
Date: 04-12-93 (16:41)              Number: 4128 of 4140
  To: ALL                           Refer#: NONE
From: YIGAL ARENS                     Read: (N/A)
Subj:  ADL spying case              Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE
Conf: NEWSWIRE (5)               Read Type: GENERAL

Path: uupsi!psinntp!uunet!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!news.isi.edu!not-fol
From: arens@isd12.isi.edu (Yigal Arens)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.jewish
Subject: ADL spying case
Date: 10 Apr 1993 21:19:45 -0700
Message-ID: <1q8691$c91@isd12.isi.edu>

From LA Times, Friday, April 9, 1993.  P. A1.

EVIDENCE OF ADL SPY OPERATION SEIZED BY POLICE

By Richard C. Paddock, Times staff writer

SAN FRANCISCO -- Police on Thursday served search warrants on the
Anti-Defamation League here and in Los Angeles, seizing evidence of a
nationwide intelligence network accused of keeping files on more than
950 political groups, newspapers and labor unions and as many as
12,000 people.

Describing the spy operation in great detail, San Francisco
authorities simultaneously released voluminous documents telling how
operatives of the Anti-Defamation League searched through trash and
infiltrated organizations to gather intelligence on Arab-American,
right-wing and what they called "pinko" organizations.

Representatives of the Anti-Defamation League, a well-known
organization in the U.S. Jewish community dedicated to fighting
anti-Semitism, declined detailed comment Thursday but denied breaking
any laws.

Police allege that the organization maintains undercover operatives to
gather political intelligence in at least seven cities, including Los
Angeles and San Francisco.

Groups that were the focus of the spy operation span the political
spectrum, including such groups as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Aryan
Resistance, Operation Rescue, Greenpeace, the National Assn. for the
Advancement of Colored People, the United Farm Workers and the Jewish
Defense League.  Also on the list were Mills College, the board of
directors of San Francisco public television station KQED and the San
Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper.

People who were subjects of the spy operation included former
Republican Rep. Pete McCloskey, jailed political extremist Lyndon H.
LaRouche and Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent Scott Kraft, who
is based in South Africa.

Authorities said much of the material collected by the groups was
confidential information obtained illegally from law enforcement
agencies.  They also alleged that data on some individuals and
organizations was sold separately to the South African government.

In addition to allegations of obtaining confidential information from
police, the Anti-Defamation League could face a total of 48 felony
counts for not properly reporting the employment of its chief West
Coast spy, Roy Bullock, according to the affidavit filed to justify
the search warrant.

The Anti-Defamation League disguised payments to Bullock for more than
25 years by funneling $550 a week to Beverly Hills attorney Bruce I.
Hochman, who then paid Bullock, according to the documents released in
San Francisco.  Hochman, a former president of the Jewish Federation
Council of Greater Los Angeles and one of the state's leading tax
attorneys, will be out of the city until late next week and could not
be reached for comment, his office said.

Until 1990, Hochman, a former U.S. prosecutor, also was a member of a
panel appointed by then-Sen. Pete Wilson to secretly make initial
recommendations on new federal judges in California.  Hochman is a
former regional president of the Anti-Defamation League.

The league, which initially cooperated with police, has denied
repeatedly that its intelligence-gathering operation broke any laws.
League officials will not confirm or deny whether Bullock was an
employee and have said they simply traded information with police
departments about people who might be involved in hate crimes.

But in an affidavit filed to obtain warrants for Thursday's searches,
San Francisco police alleged that "ADL employees were apparently less
than truthful" in providing information during an earlier search
conducted without a warrant.

David Lehrer, executive director of the Los Angeles ADL office, said
the organization has not violated the law.  "There is nothing
nefarious about how we operate or what we have done," he said.  "Our
record speaks for itself."

The police affidavit contends that Lehrer had sole control of a secret
fund used to pay for "fact-finding operations."  Lehrer, according to
the documents, signed checks from the account under the name L.
Patterson.

An ADL official said the account was used to pay for subscriptions to
a wide variety of extremist publications that might balk at sending
them directly to the Anti-Defamation League.

Bullock, 58, who has been collecting intelligence for the ADL for
nearly 40 years, defended his efforts during a lengthy interview with
San Francisco police.  He said that he gathered names from many


Date: 04-12-93 (16:41)              Number: 4129 of 4140
  To: ALL                           Refer#: NONE
From: YIGAL ARENS                     Read: (N/A)
Subj:  ADL spying case              Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE
Conf: NEWSWIRE (5)               Read Type: GENERAL

"And it doesn't mean anything that they're in the files.  It's not a
threat to anyone's civil rights that a name appears in my files under,
say, 'Pinko.'"

