The ADL’s Forgotten Spy Ring Scandal and the South African Apartheid Regime w/ Mark Ames

On this edition of Parallax Views, Mark Ames, journalist and co-host of the popular podcast Radio War Nerd w/ John Dolan (aka Gary Brecher), joins the show to discuss his 2014 NFSFWCORP piece "The Kings of Garbage, or, The ADL Spied on Me and All I Got Was This Lousy Index Card". Due to his anti-apartheid activism at Berkeley, Mark Ames found out in the 90s that he'd been spied upon by the ADL. His file listed him marked him as a "Pinko".

This leads us into the story of Roy Bullock, an investigator who spied on anti-Apartheid activists for the Anti-Defamation League and the South African apartheid regime. Working with SFPD intelligence officer Tom Gerard (who also had a spooky background involving CIA dirty wars in Latin America), Bullock was involved in all kinds of skullduggery, including a case that almost led to the murder of a Simon Wiesenthal Center researcher so that an ADL researcher could take his job and make some extra cash. It's a wild story that involves a spy ring within the ADL spying on American anti-apartheid activists. This also takes us into a discussion of how the Irwin Sewell and the ADL had dossiers on antifascist researchers like Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, the relationship between Israel and South African apartheid, the ADL's shift from focusing on far-right movement like the John Birchers to left wing activists in Berkeley and Arab Americans, the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee and the car bombing assassination of Palestinian activist Alex Odeh, Abe Foxman (national director of the Anti-Defamation League from 1987 to 2015), the FBI (and LA Times?) vs. the ADL, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt's embrace of Elon Musk (and curious comments comparing him favorably to noted antisemite Henry Ford), ADL spying on black Americans like former Congressman Ron Dellums, the ADL as part of the National Security State, philosemitic antisemitism, Israel as being its own worst enemy, the canceling of author and journalist Vincent Bevins in Germany, and more.