Send resultatet til PM Johansen eller Magnus M
Meld frå til KK-forum om du kan gjera dette, slik at vi unngår dobbeltarbeid.
Helsing
Magnus E. Marsdal
KLASSEKAMPEN
-----
_________________________________________________________________
THE `PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP':
"Counterterrorism," Right-Wing Spy Networks and the ADL
_________________________________________________________________
By Tom Burghardt
Editor, Antifa Info-Bulletin
Æaccompanying article to "Cops and LAM Go Hand in Hand:
The Nature of the World Anti-Fascist League"Å
*
What do ACT-UP, the African National Congress, Anti-Racist
Action, the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights, Casa
El Salvador, CISPES, the Council of Arab-American Organizations,
Global Exchange, ILWU Local 6, the Jewish Committee on the Middle
East, the NAACP, the _S.F. Bay Guardian_ and the Spartacist
League all have in common?Æ1Å
Like hundreds of other radical and progressive groups, labor
unions, alternative news services, and an estimated 100,000 Bay
Area residents, they were targets of illegal covert spy
operations carried out by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith (ADL) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).Æ2Å
A political firestorm erupted in San Francisco last January
when the FBI proposed that the S.F. Police Department join a "Bay
Area Counterterrorism Task Force," designed to "investigate
individuals and groups suspected of domestic or international
terrorism," according to a copy of the FBI's proposal.Æ3Å
Though doomed in advance due to opposition from human rights
organizations, immigrant rights groups, civil libertarians, Mayor
Willie Brown and members of the Police Commission, the task force
would have operated under federal guidelines that preclude
civilian oversight, implemented in the wake of the ADL's 1993 spy
scandal.
With an annual budget of more than $34 million, the ADL is
anything but your average "civil rights" organization. For more
than 50 years, the group has routinely compiled dossiers on
"extremist hate groups" and admits to supplying reports to law
enforcement agencies including the FBI. Roy Bullock, a San
Francisco art dealer and S.F. police officer, Tom Gerard, a CIA
"contract employee," ran a "private" version of the FBI's
COINTELPRO operations against Arab-American, Black, Chicano,
feminist, labor, left, progressive and religious organizations
between 1985-1993.Æ4Å
Bullock, described by _Covert Action Quarterly_ and the _San
Francisco Examiner_ as a "paid FBI informant" since 1957Æ5Å and
Gerard, a CIA "bomb expert" who disclosed details of illegal CIA
support for Latin American death squads, peddled information on
progressive political activists to the governments of Israel, El
Salvador and South Africa.Æ6Å
Though ADL attorney, Barbara Wahl, tried to distance the
group from Bullock/Gerard's illegal spy operations, asserting
that Bullock was an "independent contractor," subsequent
investigations revealed that "many of the files seized from
Bullock's home turned out to be the same as those in the ADL
offices."Æ7Å Indeed, the spy network to which Bullock and Gerard
belonged is headquartered in the ADL's New York office under the
organization's director of "fact-finding," Irwin Suall and his
deputy, Thomas Halpern.Æ8Å
After a 24-month stint as a contract employee in El
Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, Gerard returned to his former
job at the SFPD and was assigned to the Intelligence Division in
August 1985. Shortly thereafter, Central America solidarity
activists and religious groups working with refugees displaced by
the Reagan administration's covert war, began to notice an
upsurge in office break-ins and surveillance activities.Æ9Å
A prime target for the ADL's spymasters was CISPES - the
Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. This was
hardly surprising since the organization was the prime target of
an FBI "active measures" campaign that included resource
mobilization by 52 FBI field offices throughout the country.Æ10Å
Ominously, refugee groups including Casa El Salvador began to
suspect they were under surveillance. A string of office break-
ins confirmed their suspicions.Æ11Å
By July 1987, after refugee activist Yanira Correa was
kidnapped and threatened by Salvadoran death squad affiliates in
Los Angeles, representatives of refugee and solidarity groups met
to compare notes. They discovered there had been some 23
