foxman to resign has come largely from minor
figures outside the ADL orbit, especially from militant activists
for the cause of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, some of whom
criticize Mr. Foxman for failing to act on Pollard's behalf.

More serious, though, was a call for his resignation made this week
by New York Times columnist William Safire. Mr. Safire wrote that
Mr. Foxman had been induced by a donation from Mr. Rich "to lobby
President Bill Clinton for forgiveness and thereby bring glee to
the hearts of anti-Semites." Mr. Foxman, he wrote, should resign
"to demonstrate that ethical blindness has consequences."

Toward Tradition, a politically conservative Jewish group, on
Wednesday gave Mr. Foxman its "Our Own Worst Enemy Award."

Sources close to the ADL say the protests' effect on Mr. Foxman
would probably be minimal, and an ADL spokeswoman that he has no
intention of stepping down.

Even so, board members acknowledged that Mr. Foxman had not
consulted them before writing on behalf of Mr. Rich. He first
discussed his role at a February ADL national commission meeting in
Florida.

"There was some criticism expressed," said one commission member,
New York attorney Seymour Reich. "He said it was probably a
mistake, that he shouldn't have sent it. But the net result was
confidence in Abe and a feeling of 'let's move on.'"

Mr. Foxman's role in the Rich pardon offers a window as much into
the modus operandi of Mr. Rich, a Belgian-born commodities trader
who allegedly won Mr. Foxman's trust by telling him he hailed from
the next shtetl over in Belarus, as it does on Mr. Foxman himself.
It also illuminates the mindset of the pro-Pollard lobby, which
long has protested the ADL's refusal to advocate for Pollard.

At the press conference, Mr. Foxman said that he had first proposed
the pardon strategy to Mr. Rich's aides at a meeting in Paris in
February 2000. This statement contradicted the Rich team's accounts
of the pardon as a last-minute tactic adopted in November.

He also said that when he wrote his December 7 pardon letter he
didn't know Mr. Rich had renounced his American citizenship. Nor
did he know that the Justice Department had offered Mr. Rich the
possibility of being released on bail without going to prison,
despite being a fugitive, if he returned to the United States to
visit his daughter before she died of cancer in 1996. "Had I known
that, I wouldn't have written," he said.

Mr. Foxman said he was first introduced to Mr. Rich "15 or 16 years
ago" by a European Jewish leader and "landsman" who hailed from Mr.
Foxman's native region of Belarus. He said he thought that Mr. Rich
"had been born in the same town, Lucowicz." "I was born in
Baronowicz," he said.

At their first meeting, Mr. Rich said he thought that his
prosecution had been motivated by anti-Semitism. Mr. Foxman said he
told Mr. Rich that he didn't see any evidence of anti-Semitism.

Mr. Foxman said that backing the Roth pardon had been a mistake
because it "wasn't directly on target with the ADL's mission."

Mr. Rich and Mr. Foxman struck up a friendship and dined together
seven or eight times. "We speak Yiddish," Mr. Foxman said. "We
talked about the world and about literature."

Mr. Foxman's spokeswoman, Myrna Shinbaum, said the ADL leader was
"flabbergasted" to learn that Mr. Rich was actually born in Belgium
and his father in Frankfurt. The family moved to America in the
early 1940s. "Abe has always been under the impression that Rich
was from Lucowicz," Ms. Shinbaum said. "He didn't ask for his birth
certificate."

"I'm sure that Marc Rich is very astute at manipulating the
system," said one Jewish leader speaking on condition of anonymity.
"And while I think that Abe's very cautious, I think he just got
taken in by Mr. Rich. I think they took advantage of his good
nature."

Mr. Foxman said Mr. Rich began to donate to the ADL, but then
stopped. In 1999 he was contacted by the director of Mr. Rich's
Israeli foundation, Avner Azulay, who said he wanted to start
contributing again. Shortly afterward he pledged $100,000. The two
met again in Paris in February 2000 and it was there that Mr.
Foxman raised the pardon idea, he said, while "brainstorming" on
Mr. Rich's legal troubles.

Speaking to reporters, Mr. Foxman rejected implications that Mr.
Rich's donations, totaling $250,000, had "bought" his support. "If
I got nothing or $10 million I would have made the same decision,"
adding that it was a decision "I now regret."

For some observers, more troubling than the money questions was, as
Mr. Reich said, "that this whole effort was made on behalf of Rich
and not Pollard. And money was the key for Rich."

Mr. Foxman said numerous board members had raised the Pollard issue
with him. "Some people accused me of having sold out Pollard," he
said.

The ADL has no formal position on Pollard, officially because it
has found no evidence of anti-Semitism in the case. In 1993,
however, Mr. Foxman wrote a personal letter to Mr. Clinton ? not on
ADL stationery ? urging a pardon for Pollard.

In recent weeks, Mordechai Levy, the head of the Jewish Defense
Organization, a tiny, right-wing group that has long blamed Mr.
Foxman for Pollard's continued incarceration, has stepped up his
campaign calling for Mr. Foxman's resignation. He said he had sent
mailings to that effect, including symbolic bags of money, to
several ADL national commission members.

Joel Sprayregan, a Chicago lawyer and honorary ADL national vice
chairman, said he had received mail from Mr. Levy but found it "not
credible. It was an undeserved smear."

Some observers said the onus for the scandal belonged not on Mr.
Rich's advocates but on Mr. Clinton, who granted the pardon without
going through official channels. "If I were asked to write a
recommendation for a pardon, I'd assume that it would be vetted by
the White House and the Department of Justice," said Kenneth
Bialkin, an honorary chairman of the ADL and close friend of Mr.
Foxman.

Still, Mr. Foxman said he wouldn't rule out asking Mr. Rich to use
his connections to help the ADL fight anti-Semitism in future
international hotspots, as he had done in Romania and other
countries that he declined to name. "I'd ask who is there that
could be helpful, and if there was no one but him, then yes, I'd go
to him," Mr. Foxman said.

Asked if the ADL would accept money from Mr. Rich in the future,
Mr. Foxman declined to comment. Indeed, even in explaining his
apology he appeared to leave open the possibility that he stood by
his original act. "I'm not 100% sure that it's so terrible as it's
made out to be," Mr. Foxman said.

(c) 2001 The Forward[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Safire Calls for Resignation of Executive Director Foxman[/large]

March 26, 2001

Working Its Will

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON - The story is told of the corrupt Albany judge who
called opposing trial lawyers into his chambers.

"You offered me a $5,000 campaign contribution to throw this case
to the plaintiff," said the fair-minded judge, "and defendant's
lawyer here just offered me $10,000 to find for his client. Now how
about plaintiff giving me $5,000 more, evening things up - and we
try the case on the merits?"

Whether the bidding war that is now American politics will continue
in this fashion is to be decided in the Senate this week. Every
senator knows the subject cold and need not rely on staff expertise
or party discipline for guidance. Rarely do voters see such a
revealing free-for-all.

Money talks, but money is not speech. That, in essence, is the
offense and defense of campaign finance reformers.

That heavy political contributions influence officeholders is
beyond dispute. Money for "access" rarely qualifies as prosecutable
bribery, but the biggest givers are usually the biggest receivers.
The pros know that a quo has a way of following a quid and the
public is not stupid.

The purchase of a pardon by Marc Rich haunts the Senate this week.
The stain spreads; now we learn that the fugitive billionaire, with
$250,000 to the Anti-Defamation League, induced its national
director to lobby President Bill Clinton for forgiveness and
thereby bring glee to the hearts of anti-Semites. (Abe Foxman
should resign to demonstrate that ethical blindness has
consequences.)

But the hurdle that Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold must
jump is this: does the restriction of money in campaigns deny
anyone freedom of speech?

Of course it does. But we abridge free speech all the time, in
protecting copyright, in ensuring defendants' rights to fair
trials, in guarding privacy, in forbidding malicious defamation and
incitement to riot. Because no single one of our rights is
absolute, we restrain one when it treads too heavily on another.

That's why our courts have held repeatedly in the past century that
the Constitution permits restrictions on political contributions.
Just as antitrust laws encouraged competition in business,
anti-contribution laws have enhanced competition in politics.
Freedom of speech is diminished when one voice who can afford to
buy the time and space is allowed to drown out the other side.
Washington opponents of campaign finance reform offer less lofty
arguments, too.

1. "Holding down the number of paid political spots will increase
the power of the media at the expense of the political parties."
And what do my ideological soulmates find so terrible about that?
The wheezing liberal voices of the Bosnywash corridor are as often
as not clobbered by the intellectual firepower of conservative
columnists, Wall Street Journal editorialists and good-looking
talking heads. Wake up and smell the right-wing cappuccino, fellas.

2. "If we close the soft-money loophole, money will soon find
another way to reach politicians." Fine; that will provide a
campaign platform for the next generation's great white hat. The
tree of liberty must constantly be refreshed by the figurative
blood of tyrannous fund-raisers, as Jefferson almost said.

3. "If this goo-goo abomination passes with all its amendments, and
any one item is struck down by the courts, then the whole thing
must go up in smoke." Do Republicans really want to hold that
unseverability gun to the head of the Rehnquist court? Why, if
you're so hot for freedom of speech, tempt the high court to weaken
the First Amendment by letting a questionable part of an
all-or-nothing law through?

Tomorrow the senators seeking to keep in place the
Clinton-McAuliffe fund-raising abuses that so polluted the 90's
will offer the Hagel substitute for the McCain-Feingold bill. It's
sabotage, plain and simple, "limiting" soft-money gifts to a
half-million dollars per fat-cat family per election cycle.

Senators, fresh from offending billionaire candidates and from
thumbing the eye of the powerful broadcasters' lobby, should
cherry-pick a few items from the Hagel substitute, up the
hard-money limit to $2,500 and take their chances on a sore-loser
filibuster by voting down the all-or- nothing trick.

If that's the will the Senate works, I think President Bush would
tut-tut and sign McCain-Feingold. That's because I'm an optimist
and believe in the two-party system.

(c) 2001 New York Times[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Secrecy Defended by ADL[/large]

Date: Wed, 30 Dec 98 22:03:12 -0000

Published on September 17, 1998

Secrecy defended by Jewish group

Fighting a lawsuit, Anti-Defamation League says that its
files should be given the same protections as the work of
journalists

By Bob Egelko ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO -- A Jewish civil rights organization,
accused by pro-Palestinian and anti-apartheid activists
of spying on them, told a state appeals court Wednesday
that its files must remain secret even if they contain
information illegally disclosed by government agencies.

The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith acts as
a journalist in gathering information and publishing
reports on extremist groups, and it has the same right as
any other journalist to keep its records and sources
confidential, attorney Stephen Bomse told the 1st
District Court of Appeal.

"Courts say a government employee may be punished
for violating a duty to keep information private, but if
you are a journalist, you may not be punished" for
receiving the information and sharing it with others,
Bomse said.

The ADL is appealing a judge's order allowing 17
activists to see material that the ADL may have gathered
on them and on organizations supporting Palestinian
rights and opposing South Africa's former apartheid
government.

The order, issued last September by Superior Court
Judge Alex Saldamando, applies to internal ADL memos and
to more than 10,000 ADL files seized by San Francisco
police in 1992.

A now-retired San Francisco police inspector, Tom
Girard, later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge
of illegally accessing government information.

Girard's ADL contact, Roy Bullock, acknowledged
selling information to the South African government, then
Israel's ally. The ADL said he did it on his own, but
admitted that some of its information was shared with the
Israeli government. The ADL paid $75,000 to settle a
civil suit by the city of San Francisco.

The activists, who include some Jewish dissidents,
were notified by police that their names were in the
files. They contend the ADL illegally obtained
confidential records from the state and used them to get
people blacklisted among the organization's supporters.
The ADL denies having a blacklist and says it was merely
keeping tabs on hate groups and terrorists.

The suit, which seeks class-action status for up to
1,000 people, relies on a state law banning the
disclosure of confidential government information, and
providing damages of $2,500 for each disclosure. Before
the files were sealed, two activists learned they
contained one man's Social Security number and another's
driver's license.

The suit has been stalled by the dispute over the
confidentiality of ADL files. Material from the files is
the activists' only hope of proving illegal disclosure --
as one appellate justice noted when Bomse argued that
there was no evidence of lawbreaking that would justify
invading a journalist's files.

"The reason there may not be a scintilla of evidence
is that your client has it and won't disclose it," said
Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline.

Justice Paul Haerle questioned whether the ADL was
"operating as a journalist" when it allegedly obtained
government records, which were supposed to be
confidential, and transmitted them to foreign
governments.

Gathering and transmitting information is what
journalists do, Bomse replied. Kline agreed, saying he
assumed journalists regularly obtain records that should
not have been disclosed, but added that the rules
protecting journalists from suit for ferreting out
newsworthy information about public figures might not
apply to digging up an obscure activist's driver's
license.

