New FBI Proposal for Bay Area Counter- Terrorism Task Force

by Tom Burghardt

The 'Public-Private Partnership'

New FBI Proposal for Bay Area "Counterrorism Task Force" Revives ADL-FBI Spy Scandal

There have been reports in the press that tend to indicate that the FBI would investigate "lawful political, religious or social activities even when there is no reasonable indication of a crime." This is inaccurate and misleading.

The counterterrorism task forces that are operating throughout the United States in other cities all operate based on attorney general guidelines. Those guidelines are established to ensure that all investigations are based on a reasonable indication that a crime has occurred or may occur.

-- George Grotz, an FBI spokesman in San Francisco [1]

by Tom Burghardt

Editor, Antifa Info-Bulletin

(SAN FRANCISCO) What do ACT-UP, the African National Congress, Anti-Racist Action, Casa El Salvador, the Council of Arab-American Organizations, Global Exchange, ILWU Local 6, the Jewish Committee on the Middle East, the NAACP, the S.F. Bay Guardian and the Spartacist League all have in common?

Like hundreds of progressive groups, labor unions, alternative news services, and an estimated 100,000 Bay Area residents, they were targets of an illegal covert spy operation by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). [2] (See Appendix below for list of "Pinko," "Arab" and "ANC" organizations in ADL files).

A political firestorm erupted this week in San Francisco when the FBI proposed that the S.F. Police Department join a proposed "Bay Area Counterterrorism Task Force," that "would investigate individuals and groups suspected of domestic or international terrorism," according to a copy of the FBI's proposal. [3]

Though apparently doomed by opposition from human rights organizations, immigrant rights groups, civil libertarians, Mayor Willie Brown and members of the Police Commission, the proposed task force would have operated under federal guidelines that preclude civilian oversight, implemented in the wake of the Bullock/Gerard spy scandal.

Roy Bullock, a San Francisco art dealer and S.F. police officer, Tom Gerard, a CIA "contract employee," ran a "private" version of the FBI's COINTELPRO operations against black, Chicano, labor, left, progressive and religious organizations between 1985-1992. [4]

Bullock, described by Covert Action Quarterly and the San Francisco Examiner as a "paid FBI informant" since 1957 [5] and Gerard, a CIA "bomb expert" who disclosed details of illegal CIA support for Latin American death squads, peddled information on progressive political activists to the governments of Israel and South Africa. [6]

Though ADL attorney, Barbara Wahl, tried to distance the group from Bullock/Gerard's illegal spy operations, asserting that Bullock was an "independent contractor," subsequent investigations revealed that "many of the files seized from Bullock's home turned out to be the same as those in the ADL offices." [7]

Under broad federal guidelines, the San Francisco Police Department could have been drawn into preliminary investigations of lawful political and religious activity even if there is no "reasonable indication" of a crime.

Sound like a license for a "fishing expedition" against organizations opposed to U.S. policy? It is. Under current federal law, the State Department can unilaterally declare a foreign group a "terrorist organization", prosecute political supporters in the U.S., seize their assets and imprison them for up to 10 years, even if there is no evidence of illegal activities.

If the federal government possessed such broad statutory powers during the 1980s, supporters of the African National Congress, the Salvadoran FMLN and the Palestine Liberation Organization could have been imprisoned, deported or both.

Given the extensive documented history of illegal FBI operations (including the employment of far-right "assets" and agents provocateurs from the Lyndon LaRouche organization and the Unification Church network of South Korean clerical-fascist, Sun Myung Moon) [8] -- will North American supporters of the Mexican Zapatistas, the Peruvian MRTA or the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), find themselves the recipients of an FBI "active measures" campaign that could land them in a federal prison?

Instead of defending the interests of the Jewish people against attacks from neo-Nazis, fascists and other anti-Semites, the ADL aided and abetted the U.S. government and the CIA which employed Klaus Barbie, other Nazi war criminals. Unfortunately, the Bullock/Gerard scandal was not a new development for the ADL.

