Spy vs Spite

Steve Zeltzer and Jeff Blankfort had already been active in Middle Eastern politics for many years when, in 1987, they founded an organization called the Labor Committee on the Middle East, a group that, by their description, was devoted to alerting American workers to the plight of laborers in all the Middle Eastern countries. It could hardly be called an organization, they say. It was really just a handful of like-minded people. Or so they thought.

The first meetings were held at Zeltzer's house in San Francisco. Those who attended were familiar with one another, except for a man named Roy Bullock. Blankfort says he had seen Bullock around the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "I recognized him and was a bit surprised to see him at our meeting. I wondered if he was really interested," Blankfort says.

But, Blankfort recounts, Bullock said he liked what they were doing and wanted to be a part of the gang, and, evidently, that was good enough for the other members. As is often the case with those who fashion themselves to be part of the radical left, the members chose as one of their first projects an event that had little to do with the group's core interest. They decided to organize a picket line at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, protesting a luncheon being held by an Israeli organization called Histadrut, which reportedly had financial interests in South Africa, then still in the grip of apartheid policies.

The guests of honor at the event were former California Assemblyman Richard Katz from Sylmar, and then-Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown.

At the time, there was a growing anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., strongly supported by African-American organizations in the Bay Area, and if the public were to become aware of Histadrut's financial ties, Brown's participation in the event would not look good. Evidently he was aware of this, and sent a thoughtful, two-page response declining Zeltzer's request for him to pull out of the event.

The Labor Committee on the Middle East went forward with the protest, organizing about 60 people, including Roy Bullock, to picket in front of the Fairmont,.

Not long after the demonstration, Blankfort received an anonymous envelope. Inside was a torn-out page from a newsletter published by the Institute of Historical Review, a Holocaust denial organization. Blankfort wondered why he would get something from a neo-Nazi group he despised. He was shocked to see it was an article accusing Roy Bullock of being a spy for the ADL.

But spies of one kind or another are not uncommon in radical circles, Blankfort says. "My father was a blacklisted writer, and the FBI was poking around for years," he says. "I'm used to it."

As it turns out, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was tracking Bullock's activities; the FBI, however, was concerned with Bullock because he was an operative for the South African government.

When Bullock was questioned in 1993, according to court records, he told FBI agents that he had been instructed by the ADL to gather information on anti-apartheid groups, a statement he would later recant. He told federal agents he had been working as a "fact finder" for the ADL since 1954, when he was asked to gather information on a Communist Party club in Indianapolis. In 1987, he said, he met Tom Gerard, an officer with the San Francisco Police Department, who began supplying Bullock with records such as motor vehicle registrations and criminal histories -- records that, by law, are to be used by police and prosecutors only in legitimate criminal investigations. Bullock also admitted to receiving approximately $16,000 from the South African government in exchange for information on anti-apartheid groups. He also admitted to turning over information to Israel. At the time, Israel and South Africa maintained loose diplomatic relationships, because both faced trade sanctions, Israel from Arab countries, and South Africa from a wide variety of nations opposed to its apartheid policies.

The ADL says Bullock was acting on his own while collecting information on anti-apartheid groups.

In an investigation by the city, San Francisco police seized 10 boxes of information from the offices of the ADL. A police officer testified that 75 percent of the material was illegally obtained from confidential government sources, according to court records. Police also examined Bullock's computer files, which contained information on 9,876 people, along with 1,394 driver's license numbers. The people were divided into four categories: "Arabs," "Pinkos," "Right," and "Skins." Zeltzer and Blankfort were listed under "Pinkos." Included in Zeltzer's dossier was a description of the protest at the Fairmont Hotel.

Although thousands of nonpublic documents were found in the possession of both Bullock and the ADL, the city offered a settlement agreement to the organization in November 1993. As a result of the deal, the ADL paid a $75,000 civil fine -- most of which went to charitable causes along the lines of the ADL's own interests, such as a Hate Crimes Reward Fund -- while denying all allegations of wrongdoing.

Gerard, whom the ADL had sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel in 1991, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized use of a police computer and was sentenced to three years' probation, 45 days in jail, and a $2,500 fine. He is no longer with the Police Department.