The activists' lawyer, former Congressman Pete
McCloskey, contended the ADL's journalistic status in
some of its activities did not give it the right to
disclose confidential government information, even to
other ADL offices.

Journalists lack "the power to invade privacy and
transmit private records," he said.

A ruling is due by the end of December.

Edition: SRVT, Section: A, Page: 10
1998 Contra Costa Times[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Spat Leads to Huge Award[/large]

Source: New York Times, May 13, 2000

[large]Neighbors? Spat Leads to a Huge Award Against the Anti-Defamation League[/large]

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

DENVER, May 12 ? As a dispute with their neighbors intensified in 1994, Mitchell and Candace Aronson of Evergreen, Colo., tuned in a police scanner to intercept private phone conversations and heard the neighbors make what the Aronsons perceived were anti-Semitic remarks about them. The Aronsons immediately sought help from the Anti-Defamation League, whose local director publicly called the neighbors anti-Semites.

Over the next five and a half years, the conflict widened into a vicious legal battle over issues of privacy and defamation, ending in a Denver federal court, where a jury recently returned the first verdict ever against the league, a unit of the B?nai Brith that has fought anti-Semitism, racism and bigotry for 87 years.

The jury also awarded the neighbors, William and Dorothy Quigley, $10.5 million in damages ? a quarter of the league?s annual budget.

The Aronsons, who are now divorced, were not defendants in the case.

Lawyers for the league filed motions today asking the trial judge to set aside the verdict or, failing that, reduce the award. But the case has focused a rare spotlight on how aggressively an organization that prides itself on exposing anti-Semitism responds to perceived threats that, for many Jews, carry the emotional weight of historical persecution. In testimony, the Quigleys, who are Roman Catholic, insisted that their language did not mean to convey anti-Semitic feelings.

Still, by ruling that Saul F. Rosenthal, the director of the league?s Mountain States regional chapter, defamed the Quigleys with public remarks that relied upon phone conversations taped in violation of federal wiretap laws, the jury put limits on how far an organization can go toward fulfilling its mission. It also sent a message that protecting the privacy of personal telephone conversations is more important than punishing offensive language they might include. While some legal experts agreed with the jury?s findings, others said that if the judgment survives appeal, the organization might have to temper its responses in the future. Barry Curtiss-Lusher, chairman of the Mountain

States chapter, said that the possibility that the verdict could have a chilling effect on the organization was ?one of our fears.?

?It?s frightening,? Mr. Curtiss-Lusher said. ?It?s why we will appeal.?

Abraham Foxman, the league?s national director and a Holocaust survivor (webmaster?s note: this is a lie), disagreed, insisting that Mr. Rosenthal did nothing wrong on behalf of the Aronsons and that the league would respond in the same way again.

?We are always concerned about attitude because we don?t know what the flash point is,? Mr. Foxman said, referring to remarks made by the Quigleys that the Aronsons taped and found offensive. ?With latent anti-Semitism, at what point is attitude converted into action or violence? This is what concerns us, and I would hope this verdict does not have a chilling effect on what we do.

?We will continue to stand up against racism and anti-Semitism. Even though we are sometimes misconstrued, that has always been our strength.?

Only once before has the league been a defendant in a defamation case that went to trial, winning in 1984. Many other cases against the league were dismissed.

Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, who is not affiliated with the league, said: ?In the final analysis, this could chill the work of a very important organization that lives by its freedom of expression. Sometimes they make a mistake, but the essence of American free speech is that you have the right to be wrong.?

With appeals ahead, neither the Aronsons, the Quigleys, Mr. Rosenthal nor their lawyers would comment on the case.

The story of the Aronsons and Quigleys, as told through court documents and trial testimony, began the summer of 1994, when the two families lived two houses apart in Evergreen, an upscale suburb west of Denver in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Former New Yorkers all, they occasionally socialized; their children played together.

But starting with arguments over the behavior of their dogs, the friendship deteriorated, leading to an incident in which Mr. Quigley drove his car toward Mrs. Aronson, sitting in her car, before he turned away. In court papers, Mr. Quigley contended that Mrs. Aronson was taunting him by blocking his passage; Mrs. Aronson claimed Mr. Quigley was speeding to intimidate her.

In either case, after Mrs. Aronson told her husband what happened, he turned on a police scanner that he often used and picked up Mrs. Quigley speaking on a cordless telephone with a friend. Hearing Mrs. Quigley talking about him and his wife and discussing ways to drive them out of the neighborhood, Mr. Aronson began taping a conversation that lasted nearly two hours and included references to Holocaust imagery, like ?painting a facsimile of an oven door? on the Aronson house, and suggestions that they would harm the Aronson children.

But Mrs. Quigley and her friend laughed about theirnconversation, as if to suggest that Mrs. Quigley was letting off steam. At one point, Mrs. Quigley conceded to her friend that their remarks were ?sick.?

The Aronsons were not so amused. In the days that followed, they complained to David J. Thomas, the Jefferson County district attorney, contending that the Quigleys had violated Colorado?s ethnic intimidation law, which prohibits intimidation, harassment or actions against a person based on race, religion, ancestry or national origin.

They also contacted the Anti-Defamation League, saying they had become victims of anti-Semitism. At the suggestion of lawyers for the league who later represented them, the Aronsons continued taping the Quigleys? phone conversations, amassing almost 100 hours worth in the next seven weeks.

Some tapes, testimony showed, included other derogatory comments about Jews and references to the Holocaust ? all by Mrs. Quigley ? which the Quigleys? lawyer, Jay S. Horowitz, characterized in court papers as ?facetious or sarcastic.?

Mr. Aronson dismissed that interpretation, testifying that he and his wife ?lived in great fear? of the Quigleys because of what they had heard.

The tapes led to no physical actions by the Quigleys and they revealed no anti-Semitic remarks by Mr. Quigley, but they became the source of almost everything that followed and, ultimately, the reason the league lost in court.

Unknown to anyone at the time that the Aronsons were taping ? including Mr. Thomas, ? Congress amended the federal wiretap law, making it illegal to record conversations on a cordless telephone, to transcribe the material and to use the transcriptions for any purpose. The law already covered conventional telephones and cellular phones.

Without knowing about the change, the Aronsons used the tapes as the basis for a federal civil lawsuit against the Quigleys in December 1994. A day later, Mr. Rosenthal appeared at a news conference with the Aronsons in which he described their encounter with the Quigleys as ?a vicious anti-Semitic campaign,? based solely on conversations he and associates had with the Aronsons. Later that day, Mr. Rosenthal expanded on his remarks in an interview on a Denver radio talk show.

Two days later, Mr. Thomas used the tapes as the basis for filing criminal charges against the Quigleys.

But after Mr. Thomas learned of the change in the wiretap law and heard on the tapes the context of Mrs. Quigley?s remarks, he dropped all charges but one, a misdemeanor traffic violation against Mr. Quigley for the incident in the street. In an open letter released to reporters, Mr. Thomas apologized to the Quigleys, saying he found no evidence that either had engaged in ?anti-Semitic conduct or harassment.?

A swirl of lawsuits, countersuits and settlements over the next four years left only the Quigleys? civil complaint against the Anti-Defamation League and Mr. Rosenthal. In a four-week trial that ended last month, the jury determined that Mr. Rosenthal had made more than 40 statements defaming the Quigleys; their lawyers asked the judge today to use his discretion to triple the jury?s damage award.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[large]Spy vs Spite[/large]

Source: Sfweekly, February 2, 2000


[justify]Spy vs Spite

The Clinton administration has praised the Anti-Defamation League for helping shield kids from Internet hate.
But should a group that spied on thousands of Californians be allowed to police the Web?

By Matt Isaacs

The first snow of the season is falling on New York in big fluffy flakes, making the city look new again. The offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B?nai B?rith, located in U.N. Plaza, are stuffy, the windows steamed. Everyone appears a bit disheveled; rumpled clothes and flattened hat hair seem to be in vogue. Jordan Kessler, a handsome young man with a beard, sits at a computer terminal, talking about how he compiles his list.

Kessler is personally responsible for the ADL?s HateFilter, a software program that blocks access to Web sites that, the ADL contends, contain bigoted or hateful speech. This 25-year-old Columbia grad has accepted the enormous task of seeking out and cataloging inflammatory language among the roughly 800 million Web pages available to the public. He has help, of course. The ADL, a group dedicated to securing ?justice and fair treatment for all citizens alike,? has 30 offices around the country tracking extremists of every different shade, and each office has Kessler?s direct line.

Kessler assembles a list of all the groups his organization deems dangerous; it?s a list that must be constantly updated because, he says, hatemongers have a tendency to mutate. To be deemed objectionable by the ADL, a site must be cleared by a committee of the organization?s managers before it makes Kessler?s list. He won?t say how many people are on the committee, or reveal the names of the organizations he has labeled as dangerous.

Some of the groups he watches, Kessler says, also watch him. Some revel, just because their sites have been chosen by the ADL, he says. It?s like making the big time. The Web designers for the white supremacist site World Church of the Creator, for example, actually promote their work with a quote taken out of context from a Kessler report in which he grudgingly complimented the graphics for that site.

?If their Web site gets blocked by the ADL, in their eyes they?ve made it,? he says. ?They think we are all-powerful, in control of the government and everything that stands in their way.?

Kessler?s screen displays a number of yellow file folders. One folder is titled ?Gays,? presumably a file on gay-bashers. Another is titled ?Arabs,? presumably a list of anti-Arab groups. He says he takes great care in reviewing a site before he brings it to the committee. Many sites may be offensive, he says, featuring anti-Semitic jokes or caricatures, but they won?t make the list of those to be blocked by the ADL?s HateFilter. On the other hand, he says, some sites might be recommended for the list based on what the ADL knows about the organization rather than the content of the site. His organization has been monitoring hate groups for more than 85 years, he says, bringing an expertise that stretches far beyond HTML or Java codes.

The ADL has been fighting anti-Semitism, in its own way, since 1913. The organization was founded by Sigmund Livingston, a Chicago attorney, hoping to fight the overt presence of anti-Semitism in American society following the turn of the century. Livingston began with two desks, $200, and the sponsorship of the Independent Order of B?nai B?rith, meaning ?Children of the Covenant.? Since then the organization has grown into a national nonprofit organization that took in $46 million in revenues in 1998 and employs 200 people in its New York headquarters alone. In the 1960s the ADL fought stridently for the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. More recently it pioneered efforts to create a model for ?hate crime? laws.

It is an organization with a unique mission, given that its existence is largely based on the continuance of racism and bigotry. If anti-Semitism had disappeared from the face of the Earth during the 20th century, the ADL might have withered away, too. But even five decades beyond the fall of Nazi Germany, the world continues to be a prejudiced place, and the organization still regularly denounces anti-Semitic statements made in print, over the airwaves, and, more recently, over the Internet.

The Web is a new frontier, presenting the ADL with fresh challenges and opportunities for growth. The medium has given every electronic pamphleteer the reach of a worldwide television broadcasting network, making it easy for anyone with a computer to spread his message, racist or otherwise. Because the Web is essentially unregulated, the ADL believes cyberspace is ?a dangerous place for children,? according to the organization?s literature. ?There are no parents or teachers standing by to guide and advise a child who has come upon a site that promotes hate. Without that guidance, there is a real chance children will simply accept what they read as fact.?

In response to this supposed threat to young minds, the ADL has stepped up its own efforts to combat intolerance by introducing the HateFilter, which runs on Mattel?s CyberPatrol, a software package that blocks a wide gamut of material on the Internet. Consumers who purchase the HateFilter receive all of CyberPatrol?s features, including categories other than hate speech, among them graphic violence and pornography. But CyberPatrol purchased on its own does not include the HateFilter, because Mattel has its own version of what it considers hate speech, and does not market the filter, nor does it necessarily approve of what the ADL?s HateFilter blocks, company officials say.

So far, the ADL HateFilter has been marketed as a service to be used in the home. But that may soon change. CyberPatrol is already in 15,000 private and public libraries, schools, and universities, and the ADL has not ruled out broadening the distribution of HateFilter software to public institutions. ?Right now, the HateFilter is not meant to be used by the government, but over the next few months we will be discussing whether we will advocate for its use in schools and libraries,? says Sue Stengel, an ADL attorney.

It appears, however, that the organization, which wields tremendous clout in Washington, has already begun to advocate ? at the highest levels. The ADL?s national director, Abraham Foxman, met with President Clinton at least twice last year, once following the Littleton shooting in May, and again in the wake of an attack on a Jewish community center in Granada Hills in August. After the latter meeting, Malcolm Hoenlein, a top official in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, told reporters that Clinton had agreed to take the lead in persuading Americans to install a ?hate filter? on their computers. In October, Clinton again met with the ADL, and began his speech with a tribute to the organization?s new software. ?Thank you for your pioneering work to filter out hate on the Internet ? which, lamentably, was part of the poison that led to the tragedy at Columbine High School,? Clinton said.

