ADL to beef up intelligence

Lack of money hampers plans for expansion

CHRIS GARIFO
Staff Writer

Anti-Defamation League leaders plan to increase the organization's intelligence gathering efforts in Arizona, but they are constrained by a lack of funding.

Still, Neil Herman, ADL national director of fact-finding, told the ADL's Arizona regional board on Tuesday, Nov. 9, that there are a variety of areas in which fact-finding efforts can be increased now, without additional funding. They include dealing more effectively with law enforcement personnel, better listening to the community, reaching out to the public, checking out what's being put on the Internet, and making note of what is being said in the schools, by other organizations and in the news media.

"I think it's a grass-roots effort," Herman told board members at their luncheon meeting at the University Club in Phoenix. "There's a lot of public information out there that's available. Having that ability to have a grass-roots effect was the basis for what to do. That's how law enforcement develops information. So, I think it's an area that frankly can be rebuilt at a local level, and I think it's an area that needs to be addressed more and more so."

After the meeting, Herman told Jewish News that the ADL in Phoenix has been strong on fact-finding in the past and he hopes that will continue in the future. "We're satisfied with the overall operation in terms of the fact-finding process in the western United States," said the former FBI agent who was involved in the investigations of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, the New York Trade Center bombing and the crash of TWA Flight 800. There have been (extremist) groups here in the past; some of the patriot groups and some of the militia groups have been here," Herman added. "Some of the gangs that have evolved through the prison systems have come out in this area over the past number of years."

The local ADL office has been without a regional director since the end of June when Joel Breshin, who had held the position for 14 years, resigned. Breshin recently was hired to be an investigator for the Arizona Attorney General's Office, said Marc Lieberman, chairman of the ADL's Arizona board. Lieberman has said in the past that he wants the local ADL office expanded. Plans are under way to expand the local staff to 40 paid professionals over the next 12 years. The current staff has three paid professional positions.

With the planned expansion, Lieberman said, "three or four of those positions would be professional investigators who would do nothing but fact finding. But, that takes an awful lot of money, so that's just not on the agenda right now."

Lieberman said the local ADL office would need an annual budget in excess of $2 million to $3 million, or as much as four times the current budget of $756,000, for the sort of expansion being envisioned.

I think it's five to seven years down the road," Lieberman said about the addition of full-time investigators.

It will be in the future and we will be so much better prepared when we have full-time people on staff who are professional investigators probably retired FBI or Secret Service people who do nothing but fact finding," Lieberman said. "I think we'll have a hell of a safer community when we do that."

The lack of such a fact-finding staff "really does make me nervous," Lieber-man said, especially in light of the shootings at a Jewish community center in the Los Angeles area this past summer. "I would feel much better if I had the kind of fact-finding staff that L.A. has, but the fact remains that the folks in L.A. couldn't prevent the shooting."

Prior to his resignation, Breshin had done most of the local fact finding. Lieberman, Civil-Rights Committee chairwoman Helen Stern and Fact-Finding Committee chairwoman Janet Mueller have picked up that effort temporarily.

Lieberman said the local ADL has done" remarkably well with a bunch of lay staff that's dedicated, but not so skilled, learning on the job."

Meanwhile, efforts are continuing toward hiring a new regional director, Lieberman reported, with two candidates currently under consideration, one of whom is scheduled to be interviewed at ADL's New York headquarters in about two weeks. Lieberman said he hopes to be able to announce the hiring of a new regional director within two months.

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