More on FOIA; The Anti-Defamation League and the FBI Dec 29, 2002 IN THIS MESSAGE * More on FOIA * The Anti-Defamation League and the FBI ______________________________________________ Freedom of Information: attempts, procedures etc "The Freedom of Information Act process is obviously under heavy attack [administrative, foot-dragging, statutory thrusts] from the Bush/Ashcroft et al. forces -- and certainly doesn't seem to be getting any substantive defense from the Democrats. Much of the "mechanism", however, is still intact . . . ." The mechanism may be technically intact in that all the steps are still there. But Asscroft ordered the agencies, in the wake of 911, to routinely not disclose. The effect is to add another step to the mechanism--going to court to get disclosure. I don't know how closely the agencies have followed Asscroft's advice. And some cautionary notes: The request goes into the file of the requester and probably the subject's file, to. So that should be in the mind of the person drafting it. Second, no reason for wanting the material need be given; it's entirely irrelevant. Giving the kinds of reasons that exist here, it seems to me, just waves red flags (double meaning intended) that might move the request from the regular track to the high resistance track. A countervailing consideration is when the requester thinks there might be information not indexed or filed under the subject's name but in the file maintained on an organization. So the requester should consider whether to ask that the search include the files on named organizations. FBI field offices sometimes have information they didn't send to Washington, so consider querying selected offices in addition to headquarters. - Reber Boult ============================================ The Anti-Defamation League and the FBI Note by Hunterbear: There's been something of a discussion today on a couple of Left lists -- including that of Socialists Unmoderated [SPUSA] -- about the Anti-Defamation League. The consensus certainly is -- and quite accurately -- that ADL is a reactionary outfit indeed. Here is a post on that -- which includes a little personal experience on my part -- which I sent out early last June to several lists. Now on our large website, I'm reposting it on several lists -- including a few that never saw it. Following my comment is a very revealing ADL news release about its cooperation with FBI. ADL AND FBI [HUNTER GRAY 6/8/02] Note by Hunterbear: The fact that the Anti-Defamation League is working very conspicuously with the FBI -- and at a point where FBI is functioning in a more openly [I say openly] repressive fashion than it has in decades [FBI, of course, has always been repressive as hell], should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone even generally familiar with the civil liberties turf in the United States. ADL has been doing this as long as I, at least, can remember -- and one of its traditional areas of concern has always been everything from militant liberalism into and across the Left spectrum [with the exception of right-wing "social democrats."] About ten years or so ago, the now very well established and broad-based and always quite circumspect American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, then spearheaded by former US Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota [married to a Rosebud Sioux and a major figure in Indian rights], released documents that had been secretly issued by ADL: its so-called list of "subversive organizations" which numbered into the hundreds -- and included, among others, not only the various racist and anti-Semitic hate groups -- BUT also American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, all sorts of Native American and Chicano and Black and Asian rights organizations, virtually everything on the Left, labor unions, liberal outfits, Islamic groups, social justice-oriented Christian church organizations -- and on and on and on. All of this was in the context of ADL working covertly with various police organizations and operations. My own experiences with ADL were many, many years ago and relatively minimal -- but not friendly. In the Southern Movement days, ADL was working with the right-wing Jay Lovestone elements in AFL-CIO [mostly on the AFL end of it] to "track" and hunt alleged "subversives" in the Civil Rights Movement -- with an especial focus on SNCC and SCEF [I was the SCEF Field Organizer.] On the other hand, its influence in the hard-core South was essentially nil and its sabotaging thrusts occurred mostly in the North, East, and West Coast regions. In the late Fall, 1963, veteran activist Miss Ella J. Baker [Advisor to SNCC, Consultant to SCEF -- and an old and dear friend always] and I [as SCEF Organizer] spent a few hard-traveling and very demanding weeks on a speaking tour in the North and West, building support for the Civil Rights Bill [to become the 1964 CR Act] and for the Movement generally. This trip -- focused on church and labor and academic groups -- went extremely well. A year later -- late in 1964 -- I did a shorter solo run which was mostly in the Western Mountain states. By this time, the old national solidarity behind the Southern Movement was beginning to crack: many northern liberals were "tired" and wanted to feel that the passage of the '64 CR Act was the apex, various ideological divisions within the Movement were becoming more and more publicly apparent, war clouds in Southeast Asia were very visible, there had been several Northern ghetto upheavals, the integrationist / separatist debates were obviously incipient, a plethora of New Left outfits had emerged -- many healthy, and some not so. In addition, FBI COINTELPRO was in full swing. That late 1964 speaking trip of mine in the West, focused mostly on labor and academic sectors, was quite successful -- very large turnouts -- but there were occasionally turbulent dimensions. John Birchers and Young Americans for Freedom et al were