The first documented involvement by the ADL in the service of state repression was in 1947 when anticommunist "red hunters" began a broad purge of "subversives." [9]

During the 1980s, the organization, then a staunch ally of the Reagan administration's holy war against the Sandinistas, participated in a truly grotesque smear campaign which alleged that the FSLN government in Managua were persecuting Jews. [10]

Despite testimony to the contrary by a Latin American Rabbi who was a leader in the struggle against the Argentine neo-Nazi generals, a Panamanian Rabbi honored by the Latin American Jewish Congress for his human rights work and Human Rights Watch, the ADL insisted that the Sandinistas were "anti-Semitic." [11]

The Jewish Student Press Service reported that the ADL had "approached Presidential advisers with the idea of a deal" in an effort "to gain clout with the Reagan White House" (accepted by the Administration) who viewed the smear campaign against the FSLN as a way "to get the Jewish community to join the bandwagon" to enlist public support for the CIA's terrorist, dope-running Contra army. [12]

The "public-private partnership" among intelligence agencies and right-wing spy outfits will undoubtedly continue. As "counterterrorism" and the racist "war on drugs" replace "anticommunism" as the lever for enacting repressive legislation in the United States and persecuting public policy opponents, the best defense against such moves are public exposure, broad educational campaigns about the nature of police spying and mass mobilizations against all threats to civil liberties, regardless of the source.

Endnotes

1. Susan Sward, "S.F. Police Panel Puts Off FBI Proposal," San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 1997

2. Dennis Opatrny and Scott Winokur, "S.F. Spying Details Laid Bare," San Francisco Examiner, April 11, 1993; Scott Winokur, "ADL Denies Spying for Foreign Governments," San Francisco Examiner, April 15, 1993

3. Seth Rosenfeld, "FBI Wants S.F. Cops to Join Spy Squad: Bureau urges City participation in anti-terror group without civilian oversight," San Francisco Examiner, January 12, 1997

4. Abdeen Jabara, "The Anti-Defamation League: Civil Rights and Wrongs," Covert Action Quarterly, Washington, D.C., Number 45, Summer 1993

5. ibid.

6. Bob Drogin, "Ex-Spy Threatens CIA Scandal," Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1993

7. Richard Paddock and Kenneth Reich, "ADL Officials Deny They Condoned Illegal Spying," Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1993; Jabara, op. cit.

8. Ross Gelbspan, Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement, 1991, Boston, South End Press, multiple citations

9. Jabara, op. cit.

10. Noam Chomsky, Turning The Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central American and the Struggle for Peace, 1985, South End Press, Boston, pp. 77-78, 268

11. ibid.

12. ibid. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Appendix

The list below is from, Abdeen Jabara, "The Anti-Defamation League: Civil Right and Wrongs," Covert Action Quarterly, Washington, D.C., Number 45, Summer 1993. Jabara notes: "Categories and names are as they appeared in Gerard's and Bullock's files (except abbreviations)."

Organizations found in ADL files

PINKO

Act Now; ACT-UP; Action for Animals; Adrian 17; African Students Org./S.F. State; African Network; African National Reparations Org.; African People's Socialist Party; African People's Solidarity Comm.; African Students Org.; Africans United for Progress; AFSCME Local 3218 (Vice Pres.); AFSCME Local 3508; Alexandria Assoc. of Human Rights Advocacy; All Peoples Congress; Alliance for Philippine Concerns; Alliance to Stop First Strike; Alliance to Stop Police Abuse; Allied Printing Trades Council; Alternative Information Center; Amer-I-Can; American Civil Liberties Union; American Indian Center; American Indian Movement; American Indian Student Org.; American Muslim Museum; Americans for Peace Now; Anarchist Collective; ANC Meeting; _Ang Katipuan_; Anti-Apartheid Comm./AFSCME; Anti- Militarism Comm.; Anti-Racist Action; April 19th Comm. Against Nazis; Arab Baath Socialist Party; Arab Lesbian Network; Armenian National Comm.; Armenian Peoples Movement; Arms Control Research Center; Artists and Videomakers Against the War; Artists and Writers Out Loud; Artists Television Access; Asian Law Caucus; Audio Archives; Author of Measure J;