More recently, Elizabeth Coleman, the ADL?s director of civil rights, was asked to participate in a panel discussion concerning a ?family friendly? Internet at a conference for the National Association of Attorneys General a few weeks ago ? a conference where Attorney General Janet Reno gave the keynote address. Coleman demonstrated the filter for all the law enforcement officials in attendance. She said over lunch that the organization had also shown the filter to Vice President Al Gore, who ?loved it.?[/justify]


[justify]Elizabeth Coleman, the ADL?s director of civil rights

If made explicit, White House support for the ADL filter could have a significant impact on the policy decisions of public schools and libraries across the country. Although decisions regarding school and library Internet filters are currently made at the local level, a bill before Congress spearheaded by Sen. John McCain, called the Children?s Internet Protection Act, would require all schools and libraries receiving federal funds to install Internet filters on computers accessible to children. If the bill wins approval, even a mention by the White House, combined with the ADL?s strong regional lobbying, could go a long way toward encouraging local jurisdictions to choose the HateFilter from the filtering software on the market.

But if Clinton likes and Gore loves the HateFilter (at least in the ADL?s eyes), many are aghast at the thought of the ADL having any say over what children may or may not see. These critics, whose political and religious affiliations vary widely, repeatedly describe the ADL as a self-appointed agent of Israel that cloaks itself in the rhetoric of fighting hate, while actively attempting to silence those who are not hatemongers, but mere opponents of Israeli government policy.

?The Number 1 goal of the ADL is the protection of Israel,? says Pete McCloskey, a former Republican congressman from San Mateo who regularly criticized Israel?s policies. ?Any group whose sole purpose is to protect a foreign nation should not have anything to say about what?s said or written here in America.?[/justify]



[justify]Pete McCloskey, a former Republican congressman from San Mateo

On a number of occasions since the 1970s, the ADL has been caught distributing lists of its enemies, replete with detailed descriptions of ?black demagogues? and ?pro-Arab propagandists,? including poet Amiri Baraka in the list of demagogues, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky under the propagandist label. Then, in 1993, a longtime ADL investigator admitted to working with a member of the San Francisco Police Department to illegally gather information on almost 10,000 people, including members of socialist, labor, and anti-apartheid groups.

Some of the targets of that information-gathering effort have gone to court in an attempt to gain access to their dossiers, currently in possession of the ADL, but the ADL has refused to release the files, claiming that its investigator was an ?investigative journalist? whose unpublished reporting materials are protected against disclosure by the California shield law, which was originally adopted to help journalists keep confidential sources who reveal important public wrongdoing confidential.

Thus the ADL finds itself in a sticky position: While it advocates for a software product that limits access to the Internet?s open exchange of ideas, the Anti-Defamation League is also hiding behind a law put in place to encourage people to speak freely.




The ADL recently added one episode to a videotape it uses in workshops that are meant to promote cultural understanding in schools. The vignette shows a boy, about 15 years old, surfing the Web in his school library. He comes across a page called the Zundelsite, with the headline ?Did Six Million Really Die??

?Hey guys, come here,? the kid says to his friends. ?Check this out. It says here the Holocaust was a bunch of bull. Like it never really happened like the Jews say it did.?

Two blond students lean over his shoulder, as a dark-haired student listens to the conversation in the background. ?Wow, big surprise. I hear they always lie,? one boy says.

?I guess they just want us to feel sorry for ?em,? says a girl, as they look at a page titled ?Holocaust Myth 101.?

?Well. They can lie all they want,? says the boy who found the page. ?Looks like we dug up the truth.?

At this point, the instructor leading the workshop is supposed to stop the video and begin a discussion, using questions from an accompanying guide. On the whole, the questions are predictable classroom fare: ?What happened?,? ?Has anyone ever experienced a similar situation?,? and so on. But one question stands out: ?Should the school have some kind of policy regarding what students can access on the Internet??

In fact, many public secondary schools have Internet policies for minors, as do almost all public libraries. And both types of institutions are leaning toward the use of filtering software to limit what children can access on the Web. The San Francisco Unified School District, for example, employs a systemwide filter to block access to a variety of material, including ?intolerance.? School officials would not identify the name of the filter.

The policy discussions regarding the protection of minors on the Internet thus far have dealt almost exclusively with pornography. In the heated debate over First Amendment freedoms on the Web, smut has taken center stage because it has already been addressed and narrowly defined. The Supreme Court has ruled that ?obscene? speech, meaning material appealing to a prurient or unhealthy interest in sex and lacking serious artistic, scientific, literary, or political value, can be regulated by the government.

The Supreme Court has also ruled that the definition of ?obscene? can take the age of the audience into account. Thus, for adults, pornographic films are, by and large, protected by the First Amendment. But the government may prohibit the sale of these films to minors by labeling the material ?indecent,? a much broader, generally ill-defined category.

In 1996, Congress tried to apply the court?s broad definition of ?indecent? in its passage of the Communications Decency Act, a law prohibiting the transmission of ?indecent? material over the Internet. But in 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the law in Reno vs. ACLU, declaring that communications on the Internet cannot be limited to what is suitable for children. The landmark ruling prevents a library from installing porn filters on terminals intended for adult use. But it still allows schools or libraries to restrict a minor?s access to smut.

A school or library may also limit children?s access to hate speech, but for a different reason. Ordinarily, in a public forum, anything outside the narrow definition of ?obscene? is protected by the First Amendment. But schools and libraries are not the same as the town square (or the Internet), where people can spout hateful rhetoric to their heart?s desire. A library has only so much shelf space; thus a professional librarian has the right to choose which materials to include in a collection, and which to leave out. The same goes for schools, which have the right to set their own curriculums and base the selection of library books on those curriculums.

?That?s why if you were to go to your local library in search of books on the Holocaust, you would probably find many,? says Frederick Schauer, a First Amendment professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. ?But it?s not likely you?ll find any books that say the Holocaust didn?t happen. And I think most people would agree that?s appropriate.?

Schauer says he believes the debate over allowing speech filters for minors into the public forum is only just beginning. Would it be possible for the ADL HateFilter to find a place in public libraries and schools? Yes, he says, although it would be challenged in court, and would probably be more likely to be allowed in secondary schools than in public libraries that serve all ages.

Some First Amendment lawyers find it curious that the ADL would even be getting into the business of speech filters. The Anti-Defamation League, after all, considers itself a civil rights organization. Judging from literature promoting the HateFilter software, it?s clear the ADL is thinking about the apparent conflict between the civil right of free speech, and the limitation of speech inherent to Internet filtering software. Almost every page of HateFilter literature mentions the First Amendment, and explains that the ADL does not seek to censor or limit speech on the Internet. The HateFilter does not remove sites or censor their content, says ADL Director Elizabeth Coleman; it only blocks these sites from coming into the home at the parents? discretion.[/justify]




[justify]Slide from Hate Filter presentation.

Parents have good reason for wanting to keep these sites off their computers, Coleman says. Many extremist sites cater to children, she says. For example, the World Church of the Creator site has a special link for kids. Other sites, she says, are highly polished, presenting themselves as mainstream academic thought. This misinformation, she says, can lead to the kind of violence that has made headlines in recent years. Last August, for example, three teenagers firebombed a judge?s house in San Jose, believing he was Jewish. (He was actually Catholic.) Investigators say two of the kids had used computers at school to access white supremacist Web sites. Also, Matthew and James Williams, brothers suspected of murdering a gay couple in Redding and setting fire to three synagogues in Sacramento, were reported to have been led astray by radical right philosophies ferried on the Internet. (Although at 31 and 29 years of age, the brothers would not have been constrained by an Internet filter aimed at minors.)

Coleman says the best part of the HateFilter is that it doesn?t just block sites, it also routes Internet surfers back to links on the ADL Web page that provide information about extremists such as white supremacists or Holocaust deniers. ?Nobody else has the same educational component,? she says.

But critics of Internet filters wonder if they actually do more harm than good. A highly regarded study by Chris Hunter, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, found that the devices block an average of 21 percent of Web sites containing useful, legal information, while failing to block an average of 25 percent of sites containing ?objectionable? content. (The ADL?s HateFilter was not included in the study.)

Even organizations that have historically spoken out against racism and gay-bashing, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, object to Internet speech filters. Ann Brick, an attorney with the civil rights organization, says that one of the inherent risks of filters is that consumers never know the political or commercial biases of the filter?s manufacturer. ?The ADL is a partial organization, in that they have a point of view,? she says. ?And what they consider hate speech might be a complex exposition of the Israeli-Arab conflict.?

The Southern Poverty Law Center, another civil rights organization that publishes its own annual list of extremists on the Web, is also unconvinced of the efficacy of filters. Joe Roy, director of the center?s intelligence project, says his organization supports any effort to fight hatred, but would not endorse a speech filter because, in the organization?s opinion, filters simply don?t work.

The ADL?s software manufacturer, CyberPatrol, has taken an especially hard beating from critics who say the filtering software has mistakenly blocked sites such as Creatures Comfort Pet Care Service and the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computations, for their explicit sexual content.

Because the HateFilter has a narrower scope, ADL officials say, it is more sophisticated than other filters on the market. ?You?re getting 85 years of knowledge and experience monitoring these groups,? says Coleman. ?Yet we want to be subtle. You can?t use a sledgehammer in this endeavor.?

And in a limited test run of the software, the HateFilter does appear to be more refined than its competitors. It doesn?t block the Pat Buchanan Web site, though Buchanan has been critical of Israel and made controversial statements about Jews in the past. It does block a site called Radio Islam, which blatantly flaunts its hatred of Jews. It also blocks what appears to be a very thoughtful ? and hardly controversial ? site called Interracial Voice, containing a long list of essays describing the challenges of growing up with parents from different cultures.

Elizabeth Coleman says the ADL?s block on the Interracial Voice page was an oversight.

The ADL will not provide a list of blocked sites, officials say, because in the wrong hands, it could be used as a kind of address book for extremists, allowing them easier communication with one another. Without a list of blocked sites, however, it?s hard to get a picture of what the ADL deems inappropriate for children. And an understanding of this bigger picture is important, critics say, because contrary to Coleman?s claims, the ADL has a history of making blacklists that do, in fact, attack legitimate schools of thought with a sledgehammer.

In the early 1980s, for example, records show the organization circulated through college campuses a confidential list of pro-Arab sympathizers ?who use their anti-Zionism as a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism.? The report contained the names of respected professors from Georgetown University, Columbia University, and the University of California at Berkeley, among others, who had criticized Israel for its invasion of Lebanon. When the Middle East Studies Association discovered the document, and called for the ADL to disown it, a high-ranking ADL official was quoted in the New York Times blaming it on an ?overly zealous student volunteer.?

Francis Boyle, a professor of law at the University of Illinois, still has vivid memories of what it was like to be the recipient of the ADL?s wrath. He says when he and a colleague began giving lectures critical of Israel?s attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, the ADL and a local Jewish organization went far out of their way to silence them. Boyle says ADL members would sit in the front row during his lectures, simply to shout him down. The organizations also filed a complaint against him with the dean of the law school, he says. ?I was really surprised. Here I thought the ADL was this great civil rights organization, and they?re doing these things that are totally antithetical to what academic freedom is supposed to be about.?

But Boyle says things were much worse for his Jewish colleague. When the colleague began speaking about the atrocities he had seen when he visited Lebanon in 1982, Boyle says the ADL organized for students to boycott the professor?s classes and requested that the administration deny the professor tenure. ?The ADL was far worse on Jews who criticized Israel than they were on Arabs. They treated them like traitors,? Boyle says. ?The ADL has turned itself into a dirty tricks organization for Israel.?




Steve Zeltzer and Jeff Blankfort had already been active in Middle Eastern politics for many years when, in 1987, they founded an organization called the Labor Committee on the Middle East, a group that, by their description, was devoted to alerting American workers to the plight of laborers in all the Middle Eastern countries. It could hardly be called an organization, they say. It was really just a handful of like-minded people. Or so they thought.[/justify]




[justify]Steve Zeltzer

The first meetings were held at Zeltzer?s house in San Francisco. Those who attended were familiar with one another, except for a man named Roy Bullock. Blankfort says he had seen Bullock around the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. ?I recognized him and was a bit surprised to see him at our meeting. I wondered if he was really interested,? Blankfort says.

