Unions
among hundreds of groups spied on by ADL
Informant 
ADL National Director Abraham H Foxman
(right)
Jeffrey Blankfort Middle East Labor
Bulletin Vol 4. No. 3 Fall 1993 - Question:
"What was the purpose of keeping
all
those names,
Cal?
- Answer:
"What was the purpose? I was an
investigator for the ADL. I
investigated any and all
anti-democratic movements.
- Question:
"And these investigations that you were
doing, were they all in behalf of the
ADL?
- Answer:
"They were all in behalf of the ADL."
- (From deposition of
Roy "Cal" Bullock, interviewed by San
Francisco Police inspector Ron Roth,
January 25. (Pp. 138 and
139)
-
ROY "CAL" BULLOCK has been on the
"unofficial" payroll of the
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith for
nearly 40 years and as recently as July
19, 1992*, was described by its New
York-based chief spymaster, Irwin
Suall, as "our Number One
investigator." Bullock, as of 1992, was receiving
close to $25,000 annually for
monitoring
what Bullock and the ADL apparently
considered to be "anti-democratic"
organizations and individuals. The numbers
of the former stretched into the hundreds
and the names of individuals he had in his
computer went well beyond 10,000,
according to 700 pages of documents
released in April by San Francisco
District Attorney Arlo Smith. While Bullock monitored and at times
infiltrated neo-Nazi and skinhead groups,
his and the ADL's main concerns were
organizations and individuals considered
threats or potential threats to Israel.
These seemed to include not only the more
obvious targets, Palestinians and
Arab-Americans and their support groups,
but organizations representing virtually
every segment of the progressive social,
legal and political spectrum, with a
special emphasis on those opposing
apartheid. Under a separate "Arab" category he
kept 77 files on 58 Arab- American
organizations; among 647 groups described
as "pinko," multiple files were maintained
on the African National Congress and 47
other anti-apartheid organizations, both
here and South Africa-based. His
surveillance of the latter reflected the
ADL's desire, as part of Israel's
"unofficial" U.S. propaganda arm, to
neutralize critics of Israel's military
and economic ties to the apartheid state,
an effort, which, the records show, was
largely successful. This eventually led him to do similar
spying for the South African intelligence
service together with his buddy, now
retired San Francisco police inspector
Tom Gerard who kept his own set of
files (which is more than just a
departmental no-no and has him already
indicted and facing a possible
conviction). Among the hundreds of others groups
spied upon were such diverse organizations
as the NAACP, the National Indian Treaty
Council, Greenpeace, the
Japanese-Americans Citizens League, the
Centro Legal de La Raza, the American
Civil Liberties Union, the Earth Island
Institute and the Harvey Milk Gay and
Lesbian Democratic Club. A half dozen
American Jewish and Israeli groups also
received his attention including the
Jerusalem-based Alternative Information
Center, Americans for Peace Now, Friends
of Yesh G'vul, the International Jewish
Peace Union and Israelis Against
Occupation. There were also files on 20 Bay Area
labor unions, plus the San Francisco
Central Labor Council, the Coalition of
Black Trade Unionists, the Boycott Shell
Committee, the Green Giant Frozen Food
Workers Committee and the San Francisco
Chapter of the Committee for Labor Union
Women. In alphabetical order, files were
maintained on: - AFSCME Local 3218
- AFT 151
- AFSCME Local 3506
- Carpenters Local 22
- NABET Local 51
- HERE Local 2
- IAM Local 565
- ILWU
- ILWU Local 6
- NALC Local 214
- OCAW
- OCAW 8149
- Plumbers & Fitters Local
93
- SEIU Local 535
- SEIU Local 616
- Teamster Local 921 (S.F. TDU),
- United Farm Workers and UTU Local
1730.
In addition, records were kept on - The Bay Area Network on Central
America
- The Portland Labor Committee on
Central America
- The Free South Africa Labor
Committee
- The Labor Committee on the Middle
East.
