Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 22, 1993 TAG: 9310220113
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The lawsuit, based in large part on facts that have emerged in a criminal probe of the ADL in San Francisco, not only pits Arab-American groups against the ADL, but several other civil-rights groups representing blacks, Latinos and Jews as well as various social causes such as the anti-apartheid movement and those opposed to police abuse.
Named in the suit is the ADL; its national "fact finding" director, Irwin Suall; Roy Bullock, a free-lance ADL "fact finder" for 25 years; and Tom Gerard, a former San Francisco police inspector who has been charged with giving confidential police information to Bullock. The counties of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego also are named because of allegations that law enforcement officials in those counties provided confidential information to the ADL.
Allegations in the separate criminal investigation are to be presented to grand jury in San Francisco on Nov. 3 in a case in which prosecutors plan to allege that ADL officials conspired to obtain legally confidential police material on individual political activists, which is a felony in California.
The case took shape this year when authorities investigating police abuse discovered that Gerard and Bullock kept files on hundreds of groups and individuals across the political spectrum. Those files, plus files taken in searches of the ADL's two California offices, showed the group's attentions had spread far beyond the hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, that were its traditional targets. Instead, the ADL appears to have become concerned about groups of all stripes that did not shares its views on Palestine and Israel. - Associated Press
by CNB