But, Blankfort recounts, Bullock said he liked what they were doing and wanted to be a part of the gang, and, evidently, that was good enough for the other members. As is often the case with those who fashion themselves to be part of the radical left, the members chose as one of their first projects an event that had little to do with the group?s core interest. They decided to organize a picket line at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, protesting a luncheon being held by an Israeli organization called Histadrut, which reportedly had financial interests in South Africa, then still in the grip of apartheid policies.

The guests of honor at the event were former California Assemblyman Richard Katz from Sylmar, and then-Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown.

At the time, there was a growing anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., strongly supported by African-American organizations in the Bay Area, and if the public were to become aware of Histadrut?s financial ties, Brown?s participation in the event would not look good. Evidently he was aware of this, and sent a thoughtful, two-page response declining Zeltzer?s request for him to pull out of the event.

The Labor Committee on the Middle East went forward with the protest, organizing about 60 people, including Roy Bullock, to picket in front of the Fairmont,.

Not long after the demonstration, Blankfort received an anonymous envelope. Inside was a torn-out page from a newsletter published by the Institute of Historical Review, a Holocaust denial organization. Blankfort wondered why he would get something from a neo-Nazi group he despised. He was shocked to see it was an article accusing Roy Bullock of being a spy for the ADL.

But spies of one kind or another are not uncommon in radical circles, Blankfort says. ?My father was a blacklisted writer, and the FBI was poking around for years,? he says. ?I?m used to it.?




As it turns out, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was tracking Bullock?s activities; the FBI, however, was concerned with Bullock because he was an operative for the South African government.

When Bullock was questioned in 1993, according to court records, he told FBI agents that he had been instructed by the ADL to gather information on anti-apartheid groups, a statement he would later recant. He told federal agents he had been working as a ?fact finder? for the ADL since 1954, when he was asked to gather information on a Communist Party club in Indianapolis. In 1987, he said, he met Tom Gerard, an officer with the San Francisco Police Department, who began supplying Bullock with records such as motor vehicle registrations and criminal histories ? records that, by law, are to be used by police and prosecutors only in legitimate criminal investigations. Bullock also admitted to receiving approximately $16,000 from the South African government in exchange for information on anti-apartheid groups. He also admitted to turning over information to Israel. At the time, Israel and South Africa maintained loose diplomatic relationships, because both faced trade sanctions, Israel from Arab countries, and South Africa from a wide variety of nations opposed to its apartheid policies.

The ADL says Bullock was acting on his own while collecting information on anti-apartheid groups.

In an investigation by the city, San Francisco police seized 10 boxes of information from the offices of the ADL. A police officer testified that 75 percent of the material was illegally obtained from confidential government sources, according to court records. Police also examined Bullock?s computer files, which contained information on 9,876 people, along with 1,394 driver?s license numbers. The people were divided into four categories: ?Arabs,? ?Pinkos,? ?Right,? and ?Skins.? Zeltzer and Blankfort were listed under ?Pinkos.? Included in Zeltzer?s dossier was a description of the protest at the Fairmont Hotel.

Although thousands of nonpublic documents were found in the possession of both Bullock and the ADL, the city offered a settlement agreement to the organization in November 1993. As a result of the deal, the ADL paid a $75,000 civil fine ? most of which went to charitable causes along the lines of the ADL?s own interests, such as a Hate Crimes Reward Fund ? while denying all allegations of wrongdoing.

Gerard, whom the ADL had sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel in 1991, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized use of a police computer and was sentenced to three years? probation, 45 days in jail, and a $2,500 fine. He is no longer with the Police Department.

Since the city settled its civil case against the ADL, 17 people who had been subjects of the ADL?s investigation have attempted to recover their files; they are represented in court by former Congressman Pete McCloskey, whose wife is one of the plaintiffs. So far, the ADL has blocked those efforts, claiming to be a news-gathering organization and invoking the need for journalists to protect their confidential sources. The California Court of Appeals has ruled that plaintiffs who were the target of illegitimate information-gathering that resulted in the transfer of information to a foreign government have a right to see what was transferred.

The lawsuit has certainly shed light on how the organization has gathered information. For example, the former director of the ADL?s San Francisco office, Richard Hirschhaut, testified that he was aware that Bullock had prepared reports on hundreds of individuals and organizations. He also said that up to half of the ADL?s activities in the seven years between 1986 and 1993 had been centered on discrediting political views that disagreed with the organization?s support of Israel, rather than on the ADL?s traditional efforts to counter bigotry and anti-Semitism.




The Internet has undoubtedly made it easier for children to access inappropriate information. Few would argue that a child has something to gain by reading the diatribes of the Farm Belt Führer, and, although hate crimes are actually on the decline in terms of numbers, the hate incidents that have occurred recently are conscience-shocking. Last year the country was introduced to Benjamin Smith, who went on a rampage in Indiana, wounding six Jews coming home from Sabbath and killing an African-American and an Asian-American before committing suicide. Buford Furrow Jr. became famous for shooting up a Jewish community center in Los Angeles. And of course there were Columbine?s Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two teenagers wreaking bloody havoc on their classmates. Teenagers are laughing while they send bullets into their peers, and the World Church of the Creator has a special section for kids.

Who wouldn?t be looking for ways to stop the haters? Potential presidents certainly are.

John McCain is stumping through New Hampshire with his Children?s Internet Protection Act, a bill that would require all public libraries and secondary schools receiving federal subsidies for their Internet hookups to install filtering software on computers accessible to minors. Many experts say the bill is very likely to win approval from Congress. Al Gore?s campaign Web site has a link to Internet Safety for Parents and Kids, complete with follow-on links to the filter sites Cybersitter and Netnanny.

Judith Krug, a law expert with the American Library Association, says she expects to see an avalanche of Internet filtering laws passed at the state level. (Some states, including South Dakota and Virginia, have already mandated Internet filters for library computers accessible to children.) ?Without a doubt, schools have to find ways to protect children from inappropriate material,? says CyberPatrol Vice President of Marketing Susan Getgood. ?I see schools implementing filters in record numbers.?

It seems that the ADL?s pet project, HateFilter, couldn?t have materialized at a better time. Throughout its long life, the ADL has spent vast amounts of money collecting information on the groups it considers threatening, all for a small number of ADL publications that few people would ever read. Now the organization has the opportunity to have a major impact on how young people view the world.

It?s quite possible that every library and school receiving federal funds across the nation will be forced to install filters on its computers, not just for pornography, but for extremist speech as well. These institutions will have a choice between a few commercial monoliths that provide filtering software ? and a civil rights organization that can accurately say it has 85 years of experience in fighting bigotry. Some public institutions will almost certainly choose the HateFilter.

And without a list of sites the ADL has decided to block, parents won?t ever know what their children are missing. Perhaps a lecture by Noam Chomsky on the mainstream media monopoly. Or a RealAudio spoken-word monologue by Amiri Baraka, formerly known as Leroi Jones. Or a detailed analysis of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

So far, nobody is connecting the dots in a public way: An organization with a history of ruthlessly silencing its critics is trying to dictate the Internet content available to the country?s young minds. And when asked about the HateFilter, the White House offers this vague comment of apparent support: ?The president certainly supports any tool that blocks hate and other inappropriate material on the Internet.?




The Labor Committee on the Middle East fizzled out a few years ago, but Steve Zeltzer is still active in radical politics. His Victorian home in Bernal Heights is cluttered with tall stacks of videocassettes, material for the documentary television show he produces, Labor on the Job.

Zeltzer says he?s still haunted by the paranoid feelings that began when he realized he was being watched. For the first couple of weeks after his confrontation with ADL ?fact-finder? Roy Bullock, Zeltzer says, his phone rang repeatedly; when the answering machine came on, the caller began dialing random numbers, an apparent attempt to retrieve messages left for Zeltzer. Now, if he answers the phone and nobody?s there, he can?t help but wonder if he?s still being targeted.

Zeltzer says he?s not surprised that the ADL is creating an Internet filter. To him, it?s an extension of what the organization has been doing for decades. ?They have always had enemies lists, and they have always wanted to control the flow of information,? he says. ?The HateFilter is just an extension of that.?[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Spying Case over Struggle Continues[/large]

Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein
CounterPunch?s Booktalk
February 25, 2002
The ADL Spying Case Is Over,
But The Struggle Continues
By Jeffrey Blankfort, Anne Poirier
and Steve Zeltzer
Plaintiffs in the of ADL Spying Case

In 1993, the District of Attorney of San Francisco Arlo Smith released 700 pages of documents implicating the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that claims to be a defender of civil rights, in a vast spying operation directed against American citizens who were opposed to Israel?s policies in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza and to the apartheid policies of the government of South Africa and passing on information to both governments.

Under great political pressure, Arlo Smith later dropped the charges. One wonders what would have happened had an Arab-American or Muslim organization been caught spying with the names of 10,000 people and 600 organizations in their files.

Not only were critics of Israel under ADL?s surveillance, including thousands of Arab-Americans, but labor organizations such as the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, and the Oakland Educational Association, and civil rights groups such as the NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council and the Asian Law Caucus were also found in the ?pinko? files of ADL?s undercover operative, Roy Bullock.

Moreover, Bullock, who had worked, off the books, for the ADL for more than 25 years, admitted that he had been reporting on the activities of black South African exiles and American anti- apartheid activists for South African intelligence.

Bullock, pretending to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, came to the founding meeting of the Labor Committee of the Middle in 1987 at the home of plaintiff Steve Zeltzer, having met Zeltzer at meetings of the Free Moses Mayekiso Defense Committee, a South African labor solidarity committee in which he also infiltrated under false pretenses.

Having been responsible for exposing Bullock as an ADL agent to the media, we joined together with other Bay Area activists in filing a suit against the ADL for violation of our privacy rights as provided in California law.

Almost a decade later the suit has been settled with a significant cash payment by the ADL and, we wish to emphasize, without our signing any agreement for confidentiality which the ADL had previously demanded. Our efforts to expose the organization?s work in defending the policies of the Israeli government and stifling its opponents will continue, using new information gained in the pursuance of the suit.

The ADL spent millions of dollars preventing this case from coming to trial through costly appeals and exploiting the judicial process but, at the end, it had to give up..

During the course of the suit we learned that:

Bullock, the ADL?s top ?fact finder? had sold confidential information to a South African intelligence agent in San Francisco for $15,000.

Ten days before he was assassinated in South Africa, Chris Hani, the man who would have succeeded Nelson Mandela as the country?s president, was trailed by Bullock on a trip through California who reported on it to the South African government.

ADL agent Roy Bullock was discovered to have a floor plan of murdered Los Angeles Arab American leader Alex Odeh and a key to his office.

The ADL supplied confidential information to foreign governments that it obtained from police and federal agencies in the US,

Having infiltrated the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the ADL?s ?fact finder? performed a COINTEL-type operation at the convention of the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review when he put ADC?s literature on convention tables as a way of smearing the committee for ?working with anti- Semites.?

The ADL has organized to silence and eliminate all critical voices of Israel from academia and the media and has targeted professors , particularly those who are African American, and who are critical of Israel.

That at least 51% of the activities of its San Francisco office were devoted to defending Israel.

The ADL provided secret files to police agencies when these police agencies were prevented by law from collecting the files themselves,

Many questions must still be answered about the activities of the ADL and it?s non-profit status as an ?education organization?. The settlement offered by the ADL is recognition on its part that it could not afford to go to a trial in front of a jury and face the likelihood that more of its dirty secrets would be revealed.

We call on all people to make sure that these practices on the part of the ADL are not allowed to continue and that the double standard that presently dominates this country on issues dealing with Israel be eliminated.

Finally, we wish to thank our attorney, former congressman Pete McCloskey, himself a victim of the ADL and the Israel Lobby, for his years of work on our behalf and his steadfast commitment to the pursuit of justice.

Jeffrey Blankfort can be reached at: jab@tucradio.org

For more information on this case read CounterPunch?s story, ADL Snoops: Were the Spies ?Journalists??[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Stopping Extremism Before the Crime[/large]

August 12, 1999 New York Times

Stopping Extremism Before the Crime

By ABRAHAM H. FOXMAN

In the late 1980's violence by neo-Nazi skinheads was on
the rise across America. At a meeting with Richard
Thornburgh, then the Attorney General, we urged the
Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation to place the skinheads on the F.B.I. watch
list -- to monitor their activities and vigorously apply
the law. The Attorney General did just that, and as a
result violence by neo-Nazi skinheads declined
significantly.

Fast-forward to this past July 4 weekend, when Benjamin
Smith, who had been linked to the white supremacist,
anti-Semitic World Church of the Creator, went on a
shooting rampage, wounding six Jews coming home from
Sabbath services and killing an African-American and an
Asian before committing suicide.

