56 Friday, July 23, 1976 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS U.S. Congressmen Begin Investigating Interpol's Effectiveness and Links to Totalitarian States By S.A. BARRAM (Editor's note: S.A. Bar- ram is ,a London re- searcher who has written many articles, including a series in The Jewish News (Sept. 5—Oct. 3, 1975), on the Nazi past and present of Interpol, the interna- tional police organiza- tion.) Interpol used the Israel membership as a "clean bill of health" to demonstrate innocence vis-a-vis the accu- sations of Nazi involvement levelled against the organi- zation during the U.S. Con- gressional hearings of the House Appropriations Com- mittee. racial prejudice, the crea- tion and dissemination of false reports on innocent groups and individuals through Interpol's com- munication network, en- couragement of the dossier system, arbitrary and dog- matic handling of cases, connivance with the American Internal Rev- enue Service to hunt U.S. taxpayers abroad, etc., methods which are char- acteristic of a totalitarian police force, which does not serve the protection of law-abiding citizens, but pursues the self-serving purpose of accumulation of power. Seen in this context, Rep. Beard's statement is well The Washington bureau taken: "The 1938-1945 pe- of Interpol, which is staffed riod has affected the modus by Americans, defended In- operandi of the organiza- terpol at the hearings. It ap- tion." pears that it was unaware The hearings revealed as- of the Nazi domination of Interpol during the war, as tonishing particulars: Out of a total of 1,098 re- it was equally ignorant of the Nazi past of the quests for investigations 1968-1972 president of In- during.1973, there were 325 terpol, Paul Dickopf and of mysterious cases which the recently exposed Nazi were not initiated by fed- past of,Serge Langlais, who eral, state or -local police was a collaborator with the agencies. Yet, the Interna- tional Criminal Police Or- Nazis during the war. ganization is supposed to Langlais was expelled act upon requests of law from the French police in enforcement agencies alone. 1944, but found a haven at Jean Nepote, the General the Paris headquarters of Interpol, where he currently Secretary cabled the inquiry holds one of the highest ex- that "no one employed by ecutive posts in the organi- the General Secretariat has zation. a criminal record; it would The U.S. Interpol repre- be inconceivable to have any sentatives were taken by such person working here." surprise by the volume and Nepote, apparently, does grievousness of the not consider the collabora- charges, which included tion of Serge Langlais with the Nazi occupation force a crime. Equally, he does not think that Paul Dickopf's membership in the SS and in the infamous Security Service (SD) of the Nazi party was a crime. The ineffectiveness of In- terpol as a police organiza- tion and the amount of cooperation the U.S. bureau obtains from the member police organizations reveals the breakdown of requested and supplied information on suspects and criminals from July to December 1974, as listed in the congressional report on the first hearing on Interpol. The grand total of re- quested and supplied in- formation to the U.S. bu- reau amounts to the ridiculously low figure of 1,879 from 124 member countries and 50 countries did not cooperate at 'all. The 16 Arab countries combined requested and supplied a total of 60. Yet, despite the insignificant police contribution of the Arab countries to Interpol, the General Secretariat declared Arabic one of the organization's official lan- guages, with English, French and Spanish. International terrorism has considerably increased during the last few years. None of the national law en- forcement agencies, mem- bers of Interpol, have been successful in the combat of this crime, which has cost heavy losses in lives and property. An increasing number of policemen-delegates to In- terpol's General Assemblies have demanded the active involvement of the Interpol machinery in the combat of terrorism. The General Sec- retariat and Executive Com- mittee. which previously had used Article 3 of its con- stitution (which forbids in- volvement in political- mat- ters) as an escape clause. The General Secretariat agreed to disseminate in- formatio,n on international terrorists without identi- fying the group to which the individual terrorist would belong. This means, in practical terms, that a national , law enforement agency, receiving an In- terpol notification that a certain terrorist is ex- pected to arrive in that country from abroad, would not be able to know which group he would con- tact upon arrival, unless he is already on record in this country and his file contains his photograph. Most terrorists have ei- ther no record at all or an incomplete record. The fact that Interpol withholds the names of the groups makes surveillance difficult if not impossible. Therefore, In- terpol's ostensible yield to the demand of active in- volvement in the combat of terrorism, is a sham. - The attitude of Interpol's management is not surpris- ing if one scrutinizes the organization's membership. Out of the 126 member- countries, about 90 percent entertain totalitarian re-, gimes, where the torture of peaceful dissenters is the or- der of the day, where the police have been trained and organized according to the Nazi or KBG police system. The same countries which voted against Zionism at the United Nations protect in- ternational Arab terrorism at Interpol and some even support it. The loyalties of the Arab delegates and representa- tives at the Executive Committee has never been in dispute. And the Arab bloc consisting of Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, Iraq, Jor- dan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and other Asian and African coun- tries, carries a lot of weight. Considering the access the Arab representatives have to intelligence on ter- rorists, collected and stored in the files of the General Secretariat, Interpol's ac- quiescence to combat terror- ism becomes a mockery. The enmeshment of Inter- pol in political manipula- tions by geographical and ethnic groups is not new. When J. Edgar Hoover, the late chief of