incidents of office and car break-ins since 1985. Gerard later
bragged to another cop that he had the Casa El Salvador mailing
list.Æ12Å
When the ADL spy scandal broke in 1993, SFPD investigators
recovered materials from Gerard confirming the suspicions of
solidarity activists that they had been the target of an
extensive surveillance/infiltration operations and that the
information had been passed to security agencies of the
Salvadoran death squad state. In a gym bag seized from Gerard,
authorities discovered CIA interrogation manuals, a top secret
cable from the U.S. embassy in El Salvador to the CIA's Langley,
Virginia headquarters. The chilling title of one document,
"Biodata of Nominees to be Trained in Human Resource Exploitation
(Interrogation) Course" -- a CIA interrogation manual -- is
evidence that the ADL's "public-private partnership" with
repressive government agencies was hardly the "benign" operation
that ADL officials claim. The FBI seized all of Gerard's
documents, including a loose-leaf binder filled with pictures of
hooded Salvadoran interrogation suspects; these materials have
since disappeared.Æ13Å
If the FBI's proposed counterterrorism task force had won
the approval of San Francisco officials, the ADL's "public-
private partnership" could have become a permanent, and legal,
feature of the Bay Area's political landscape. Under broad
federal guidelines, the San Francisco Police Department could
have been drawn into preliminary investigations of lawful
political and religious activity even if there is no "reasonable
indication" of a crime.
Sound like a license for a "fishing expedition" against
organizations opposed to U.S. policy? It is. Under current
federal law, the State Department can unilaterally declare a
foreign group a "terrorist organization", prosecute political
supporters in the U.S., seize their assets and imprison them for
up to 10 years, even if there is no evidence of illegal
activities.
If federal snoops had possessed such broad statutory powers
during the 1980s, supporters of the African National Congress,
the Salvadoran FMLN and the Palestine Liberation Organization
could have been imprisoned, deported or both. Given the FBI's
documented history of illegal operations (including the
employment of far-right "assets" and _agents provocateurs_ from
the Lyndon LaRouche organization and the Unification Church
network of South Korean clerical-fascist, Sun Myung Moon -- and
the ADL)Æ14Å -- will North American supporters of the Mexican
Zapatistas, the Peruvian MRTA or the Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK), find themselves the recipients of an FBI "active measures"
campaign that could land them in a federal prison?
Far from being a progressive organization, the Anti-
Defamation League of B'nai B'rith is a right-wing spy outfit
masquerading as a "public policy research and civil rights
organization."
According to progressive researchers, the ADL systematically
cooperated with right-wing spymaster John Rees and his allies.
Rees, the publisher of _Intelligence Digest_, and his associates
were caught computerizing files on leftists stolen from the LA
police. Additional information taken from files pilfered from
leftist groups was published in Rees' secret newsletter and sent
to clients ranging from the New York State Police to the FBI to
the John Birch Society.Æ15Å Hardly the milieu normally associated
with a civil rights group!
Instead of defending the interests of the Jewish people
against attacks from neo-Nazis, fascists and other anti-Semites,
the ADL aided and abetted the same U.S. governmental "national
security" apparatus that employed Klaus Barbie and other Nazi war
criminals during the Cold War. Unfortunately, the Bullock/Gerard
scandal was not a new development for the ADL.
The first documented involvement by the ADL in the service
of state repression was in 1947 when anticommunist "red hunters"
began a broad purge of "subversives." Hearings before the House
Subcommittee on Expenditures in the Executive Department were
investigating the Civil Service Commission's authority to compile
an "investigators' lead file" containing "facts, rumor and gossip
bearing upon the views, opinions and acts of individuals who were
neither federal employees nor applicants for positions coming
under the jurisdiction of the Civil Service Commission." The
result, according to subcommittee chair, Clare E. Hoffman (R-
Mich), would be "a most admirable smear list" based on "hearsay."