The Anti-Defamation League and other organizations knew
about this group -- we monitored its activities and Web
site, sought to expose it in the news media. After the
July 4 rampage, again we went to the Attorney General,
this time Janet Reno, and asked that a full field
investigation be initiated in keeping with the Attorney
General's "Guidelines on Domestic Security/Terrorism
Investigations."

We believe we had documented examples of violence and
criminal activity perpetrated by members of the World
Church. I believe that if Ms. Reno was not restricted by
certain legal parameters put in place since the
Thornburgh era, she would have acted immediately.
Instead, she said she had to "review whether the group
itself was tied to individual acts." Mr. Smith's
activities on behalf of the World Church of the Creator,
while public and abhorrent, were protected by the First
Amendment, irrespective of his shooting rampage.

Now, in the shootings this week at a Jewish community
center in Los Angeles, we have the worst act of
anti-Semitic violence since the killing of Yankel
Rosenbaum in Crown Heights eight years ago, and we have
a suspect with clear ties to known hate groups.

The suspect, Buford Furrow Jr., who turned himself in
yesterday, had spent considerable time at a compound of
the Aryan Nations, authorities say, and he may have
aspired to the Phineas Priesthood, to which one gains
"membership" by committing violence against nonwhites.

Once again, the information we're getting about the
suspect is coming largely from private groups. This
doesn't mean that the F.B.I. has not been tracking these
hate groups. But the Justice Department and the bureau
are so hamstrung -- by the unpleasant legacy of the
Hoover years, by fears of suits from the American Civil
Liberties Union, by complaints from conservative
lawmakers about avoiding another Randy Weaver fiasco --
that they can't act aggressively. They are unable to
monitor individuals or groups unless a crime has been
committed. They are unable to track hate group Web sites
without a known, specific threat.

"We live in a free and open society," an F.B.I. official
told ABC last night, adding that Congressional and
Justice Department mandates "forbid us from going after"
the groups. The bureau says it is particularly difficult
to investigate lone terrorists who are in the thrall of
extremist ideology but who either don't belong to any
group or are marginal members.

This is too timid an approach given the current rhetoric
of these groups and its ability to inflame their more
unstable adherents. The Constitution provides for the
civil liberties of citizens, but it is not a prescription
for suicide; it should enable us to protect our civil
liberties against those who have no respect for the
nation or would destroy it.

As we're assaulted in such horrendous ways, the time has
come to recalibrate that balance -- to permit law
enforcement not only to go get the man, but also to
prevent the act. If law enforcement agencies should
overstep the line, we should very swiftly take the
authority away. But now is the time to give them that
trust and that capability.

The world is changing rapidly around us. Most of this
change is for the better. With sophisticated technology,
however, come nonconventional weapons that could threaten
us all. With the Internet come new opportunities for
hate-mongers. With globalism come those who may feel left
behind and more embittered.

Changing challenges require a new look at education, at
law enforcement, at the role of the news media. Hatred
can still destroy.

Abraham H. Foxman is national director of the
Anti-Defamation League.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Tell the ADL: Stop Silencing Jewish Dissent[/large]


This last week has marked a major victory for the campaign to pressure Caterpillar to stop profiting from human rights violations. On February 6, the Church of England voted overwhelmingly to divest its $3.84 million in shares from Caterpillar. Caterpillar sells weaponized bulldozers which are used by the Israeli military to destroy Palestinian civilian homes and orchards in violation of international human rights laws.

At the same time, at JVP, we?ve been witnessing a severe backlash by mainline Jewish organizations, in particular the Anti-Defamation League, to silence JVP and our perspective. Just this week alone, the ADL told two separate organizations, both of whom had set up debates between mainline Jewish representatives and progressive Jewish voices, that they refused to appear alongside JVP representatives. The ADL said that, with a JVP speaker on hand, the debate would become ?too politicized.?

JVP and our sister organizations represent thousands of American Jews who vociferously support public and open debate within and outside of the Jewish community on the issue of Israel. For us, there are no sacred cows, no voices that deserve to be silenced. Vigorous dialogue is a central component of what it means to be Jewish.

The ADL?s stated mission it to protect the rights of Jews and fight bigotry wherever it appears. But the ADL has created an environment of fear and intimidation, in which thousands of American Jews are systematically silenced.

Take a moment and send a letter to Abe Foxman, the Executive Director of the Anti-Defamation League. Let him that you support open debate on the issue of Israel within the Jewish community, and that his organization needs to stop systematically silencing the voices of progressive Jews.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]The ADL America's Greatest Enemy[/large]

Source: Reprinted from American Dissident Voices, Program of 29th May, 1993

The Anti-Defamation League of B?nai B?rith: America?s Greatest Enemy by Kevin Alfred Strom
Part 1

Welcome to American Dissident Voices. I?m Kevin Alfred Strom. Did you know that there is a secret espionage and ?dirty tricks? agency operating with impunity in communities across the United States, spying and maintaining files on thousands of ordinary Americans, an organization hwhich is not even a part of the U.S. government? Did you know that a former top official of this group has stated in sworn courtroom testimony that this organization is actually an agent of a foreign government, the government of Israel? Did you know that one of the biggest stories of this year, which has been downplayed by most, though not all, of the establishment media, is the discovery of thousands of stolen police intelligence documents and supposedly confidential government data on thousands of Americans in the files of this nefarious group? This un-American and anti-American espionage agency for a foreign government, and international conspirator against our nation and our people?s freedom is officially known as the Anti-Defamation League of B?nai B?rith, or ADL for short. The ADL was founded in 1913 as an adjunct to the international Jewish fraternal order and secret society, the ?B?nai B?rith,? whose name, translated literally from Hebrew means ?sons of the cut? ? referring to circumcision ? which is a figure of speech usually interpreted as meaning ?Sons of the Covenant.? While posing as a public-spirited ?civil rights? group, they have been working for decades to disarm law-abiding Americans, to control our sources of news and other information, and enslave us under a totalitarian world government which many have come to call the ?New World Order.? They do this through overt and covert propaganda, the creation of humanitarian-sounding front groups secretly controlled by the ADL, by the conducting of brainwashing sessions called ?sensitivity-training? for members of our police forces, by the production and introduction into the public schools of ADL propaganda as ?textbooks? or ?resource material for teachers,? and by their cozy relationship with the controlled media, which routinely print and broadcast ADL propaganda releases as so-called ?news.? Now it is apparent that the section of the ADL that they call their ?Fact-Finding? division has been engaging in illegal espionage against American citizens on a scale undreamt of by the KGB. And, ladies and gentlemen, my friends ? they?ve just been caught in the act. One of the top ADL spies in this country, Mr. Roy Bullock, a homosexual from San Francisco posing as an ?art dealer? whose specialty was the infiltration of patriotic, Arab-American, and other organizations on behalf of the ADL, has been found to have in his possession illegally obtained data, stolen from police and other confidential government files; data that was also discovered in the files of the ADL itself when police recently raided ADL headquarters in San Francisco and Los Angeles. We and other patriots have been telling you for many years that the ADL was the greatest enemy of American?s freedom and independence ? a far greater enemy than the KGB ever was. Now, at long last, a few brave and, as yet, lonely, journalists from the establishment media have broken their decades-long silence on this dangerous group, triggered by the police investigation of stolen files that led to Roy Bullock and the ADL. I often criticize the establishment media on this program, and I think they, in general, richly deserve the appellation ?controlled media,? as any reader of our research report, Who Rules America well knows. But let me now give credit where credit is due, especially to the reporters at the Los Angeles Times and ABC News, who put their careers on the line to report some of the grisly truth about an organization which acts as though it is untouchable and above the law. This is a story that every American needs to hear. It may well be the most important story I?ve ever covered on American Dissident Voices.

