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From: arf@genesis.MCS.COM (Jack Schmidling)
Newsgroups: misc.headlines,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast,alt.conspiracy,alt.censorship
Subject: NEWS YOU WILL MISS, Apr 15
Date: 15 Apr 1993 22:51:03 -0500
Organization: MCSNet Contributor, Chicago, IL
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                      Yigal et al, sue ADL
 
  Nineteen people, including the son off ormer 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.
 
 ...........
 
 js
 