traditional, frequent and noisy nuisances. Now and then, there were very ultra-Left thrusts which may well have been in actuality COINTELPRO. But, in at least one setting, ADL was definitely involved as a would-be sabotaging force. That was at Colorado State, Greeley, where my host was an internationally known educator and where most of the people who came to hear me were faculty, labor officials, and Chicano and Black civil rights activists. No visible problems -- but I was told that one faculty person at Greeley, who did not come to the meeting, had advised everyone in advance that I and SCEF were very "suspect" and "probably Communists" and he cited information he'd gotten from the ADL regional office at Denver. No one listened to him and the meeting at Greeley and environs was an excellent one. My next engagement was at Denver and, as soon as I got there, I went to the ADL Regional Office and raised High Hell with its director [while grinning junior staff, out of his sight, and in my general age range, enthusiastically signaled me to lay it on him.] For his part, he beat a very hasty retreat indeed, blamed the Greeley prof for everything, and apologized profusely. I had brought with me on this trip a great deal of United Klans and other Klan-type White supremacist material from the Deep Dixie setting in which I was deeply involved -- and I left some of that with them. Although I invited him, he did not come to my large Denver meeting which had many officials from the Mine-Mill and OCAW international offices, other labor people, Native Americans, many academics and students, and a large number of Black and Chicano activists. There, a very weird and ostensibly far, far Left threesome tried to disrupt things -- but got nowhere. So my own experiences with ADL have been neither extensive nor friendly. Still, the Colorado thing was certainly revealing -- and the ADL connections with the Lovestone finks in AFL-CIO were also becoming more and more apparent to many of us working in the Southern battlefields. Decades later, when I saw, via American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the massive ADL "subversive list," I was certainly not surprised at all. Nor am I at all surprised now to see ADL cooperating so openly and congenially with FBI -- in the blank-check name, of course, of "national security." Hunter Gray [ Hunterbear ] ======================================== Law Enforcement From Across The U.S. Participate In Joint ADL-FBI Conference On Terrorism Anti-Defamation League 6/6/02 staff More than 500 representatives of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were briefed on extremist and terrorist threats during a daylong conference co-sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The May 31 program, held at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA, was an outgrowth of ADL's longtime involvement in providing information and training to law enforcement on threats posed by extremists. The conference, "Extremist and Terrorist Threats: Protecting America After 9/11" included presentations from ADL, FBI and other nationally recognized experts on extremist groups, investigative techniques, counterterrorism strategies, domestic security and threat assessment. "Now more than ever, law enforcement must have the resources and know-how to prevent future acts of terrorism," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "In order to assess threats against the United States, law enforcement must have credible information about domestic and foreign extremists whose rhetoric promotes violence. Through our network of regional offices and our experts in the field, ADL is uniquely suited to aid in the war against terrorism. This conference was an opportunity for law enforcement and extremism watchdogs to compare notes and forge alliances." The conference brought together representatives of federal, state and local law enforcement from every region of the U.S., and included participants in the FBI National Academy, ADL regional directors, area counsels and investigative researchers. The program featured opening remarks from Mr. Foxman and Dr. Kathleen L. McChesney, the FBI's Executive Assistant Director for Law Enforcement Services. The plenary session, "Right and Left, Domestic and Foreign: An Overview of Extremist and Terrorist Movements and Groups," featured presentations from Dr. Bruce Hoffman, Director of the Washington office of The Rand Corporation; Greg Comcowich, Intelligence Research Specialist in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division; and Mark Pitcavage, ADL Director of Fact Finding. James T. Caruso, the FBI's Deputy Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, delivered the keynote address. Five concurrent workshops focused on Threat Assessment on the State and Local Level; Strategies for Police-Community Cooperation to Combat Extremism and Terrorism; The Changing Role of Law Enforcement: Policy, People and Technology; Inside the Minds of Terrorists and Extremists; and New Partnerships: Law Enforcement, the Military and Non-Governmental Organizations. Among the presenters were police chiefs from Arlington, VA, Irvine, CA, and Spokane, WA; and officials from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command; the U.S. Army War College, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and ADL and FBI professionals. David Friedman, Director of ADL's Washington, D.C. Regional Office, and Louis Quijas, Assistant Director for the FBI's Office of Law Enforcement Coordination, delivered closing remarks. EDITORS NOTE: Additional information on extremist groups and ideologies, and the League's partnerships with law enforcement agencies across the country, is available at ADL's online Law Enforcement Agency Resource Network, at www.adl.org/LEARN. The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hunter Gray [ Hunterbear ] www.hunterbear.org ( strawberry socialism ) Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