According to Hoffman, much of the information on alleged
subversives was the American Jewish Committee and the ADL.Æ16Å
This however, would not be the last instance that the group aided
the state's continuing war against "subversion."
During the 1980s, the ADL, a staunch ally of the Reagan
administration's _holy war_ against the Sandinistas, manufactured
a grotesque smear campaign which alleged that the FSLN government
in Managua were persecuting Jews.Æ17Å
Despite contrary testimony by a Latin American Rabbi who was
a leader in the struggle against the Argentine neo-Nazi generals,
a Panamanian Rabbi honored by the Latin American Jewish Congress
for his human rights work and Human Rights Watch, the ADL
insisted the Sandinistas were "anti-Semitic."Æ18Å The "evidence"?
Assets seized from Somoza supporters by the victorious
Sandinistas included the property of a prominent Somacista who
happened to be Jewish!
The Jewish Student Press Service smelled a rat and reported
that the ADL had "approached Presidential advisers with the idea
of a deal" in an effort "to gain clout with the Reagan White
House." The ADL's proposal was accepted by the Administration.
Why shouldn't they since they viewed the smear campaign against
the FSLN as a way "to get the Jewish community to join the
bandwagon" to enlist public support for the CIA's terrorist,
dope-running Contra army. Predictably, the "mainstream" media
trumpeted these fraudulent charges.Æ19Å
However, when Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a darling of
the Reagan administration and an avid supporter of the Contras
preached in Managua in 1984:
The leaders of Israel...mistreated the prophets, beat them,
killed them. Finally as supreme proof of his love, God sent
his divine Son, but they...also killed him, crucifying
him...The Jews killed the prophets and finally the Son of
God...Such idolatry calls forth the sky's vengeance.Æ20Å
Not a peep was heard. One would expect that this vile piece
of anti-Semitic propaganda, a staple of Jew-baiters across the
centuries would be denounced by the self-appointed defenders of
the Jewish people. However, the ADL did not pursue the matter.
Indeed, the organization issued a 1986 "White Paper" reiterating
their spurious allegations against the FSLN.Æ21Å
While the ADL did denounce systematic anti-Semitic terror
carried out in Argentina by the fascist generals during the
period of the "dirty war" (1976-1983), the group offered no
criticism whatsoever of extensive Israeli arms sales, including
the sale of advanced Lavi and Kfir fighter aircraft to the
neofascist murderers who persecuted Jews, bombed synagogues and
seized Jewish assets. This too, fit a predictable pattern of
complicity with repressive states throughout the region. When the
Israeli's sold Guatemalan state terrorists an advanced computer
system which would allow them to monitor, arrest, torture and
"disappear" dissidents, only profound _silence_ emanated from the
ersatz "civil rights" organization.Æ22Å Indeed, any criticism of
imperialism's "strategic asset" Israel was denounced by the ADL
as "proof" of anti-Semitism!
This was a motif that the ADL would duplicate in its
dealings with the racist South African apartheid state. While
denouncing alleged African National Congress "anti-Semitism," (a
charge made by South African "dirty war" asset Mangosuthu
Buthelezi, the leader of the death-squad/Special Branch-linked
Inkatha Freedom Party), the ADL covered-up the military alliance
forged by Israel and the racist South African state, including
Israeli assistance to South Africa to construct and detonate a
nuclear bomb. Is it any wonder that Bullock and Gerard in their
capacity as ADL assets peddled information on anti-apartheid
activists to South African military intelligence.Æ23Å
Updating their repressive agenda for the 1990s B'nai B'rith
Canada hosted an "International Symposium on Hate on the
Internet" in September 1997. Meeting in Toronto, the symposium
featured "closed sessions" for police intelligence units and
lectures by international intelligence "experts." One guest
speaker, Sigurd Werner, is the Criminal Director of the State
Police in Wurttemberg, Germany. Given the German state's on-going
initiatives to criminalize militant antifascists such as the
radical Autonome Antifa (M), it doesn't take a rocket scientist
to surmise that the criminalization of militant antifascism is
high on the ADL's agenda.
