[Peace-discuss] FW: Rulings Revive Spy Case Against Anti-Defamation League

[Boyle, Francis A]

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
(personal comments only)


-----Original Message-----
From: Boyle, Francis [mailto:FBOYLE at LAW.UIUC.EDU] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 1998 11:35 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list <humanrights-l at lawlib.wuacc.edu>
Subject: Rulings Revive Spy Case Against Anti-Defamation League

Dear Colleagues:
	I am honored and pleased to be on the ADL blacklist because of my representation of a Jewish Professor friend of mine who had been previously blacklisted by them because of this Professor's vigorous opposition to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, where this Professor had been located at the time, and then subjected to McCarthyite tactics. I have old copies of the ADL blacklist and the AIPAC blacklist  in my office if anyone wants to see them, together with related internal and external documents on the blacklisting  policies and McCarthyite practices of these two organizations. The cowards and hypocrites at  the American Association of University Professors (of which I was a member at the time) refused to do anything to help my Jewish Professor Friend or to help the Black  Professor Fred Dube, who had also been blacklisted by these organizations,or to help  other professors who had been blacklisted by these two organizations and then subjected to similar McCarthyite practices. I later  quit the AAUP and joined a real union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers/AFL-CIO. At least second editions of these ADL and AIPAC blacklists were never published. I am sure, however, that both organizations still maintain internal blacklists and continue to perpetrate their McCarthyite tactics on professors they do not approve of. And Jewish Professors are treated far worse than others.
	Francis A.Boyle
	Professor of  Law
	Counsel, Concerned Academics for Peace and Justice in the Middle East (1984-1986)



