Jewish
Group Wants Files Withheld By
Bob Egelko
Associated Press Writer SAN
FRANCISCO
(AP) -- The Anti-Defamation
League
of B'nai B'rith claims it has the same
right as a journalist to withhold records
it gathered on leftist pro-Palestinian and
anti-apartheid activists. The
Jewish organization argued before an
appellate court Wednesday that it should
not have to comply with a judge's order to
produce the documents to individuals who
have sued the group for invasion of
privacy. The
ADL is appealing a September order
allowing 17 people to see material that
the ADL gathered on individuals and
organizations that supported Palestinian
rights and opposed South Africa's former
apartheid government. The
cases arose out of a 1992 seizure
by San Francisco
police
of more than 10,000 ADL files. The ADL
later paid $75,000 to settle a civil suit
filed by the city accusing it of illegally
obtaining confidential government
documents. A
now-retired San Francisco police
inspector, Tom Girard, also pleaded
no contest to a misdemeanor charge of
illegally accessing the
information. | Girard's
ADL contact, Roy Bullock,
acknowledged selling information to the
South African government, then Israel's
ally. The ADL said he did it on his own,
but admitted that some of its information
was shared with the Israeli
government. Police,
who returned the documents to the ADL
after the settlement, notified the
plaintiffs that their names were in the
files. The 17 contend the ADL illegally
obtained confidential records from the
state and blacklisted them among the
organization's supporters. The
ADL denies having a blacklist and says it
was merely keeping tabs on hate groups and
terrorists. "Courts
say a government employee may be punished
for violating a duty to keep information
private, but if you are a journalist, you
may not be punished'" for receiving the
information and sharing it with others,
B'nai B'rith lawyer Stephen Bomse
said Wednesday. The
plaintiffs' lawyer, former Congressman
Pete McCloskey, said even if the
ADL should be treated as a reporter, no
journalist has the power "to invade
privacy and transmit private
records.'' Bomse
said there was no evidence of lawbreaking
that would justify invading the group's
files. "The
reason there may not be a scintilla of
evidence is that your client has it and
won't disclose it,''
replied Presiding Justice J. Anthony
Kline. A
ruling from the appeals court is expected
in December. ©
Copyright 1998 The Associated
Press |
David
Irving writes:  FOR
OVER twenty years the powerful New York
based Anti-Defamation League of the
B'nai Brith (ADL),
an organisation that is responsible to
nobody but itself, has policed the
media in North America (and much of the
rest of the world), monitoring even the
smallest provincial newspapers for
advertisements or reader's letters and
for evidence of activities by
individuals whom they will list on
their database as their enemies. Its
national director currently is
Abraham H Foxman (left).The
ADL has then used its best efforts to
destroy these people--not openly, and
by fair means, but using their own
network of influences and contacts,
with ugly tentacles which often
extended deep into the regular forces
of law and order (the ADL were
found
in April 1992 to have bribed corrupt
officials in San Francisco to secure
secret police files.)  I
have a special reason to loath the ADL:
in February 1996 they started a
clandestine campaign
of terror
against my New York publishers, St
Martins Press Inc. and Doubleday Inc.
Both stood firm for two months before
finally capitulating to an
unprecedented reign of intimidation and
smears
upon which even mainstream newspapers
commented. At considerable cost, and of
course at heavy loss to myself as well,
these publishers abandoned their
contractual obligations to publish my
biography
of the Nazi propaganda minister Dr
Joseph Goebbels, the product of
eight-years of research in archives
around the world.
It
is the ADL who have organised, through
front organisations with names like the
Coalition for Human Dignity, and the
Nizkor Website, gangs of mobspitters to
intimidate normal, law-abiding
audiences, and a concerted effort to
swamp the Internet with their own
hate-filled propaganda. Simultaneously,
the ADL backroom boys are trying to
develop 1984-style software to choke
off free speech on the Internet.
Through their associates in the North
American library system and state and
county education boards they are trying
to enforce the installation of this
software on North American computers.
 The
article reproduced above is reproduced
without any editing. We direct the
attention of our visitors to our growing
index
of material on the ADL, which we intend to
expand over the coming months.
|
write to David Irving