Babylon Burning; Back Country Action Network; Bad Cop/No Donut; Barricada Internacional; Bay Area Anti-Racist Action; Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights; Bay Area Friends of the Christic Institute; Bay Area Jewish Task Force on Cent. Am.; Bay Area Natl. Conf. of Black Lawyers; Bay Area Peace Council; Bay Area Peace Navy; Bay Area Reporter; Bay Area Times; Bay Area Vets Against War in Mid. East; Beebee Memorial C.M.E. Temple; Ben Linder Construction Brigade; Big Mountain Native People's Support; Bir Zeit Univ. Instructor; Black Consciousness Movement of Azania; Black Freedom Fighters Coalition; Black Men United for Change; Black Studies Department/S.F. State; Black United Front; Boricuan Popular Army for Puerto Rican Independence; Boycott Coke; Boycott Shell Comm.; Breakthrough; Brigada Antonio Maceo; Brothers of African Descent; Bulletin in Defense of Marxism;

Calendar Magazine (Gay); California Voice; Campaign Against Apartheid; Campus Peace Comm.; Canadians for Justice in the Middle East; Capp Street Center; Capp Street Foundation; Carpenters Local 22; Casa El Salvador; Casa El Salvador Mailing List; Center for Constitutional Rights; Center for Democratic Renewal; Center for Investigative Reporting; Center for Middle East Studies; Center for the Study of the Americas; Cent. Amer. Research Institute; Chair: Chicano Studies (U.C. Berkeley); Chop >Representative Government; Coalition of Black Trade Unionists; Commission of Inquiry; Comm. Against Lockheed D-5; Comm. for Academic Freedom in Israeli-Occupied Territories; Comm. for Equality and Justice; Comm. for Freedom in Argentina; Comm. for Peace and Democracy in Iran; Comm. for Perm. Israeli-Palestinian Peace; CISPES; Cistur; Committee to Free Geronimo Pratt; Comm. to Support the Revolution in Peru; Communist Party U.S.A.; Communist Workers Party; Communist Youth Brigade; Community- Labor Coalition for Social & Econ. Justice; Community United Against Violence; Continuing the Peace Dialogue; Contra Watch Newsletter; Copwatch; Council for the National Interest; Council on Foreign Relations; CounterSpy; Covert Action Information Bulletin; Covert Action; Cuba Resource Group; Cuba Information Project; Delta Sigma Beta; Democratic Society of America; Democratic Workers Party; Dennis Banks Defense Comm.; Diablo Valley Peace Center; Direct Action Against Racism; Doghouse Newsletter; Downside Records; Dykes and Gay Emergency Response;

Earth Island Institute; East Bay Women for Peace; El Centro de la Raza; El Tecolote; Emergency Coalit. for Palestinian Rights; Emergency Coalition to End War; Emergency Comm. to Stop Flag Amendment; Endorser of Proposition W;

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting; Fighting Back; Filipino East Bay Network; Filipino Organization Comm.; FMLN-FDR West Coast Representative; Food First; Food Not Bombs; Free S.A. Labor Comm.; Freedom for S.A. Refugees Campaign; Freedom for S.A. Refugees Center; Freedom Rising Africa Solidarity Comm.; Freedom Road Socialist Org.; Freedom Socialist Party; Friends of Nicaragua; Friends of Yesh Gvul; Frontline; Frontline Managing Editor;

Gay American Indians; Gay and Lesbian Labor Alliance; Global Exchange; Global Options; Green Giant Frozen Food Workers Comm.; Greenpeace; Group for the Critical Study of Colonialism; Guardian; Guatemala News and Information Bureau;

Harvey Milk Club; Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 2;

ILWU Local 6, President; ILWU Local 10; INCAR; In These Times; Independent Grocers Assn.; Info. Network Against War and Fascism; Information Services on Latin America; Instituto del Pueblo; Interfaith Center on Corporate Accountability; Interfaith Task Force on Cent. Amer.; Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Ctr.; Intl. Campaign to Free Geronimo Pratt; Internatl. Comm. Against Racism; Internatl. Indian Treaty Council; Internatl. Jewish Peace Union; Internatl. League for Human Rights/N. Amer. Chapter; Internatl. Socialist Org.; Internationalist Workers Party; Irish National Aid; Irish Northern Aid; Irish Republican Socialist Comm.; Israeli Foreign Affairs; Israelis Against Occupation;

Japanese-American Citizens League; Jewish Comm. on the Middle East; John Brown Anti-Klan Comm.;

KPOO Radio; KQED-TV Board of Directors; KUNA;