> ----------
> From:
> rich at pencil.math.missouri.edu[SMTP:rich at pencil.math.missouri.edu]
> Sent: 	Wednesday, March 25, 1998 1:43 AM
> To: 	undisclosed-recipients
> Subject: 	USA: Rulings Revive Spy Case Against Anti-Defamation
> League
> 
> /** headlines: 129.0 **/
> ** Topic: USA: B'nai B'rith Spy Files Cracked **
> ** Written  9:54 PM  Mar 23, 1998 by newsdesk in cdp:headlines **
> /* Written 5:24 PM  Mar 22, 1998 by owner-pjml at shamash.org in 
> action.jewish */
> /* ---------- "No Subject Given" ---------- */
> 
> Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 15:16:10 -0800
> To: Discussion forum for progressive Jews <pjml at shamash.org>
> From: Yigal Arens <arens at ISI.EDU>
> 
> Rulings Revive Spy Case Against Jewish Group
> 
> * It appears the Anti-Defamation League will have to reveal what it 
> knows about 17 people.
> 
> By Bob Egelko
> Associated Press
> 
> Court rulings have breathed new life into an almost-forgotten lawsuit 
> accusing the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith of spying 
> illegally on political activists.
> 
> Seventeen people who learned the venerable Jewish civil rights 
> organization was keeping tabs on them are trying to find out just what 
> the group knows - and a recent court ruling requires a very reluctant 
> ADL to release the information, which has been sealed by court order.
> 
> The ADL appealed to the state Supreme Court, which is expected to 
> decide by late March whether to review the case.
> 
> The dispute made national headlines five years ago, when San Francisco 
> police raided the ADL's offices and seized more than 10,000 files on 
> political organizations and individuals.  Some were neo-Nazis and 
> terrorists the ADL says are its chief concern.  Others came from a 
> variety of groups on the political left, including critics of Israel 
> and of apartheid in South Africa.
> 
> After police told them their names were in the files, the 17 activists
> -
> Arab-Americans, anti-apartheid organizers and Jewish dissidents, 
> including the son of a former Israeli defense minister - sued the ADL.
> 
> They are seeking class-action status for the civil suit on behalf of 
> up to 1,000 activists and could get $2,500 for any instance of illegal 
> disclosure of confidential information.
> 
> But first the group has to find out just what was in the ADL files.
> 
> Until last September, the organization rebuffed those efforts with the 
> unlikely sounding but legally unchallenged argument that, as a 
> publisher of reports on extremist groups, it acts like a journalist, 
> with the right to protect its sources.
> 
> But last September, Superior Court Judge Alex Saldamando ruled that a 
> journalist's protections must give way to a private citizen's right to 
> learn the source of confidential government information that may have 
> been used illegally.  He granted the plaintiffs access to thousands of 
> ADL files seized by San Francisco police, and to Internal ADL memos on 
> pro-Palestinian and anti-apartheid activists.
> 
> The ADL appealed but a state appeals court upheld the ruling last 
> month.
> Now, unless the state Supreme Court intervenes, the plaintiffs may 
> finally get the information they need to take their case to a trial 
> that is scheduled for September.
> 
> "They have a reputation as a civil rights organization when in fact 
> there's a long history of doing this kind of spy work," said plaintiff 
> Jeffrey Blankfort, a Jewish activist for Palestinian rights and 
> against apartheid, and cofounder of the Labor Committee on the Middle 
> East.
> His
> Social Security number turned up in an ADL file seized by police.
> 
> David M. Goldstein, a lawyer for the ADL, declined comment on the 
> rulings.  However, in court papers, the ADL has said releasing the 
> information would jeopardize sources inside hate groups, with 
> potentially disastrous consequences.
> 
> "If the identities of ADL's sources - or even the fact of their 
> existence - becomes known, many of the sources could be in grave 
> danger," attorney Stephen Bomse wrote.
> 
> "The groups being investigated are not, after all, elementary school 
> play groups.  To the contrary, they include groups that preach, 
> practice or support intolerance, hate, violence and terrorism," he 
> wrote.
> 
> The ADL, founded more than 80 years ago to combat anti-Semitism, has 
> in recent years fought a quiet battle with U.S. leftist supporters of 
> Palestinian rights.  The San Francisco dispute surfaced in 1992 when 
> FBI agents tracking South African operatives saw them talking to Roy 
> Bullock, the ADL's local "fact-finder," and Tom Girard, a San 
> Francisco police inspector, according to the plaintiff's lawyer.
> 
> The FBI contacted San Francisco police, who searched ADL offices.
> Bullock later said he and Girard had sold information to the South 
> African government, a statement Girard denied.
> 
> Girard, the only one charged with a crime, pleaded no contest in 1994 
> to a misdemeanor charge of illegally accessing government information.
> The
> ADL itself came under criminal investigation by the district 
> attorney's office in 1993, but never was charged, and settled the 
> city's civil suit by paying $75,000 and agreeing to a ban on the 
> acquisition of secret government files.
> 
> More than 600 names of political activists were found in ADL files 
> that were searched as part of a 1996 settlement of a similar suit in 
> Los Angeles, in which the organization agreed to destroy all such 
> records, said plaintiff's attorney Pete McCloskey.
> 
> McCloskey, a former congressman, said he got involved after learning 
> that the ADL had a file on his wife, Helen, for protesting the strip 
> searching of an Arab-American woman by an Israeli border guard in the 
> 1980s.  She is now a plaintiff.
> 
> "We will learn the extent of our case.  ...  ADL has fought for five 
> years to keep this information from being public," McCloskey said.
> 
> The damage suit accuses the ADL of obtaining and illegally using 
> confidential government records, such as driver's license information, 
> post office boxes and police reports.
> 
> The information was allegedly used to infiltrate political groups, 
> inform on members to police and get them blacklisted among ADL 
> sympathizers, according to the suit.  It said the ADL also provided 
> information to the governments of Israel and South Africa.
> 
> Typically, McCloskey said, Bullock would pose as a sympathizer, join a 
> target group, copy down license plate numbers and relate them to 
> Girard.
> Girard would use state computers to find driver license numbers and 
> other government data which would be relayed to ADL offices in New 
> York and, presumably, to the organization's self-described community 
> of
> 12,000 supporters in the San Francisco area.
> 
> Bomse called the claim of a blacklist "nonsense."
> 
> The ADL "monitors anti-Semitic and anti-Israel groups, right- and 
> left-wing extremists, white supremacists and other hate groups and 
> terrorists," he said in court papers.
> 
> He said the ADL has a right to investigate the plaintiff's involvement 
> in "issues of public consequence," share information internally and 
> report suspected lawbreaking to police.
> 
> McCloskey acknowledged that allegation of an ADL blacklist are hard to 
> substantiate.  But in at least one case, a plaintiff who is a 
> photographer found she was unable to get work with Jews after her 
> sister published a letter critical of Israel.
> 
> ** End of text from cdp:headlines **
> 
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Private reply:         Yigal Arens <arens at ISI.EDU>
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