In Bullock's computer, all were labeled
"pinko," (which in his interview with SFPD
inspector Roth, he equated with "left
wing.") Robert Carl Miller, writing in
The Voice, (July/Aug. '93) the publication
of the spied-upon Letter Carriers Local
214, asked: "Why would the ADL, dedicated
to 'translating the country's democratic
ideals into a way of life for all
Americans," be wasting their time and
resources (an estimated 34 million dollars
a year) investigating all of the
above-named groups? Why was this spy
network interested in rooting out possible
anti-Semitism in the Boycott Shell
Committee but had no interest in any anti-
Semitism in the boardroom of Standard Oil?
Are the wealthy purer of heart than the
working class? The history of oil
companies is littered with anti-Semitism.
Henry Ford, not the UAW, was
supporter of Hitler. There were no
files listed for corporations with this
spy network." What information Bullock entered into
in his files will be secret, at least
until September 10th, thanks to an
accommodating San Francisco judge,
Henry Louie, who accepted the ADL's
version of reality -- that their files and
those of Bullock, who remains on the ADL
payroll, are their private property, as
well as protected by the First
Amendment. On a more ominous note, an announcement
by Smith in April that indictments would
be filed against Bullock and/or the ADL by
the middle of June, appears, at best, to
have been premature, and at worst,
projects the possibility that the massive
pressure being applied to stop the
investigation by the city's Jewish
establishment -- not only on the D.A.'s
office, but on the mayor and the chief of
police -- may result in a compromise that
would leave the ADL free of criminal
charges (see accompanying story on Page
32). A private class action suit has already
been filed by Attorney and former
Congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey,
himself a long-time victim of ADL
surveillance and disinformation,
representing, initially, 19 individuals
who believe they were victimized by the
ADL either for their public opposition to
Israeli policies and/or their opposition
to South African apartheid. The suit contends that the ADL violated
certain right to privacy laws that are
protected by the California civil code
which are designed to prevent private
institutions, such as the ADL, from
receiving and disseminating personal
information that is not publicly
available. TO REFRESH those who have not kept up
with a fast-breaking story that has now
slowed down to a crawl: in early December,
a recently retired San Francisco policeman
and former CIA operative in El Salvador,
Afghanistan, Algeria and Honduras, the
aforementioned Gerard, was accused by the
FBI (for whom he had also previously
worked) of being in possession of files on
anti-apartheid activists which he had
illegally obtained and was passing on to
South Africa. It was apparent, from an investigation
of Gerard's computer files,that he was
also, illegally, providing personal
information on individuals to the ADL. He
also had turned over to Bullock, hundreds
of San Francisco Police Department files
that the SFPD had been ordered to be
destroy following a previous investigation
of local police spying. They also found in a search of Gerard's
gym locker in February, a black
executioner's hood, photos of blindfolded
men, presumably El Salvadorans, 10
passports in different names, a CIA cable
marked "Secret," what were apparently CIA
interrogation manuals and over a 100 names
and phone numbers under the title,
"International Activities Division-Special
Activities Group," a who's who of the
CIA," Gerard told an L.A. Times reporter who
sought him out in the Philippines where he
had initially headed, one step ahead of
the authorities, and from where has since
returned and been indicted. All this was
proof, Gerard told the Times, (April 27)
that the CIA was directly involved in the
training and support of torturers and
death squads operating in El Salvador,
Honduras and Guatemala in the mid-80s. It turned out that Gerard had a
partner, a beefy, pathologically
anti-communist (of the Joe McCarthy
stripe) dealer in Asian art named Roy
Bullock, who had been a paid agent of
the ADL since 1954, and who, like Gerard,
had also been working for the South
African government as well as moonlighting
for the FBI.( In August, 1987, Bullock was
revealed to be an ADL agent after joining
LCOME; see MELB 4/2.) The ADL
predictably pleaded innocent and
attempted to distance itself from both
Gerard and Bullock, referring to the
latter as a "independent contractor."