Labor Comm. on the Middle East; Labor for Peace; Labor Video; LAGAL; La Raza Coalition of Berkeley; La Raza Unida; Latin American Support Comm.; Lavender Mafia; Lawyers Comm. on Cent. Amer.; League of Filipino Students; Leonard Peltier Alliance Group; Lesbian Agenda for Action; Lesbians and Gays Against Intervention; Liberation Support Movement; Libros Sin Fronteras; Line Of March; L.A. Coalition Against Intervention in the Middle East; L.A. Observer; L.A. Student Coalition;

MADRE; Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; Mandela Reception Comm.; Maoist Internationalist Movement; Marazul Tours; Mariposa Peace Network; Marxist-Leninist Party; Media Review; Middle East Children's Alliance; Middle East Comm. for National Conference of Black Lawyers; Middle East Peace Network; Midwest Labor Institute; Mobilization Support Group; Modern Times Bookstore; Mother Jones; Movimiento de Agrupacion Popular; Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano;

NABET Local 51/Executive Board; NALC Local 14; National Alliance of Third World Journalists; NAACP; National Call to Action; Natl. Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays; Natl. Comm. Against Repressive Legislation; National Conference of Black Lawyers; National Forum of S.A.; National Midweek; National Org. of African Students in N. Am.; National Rainbow Coalition; National Response Comm./NBAU; National Student Cent. Am. Action Network; National Student Lobby; National Union of Farmers; Network of Arab-American Students; Network in Solidarity with Chile; New Afrikan Peoples Org.; New Alliance Newspaper; New Alliance Party; New Americas Press; New Jewish Agenda; New Movement in Solidarity with Puerto Rican Independentistas; Nicaragua Cultural Center; Nicaragua Information Center; Nicaragua Information Center Bulletin; Nicaragua Interfaith Comm. Action; Nicaragua Network News; No Apologies/No Regrets; No Business As Usual; No Justice, No Peace; North Bay Anti-Racist Action; North Star; Northern California Ecumenical Council; Now Magazine, Toronto (Canada); Nuremberg Action;

Oakland Education Association; O.C. Coalition for Peace in the Middle East; OCAW; OCAW Local 8149; October 6 Justice Project; Oregon Philippines Concerns Comm.; Out of Control Comm.; Outrage;

Pacifica Foundation; Pakistan Democratic Comm.; Pan African Movement of the U.S.; Partido Socialista Chileno; Partido Socialista Puertorriqueno; Partisan Defense Comm.; Patrice Lumumba Coalition; Paul Robeson Friendship Society; Peace and Conflict Studies; Peace and Freedom Comm.; Peace and Freedom Party; Peace and Justice Comm. - School Board; Peace and Solidarity Alliance; Peace and Solidarity Comm.; Peace Cafe; Peace Research Center; People Against Racist Terror; Peoples Anti-War Mobilization; Peoples Architecture Collective; Peoples Law Office; Peoples Park; Peoples Video; Peoples World; Pershing Plowshares; Philippine Organizing Comm.; Philippine Resource Center; Philippines Human Rights Lobby; Pledge of Resistance; Plumbers and Fitters Local 393; Portland Cent. Am. Solidarity Comm.; Prison News Service; Project Impact; Project National Interest; Public Eye;

Queer Nation; Quinn Defense;

Radical Film Collective; Radical Women; Rainbow Coalition; Rainbow Lobby; Refuse and Resist; Republic of New Afrika; Revolutionary Books; Revolutionary Communist Party; Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade; Revolutionary Worker; Revolutionary Workers League; Richmond Education Assn.; Roots Against War;

San Fernando Valley Peace Coalition; San Francisco Bay Guardian; S.F. Coalition of Labor Union Women; S.F. Labor Council/AFL- CIO; San Francisco Sentinel; S.F. Univ. Labor Studies; San Francisco Weekly; S.F. Women for Peace; SANE/FREEZE; Sardaraba; Science for Nicaragua; SEIU Local 535; SEIU Local 616; Serbian Unity Congress; Shell Boycott Comm.; Simon Wiesenthal Center; Sister City Assn; Socialist Action; Socialist Party Political Org.; Socialist Workers Party; Society of In'Ash El-U.S.A.; SOHRI Study Group (U.C. Berkeley); Solidarity; S.A. Forum; S.A. Freedom Through Education Foundation; S.A. Internatl. Student Congress; South African Workers Org.; South Bay Nicaragua Solidarity Comm.; So. African Liberation Support Comm.; Southern African Media Center; Spartacus Youth League; Spartacist League; Stevens, Hinds & White, Attorneys; Stop the U.S. War Machine Action Network; Student Cltn. Against Apartheid and Racism; Student Pugwash; Students Against Intervention; Students Against Intervention in Cent. Am.; Students for Peace in the Persian Gulf; SWAPO; SWAPO Meeting;

