[It looks like Yigal has been busy...]

RTw  04/14 2155  JEWISH GROUP SUED FOR PASSING OFFICIAL INFORMATION

    By Adrian Croft
     SAN FRANCISCO, April 14, Reuter - Nineteen people, including the son of
former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Arens, sued the Anti-Defamation League
(ADL) on Wednesday, accusing the Jewish group of disclosing confidential
official information about them.
     Richard Hirschhaut, director of the San Francisco branch of the ADL, art
dealer Roy Bullock and former policeman Tom Gerard were also named as defendants
in the suit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court.
     The 19 accuse the ADL of B'nai B'rith, a group dedicated to fighting
anti-Semitism, and the other defendants of secretly gathering information on
them, including data from state and federal agencies.
     The suit alleges they disclosed the information to others, including the
governments of Israel and South Africa, in what it alleges was a "a massive
spying operation."
     The action is a class-action suit. It was filed on behalf of about 12,000
anti-apartheid activists or opponents of Israeli policies about whom the
plaintiffs believe the ADL, Bullock and Gerard gathered information.
     Representatives of the ADL in San Francisco were not immediately available
for comment on Wednesday.
     The civil suit is the first legal action arising out of allegations that
Gerard, a former inspector in the San Francisco police intelligence unit, passed
confidential police files on California political activists to a spy ring.
     The FBI and San Francisco police are investigating the ADL, Bullock and
Gerard over the affair and last week searched the ADL's offices in San Francisco
and Los Angeles.
     The suit alleges invasion of privacy under the Civil Code of California,
which prohibits the publication of information obtained from official sources.
It seeks exemplary damages of at least $2,500 per person as well as other
unspecified damages.
     Lawyer Pete McCloskey, a former Congresmen who is representing the
plaintiffs, said the 19 plaintiffs included Arab-Americans and Jews -- and his
wife Helen, who also had information gathered about her.
     One of the plaintiffs is Yigal Arens, a research scientist at the
University of Southern California who is a son of the former Israeli Defence
Minister.
     Arens told the San Francisco Examiner he had seen a file the ADL kept on
him in the 1980s, presumably because of his criticism of the treatment of
Palestinians and his position on the Israeli-occupied territories.
     According to court documents released last week, Bullock and Gerard both
kept information on thousands of California political activists.
     In the documents, a police investigator said he believed the ADL paid
Bullock for many years to provide information and that both the league and
Bullock received confidential information from the authorities.
     No criminal charges have yet been filed in the case. The ADL, Bullock and
Gerard have all denied any wrongdoing.
  REUTER AC KG CM



APn  04/14 2202  ADL Lawsuit

Copyright, 1993. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By CATALINA ORTIZ
 Associated Press Writer
   SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Arab-Americans and critics of Israel sued the
Anti-Defamation League on Wednesday, saying it invaded their privacy by
illegally gathering information about them through a nationwide spy network.
   The ADL, a national group dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, intended to
use the data to discredit them because of their political views, according to
the class-action lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court.
   "None of us has been guilty of racism or Nazism or anti-Semitism or hate
crimes, or any of the other `isms' that the ADL claims to protect against. None
of us is violent or criminal in any way," said Carol El-Shaieb, an education
consultant who develops programs on Arab culture.
   The 19 plaintiffs include Yigal Arens, son of former Israel Defense Minister
Moshe Arens. The younger Arens, a research scientist at the University of
Southern California, said the ADL kept a file on him in the 1980s presumably
because he has criticized Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
   "The ADL believes that anyone who is an Arab American ... or speaks
politically against Israel is at least a closet anti-Semite," Arens said.
   The ADL has denied any wrongdoing, but couldn't comment on the lawsuit
because it hasn't reviewed it, said a spokesman at the ADL's New York
headquarters.
   The FBI and local police and prosecutors are investigating allegations that
the ADL spied on thousands of individuals and hundreds of groups, including
white supremacist and anti-Semitic organizations, Arab-Americans, Greenpeace,
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and San Francisco
public television station KQED.
   Some information allegedly came from confidential police and government
records, according to court documents filed in the probe and the civil lawsuit.
No charges have been filed in the criminal investigation.
   The lawsuit accuses the ADL of violating California's privacy law, which
forbids the intentional disclosure of personal information "not otherwise
public" from state or federal records.
   The lawsuit claims the ADL disclosed the information to "persons and
entities" who had no compelling need to receive it. It didn't elaborate.
   Defendants include Richard Hirschhaut, director of the ADL's office in San
Francisco. He did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
   Other defendants are San Francisco art dealer Roy Bullock, an alleged ADL
informant over the past four decades, and former police officer Tom Gerard.
Gerard allegedly tapped into law enforcement and government computers and passed
information on to Bullock.
   Gerard, who has retired from the police force, has moved to the Philippines.
Bullock's lawyer, Richard Breakstone, said he could not comment on the lawsuit
because he had not yet studied it.





UPwe 04/14 1956  ADL sued for allegedly spying on U.S. residents