To keep Bullock's undercover identity
intact, the ADL paid him through a
"cut-out," Bruce Hochman, a
Beverly Hills attorney who serves on
the organization's Southern California
Board. The ADL's alleged lack of knowledge of
Bullock's activities failed to convince
Yehuda Lev, associate editor of Los
Angeles's Jewish Journal (April 30). Lev
wrote: "I also have enough common
sense to know that a 40-year
relationship with a client and agent
should result in some knowledge, each
about the other. The official
explanation that Bullock was an
'independent contractor,' holds no
water. That may affect his Social
Security payments and tax deductibilty,
but an employee of a firm for more than
four decades is more than a free lance
researcher." Between 1985 and 1982, Hochman's checks
to Bullock totaled $169,375. His salary
for 1992 was $24,400. The ADL's failure to
his pay social security taxes and withhold
income tax are among the possible felonies
with which ADL may be charged. As late as February 25, the ADL was not
even willing to admit to many of its own
senior employees that Bullock was working
for "the firm." In a memorandum sent to
ADL Regional Directors on that date,
Jeffrey Sinensky, ADL's Director of
its Division on Civil Rights, and Ann
Tourk, its Director of Community
Service refer to "information
[that] was found in the possession
of an individual who is alleged to have a
relationship with ADL." The memo also attacked reports "falsely
implying that ADL worked covertly with Tom
Gerard to monitor Arab Americans." Similar
statements were included in a five-page
booklet, "Talking Points," which the
directors were advised to use in defusing
criticism from ADL's "allies" in the civil
rights field. In the memo and in statements to the
press, ADL officials denied any wrong
doing and kept repeating that they were
"cooperating" with law enforcement
agencies. It was soon clear, at least to
the San Francisco Police Department, that
they weren't. What the San
Francisco investigators found
remarkable was the refusal of the Los
Angeles Police Department, which
evidently had been heavily infiltrated
by the ADL, to assist the SFPD in the
investigation, a decision that was
shamelessly hailed by the B'nai B'rith
Messenger, the ADL mother
organization's weekly paper in Los
Angeles. (The Messenger also applauded
the New York Times for not reporting
the story.) The story took a major leap when the
SFPD and FBI staged multiple raids on ADL
offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles,
and found thousands of files on
individuals and organizations, some of
which the ADL had apparently "doctored" in
the meantime. Subsequently, some 718 pages of
documents and police and FBI interviews
with Bullock, David Gurvitz, a
former ADL operative in Los Angeles, a and
San Diego Police Officer, who had
collaborated with Bullock, were released
to the public by District Attorney Smith
along with the list of organizations spied
upon. They appeared to contain enough
information to file multiple charges
against the ADL and, at the very least,
seriously, threaten its tax-exempt
status. "We are talking about the use of
information from DMV files, criminal
files, and other confidential files,"
Smith told ABC News, "files from state and
local agencies that were being illegally
furnished and illegally received." His opinion was corroborated by SFPD
police inspector Ron Roth. "Based
on the evidence," Roth wrote in
summarizing his findings, "exhibits and
facts in this affidavit, I believe that
Roy Bullock and the ADL had numerous peace
officers supplying them with confidential
criminal and DMV information." He was not
just referring to San Francisco. Citing his interview with former ADL
employee Gurvitz, he learned of the
existence of "other [ADL]
code-named fact finders and field
investigators. In Chicago there is an
ex-police officer named CHI-3 (there are
also references to CHI-1 and CHI-2 who
apparently are not policemen.) In St.
