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 Posted Tuesday, September 22, 1998


 

Merchants of Hatred

 

Thursday, September 17, 1998

 

Jewish Group Wants Files Withheld

 

By Bob Egelko
Associated Press Writer

 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith claims it has the same right as a journalist to withhold records it gathered on leftist pro-Palestinian and anti-apartheid activists.

The Jewish organization argued before an appellate court Wednesday that it should not have to comply with a judge's order to produce the documents to individuals who have sued the group for invasion of privacy.

The ADL is appealing a September order allowing 17 people to see material that the ADL gathered on individuals and organizations that supported Palestinian rights and opposed South Africa's former apartheid government.

The cases arose out of a 1992 seizure by San Francisco police of more than 10,000 ADL files. The ADL later paid $75,000 to settle a civil suit filed by the city accusing it of illegally obtaining confidential government documents.

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

Police, who returned the documents to the ADL after the settlement, notified the plaintiffs that their names were in the files. The 17 contend the ADL illegally obtained confidential records from the state and blacklisted them among the organization's supporters.

The ADL denies having a blacklist and says it was merely keeping tabs on hate groups and terrorists.

"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, B'nai B'rith lawyer Stephen Bomse said Wednesday.

The plaintiffs' lawyer, former Congressman Pete McCloskey, said even if the ADL should be treated as a reporter, no journalist has the power "to invade privacy and transmit private records.''

Bomse said there was no evidence of lawbreaking that would justify invading the group's files.

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

A ruling from the appeals court is expected in December.

© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press

 David Irving writes:

FoxmanFOR OVER twenty years the powerful New York based Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai Brith (ADL), an organisation that is responsible to nobody but itself, has policed the media in North America (and much of the rest of the world), monitoring even the smallest provincial newspapers for advertisements or reader's letters and for evidence of activities by individuals whom they will list on their database as their enemies. Its national director currently is Abraham H Foxman (left).

The ADL has then used its best efforts to destroy these people--not openly, and by fair means, but using their own network of influences and contacts, with ugly tentacles which often extended deep into the regular forces of law and order (the ADL were found in April 1992 to have bribed corrupt officials in San Francisco to secure secret police files.)

ADL logoI have a special reason to loath the ADL: in February 1996 they started a clandestine campaign of terror against my New York publishers, St Martins Press Inc. and Doubleday Inc. Both stood firm for two months before finally capitulating to an unprecedented reign of intimidation and smears upon which even mainstream newspapers commented. At considerable cost, and of course at heavy loss to myself as well, these publishers abandoned their contractual obligations to publish my biography of the Nazi propaganda minister Dr Joseph Goebbels, the product of eight-years of research in archives around the world.

It is the ADL who have organised, through front organisations with names like the Coalition for Human Dignity, and the Nizkor Website, gangs of mobspitters to intimidate normal, law-abiding audiences, and a concerted effort to swamp the Internet with their own hate-filled propaganda. Simultaneously, the ADL backroom boys are trying to develop 1984-style software to choke off free speech on the Internet. Through their associates in the North American library system and state and county education boards they are trying to enforce the installation of this software on North American computers.

The article reproduced above is reproduced without any editing. We direct the attention of our visitors to our growing index of material on the ADL, which we intend to expand over the coming months.

The above news item is reproduced without editing other than typographical

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© Focal Point 1998 write to David Irving