Indianaraktivisten og sosialisten Hunterbear www.hunterbear.org er sjølvsagt
ein del av trugsmålsbiletet for ADL, verdas leiande organisasjon når det
gjeld kamp mot antisemittisme. Hans vesle notat om tilhøvet mellom ADL og
FBI er instruktivt og lærerikt.
Hans Olav Brendberg, Hitra
Note by Hunterbear:
The fact that the Anti-Defamation League is working very conspicuously with
the FBI -- and at a point where FBI is functioning in a more openly [I say
openly] repressive fashion than it has in decades [FBI, of course, has
always been repressive as hell], should come as absolutely no surprise to
anyone even generally familiar with the civil liberties turf in the United
States. ADL has been doing this as long as I, at least, can remember --
and
one of its traditional areas of concern has always been everything from
militant liberalism into and across the Left spectrum [with the exception
of
right-wing "social democrats."]
About ten years or so ago, the now very well established and broad-based
and
always quite circumspect American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, then
spearheaded by former US Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota [married
to a Rosebud Sioux and a major figure in Indian rights], released documents
that had been secretly issued by ADL: its so-called list of "subversive
organizations" which numbered into the hundreds -- and included, among
others, not only the various racist and anti-Semitic hate groups -- BUT
also
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, all sorts of Native American
and Chicano and Black and Asian rights organizations, virtually everything
on the Left, labor unions, liberal outfits, Islamic groups, social
justice-oriented Christian church organizations -- and on and on and on.
All of this was in the context of ADL working covertly with various police
organizations and operations.
My own experiences with ADL were many, many years ago and relatively
minimal -- but not friendly. In the Southern Movement days, ADL was
working
with the right-wing Jay Lovestone elements in AFL-CIO [mostly on the AFL
end
of it] to "track" and hunt alleged "subversives" in the Civil Rights
Movement -- with an especial focus on SNCC and SCEF [I was the SCEF Field
Organizer.] On the other hand, its influence in the hard-core South was
essentially nil and its sabotaging thrusts occurred mostly in the North,
East, and West Coast regions.
In the late Fall, 1963, veteran activist Miss Ella J. Baker [Advisor to
SNCC, Consultant to SCEF -- and an old and dear friend always] and I [as
SCEF Organizer] spent a few hard-traveling and very demanding weeks on a
speaking tour in the North and West, building support for the Civil Rights
Bill [to become the 1964 CR Act] and for the Movement generally. This
trip -- focused on church and labor and academic groups -- went extremely
well.
A year later -- late in 1964 -- I did a shorter solo run which was mostly
in
the Western Mountain states. By this time, the old national solidarity
behind the Southern Movement was beginning to crack: many northern
liberals
were "tired" and wanted to feel that the passage of the '64 CR Act was the
apex, various ideological divisions within the Movement were becoming more
and more publicly apparent, war clouds in Southeast Asia were very visible,
there had been several Northern ghetto upheavals, the integrationist /
separatist debates were obviously incipient, a plethora of New Left outfits
had emerged -- many healthy, and some not so. In addition, FBI COINTELPRO
was in full swing.
That late 1964 speaking trip of mine in the West, focused mostly on labor
and academic sectors, was quite successful -- very large turnouts -- but
there were occasionally turbulent dimensions. John Birchers and Young
Americans for Freedom et al were traditional, frequent and noisy nuisances.
Now and then, there were very ultra-Left thrusts which may well have been
in
actuality COINTELPRO.
But, in at least one setting, ADL was definitely involved as a would-be
sabotaging force.
That was at Colorado State, Greeley, where my host was an internationally
known educator and where most of the people who came to hear me were
faculty, labor officials, and Chicano and Black civil rights activists. No
visible problems -- but I was told that one faculty person at Greeley, who
did not come to the meeting, had advised everyone in advance that I and
SCEF
were very "suspect" and "probably Communists" and he cited information
he'd
gotten from the ADL regional office at Denver. No one listened to him and
the meeting at Greeley and environs was an excellent one.