Louis there is IRONSIDES-I. In Atlanta
there is an Arab speaking man named
FLIPPER." Roth was unable to locate any files on
the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee (ADC) in ADL's San Francisco
office. Gurvitz explained that there were
many files on the ADC in the ADL's Los
Angeles office, along with the names of
"any Arab American with anti-Israel
leanings or any Arab Americans that wrote
letters to the newspaper editors." He also volunteered the information
that Bullock's home computer was "the
repository of the fact finding information
for the San Francisco ADL office." Roth estimated "after numerous
interview and analysis of the documents
seized in eight searches," that "inquiries
were made to DMV vehicle registration and
driver's license numbers of members listed
at a ration of approximately 10-15% of the
total [ADC] membership." One of Gerard's assignments with the
police was to act as liaison to the Arab
community, which "required" that he attend
community events, giving him the necessary
cover to join Bullock in recording the
vehicle licenses of those attending. Some
of Bullock's responses to inquiries by
Roth and the FBI were truly
extraordinary. One of the
individuals he was keeping tabs on was
Alex Odeh, the head of the ADC
office in Orange County, who was
murdered in 1987 by a bomb in his
office, believed to have been planted
by the Jewish Defense League. "I happened to know Alex Odeh, a very
nice, decent, humane guy," Bullock told
Roth. "In fact, I missed going to the
office by one day: I might have been there
to open the door instead of him because he
allowed me to go into the office if I was
down there; just by sheer coincidence it
wasn't me." Bullock's expressed reason for spying
on the anti-apartheid movement appeared
even more disingenuous: "Because," read
the FBI report of its interview with him,
"he wanted to help South Africa make a
better assessment of the anti-apartheid
situation in the United States. Bullock
said he hoped that by doing this he would
encourage the Government of South Africa
to bring it to an end." It should be noted
that Bullock made this statement after
learning that a document was found in his
computer, addressed to his South African
contact, warning him that he (Bullock) had
been questioned by the FBI concerning S.A.
agents in the area. A more honest reason for the ADL's
snooping on the movement was forthcoming
from ADL's national director, Abe Foxman,
on a sweep through the Bay Area in
May. "People are very upset about the
[files on the] ANC," he agrees.
"At the time we exposed the ANC, they were
communist. They were violent, they were
antisemitic, they were pro-PLO and they
were anti-Israel. You're going to tell me
I don't have the legitimacy to find out
who they were consorting with, who their
buddies are, who supports them." (Northern
California Jewish Bulletin, May 7). In May, 1986, the ADL Bulletin featured
a cover story bashing the ANC. The
article, co-authored by its then national
director, Nathan Perlmutter,
suggested that the organization "so
frequently discussed as an alternative to
the Botha government, merits a
close, unsentimental look. The question
can be fairly asked, what has all this to
do with Jews?" After favorably quoting an author who
reported that "P.W. Botha has been
dismantling apartheid by stealth," the
article let loose with a litany of charges
that focused mainly on the ANC's siding
with the Palestinians, beginning with its
support of "Soviet attempts to undermine
the legitimacy of Israel," its "strident"
support of the PLO; its denunciation of
"Israel's aggressive expansionism"
supported by the U.S. and its allies' and
its linkage of zionism with racism. Since Bullock was already spying on the
domestic anti-apartheid movement for the
ADL, taking on the task for the South
Africans meant little extra work, since,
as he acknowledged to Roth, much of the
information they wanted he and the ADL
already possessed. One of the
items found in his computer files was a
report on a meeting in Los Angeles in
1991 that anti-apartheid activists
staged for ANC leader Chris
Hani. (Hani was assassinated in
S.A. this Spring by a gunman who
allegedly was hired by J. Darby
Grace, the new president of the
World Anti-Communist League, an
organization formerly headed by Gen.
