Spy vs Spite

So far, the ADL HateFilter has been marketed as a service to be used in the home. But that may soon change. CyberPatrol is already in 15,000 private and public libraries, schools, and universities, and the ADL has not ruled out broadening the distribution of HateFilter software to public institutions. "Right now, the HateFilter is not meant to be used by the government, but over the next few months we will be discussing whether we will advocate for its use in schools and libraries," says Sue Stengel, an ADL attorney.

It appears, however, that the organization, which wields tremendous clout in Washington, has already begun to advocate -- at the highest levels. The ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, met with President Clinton at least twice last year, once following the Littleton shooting in May, and again in the wake of an attack on a Jewish community center in Granada Hills in August. After the latter meeting, Malcolm Hoenlein, a top official in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, told reporters that Clinton had agreed to take the lead in persuading Americans to install a "hate filter" on their computers. In October, Clinton again met with the ADL, and began his speech with a tribute to the organization's new software. "Thank you for your pioneering work to filter out hate on the Internet -- which, lamentably, was part of the poison that led to the tragedy at Columbine High School," Clinton said.

More recently, Elizabeth Coleman, the ADL's director of civil rights, was asked to participate in a panel discussion concerning a "family friendly" Internet at a conference for the National Association of Attorneys General a few weeks ago -- a conference where Attorney General Janet Reno gave the keynote address. Coleman demonstrated the filter for all the law enforcement officials in attendance. She said over lunch that the organization had also shown the filter to Vice President Al Gore, who "loved it."

If made explicit, White House support for the ADL filter could have a significant impact on the policy decisions of public schools and libraries across the country. Although decisions regarding school and library Internet filters are currently made at the local level, a bill before Congress spearheaded by Sen. John McCain, called the Children's Internet Protection Act, would require all schools and libraries receiving federal funds to install Internet filters on computers accessible to children. If the bill wins approval, even a mention by the White House, combined with the ADL's strong regional lobbying, could go a long way toward encouraging local jurisdictions to choose the HateFilter from the filtering software on the market.

But if Clinton likes and Gore loves the HateFilter (at least in the ADL's eyes), many are aghast at the thought of the ADL having any say over what children may or may not see. These critics, whose political and religious affiliations vary widely, repeatedly describe the ADL as a self-appointed agent of Israel that cloaks itself in the rhetoric of fighting hate, while actively attempting to silence those who are not hatemongers, but mere opponents of Israeli government policy.

"The Number 1 goal of the ADL is the protection of Israel," says Pete McCloskey, a former Republican congressman from San Mateo who regularly criticized Israel's policies. "Any group whose sole purpose is to protect a foreign nation should not have anything to say about what's said or written here in America."

On a number of occasions since the 1970s, the ADL has been caught distributing lists of its enemies, replete with detailed descriptions of "black demagogues" and "pro-Arab propagandists," including poet Amiri Baraka in the list of demagogues, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky under the propagandist label. Then, in 1993, a longtime ADL investigator admitted to working with a member of the San Francisco Police Department to illegally gather information on almost 10,000 people, including members of socialist, labor, and anti-apartheid groups.

Some of the targets of that information-gathering effort have gone to court in an attempt to gain access to their dossiers, currently in possession of the ADL, but the ADL has refused to release the files, claiming that its investigator was an "investigative journalist" whose unpublished reporting materials are protected against disclosure by the California shield law, which was originally adopted to help journalists keep confidential sources who reveal important public wrongdoing confidential.

Thus the ADL finds itself in a sticky position: While it advocates for a software product that limits access to the Internet's open exchange of ideas, the Anti-Defamation League is also hiding behind a law put in place to encourage people to speak freely.

The ADL recently added one episode to a videotape it uses in workshops that are meant to promote cultural understanding in schools. The vignette shows a boy, about 15 years old, surfing the Web in his school library. He comes across a page called the Zundelsite, with the headline "Did Six Million Really Die?"

"Hey guys, come here," the kid says to his friends. "Check this out. It says here the Holocaust was a bunch of bull. Like it never really happened like the Jews say it did."