the FBI, with- drew from the organization in 1950, he justified the step stating that Interpol has become the playground for power politics, the results the U.S. obtained from its membership were not worth the financial outlay and that the management was unprofessional and under- mined by the personal am- bition which is so typical of the French administration. With Interpol hearings of the U.S. Senate Appropria- tions Committee still pend- ing, Rep. John Moss, chair- man of the House investigation's subcommit- tee, asked for a full investi- gation by the General Ac- counting Office into the activities of Interpol. His de- mand was supported by Sen. Montoya and Rep. Beard. The latter also did 's own investigation an quested the German - eral Police to reveal the records of the late presi- dent of Interpol, Paul Dickopf. Rep. Joshua Eilberg plans to raise the Interpol issue in the subcommittee on immi- gration which he chairs. He intends to demand that In- terpol go after war crimi- nals. Several other investi- gations are pending. On the other hand, the Treasury Department, un- der which the U.S. Interpol Bureau has worked since 1958, defends Interpol and all criticism levelled against the organization, while the Justice Department accuses Interpol of excessive bur- eaurcracy. It remains to be seen, if Congress is able to cut through the bureaucracy and allocate blame among individuals and focus per- sonal culpability on those who are responsible so that reform can take place to ensure that police proce- dures will be carried out in fairness in the interest of humanity. Adams, Thomas Kennedy Were Leading Philo-Semites By MOSHE DAVIS Hebrew U. of Jerusalem attitudes of the Christian Church towards the Jews. In fact, Adams himself found it logical that accept- ance of the Jews by their en- vironment might in turn bring about the Jews' ac- ceptance of the Christian faith. But it is equally true that in the United States, Christian feeling stimulated and encouraged official sup- port for the restoration of the Holy Land to the Jews. "For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an inde- pendent nation." This key sentence in John Adams' letter of 1819 to Mordecai Manuel Noah is probably the first declaration by an American statesman in fa- vor of a soveriegn Jewish state in Eretz Israel. It is true that in the long line of declarations over the years by high United States A genuinely sincere note officials, we come across was struck in the early many which reflect age-old part of the 19th Century by THOMAS KENNEDY —Photo courtesy of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati Thomas Kennedy, a young again be unfurled on the Catholic who supported walls of Jerusalem on the equality for the Jews of Holy Hill of Zion?" Maryland although he had At the beginning of the never even seen a Jew. In United States, Jews were his presentation in favor of perceived as the bearers of the "Jew Bill" in 1818, i- a great tradition, a domi- Kennedy declared: nant force in the shaping "But if we are Christians of America. in deed and in truth, we From the very beginning must believe that the Jewish of indigenous American cu- nation will again be re- lture, as documented in stored to the favor and pro- theological and literary tection of God. writings — and molded in "The story of that won- the seals of such major univ- derful people, from the days ersities as Columbia, Dart- of Abraham unto the pre- mouth and Yale — Hebrew sent time, is full of interest was not another "foreign" and instruction; their first language. It was the Holy emigration into Egypt, their Tongue, language of eternal leaving that country for the values, to such an extent land of Canaan; their pas- that, following the victory of sage through the Red Sea; the colonies, Hebrew was their journey in the wilder- proposed as the official lan- ness; their settlement in guage of the United States. Canaan; their captivity at To the founding fathers, Babylon; their restoration Jews did not represent an and final dispersion, afford ethnic minority or a small a theme that never has been, numerical segment of the never can be, exhausted. American people, although "They were once the pecu- they numbered less than liar people of God, they are 2,000 in those days. Jews yet a peculiar people; and Judaism were seen as though scattered and dis- indivisible — as one. persed in every country and Just as it was inconceiv- in every clime, their future able to Jefferson, Franklin state will no doubt be more Washington and Adams glorious than ever. May we that their contemporary not hope that the banners of Jewish citizens should be the children of Israel shall denied a voice in the American future, so was it equally inconceivable that a voice in the American destiny should be denied to the ancient fathers of Ju- daism: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — and to the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In a sense, the ideas of Ju- daism welcomed the Jews to America because of the many biblical concepts that the Pilgrim fathers had brought with them and which had taken root in the colonies long before the Jews' arrival. In the American tradi- tion, the Bible is the source of the common faith, a cohe- sive force in national aspira- tion. Its language and im- agery, moral directives and human strivings are embed- ded in the American charac- ter. In both glorious and trying times of American history, prophets and idola- tors, kings and commoners who lived centuries ago in ancient Israel rose to play contemporary roles. The fathers of the Re- public, for example, did not cite Holy Scriptures in the past tense, but as living, contemporary reality. Their political condition was de- scribed as "Egyptian slav- ery": King George was Pharaoh; the Atlantic Ocean nothing other than the Red Sea; the New Land was the desert; and Wash- ington and Adams — Moses and Joshua. What then -,- would be a more appropriate seal to exemplify the underlying purpose of the Revolution, thought a committee com- posed of Washington, Adams and Jefferson, than the portrayal of the Israe- lites' redemption, their exo- dus from Egypt: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." Dr. MOSHE DAVIS