Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, page 32

Pro-Israel McCarthyism

A Third Lawsuit Against the Anti-Defamation League Inches Forward

By Rachelle Marshall

The Anti-Defamation League was originally founded to combat racial and religious prejudice, but since has turned to attacking critics of Israel. Now, thanks to a ruling handed down in late November by the California First District Court of Appeals, ADL has suddenly become a “journalistic organization.” The ruling was announced in a case initiated five years ago by 17 Bay Area residents whose private records were found in the ADL’s files. The plaintiffs, who are represented by former Congressman Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey, assert that ADL obtained their records illegally.

The lawsuit was filed after police raids on ADL offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1992 found that ADL was keeping records on more than 1,000 law-abiding citizens, most of whom were Arab Americans. Also included were files on anti-apartheid activists, environmentalists, and members of groups such as the ACLU and the American Friends Service Committee.

ADL had obtained the confidential records from a former San Francisco police inspector named Tom Gerard, who had illegally taken them home after his police intelligence unit was disbanded in response to complaints by civil liberties groups. Gerard gave many of the files to Roy Bullock, a close friend who was also a paid investigator for the ADL.

Bullock regularly spied on such groups as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Nation of Islam, as well as anti-apartheid activists. He and Gerard reportedly sold some of their information to Israel and the former apartheid government of South Africa.

In 1994 ADL settled a civil suit brought by the City of San Francisco, and two years later settled a related suit brought by a dozen human-rights groups. In each case ADL promised to stop collecting confidential information illegally. In the current case, ADL asserts that it was doing nothing unlawful, although ADL’s regional director, Barbara Bergen, admitted in an interview that “there may have been instances” in which an ADL investigator “unknowingly” acted outside the law. Nevertheless, she said, ADL has not significantly changed its investigative practices.

It is these practices that the Court of Appeals found to be journalistic activity, a ruling that prompted ADL to file a motion asking the judge to dismiss the case for lack of evidence. McCloskey, however, is optimistic that the lawsuit will go forward. The ruling, he said, confirmed his right to future discovery and would enable him to take the case to trial. But whatever the courts finally decide, it won’t be easy to convince hundreds of Arab Americans, civil rights supporters, civil libertarians, and other activists that in collecting their confidential records ADL was only gathering news.