In recent years, Bullock worked closely with San Francisco Police
Officer Tom Gerard, who fled to the Phillippines last fall after he
was questioned by the FBI in the case.

A former CIA employee, Gerard supplied Bullock with criminal records
and Department of Motor Vehicles information such as home addresses,
vehicle registration, physical characteristics and drivers license
photographs.

Using files gathered for the Anti-Defamation League, Gerard and
Bullock also provided information to the South African government,
receiving $16,000 over four years, the documents show.

The file on Times staff writer Kraft, which was apparently sold to the
South African government, provides some insight into the hit-and-miss
nature of the spy operation.

The file notes that Kraft's articles "appear frequently in The Times
and are well researched and written," but little else about the file
is accurate.  The brief entry confuses The Times' Kraft with another
Scott Kraft and provides the South African government with the wrong
Kraft's physical description, photograph and other personal
information.

Nevertheless, the documents provide illuminating details of how
Bullock for decades infiltrated all manner of organizations, from
skinheads to left-wing radicals, searching regularly through the trash
of target groups.  Using Anti-Defamation League funds, he also ran his
own paid informants under code names such as "Scott" and "Scumbag."

He worked closely with police officers up and down the coast,
exchanged information with the FBI and worked with federal agencies,
including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

It was Bullock's work as a paid informant for the FBI -- while spying
on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League and the South African
government -- that proved his undoing. The FBI learned that he was an
agent of a foreign government and began investigating, leading to the
probe of the Anti-Defamation League's intelligence network.  The
Anti-Defamation League employed undercover operatives to gather
information in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington,
Chicago, St. Louis and Atlanta, according to the affidavit and
investigators.  Joining San Francisco police in searching league
offices and a Los Angeles bank were investigators from the office of
San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith and thestate Franchise Tax
Board.  The Los Angeles Police Department, which earlier refused to
cooperate with the investigation, was informed of the searches in Los
Angeles but not invited to participate.  Investigators suspect that
some confidential information in the Anti-Defamation League files may
have come from Los Angeles police officers.



From Los Angeles Times, Saturday, April 10, 1993.  P. A23.

ADL VOWS TO COOPERATE WITH SPY INVESTIGATION

By Richard C. Paddock, Times staff writer.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Anti-Defamation League defended its record as a
civil rights group Friday and said it will cooperate with authorities
who are investigating whether the organization collected confidential
police information on citizens and groups.

But San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith said that Anti-Defamation
League employees involved in intelligence gathering could face many
felony counts of receiving confidential files, eavesdropping, tax
violations and conspiracy.

Police have accused the Anti-Defamation League of not being truthful
about its spying operations, which collected information on more than
12,000 individuals and 950 political groups across the political
spectrum.

Hundreds of pages of documents released by prosecutors Thursday show
that the ADL maintained a nationwide intelligence network and kept
files on political figures.

Even so, Smith suggested that if the Anti-Defamation League shut down
its spy operation, prosecutors would take that into account when
deciding what charges to file.

In a statement released in Washington, National Director Abraham H.
Foxman described the ADL as "a Jewish defense agency which has fought
to protect all minorities from bigotry and discrimination for 80
years."

Foxman said the organization is regarded as a credible source on
extremist groups and has a tradition of routinely providing
information to police, journalists, academics, government officials
and the public.  It has never been the policy of the ADL to obtain
information illegally, he said.

"Like other journalists, in order to protect the confidentiality and
physical safety of its sources, ADL will not comment on the nature or
(continued next message....)

Date: 04-12-93 (16:41)              Number: 4130 of 4140
  To: ALL                           Refer#: NONE
From: YIGAL ARENS                     Read: (N/A)
Subj:  ADL spying case              Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE
Conf: NEWSWIRE (5)               Read Type: GENERAL

distanced from ADL," Hochman told a San Francisco police investigator.
Hochman could not be reached Friday at his home or office for comment.

Despite the Anti-Defamation League's assertion that it will cooperate
with authorities, San Francisco police said the group did not turn
over all pertinent documents during a voluntary search of the group's
offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco last fall.

A second round of searches Thursday, this time with search warrants,
produced a vast quantity of records, primarily dealing with financial
transactions, Smith said.  Further searches may be necessary and it
will be at least a month before any charges are filed, he said.

"The investigation, of course, will go wherever the facts lead us,"
the district attorney said.
--
Yigal Arens
USC/ISI                                                TV made me do it!
arens@isi.edu