Tass News Agency; Teamsters Local 921, S.F. Teamsters for a Democratic Union; Technica; The Black Scholar; The Data Center; The Dazen-I Foundation; The Irishman; The Nuclear Resister; Third World Resources; Toronto Anti-Intervention Coalition; Trustee, IAM Local 565 (Sunnyvale);

Ubiquitous; Unified Against Genocide; Union del Barrio; Union of Democratic Filipinos; Union Publications; United Auto Workers; United Auto Workers, Local 119; United Colors; United Farm Workers; United Front Against Fascism; U.S. Anti-Apartheid Newsletter; U.S. China Review; U.S. Comm. for Friendship with the GDR; U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange; U.S.-Grenada Friendship Society; U.S. Out of S.A. Network; U.S. Peace Council; U.S.-USSR Friendship Society of S.F.; U.S.A. Movement Banning Apartheid; Univ. of Calif., Berkeley; UTU Local 1730;

Vanguard Public Foundation; Venceremos Brigade; Vietnam Veterans Action; Vietnam News Agency; Villa Zapata Workers Comm.; Voice of the Uprising;

Washington Office on Africa; WBAI-FM (Pacifica Foundation) New York; Weatherman Underground; Witness for S.A.; Woman, Inc.; Women Against U.S. Intervention; Women in Black; Women of Color Coalition Center; Women of Color Resource Project; Women's Intl. League for Peace and Freedom; Workers World Party;

Yes on W Comm.; Young Koreans United; Young Koreans United of S.F.

ARAB

Arab-American Democratic Club; Arab Book Center; Arab People's Coalition; Arab Relief Fund of Lebanon; Arab Studies Quarterly/Middle East Research and Information Project; Arab- American Univ. Graduates; Arabic Book Center;

Bethlehem Assn.; Black Muslims;

Comm. for a Democratic Palestine; Comm. of Correspondence; Council of Arab-American Orgs.;

Dem. Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Democratic Palestinian Youth; Department of Near Eastern Studies;

El Fatah;

Family Sponsorship Project;

General Union of Palestinian Students;

Inst. of African-American Studies; Iranian Students Assn.; Iraqi Intelligence Officer; Islamic Jihad; Islamic Society of Orange County; Israeli Civil Right Assn.;

JIFNA Association;

Khilafah;

Law in the Service of Man;

Masjid Al-Islam; Masqid Al-Saff Mosque; Middle East Justice Network; Muslim Mutadhakkirun Assn.; Muslim Students Assn.; Muslim Students Union;

Nation of Islam; National Assn. of Arab-Americans; National Lawyers Guild; November 29th Comm.;

Occupied Land Fund;

Palestine American Youth; Palestine Arab Club; Palestine Arab Fund; Palestine Democratic Youth Org.; Palestine Human Rights Campaign; Palestine Solidarity Comm.; Palestine Women's Org.; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Progressive Muslim Alliance;

Sacred House of Islam;

Union of Palestinian Women's Association

ANC

A Movement Banning Apartheid; African National Congress; All African Peoples Revolutionary Party; All-African Student Conference; Alternative Education (RSA) (SACHED); Anglican Church Bd. of Social Responsibility; Anti-Apartheid Comm.; Anti- Apartheid L.A.; Apartheid Boycott Campaign; Art Against Apartheid; Artists Against Apartheid;

Bay Area Free S.A. Movement; Berkeley Anti-Apartheid Network;

Canicor Research/S.A. Forum;

Democratic Socialists of America; Dennis Brutus Defense Comm.;

Evangelical Lutheran Church/S.A.;

Free Moses Mayekiso Committee;

Journalist LA Times (in S.A.);

National Namibia Concerns;

Pan African Congress; Pan Africanist Congress; Pan-Africa Congress of Azania; Prairie Fire Organizing Comm.;

S.A. Ecumenical Task Force; S.F. Anti-Apartheid Comm.; South African Student Congress; Southern Africa Media Center;

Univ. of Calif. Divestment Coalition