The "public-private partnership" among intelligence agencies
and right-wing spy outfits such as the ADL will undoubtedly
continue. As "counterterrorism" and the racist "war on drugs"
replace "anticommunism" as the lever for enacting repressive
legislation in the United States and persecuting public policy
opponents, the best defense against such moves are public
exposure, broad educational campaigns about the nature of police
spying and mass mobilizations against all threats to civil
liberties, regardless of the source.
ENDNOTES
1. Abdeen Jabara, "The Anti-Defamation League: Civil Rights
and Wrongs," _Covert Action Quarterly_, Washington, D.C.,
Number 45, Summer 1993
2. Dennis Opatrny and Scott Winokur, "S.F. Spying Details Laid
Bare," _San Francisco Examiner_, April 11, 1993; Scott
Winokur, "ADL Denies Spying for Foreign Governments," _San
Francisco Examiner_, April 15, 1993
3. Seth Rosenfeld, "FBI Wants S.F. Cops to Join Spy Squad:
Bureau urges City participation in anti-terror group without
civilian oversight," _San Francisco Examiner_, January 12,
1997; Susan Sward, "S.F. Police Panel Puts Off FBI
Proposal," _San Francisco Chronicle_, January 16, 1997
4. Jabara, op. cit.
5. ibid.
6. Bob Drogin, "Ex-Spy Threatens CIA Scandal," _Los Angeles
Times_, April 27, 1993
7. Richard Paddock and Kenneth Reich, "ADL Officials Deny They
Condoned Illegal Spying," _Los Angeles Times_, April 17,
1993; Jabara, op. cit.
8. Jabara, op. cit.
9. Ross Gelbspan, _Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI: The
Covert War Against the Central America Movement_, 1991,
Boston, South End Press, multiple citations
10. John Ross, "Smoking Gun? Tom Gerard, Death Squads and the
Banality of Evil," Anderson Valley Advertiser, May 19, 1993
11. ibid.
12. ibid.
13. ibid.
14. Gelbspan, op. cit.
15. ibid.
16. Jabara, op. cit.
17. Noam Chomsky, Turning The Tide: U.S. Intervention in
Central American and the Struggle for Peace, 1985, South End
Press, Boston, pp. 77-78, 268
18. ibid.
19. ibid.
20. Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and
Central America, 1987, Boston, South End Press, pp. 169-178
21. ibid.
22. ibid.
23. Ross, op. cit.
* * *
SUPPORT AFF - SUBSCRIBE TO `ANTIFA FORUM' TODAY!
Anti-Fascist Forum is not a state-funded project. It relies
solely on its own resources and supporters. Subscribe to
Antifa Forum or become a supporter today!
4-issue subscription to Antifa Forum:
$25 (North America); $30 (Overseas); $50 (Institutions)
Bulk orders of Antifa Forum:
$35 for 10 copies (postage included)
Supporter subscription:
4-issues plus addition to the AFF mailing list
$40 (North America); $45 (Overseas)
* * * * *
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN (AFIB)
750 La Playa # 730
San Francisco, California 94121
E-Mail: tburghardt@igc.org
*
On PeaceNet visit ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN on pol.right.antifa
or by gopher --> gopher://gopher.igc.apc.org:7021/11/europe
Via the Web --> http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff/afib.html
*
ANTI-FASCIST FORUM (AFF)
Antifa Info-Bulletin is a member of the Anti-Fascist Forum
network. AFF is an info-group which collects and
disseminates information, research and analysis on fascist
activity and anti-fascist resistance. More info:
E-mail: aff@burn.ucsd.edu
Web: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~aff
+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+
+: A N T I F A I N F O - B U L L E T I N +:
:+ :+
+: NEWS * ANALYSIS * RESEARCH * ACTION +:
:+ :+
+: RESISTING FASCISM * BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY! +:
+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+:+
++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
++++ if you agree copy these 3 sentences in your own sig ++++
++++ see: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm ++++