In a series of stories which began on January 15, the San Francisco Examiner revealed a probe by San Francisco police, the FBI and the San Francisco district attorney into the activities of former SF policeman Tom Gerard, who allegedly kept copies of police files in his houseboat. Copies of the files were recovered from Gerard's houseboat and from the home of an associate, Roy Bullock, who was allegedly a paid informer for the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL).
The files, which contained information on political activities of Arab Americans and others, have turned up in Israeli hands, and Gerard is alleged to have sold them to Israel.
On February 12, the same reporters revealed that the name of an American citizen who had been recently arrested in Israel was among those in the Gerard files.
On the same day that Gerard's files were seized, San Francisco police removed files from ADL offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and from the home of Roy Bullock. ADL files reportedly contained material from a national police file.
Richard Hirschaut of the ADL denied the organisation kept files on Arab Americans, but admitted in an article in the Northern California Jewish Bulletin that it did keep files "pertaining to anti-Semitism and racist and extremist activities" as well as "Arab American groups or individuals who espouse anti-Jewish views or take credit for anti-Jewish acts".
In a frightening admission, Hirschaut claimed that the ADL's relationship with Gerard "was the same as with thousands of police officers around the country".
The files in question were of Arab American political activities, including organisational charts of US organisations and transcripts of tape recordings of meetings. As the files were of political activities, not suspected criminal activities, they were supposed to have been destroyed by the San Francisco police in 1991.
Gerard was a long-time San Francisco police officer who left the force for three years in the early 1980s to serve with the CIA in El Salvador, returning in 1983. According to Osama Doumani, former west coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Gerard was the police officer assigned to assist and protect San Francisco Arab Americans following the assassination in 1985 of Alex Odeh, the Los Angeles director of the ADC. Gerard fled to the Philippines when he learned he was the target of an investigation.
Gerard also apparently used the services of Roy Bullock, a shadowy figure who joined Arab American organisations, most of which are open, in order to record meeting proceedings for Gerard and/or the Anti Defamation League. According to Gerard, he was a paid informer for the ADL.
The Anti Defamation League of B'nai B'rith is a supposed human rights organisation set up to fight anti-Semitism and racism. Over the years, however, ADL has enlarged its scope to pretend to speak against prejudice for all minority groups, and has attempted in the process to control the debate in this area, as well as to exclude certain groups from the discussion.
ADL has kept virtual blacklists of Arab Americans and other critics of Israel, and has used them, both secretly and openly, to interfere with the activities of outspoken opponents of Israel and to defame them as anti-Semites. Many prominent Arab Americans and other critics of Israeli policies, including the heads of national American political organisations, had been found to be in confidential ADL files that were leaked by an ADL member in the early 1980s. The ADL has refused to confirm or deny its relationship with Bullock.
The sale of information on Arab-Americans engaged in legal activities to Israel has potentially chilling consequences. Over the years, many Arab Americans have been arrested upon their arrival in Israel to visit family members, and charged with activities, such as participation in demonstrations, that are legal in the United States but not legal for Palestinians in Israel.
Other concerned persons are Irish-American groups (who allege that Gerard had meetings with British Special Branch operatives), exiles from South Africa, African-American and Muslim activists (files were also alleged to have been sold to the South African government) and anyone of any background involved with any of these causes.
[From the European Counter Network via NY Transfer News Collective and Pegasus.]