Let?s begin this amazing story with an article from the Los Angeles Times of 9th April, 1993, by Richard C. Paddock: ?Dateline San Francisco: Police on Thursday served search warrants on the Anti-Defamation League here and in Los Angeles, seizing evidence of a nationwide intelligence network accused of keeping files on more than 950 political groups, newspapers, and labor unions and as many as 12,000 people. ?Describing the spy operations in great detail, San Francisco authorities simultaneously released voluminous documents telling how operatives of the Anti-Defamation League searched through trash and infiltrated organizations to gather intelligence an Arab-American, right-wing, and what they called ?pinko? organizations?. ??Police allege that the organization maintains undercover operatives to gather political intelligence in at least seven cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. ?Groups that were the focus of the spy operation span the political spectrum, including such groups as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Aryan Resistance, Greenpeace, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the United Farm Workers, and the Jewish Defense League. Also on the list were Mills College, the board of directors of San Francisco public television station KQED, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper. ?People who were subjects of the spy operation included former Republican Representative Pete McCloskey, jailed political extremist Lyndon LaRouche and Los Angeles Times correspondent Scott Kraft, who is based in South Africa?. ??In addition to allegations of obtaining confidential information from police, the Anti-Defamation League could face a total of 48 felony counts for not properly reporting the employment of its chief West Coast spy, Roy Bullock, according to the affidavit filed to justify the search warrant. ?The Anti-Defamation League disguised payments to Bullock for more than 25 years by funnelling $550 a week to Beverly Hills attorney Bruce I. Hochman, who then paid Bullock, according to the documents released in San Francisco. Hochman, a former president of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles and one of the state?s leading tax attorneys, will be out of the city until late next week and could not be reached for comment, his office said. ?Until 1990, Hochman, a former U.S. prosecutor, also was a member of a panel appointed by then-Senator Pete Wilson to secretly make initial recommendations on new federal judges in California. Hochman is a former regional president of the Anti-Defamation League?. ?David Lehrer, executive director of the Los Angeles ADL office, said the organization has not violated the law?. ??But in an affidavit filed to obtain warrants for Thursday?s searches, San Francisco police allege that ?ADL employees were apparently less than truthful? in providing information in an earlier search conducted without a warrant?. ??The police affidavit contends that Lehrer had sole control of a secret fund used to pay for [what the ADL calls] ?fact-finding operations.? Lehrer, according to the documents, signed checks from the account under the name ?L. Patterson.?? ??League officials will not confirm or deny whether Bullock was an employee and have said they simply traded information with police departments about people who might be involved in hate crimes.? Let me add here that the category of crime called ?hate crimes? was virtually invented by the ADL. The goal of the ADL in doing that is to criminalize any thought or action which impedes their program to turn America into a Third World province in a multicultural ?world government.? Under the Orwellian-sounding ?hate crimes? laws, American citizens would receive different sentences for the same crime, depending on whether or not their thoughts are ?Politically Correct? on issues relating to homosexuality, race, nationality, and politics; and ultimately, having certain ?politically incorrect? opinions would become a crime in itself. I continue with another article from the Los Angeles Times, 13th April, 1993, also by Richard C. Paddock: ?Dateline San Francisco: To the outside world, Roy Bullock was a small-time art dealer who operated from his house in the Castro District. In reality, he was an undercover spy who picked through garbage and amassed secret files for the Anti-Defamation league for nearly 40 years. ?His code name at the prominent Jewish organization was Cal, and he was so successful at infiltrating political groups that he was once chosen to head an Arab-American delegation that visited Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) in her Washington, D.C. office. ?For a time, ?Cal? tapped into the phone message system of White Aryan Resistance? ?From police sources, he obtained privileged, personal information on at least 1,394 people. And he met surreptitiously with agents of the South African government to trade his knowledge for crisp, new $100 bills. ?These are among the secrets that Bullock and David Gurvitz, a former Los Angeles-based [ADL] operative, divulged in extensive interviews with police and the FBI in a growing scandal over the nationwide intelligence network operated by the Anti-Defamation League?. ?Transcripts of the interviews ? among nearly 700 pages of documents released by San Francisco prosecutors last week ? offer new details of the private spy operation that authorities allege crossed the line into illegal territory. ?At times, the intelligence activities took on a cloak-and-dagger air with laundered payments, shredded documents, hotel rendezvous with foreign agents and code names?. ?On one occasion, Gurvitz recounts, he received a tip that a pro-Palestinian activist was about to board a plane bound for Haifa, Israel. Although the Anti-Defamation League publicly denies any ties to Israel, Gurvitz phoned an Israeli consular official to warn them. Shortly thereafter, another [Israeli government] official called Gurvitz back and debriefed him. ?The court papers also added to the mystery of Tom Gerard, a former CIA agent and San Francisco police officer accused of providing confidential material from police files to the Anti-Defamation League? ?Bullock said it was Gerard who sold official police intelligence. Bullock said he split about $16,000? evenly with Gerard, telling him at one point, ?I may be gay, but I?m a straight arrow.?? ?Gerard fled to the Philippines last fall after he was interviewed by the FBI, but left behind a briefcase in his police locker. Its contents included passports, driver?s licenses, and identification cards in 10 different names; identification cards in his own name for four different embassies in Central America; and a collection of blank birth certificates, Army discharge papers, and official stationery from various agencies. ?Also in the briefcase were extensive information on death squads, a black hood, apparently for use in interrogations, and photos of blindfolded and chained men. ?Investigators suspect that Gerard and other police sources gave the ADL confidential driver?s license or vehicle registration information on a vast number of people, including as many as 4,500 members of [j
ust] one target group [of interest to the ADL], the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. ?Each case of obtaining such data from a law enforcement officer could constitute a felony, San Francisco Police Inspector Ron Roth noted in an affidavit for a search warrant.? Thank you, Richard C. Paddock and the Los Angeles Times. Now, at least a few of the ADL?s nefarious deeds are being exposed to the light of day! 4,500 felonies! And that?s just the illegal ADL files from one small group that was on the ADL?s enemies list! Evidence seized from ADL spy Roy Bullock?s computer database indicate that the ADL was using him to compile data on individuals belonging to over 950 groups ? and Bullock is just one ADL spy! This investigation has so far uncovered the merest tip of a gigantic iceberg of subversion and crime. Let us hope that those few honorable men left in our justice system in this country will hold to their guns and get to the bottom of this case, and prosecute those who are guilty, regardless of their prominence, wealth, or positions of influence in society. Now we turn to an article in the New York Daily News for 9th April, 1993, by Mark Mooney: ?Police in San Francisco and Los Angeles yesterday seized documents from a prominent Jewish-American organization accused of amassing confidential information ? sometimes illegally ? on thousands of people in the United States. ?The alleged operation was directed from the New York City offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B?nai B?rith, ABC News reported last night. ?The ADL has long been one of the most respected civil rights organizations in the country, tracking hate crimes and exposing prejudice. ?But ABC said that for several decades the spying operation has snooped into the records and activities of more than 10,000 people in the United States, including many who simply opposed the policies of Israel and South Africa?. ?The report identified the leader of the intelligence ring as Irwin Suall. ?Sources told the Daily News that Suall is one of about 15 people in the ADL?s research department in Manhattan. Neither Suall or other ADL officials could be reached for comment. ?We?re talking about the use of information from Department of Motor Vehicles files, other confidential files of state and local agencies, illegally furnished and illegally received by private agencies,? San Francisco District Attorney Arlo Smith told ABC. ?Similar raids were carried out in Los Angeles and San Francisco in February. ?The report did not surprise militant Arab-Americans or militant Jews here. ??They have been in this business for years, and I personally have been a target,? said M. T. Mehdi, head of the Arab-American Relations Committee. ?From the days I was in San Francisco in the 1960s, I had a feeling that someone was looking over my activities.?? Many questions remain to be answered in this investigation into the spying operations of the ADL. In my opinion, one of the main reasons that this story saw the light of day at all is that many Leftist and ?Liberal? groups were targeted by the ADL for infiltration and so-called ?fact-finding,? in addition to the ADL?s normal targets of patriots and nationalists on the Right. If the ADL had only violated the privacy and Constitutional rights of ?Right-wingers,? it is unlikely that the current scandal would have been allowed to emerge in the press. But since the Leftists and the ?Liberals? form such a powerful part of the establishment in this country, and since they are obviously only imperfectly controlled by the forces behind the ADL, the screams of pain from the Left could not be ignored. And they were screams not only of pain, but of betrayal. After all, much of the Left considered the ADL to be their ally. Wasn?t Irwin Suall, current top ADL spymaster, a former national secretary of the Socialist Party of America? Wasn?t the ADL the leader in the fight to get self-defense weapons out of the hands of dangerous right-wing American farmers, homeowners, and senior citizens? Wasn?t the ADL the chief organization engaged in brainwashing ? er, I mean educating Americans to accept a multicultural, non-American, non-Western future? What these Leftists failed and probably still fail to understand is that the forces behind the Anti-Defamation League go far beyond the terms ?Left? or ?Right.? Though the ADL is undoubtedly a foreign agent on behalf of the government of Israel, it is also far more than that. It is nothing less than the organizational outcropping of a vast network of influence and control working ceaselessly to bring about the end to American freedom and sovereignty ? and in fact, and end to the freedom and sovereignty of every nation ? and to bring into existence a world government controlled by the forces behind the ADL. They work to infiltrate, manage, and control groups of all political, racial, ethnic, and social persuasions. Those that they cannot control they seek to destroy by perverting our legal system so that certain opinions become ?thought crimes.? They care nothing for socialism, communism, or capitalism. They have used all of these and more to advance their aims, and have quickly discarded them if they no longer suited their purposes. Ladies and gentlemen, there is far more material on the ADL, its illegal and un-American activities, and the current scandal in which it is embroiled than I can possibly fit into this one program. With your indulgence, I am going to continue this fascinating story on next week?s program. What I do want each and every one of you to do is to obtain a copy of our extensively documented research report on the ADL, which was compiled for the June 1990 edition of our patriotic magazine National Vanguard. It?s available to you now as our Radio Offer Number 6, to every listener who requests it and donates a minimum of $5 to keep this program on the air. Send as much as you can afford to keep our voice of truth on the public airwaves, a gift of at least $5, and request Radio Offer Number 6. Write to National Vanguard Books, Department R, PO Box 90, Hillsboro, WV 24946 USA. That?s $5 or more to National Vanguard Books, Department R, PO Box 90, Hillsboro, WV 24946 USA. And remember to ask for Radio Offer Number 6. You cannot understand the perilous situation of our nation ? unless you understand the insidious agenda of the ADL. I?ll continue this vital message next week ? on American Dissident Voices.
Part 2 Program of 5th June, 1993 Welcome to American Dissident Voices. I?m your host, Kevin Alfred Strom.

On last week?s program, we uncovered the growing scandal surrounding the organization known as the Anti-Defamation League of B?nai B?rith, or ADL for short. The ADL, which likes to portray itself as a humanitarian and civil rights organization working to oppose prejudice against Jews and other racial minorities, and which has 31 regional offices across the United States, has recently been implicated in the theft of confidential police and government files on thousands of innocent American citizens. These citizens were mostly ordinary Americans, neither accused of or guilty of any crimes, but who were either critical of the government of Israel, for which the ADL acts as an illegally unregistered foreign agent, or who had criticized some aspect of the multicultural, ?one world? future planned for this country by the forces behind the ADL. For these ?thought crimes,? these Americans had been placed on the ADL?s enemies list, and were considered fair game for the Jewish group?s spying operation. On today?s program, I?ll continue our coverage of the ADL ? America?s greatest enemy, on American Dissident Voices.

The ADL p.r. section are masters at portraying themselves as noble and innocent victims of persecution, and at portraying anyone who criticizes them as that ultimate in unanswerable smear words ? ?anti-Semitic.? With the cooperation of their close friends in the media, this image of pious untouchability usually means that criticism of the ADL is usually not allowed in print or on the air, and on the rare occasions when it is, such criticism is most often characterized at ?hate? or ?bigotry.? But it didn?t quite work that way this time. What possibly tripped up the ADL and allowed this story some media exposure, when police investigators got on the trail of the ADL because certain police files in San Francisco had been discovered missing, was the fact that the ADL did not restrict its spying to so-called ?right-wing extremists? and other American patriots. No, they also infiltrated and gathered data on a number of Leftist and Liberal groups, lest they stray too far from the ADL party line and start doing unacceptable things, like honest Liberals occasionally do, like criticizing Israel?s genocide of Palestinians. Many groups on the Left ? and make no mistake about it, the Left is very influential in academic and media circles in this country ? had regarded the ADL as an ally in their quest to change America and turn her away from her Western, European roots toward a Third World future; so many Leftists felt shocked and betrayed by the ADL when they discovered that they were on the ADL?s enemies list right along with the National Alliance and other patriots. For example, the NAACP, the Rainbow Coalition, the ACLU, the American Indian Movement, the homosexual group ACT UP, anti-apartheid groups, and even the hard-left Pacifica radio network were victims of ADL spying. So a few journalists have broken this story of ADL spying and intrigue, and the ADL is no longer an ?untouchable? entity that cannot be criticized in public. A civil claim has been filed against the ADL by nineteen individuals who claim that the Anti-Defamation League spy network violated their privacy rights, including the wife of former Congressman Pete McCloskey and the son of former Israeli defense minister Moshe Arens. Former Representative McCloskey is the lawyer for the plaintiffs. McCloskey, who was a critic of Israel and was the subject of ADL smears when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1982, said, according to a Los Angeles Times story of 15th April, that the ADL should be investigated to determine whether it is an agent of the Israeli government. If it is, he said, it should register as all foreign agents are required to do. Let me quote from that article: ?McCloskey said most of the plaintiffs believe that their careers have been compromised by ADL attacks on them after they made anti-Israel statements. Two people joining the suit who spoke Wednesday are former television and radio commentators. ?Donald McGaffin, a former commentator at San Francisco television station KPIX, said that after he questioned Israeli policy on negotiating with highjackers in 1985, he was informed by his management that the ADL ?had sent groups of people to try to get me fired.? ?Colin Edwards said that he was fired from a job as a commentator on a San Francisco FM radio station, KALW, after his boss told him the group had protested his Middle Eastern commentaries.? Let me interject that such is standard procedure with the ADL, who are not at all shy about using strong-arm tactics and intimidation, threats, smears, and threatening the loss of advertising to any media outlet that dares to criticize Israel, the ADL, or their agenda. One indictment has been handed down in the case, against former San Francisco Police intelligence detective Tom Gerard, who emerged from hiding in the Philippines only to be arrested at San Francisco International Airport on May 8th. Gerard apparently sold confidential government files to the ADL?s top West Coast spy, Roy Bullock, a homosexual ?art dealer? from San Francisco whose specialty was the infiltration of Arab and patriotic American organizations and reporting on their activities to the ADL. How extensive is this spying by the ADL? We now know it includes infiltration of groups on both the left and the right which the ADL considers ?enemies of Israel? or a threat to the ADL?s worldwide agenda. But did you know it reaches even into college classrooms of professors who don?t toe the line properly, as the ADL sees it? Let?s look at an article entitled ?Spies for Zion,? in the San Francisco Weekly for 28th April, 1993: ?For decades the Anti-Defamation League of B?nai B?rith has gathered secret files on critics of Israel. As the San Francisco District Attorney prepares criminal charges against the group, will pressure from prominent Jewish leaders derail the prosecution? ?Professor Dwight Simpson and the consul general of Israel stood in a corner at the Fairmont Hotel discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amid a bright tinkling of glasses and soft murmuring of voices. Halfway through the conversation at the cocktail party, the Israeli diplomat, Harry Kney-Tal, said: ?By the way, that was a very funny joke you told your class the other day.? ?The San Francisco State University international relations professor didn?t think much of the comment at first. But later that night, he asked himself: ?How in the hell does the Israeli consul general know the jokes I tell in my class?? ?As a critic of Israel?s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Simpson had been targeted by Jewish students in the past. They picketed his class on several occasions, handing out leaflets charging that he?s anti-Semitic and opposes a Jewish homeland. ?So the professor didn?t have to wrestle with the consul general?s statement for long. He quickly surmised that Kney-Tal got his information from the Anti-Defamation League of B?nai B?rith [or ADL for short] by way of Jewish students who do political surveillance work on campus for them. ?It?s always confused me why they have to spy on me,? Simpson said, ?My work isn?t secret. My whole life is an open book.? ?After a heated demonstration in 1989 that disrupted Simpson?s class, the Jewish Student Action committee was expelled from campus for violating academic freedom. ?This is a serious problem in academia,? Simpson added. ?Whenever you have monitoring and surveillance, it stifles the free discussion of ideas?.? ?Simpson is just one of thousands of people whose lives have been affected by the far-ranging spy activities of the ADL. An 80-year-old nonprofit whose professed mission is to fight anti-Semitism, the ADL uses a less controversial term ? ?fact-finding? ? for its spying?. ?ADL attorney Barbara Wahl denied any wrongdoing?. Wahl said she has reviewed the ADL?s files that prosecutors say contain illegally gathered information. When asked if she saw anything illegal, she paused and then refused to comment?. ?Some close observers believe that political pressure will make it impossible to prosecute the respected Jewish organization. ?Mark my words, this is going to be obfuscated, obliterated, and desecrated,? said one veteran police inspector. ?It?s going to a classic study in how things get covered up. You don?t do Jewish people in San Francisco. It?s not PC. Especially when you have two U.S. Senators who are Jewish (Barbara Boxer and Diane
Feinstein) and the city?s chief of protocol is Dick Goldman (a prominent fundraiser in the Jewish community).? ?Last week, Goldman called Police Chief Tony Ribera about the police department?s own internal investigation. After the call, the police decided to exclude the ADL and Bullock from the probe?. ?Last year, when federal authorities were considering funding a Black Muslim group in Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, the ADL?s top ?fact-finder? in Washington, Mira Boland, sent the word out to ADL informants that she was looking for a criminal conviction on one of the Muslims to use in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post.? What ADL spy Mira Boland got from her informant, who turned out to be none other than David Gurvitz, who lately has been talking a lot to the police and the FBI, was a copy of a classified FBI report on the Nation of Islam which had recently been stolen from the San Francisco FBI office. It was later recovered by police when they raided the San Francisco offices of the ADL. Interestingly enough, according to the Village Voice article by Robert Friedman of 11th May, 1993, it was Mira Boland who had arranged the trip to Israel, one of many arranged for the indoctrination of U.S. police officers, of Mr. Tom Gerard, late of the Philippines and one of the main conduits of stolen police and government information to the ADL. According to this same article, Boland admitted at a 1990 criminal trial that she had, in typical ADL Newspeak, ?shared information? with members of the CIA at an invitation-only ADL conference. There is also an ADL connection to the Jonathan Pollard spy affair. I quote again from the Village Voice: ?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.? (By the way, anti-American forces, for the last year or so, have been quietly working to secure Pollard?s release. Though he betrayed the people of the United States, they consider him a hero.) A headline in the Village Voice article, I repeat the very liberal, very Jewish Village Voice article screams out the truth at us: ?The Anti-Defamation League has become the Jewish thought police.?