My next engagement was at Denver and, as soon as I got there, I went to the
ADL Regional Office and raised High Hell with its director [while grinning
junior staff, out of his sight, and in my general age range,
enthusiastically signaled me to lay it on him.] For his part, he beat a
very hasty retreat indeed, blamed the Greeley prof for everything, and
apologized profusely. I had brought with me on this trip a great deal of
United Klans and other Klan-type White supremacist material from the Deep
Dixie setting in which I was deeply involved -- and I left some of that
with
them. Although I invited him, he did not come to my large Denver meeting
which had many officials from the Mine-Mill and OCAW international offices,
other labor people, Native Americans, many academics and students, and a
large number of Black and Chicano activists. There, a very weird and
ostensibly far, far Left threesome tried to disrupt things -- but got
nowhere.
So my own experiences with ADL have been neither extensive nor friendly.
Still, the Colorado thing was certainly revealing -- and the ADL
connections
with the Lovestone finks in AFL-CIO were also becoming more and more
apparent to many of us working in the Southern battlefields. Decades
later,
when I saw, via American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the massive
ADL
"subversive list," I was certainly not surprised at all.
Nor am I at all surprised now to see ADL cooperating so openly and
congenially with FBI -- in the blank-check name, of course, of "national
security."
Hunter Gray [ Hunterbear ]
====================================Law Enforcement From Across The U.S. Participate In Joint ADL-FBI
Conference
On Terrorism
Anti-Defamation League
6/6/02 staff
More than 500 representatives of federal, state and local law enforcement
agencies were briefed on extremist and terrorist threats during a daylong
conference co-sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.
The May 31 program, held at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA, was an
outgrowth of ADL's longtime involvement in providing information and
training to law enforcement on threats posed by extremists. The conference,
"Extremist and Terrorist Threats: Protecting America After 9/11" included
presentations from ADL, FBI and other nationally recognized experts on
extremist groups, investigative techniques, counterterrorism strategies,
domestic security and threat assessment.
"Now more than ever, law enforcement must have the resources and know-how
to
prevent future acts of terrorism," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National
Director. "In order to assess threats against the United States, law
enforcement must have credible information about domestic and foreign
extremists whose rhetoric promotes violence. Through our network of
regional
offices and our experts in the field, ADL is uniquely suited to aid in the
war against terrorism. This conference was an opportunity for law
enforcement and extremism watchdogs to compare notes and forge alliances."
The conference brought together representatives of federal, state and local
law enforcement from every region of the U.S., and included participants in
the FBI National Academy, ADL regional directors, area counsels and
investigative researchers.
The program featured opening remarks from Mr. Foxman and Dr. Kathleen L.
McChesney, the FBI's Executive Assistant Director for Law Enforcement
Services. The plenary session, "Right and Left, Domestic and Foreign: An
Overview of Extremist and Terrorist Movements and Groups," featured
presentations from Dr. Bruce Hoffman, Director of the Washington office of
The Rand Corporation; Greg Comcowich, Intelligence Research Specialist in
the FBI's Counterterrorism Division; and Mark Pitcavage, ADL Director of
Fact Finding.
James T. Caruso, the FBI's Deputy Executive Assistant Director for
Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, delivered the keynote address.
Five concurrent workshops focused on Threat Assessment on the State and
Local Level; Strategies for Police-Community Cooperation to Combat
Extremism
and Terrorism; The Changing Role of Law Enforcement: Policy, People and
Technology; Inside the Minds of Terrorists and Extremists; and New
Partnerships: Law Enforcement, the Military and Non-Governmental
Organizations. Among the presenters were police chiefs from Arlington, VA,
Irvine, CA, and Spokane, WA; and officials from the U.S. Army Criminal
Investigation Command; the U.S. Army War College, the International
Association of Chiefs of Police, and ADL and FBI professionals.
David Friedman, Director of ADL's Washington, D.C. Regional Office, and
Louis Quijas, Assistant Director for the FBI's Office of Law Enforcement
Coordination, delivered closing remarks.
EDITORS NOTE: Additional information on extremist groups and ideologies,
and
the League's partnerships with law enforcement agencies across the country,
is available at ADL's online Law Enforcement Agency Resource Network, at
www.adl.org/LEARN.
The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading
organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that
counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.
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