John Singlaub, which curiously
enough, was not on Bullock's or the
ADL's list of right-wing
organizations.) Bullock acknowledged receiving $16,000
from the South Africans, some of which he
shared with Gerard, who supposedly had
help set up the connection. THE REACTION of the Jewish
establishment to ADL's predicament has
been supportive, accepting, with but a
handful of exceptions, the ADL denials of
wrongdoing as statements of fact. On a
national level this has come from the
Conference of Presidents of the Major
American Jewish Organizations, the
National Jewish Community Relations
Advisory Council, the World Jewish
Congress , AIPAC and the American Zionist
Movement. Locally, the city's leading Jewish
political players whose wealth and
influence is considerable -- as is their
philanthropy -- are apparently doing what
they can to get the ADL off the hook,
although few have been as public as the
mayor's chief of protocol, Robert
Goldman. Goldman, who owns one of the city's
largest insurance brokerages and who is
extremely active in Jewish communty
circles, contacted police chief Tony
Ribera to let him know that the
investigation of the ADL had caused the
Jewish community a great deal of
"anxiety." He claimed his call was a
personal call, and "I wasn't trying to
influence anybody or anything of the kind"
(San Francisco Examiner, April 25). An apparent lone voice within the
organized Jewish community who has the
courage to criticize and ask hard
questions of the ADL is Leonard
Fein, former editor of Moment
magazine, and now a columnist for the New
York-based Jewish weekly, Forward. Fein has devoted two columns to the ADL
case. the first, "Circling the Wagons,"
(June 25) suggested that the organization
has a responsibility to the Jewish
community to do more than issue a blanket
denial of wrongdoing and "accuse the
accusers of the 'big lie.'" Wrote
Fein: "One wants to believe that the
'sinister' files others have accused it
of maintaining -- files not only on
extremist organizations but on utterly
respectable organizations (e.g., NAACP)
-- "are, as the ADL claims they are,
merely benign background files,
newspaper clippings and suchI and
whatever crimes the ADL's principal
mole [Bullock] may have been
guilty of were not in the course of his
duties or at the behest of the ADLI.
"Given the source of the accusations
and their apparent gravity, wanting to
believe doesn't quite make it."Nor, for that matter, do the
enthusiastic endorsements of the ADL's
probity by a variety of Jewish
organizations and leaders who know only
the details that the ADL has shared
with them. The ADL has sought to quiet
our legitimate concerns by claiming
that behind all the smoke, there's no
fire, just a smoke-machine." Declaring that "no organization can be
taken seriously as it own judge and jury,"
Fein suggested that an independent
investigation of the ADL's activities take
place within the organized Jewish
community. "One might have hoped that the
ADL board would itself have invited such
an examination. Apparently, it has not."
Fein concluded his column with the
question, asking "why, in any case, should
an organization that has done no wrong not
welcome such a proposal?" As would be expected, the ADL's
Foxman fired off a letter in
rebuttal, (July 16) attacking Fein for not
"seeing this episode for what it is -- not
only an attack on ADL, but an attack on
the whole community and its efforts to
protect Jewish security and rights."
Fein's response on July 30, is worth
quoting: "Over and over again, all we
have heard from ADL is an ever-more
strident denial of any and all
wrongdoing. In its earliest response to
the matter, ADL asserted that if its
procedures had in any respect been
faulty, it would correct them."Yet if there has since been
information offered to either the
public or even the ADL board regarding
the faulty procedures, I am not aware
of it. Evidently, somewhere along the
line there was a policy decision that
the best defense would be simply to
stonewallI "That style of haughty dismissal
ill-becomes an organization opposed to
defamation. There is distress and even
anger among ADL's undoubted friends
that they have given no thorough or
even adequate explanation of the
alleged felonies. I believe the
community is entitled to more than
verbal reassurance. "ADL linen, which he
[Foxman] and I both agree is
Jewish communal linen, is hanging out
there in public for all to see, and the
question of whether that linen is clean
or dirty is a real question that
deserves a real answer, both for the
ADL's sake and those who depend on ADL
for their own protection." Fein again concludes with his proposal
for an independent investigation. "I am
sorry to say that in his letter, Mr.
Foxman chose utterly to ignore that
proposal. Why?" Perhaps, it appears, because he may be
able to swing a deal with the San
Francisco district attorney's office and
the city's courts that will let the ADL
off the hook with its files ruffled, but
intact. * ABC News, April
8.
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