Let?s take a look at the agenda of the ADL for America. They are experts in the art of making subversive aims sound innocent or humanitarian ? but listen carefully, and I think even the most skeptical should begin to see that their drive for so-called ?hate crime? legislation is really a drive to stifle all criticism of their program. And their program is to change the racial and cultural character of this country to that of a Third World nation, so that we can more easily be incorporated into a one-world government. With those goals held firmly in mind, let?s take a look at a recent article from the Pomona Star-Ledger, entitled ?Stockton Coalition presses Clinton to reduce bigotry, promote diversity.? I might add that forming a coalition with well-meaning Liberal dupes is both the standard ADL and Communist technique for disguising their own programs as supposedly coming from ?the whole community.? I quote: ?A group of civic, religious, school, and college leaders has called on? Clinton to promote cultural diversity and reduce prejudice. ?Named the Stockton State College/Community Human Relations Coalition, the organization wrote to Clinton last month with recommendations developed during a more than three-hour meeting. ?At that session were representatives from student groups, the college administration, local governments and schools, the Jewish War Veterans, a church and several synagogues, a day care center, and the Anti-Defamation League. Several of those participating came from the college?s Holocaust Resource Center. ?In explaining why they wrote, they noted that the members of the coalition ?are committed to the provision of strong and vibrant leadership in the pursuit of harmony and understanding throughout all levels of our multicultural and diverse society. ?We strongly believe that racism, bigotry, and intolerance have reigned too long in America and have become too acceptable to be tolerated any longer.? ??in the field of education is their wish that Clinton ?educate the American people about cultural diversity? and ?offer courses in prejudice reduction in communities.? ?Other recommendations are to ?create a national initiative? through a President?s Council on Hate Crimes and Prejudice Reduction, to strengthen the Civil Rights Commission, and conduct a prejudice reduction audit?. ?Among the aspects of institutional change they want Clinton to achieve are: ??Encourage the Secretary of Education that multiculturalism be taught at all levels of elementary and secondary schools.? (Translation: Out with Washington and the Continental Army and in with bogus African history and the Sandinistas.) ??Leverage federal funding to compliance with multicultural inclusion.? (Translation: Schools that still have mostly traditional American students, and still teach in one language instead of 13 including Hindustani and Swahili, will lose their federal funds.) ??Encourage all businesses to have training on multiculturalism and cultural diversity.? (Translation: Government contracts and regulations will be used as weapons against private businessmen who do not enthusiastically promote the multicultural agenda of the ADL planners.) ??Recognize the efforts of groups working in the nation to alleviate intolerance, bigotry, and racism.? (Translation: Give taxpayer?s money and policy-making power to the ADL and its various front groups.) ??Encourage the federal government to be a leader in cultural diversity throughout its ranks.? (No translation necessary.) And ??Establish a President?s Award for Social Justice and Unity for persons, groups, and organizations who have achieved some success in reducing prejudice, bigotry, and racism.?? (Translation: Traitors to America?s traditional heritage and values are to rewarded and elevated as heroes in the sick world the ADL is building in what used to be called America.) We know what the ADL?s agenda is. We know that they broke the law routinely, as did the police departments that collaborated with them. It was common knowledge that the ADL was getting paid large sums of government money to ?train? ? that is, to indoctrinate ? police officers and government officials, not just over a period of years, but decades. A report by Richard Cotten, entered into the Congressional Record by Congressman John Rarick, indicates that this has been going on since at least 1963, and furthermore indicates that a large number of the police officers involved in this so-called ?sensitivity training? knew or suspected they were being brainwashed, in their own words, possibly by those with a ?Communist agenda.? How has the ADL been able to get away with it until now? The answer lies in two facts ? facts which also explain many other things about the decline of America. The first fact is that the major media in this country are largely owned or controlled by the same element that controls the ADL, and they have the same agenda. Until just a few weeks ago, when a few brave reporters dared to breathe the forbidden words that the San Francisco District Attorney was saying (all of them, I might add, at the risk of their careers, which may now be much shortened), the ADL was untouchable, and even its most outrageous, pro-Communist, and subversive activities were ignored, and any reportage it got was only the most fulsome praise. The ADL was made respectable by the controlled media. The second important fact is that the government officials and police officers who condoned ADL manipulation and control of their departments, were typical unprincipled careerists, who valued respectability above all other things, even their oaths of office and their country. If the TV said that the ADL were public-spirited humanitarians, and if the TV said that patriots who were trying to expose the anti-American activities of the ADL were evil bigots and haters, why the choice was clear to these public servants. They chose to hobnob with the ADL, and would rather have had a limb amputated than be associated with the patriots. Well, friends, a small crack has now appeared in the great wall of lies and brainwashing that has so far obscured the subversive activities of the ADL. This crack is an opportunity for patriots to educate others, and to help bring about a great patriotic renewal to this land. The truth is that most Americans don?t agree with the agenda of the ADL, and would be horrified if they knew the extent to which that group has spied on and manipulated the minds of their fellow Americans. Won?t you help us spread the truth to as many people as possible this week? I am offering our scholarly, well-documented research report on the ADL today as our Radio Offer Number 6. It is vitally important that as many Americans as possible have this report, before it?s too late, before, as the veteran police inspector said, this case is ?covered up, obfuscated, obliterated, and desecrated.? Our research report is a part of our handsomely printed and education magazine for patriots, National Vanguard. Our special research report on the ADL is yours for a small donation of $5. just send a donation of as much as you can afford to keep this program on the air, a minimum of $5, to National Vanguard Books, Department R, PO Box 90, Hillsboro, WV 24946 USA, and remember to ask for Radio Offer Number 6. Thank you for your support, and I?ll see
you next week on American Dissident Voices.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]The ADL and Rich[/large]

March 29, 2001

The A.D.L. and Rich
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.

(c) 2001 New York Times[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify]Source: The Spotlight |

[large]The ADL and the Great Sedition Trial[/large]

The role of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B?nai B?rith in prompting the FBI?s recent Project Megiddo report on potential Y2K ?terrorism? has a frightening precedent in American history. This was the topic discussed on the Nov. 14 broadcast of The SPOTLIGHT?s weekly call-in talk forum, Radio Free America, with host Tom Valentine.

Valentine?s guest was SPOTLIGHT correspondent Michael Collins Piper, author of an article on ?The Great Sedition Trial of 1944? in the January-February issue of the revisionist history magazine, The Barnes Review.

Piper described the little-known story of the criminal trial in which 30 Americans were tried on trumped-up charges of ?sedition? brought by the Justice Department of President Franklin D. Roosevelt against his critics. The evidence shows that it was the ADL that actually provided the FBI the ?evidence? used to bring the false charges against the defendants.

Today, the ongoing attacks against presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan bear a striking similarity to the attacks made against the so-called ?seditionists? in 1944.

What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. Valentine?s questions appear in boldface. Piper?s responses are in regular text.


Few Americans have heard about the Great Sedition Trial of 1944.

You always hear about ?McCarthyism? in high school, but you never hear about the sedition trial. The way history books describe World War II you would never know that 90 percent of the American people opposed getting involved in that war in the first place.

The Great Sedition Trial took place 55 years ago, but it is very applicable to what is happening today.

What we are seeing today with the attacks on Pat Buchanan in the press, but also with this Project Megiddo report issued by the FBI, is a reflection of the same mindset that led to the Great Sedition Trial.

Judge Bolitha Laws called the Great Sedition Trial a ?travesty on justice.?

That?s right. Although the trial came to a halt in 1944, there were repeated attempts by the Justice Department to enter new indictments but the charges were ultimately thrown out. There were originally three indictments involving some 40 people but 30 people actually went to trial.

The case was brought under the guise of accusing these people of supposedly attempting to disrupt the military and undermine the war effort. In fact, the bottom line was that the one thing that all of these people had done was to criticize the role of the Jewish lobby in pushing for U.S. involvement in the war. They also attacked the numerous communists in the Roosevelt administration (many of whom, in fact, were Jewish.)

That?s really why they were indicted. That?s what the Great Sedition Trial was really all about. Sedition had nothing to do with it. What they were indicted for is what Pat Buchanan is being attacked for doing?criticizing the power of the Jewish lobby.

There is firm evidence the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B?nai B?rith was the prime mover behind the FBI in the trial.

No question about it. In fact, one of the defendants, David Baxter, later went through the Freedom of Information Act and got the files that resulted in his indictment. He found that in a great many cases it was not the FBI that had conducted the investigation?it was the ADL. The FBI merely received the reports ADL investigators had prepared.

?One can hardly tell from the reports,? Baxter said, ?whether a given person is an FBI or an ADL agent. But at the time all of this was so hush-hush that I didn?t expect the web-spinning going on around me. I hadn?t considered myself that important.?

It?s a shame that Americans didn?t learn a lesson in 1944 in regard to the ADL?s role in feeding disinformation to the FBI (and the FBI willingly accepting it at face value). Using this same technique, the ADL stirred up the mindset that created Waco and Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma bombing and now they are behind this Project Megiddo report.

A reporter from The Washington Post played a key role in the scheme by the ADL and the Justice Department.

That?s right. The defendants in the Great Sedition Trial were from all over the country, so the only way they could indict them was to link them to Washington, D.C., in order to get jurisdiction over them.

What happened was that this writer for The Washington Post named Dillard Stokes sent letters to the defendants asking them to send literature to him in Washington. His letters were written under an alias, ?Jefferson Breem? (to hide his identity as a Post reporter) and the defendants responded as the ADL hoped.

On that basis, then, the Justice Department said: ?Okay, their conspiratorial activities extended into the District of Columbia so therefore we can file charges against them here.? And they did. The third and final indictment actually went to trial, charging these defendants with interfering with the war effort.

These people had been critics of FDR?s efforts to get us into the war and they were critics of the U.S. wartime alliance with communist Russia, concerned that the Roosevelt administration was rife with Soviet agents during World War II, which indeed it was.

These people targeted by the ADL were dragged from their homes and brought to Washington to stand trial. Few of them had any money to defend themselves. Many of them were destitute and hardly influential at all.

That?s what?s so frightening. It could happen again today. Let?s take the case of Pat Buchanan. He?s probably the most prominent person today who reflects the America First sentiment, the very views of those who were put on trial in 1944.

People get nervous when I start talking about Israel, so let me put things in another context that won?t scare as many people. Let?s take the war on Serbia instead. Pat Buchanan opposed that war. A lot of people opposed that war. The SPOTLIGHT opposed that war. There were American troops in that war.

Under the same theory used to indict the sedition trial, Pat Buchanan and others could have been indicted because they were conspiring to undermine the war effort.

In the earlier Gulf War, Israel was our ally and it could have been alleged that Buchanan was attacking our ally by opposing the Gulf War just as in the sedition trial it was alleged the defendants were attacking ?our great Soviet ally.?

In the trial in 1944, the people charged had expressed views that were anti-Jewish or anti-communist or both. They weren?t seditionists.

The irony is that these people were indicted under a law designed to crack down on Soviet agents in the United States.

That?s correct. The Smith Act of 1940 was passed to prevent communist infiltration of the American armed forces and many of the people indicted had actually called for enactment of the Smith Act in the first place.

In the sedition trial, the government was saying that since Soviet Russia was the war-time ally of the United States, if you said anything about communist Russia you were opposing our ally and that this was ?sedition.?

FDR?s own attorney general, Francis Biddle, didn?t even want to bring these indictments.

That?s correct. However, FDR was pushing for it. The ADL was lobbying heavily behind the scenes. It was a fait accompli. The poor attorney general didn?t have much choice.

The lives of these innocent people were very much disrupted by these criminal charges. Describe what happened to Elmer Garner.

Mr. Garner was 82 years old and he died one week after the trial opened, with 40 cents in his pocket, staying in a tiny rented room in a flophouse in Washington. He was found slumped over his typewriter, working on his defense. They shipped his body home to Kansas in a wooden box.

Ironically, Elmer was a first cousin of FDR?s two-term Vice President John Nance Garner of Texas. Old Mr. Garner?s family was made destitute because of this. This old gentleman published a newsletter that hardly anyone read, but he was indicted and accused of trying to undermine the military.

Another defendant, Col. Eugene Sanctuary, was 73 years old. He and his wife had run the Presbyterian Church?s foreign mission and he had written hymns and patriotic songs. In 1942, right before he was indicted, he had just published a song called ?Uncle Sam, We Are Standing By You.? That sounds really seditious to me.

Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling?s son, Kirkpatrick, was in the U.S. Army and was actually promoted while his mother was under indictment. At the same time, publicist George Sylvester Viereck, another defendant, had a son killed in action as a U.S. soldier, while his father was sitting in jail, accused of trying to undermine the armed forces.

Another defendant, Frank Clark, was a highly decorated veteran of World War I, wounded eight times in action, and in the 1920s was an organizer of the World War I veteran?s Bonus March to Washington, lobbying for veterans? bonuses.

As another defendant, Lawrence Dennis (a personal friend of The SPOTLIGHT?s executive publisher Willis Carto) later said, it was possible that some of the defendants had taken action, in some way, designed to undermine the armed forces. However, the government charged that all of these defendants, working together, had conspired to under mine the armed forces. In fact, most of these defendants didn?t even know each other.

In addition, they were also charged with conspiring with Adolf Hitler.

Oh yes. This sedition trial was really a ?black comedy.? But it was tragic in so many ways. If Pat Buchanan had been speaking out in 1942-1944 as he is today, Buchanan would have been in line to be indicted.

Media reports today uniformly say, in shocked voices: ?Why that Pat Buchan an sounds just like the America First Committee (AFC) prior to World War II. He says we shouldn?t have fought Hitler. Isn?t that shocking?? The ADL is ?troubled? about this. They?re always ?troubled? about something.

Buchanan is saying precisely what a large majority of Americans believed then. Keep in mind the names of some of those who were supporting the AFC and whose own views reflected the views of those who were indicted in the sedition trial:

John F. Kennedy, then a student at Harvard, gave a $100 contribution to the AFC. His brother Joe, who was later killed in the service, was a supporter, too.

Gerald Ford, as a student at Yale, was an AFC supporter.

We know other big names such as Col. Charles Lindbergh, Gen. Hugh Johnson, Gen. Robert Wood (another friend of Willis Carto?s). Big names from Congress, Republican and Democrat alike, ?right wing? and ?left wing.? They were allied on the premise that the United States had no business getting involved in the war.

Those who were actually charged, though, with ?sedition? were outspoken pamphleteers, newspaper and newsletter publishers, radio broadcasters.

They didn?t bring Sens. Robert Taft, William Langer, Burton Wheeler or other big names to trial.

That?s what was actually very clever about the way they orchestrated the Great Sedition Trial. FDR knew that he could not get away with indicting members of Congress, who had actually done things a lot more indictable than many of those who were indicted.

Elizabeth Dilling was indicted for reprinting a speech by Rep. Clare Hoffman (R-Mich.) on the floor of Congress. That?s Orwellian.

I would call it Talmudic. You see, the sedition trial was designed to frighten the large majority of the population. The people indicted were outspoken people who wrote and spoke out in public forums. The real purpose of the trial was to warn the large number of Americans who agreed with the views of those who were indicted that if they, too, spoke out, they could also be indicted. The indictments were designed to frighten the great ?silent majority? out there.

Fortunately, though, the members of Congress who were not indicted (but who could have been indicted) did not back off and attacked the sedition trial. To his credit, North Dakota?s Sen. William Langer demonstrated his contempt for the Justice Department and the ADL by purposefully coming to the U.S. Courthouse each day to escort Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling in and out of the courtroom.

A major villain of the Great Sedition Trial was the Justice Department prosecutor, O. John Rogge.

Rogge went at it with a vengeance. He had visited communist Russia and was a friend of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. In Russia he laid a wreath on the grave of a founder of the Communist Party USA. He was later the attorney for David Greenglass, the atomic spy who saved his own life by turning states? evidence against his own sister and brother-in-law, the Rosenbergs, who most deservedly went to the electric chair.

The way the trial came to an end was because the judge died. At that point the defendants agreed that they would ask for a mistrial. A mistrial was declared, although Rogge continued to push for a new trial.

However, the war came to an end and FDR died. Although Rogge claimed he would be able to find evidence in the captured German archives that would prove the defendants had been conspiring with the Nazis, he never did.

While trying to revive the trial, Rogge went on a lecture tour paid for by?you guessed it?the ADL. That?s how close he was to the ADL. However, in 1946, the Justice Department realized the case had gone far enough and Rogge was fired.

Afterward, Lawrence Dennis said that the ADL ?simply did not appreciate the difficulties of railroading to jail their political enemies without evidence of any acts in violation of the law.?

There was a very interesting de fense attorney named Henry Klein who played a part in the trial.

He was one of the most outspoken of the defense attorneys and he was Jewish. Some nervous types are probably thinking: ?Well, what difference does that make?? That makes a difference because he was defending people who were accused of being anti-Jewish, and, in fact, many were. Nonetheless, Klein was concerned these people?s liberties were being violated through this ADL police state operation.

He said in his opening statement: ?We will prove that this persecution was instigated by so-called professional Jews who make a business of preying on other Jews by scaring them into the belief that their lives and property are in danger.? He said the anti-Semitism charged in the indictment was a ?racket run by racketeers for graft purposes.? He was talking, of course, about the ADL.

Famous broadcaster Walter Win chell played a major role in promoting the trial.

That?s correct. Winchell was quite in fluential at that time and he was a front man for the ADL. Neil Gabler, a well-known Jewish-American writer, wrote a biography of Winchell and revealed that Arnold Forster, the head of the ADL?s so-called ?fact finding? division, actually drafted entire columns for Winchell and showed up at Winchell?s station to edit his radio broadcasts.

Winchell was a conduit between the FBI and the ADL and provided the ADL?s information to the FBI. But good patriotic Americans who heard Win chell?s broadcasts about the so-called ?seditionists? didn?t know it was ADL propaganda wrapped in the American flag.

The ADL role behind the FBI in the sedition trial sounds like the role of the ADL in the FBI?s Project Megiddo report.

The Project Megiddo report is basically a smear of a wide variety of groups, suggesting that when the calendar turns to 2000 that they are going to rise up and try to overthrow the government. The Nov. 15 issue of The SPOTLIGHT shows that Project Megiddo is no more than a re-write of materials originally put together by the ADL.

Now, as a consequence millions of Amer i cans are afraid when 2000 comes ?hate groups? are going to be out in the streets trying to destroy America. (Actually, if truth be told, many of these ?hate groups? are actually funded by the ADL and the FBI.)

The ADL?s tone suggests the ADL hopes that there will be violence.

Well, it?s been well documented that there have been various political groups that have committed violence but that the violence were prompted by agents sent into those groups by the FBI and the ADL. That?s the problem. This gives the government itself the opportunity to crack down on freedom of expression in the name of combating ?terrorism.?

That raises this question: If we have violence at Y2K, how can we be sure the violence isn?t being committed by an agent provocateur inside one of these groups?

By giving this kind of nonsense to the FBI that?s now in Project Megiddo, which the FBI then parrots to the media and which the media then reports to the public, the ADL is creating public turmoil. It creates suspicion and drives wedges between people?between whites and blacks, between neighbors who know that the lady down the street is a militia member.

Don?t forget that the character who heads the ADL?s ?fact-finding? division is Neil Herman, who recently retired from the FBI as head of the its ?counterterrorism? division. He was also in charge of the FBI?s investigation of the World Trade Center bombing. But Herman never reported what Jewish-American journalist Robert Friedman revealed in the Aug. 3, 1993, issue of The Village Voice: the likelihood that one of the Arabs involved in the bombing was more than likely a ?mole? of Israel?s Mossad.

Today the ADL and the FBI and the press are finding a Nazi or an anti-Semite or a Holocaust denier under every bed. You can?t open up any major newspaper or, increasingly, any small town daily, without finding stories about ?hate groups? and ?the holocaust.? It?s a steady drumbeat. If Pat Buchanan?s campaign picks up, we?ll hear a lot more of it.

We just had the Bilderberg meeting here in Washington and Sandy Berger, the president?s National Security advisor, spoke there. What Berger said was ominous. He said ?it is urgent that in ternationalists find common ground around a common agenda of our own. We must learn to recognize when our beliefs are being threatened and we must defend them together.?

That kind of language?using the term ?threatened??sounds somewhat paranoid. That?s scary since this comes from the man who heads the National Security Agency of the United States and who controls the nation?s spy mechanism that has access to our e-mails and our telephone calls and our fax ma chines. He?s saying that?as he puts it ?our beliefs,? that the beliefs of the internationalists, the big banks, the ADL, all of these power blocs that make up the global elite?are, in his words, ?being threatened? and ?we must defend them together.?

What does Berger have in mind when he says it is necessary to ?defend? those beliefs? Does that include indicting people for sedition? Does that include increased spying on Americans? What does he mean?

Americans should never forget that their government and the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-tion lied through their teeth repeatedly to justify the unjustified attack on Yugoslavia.

The attack, which was never authorized by the United Nations, was justified on ?humanitarian grounds? to prevent a ?human catastrophe? and ?genocide.? Why, those nasty old Serbs may have killed 100,000 Kosovars, U.S. politicians speculated. Finally, they seemed to accept the British estimate of 10,000 to 11,000 dead. The American press frenziedly reported these wild accusations and added their own.

Well, after months of being totally in control of Kosovo, guess how many bodies NATO has found? A tad more than 2,100. Some gravesites remain to be examined, but, because the worst were done first, the count isn?t likely to go much higher.

Richard Gwyn, a columnist with The Toronto Star, was one of the first to report the discrepancy between NATO assertions and the evidence found so far. He cites a case in which NATO claimed that as many as 1,000 bodies had been dumped down a mine shaft. Then he reports that the International Criminal Tribunal reported the results of its investigation using Western forensic experts. How many bodies did they find in the mine shaft? Zero.

Like the soccer stadium at Pristina supposedly filled with Kosovar prisoners, according to our State Depart ment, the mine shaft was empty. There was no genocide. There was no human catastrophe. There was no second holocaust. It was all lies. Comparing a two-hour ride on a passenger train from Pristina to the border with World War II Jews being packed like sardines into cattle cars and shipped all the way across Europe was absurd on its face, but when the national press gets all lathered up in spreading propaganda, nothing is too absurd to report.

Now one might think that the American press, as it discovers it was lied to and used as a vehicle for propaganda, might be all over the story, exposing these lies and exaggerations. No, members of the press are using their typical tactic: When the facts refute their earlier stories, they simply lose interest in reporting it.

So you are probably unaware that, ?under the protection of NATO,? more than 100,000 Serbs have been forced out of Kosovo, and numerous Christian churches and monasteries have been destroyed or desecrated.

The kernel of the nut is that NATO lied to justify the attack, lied during the attack and lied about its intentions after the attack. Furthermore, NATO is denying aid to Yugoslavia on the grounds that Slobodan Milosevic is still in power, which is the pattern of U.S. and British behavior. After all, 500,000 Iraqi children have died because these toddlers refuse to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Imagine these kids not obeying the U.S. government.

In the first place, Milosevic was elected. Does NATO approve of democracy only when it likes the result of the vote? It seems so. In the second place, if there was no genocide, as there obviously was not, Milosevic is not a war criminal. It?s true a lot of Serbs want to throw him out of office, but they are not mad at him for fighting to keep Yugoslavia intact. They are mad at him for losing the wars.

Apparently, though, Americans have become anesthetized to government lying. The American people are lied to all the time about all sorts of things, and it seems not to bother them. That is a sign of a dead society. We may not be a dead poets society, just a dead consumers society.

Oswald Spengler, in his Decline of the West (published in 1918), predicted the end of Western democracies in the 1990s. His timing might have been off a smidgen, but just a smidgen. In the meantime, chalk up Kosovo as one more example of the Big Lie about a genocide that never happened.

© 1999 King Features Syndicate[/justify]