Washington Watch
oor Model Clearance
Taking on the CIA; roll back at Agriculture;
`Ship of the Dammed.'
JAMES D. BESSER
Washington Correspondent
Washincton
ewish leaders urged caution
this week after a resurfacing of
longstanding complaints by a
Jewish employee of blatant
anti-Semitism at the Central
Intelligence Agency.
The charges, which first came to
light last June, involve Adam Ciralsky,
a 27-year-old CIA lawyer suspended
in October 1997, after agency officials
claimed he failed to fully disclose his
contacts with Israelis.
Neil Sher, who is representing
Ciralsky in a suit against the agency,
called the action "sheer harassment."
And he claimed the case points to a
much broader pattern of discrimination
in defense and intelligence agencies.
As proof, he cited internal CIA
memos on the Ciralsky case that
included what several Jewish leaders
agreed was inappropriate language. In
one, a senior agency official wrote that
"from my experience with rich Jewish
friends from college, I would fully
expect Adam's wealthy daddy to sup-
port Israeli political/social causes."
Sher said, "When you start ques-
tioning someone's loyalty to the United
States, and keep coming back to the
fact that their family supports UJA and
Israel Bonds, when you talk about
`Jewish daddies,' you're trotting out all
kinds of old anti-Semitic canards."
Agency Director George Tenet said
in a statement, "I will not tolerate
anti-Semitism or any other form of
discrimination at the agency." And a
group of former directors, including
John Deutch, who is Jewish, issued a
joint statement saying the chargers are
completely inconsistent with every-
thing we know about the CIA."
For their part, most Jewish leaders
here reacted cautiously. Abraham
Foxman, national director of the Anti-
Defamation League, said the alleged
documents "reflect inappropriate and
offensive ideas that have no place in a
government agency." But, he added,
"Based on what's out there I'm not
coming to the conclusion that the
CIA is rife with anti-Semitism, or that
anti-Semitism is an institutional prob-
lem there.”
"
CRIBS •DRESSERS
O
OVER
0/
ARMOIRES
TWIN BEDS
U COST BOOKCASES, ETC.
Orthodox Victory
Orthodox Jewish activists won a skir-
mish in a recurring battle over govern-
ment nondiscrimination guidelines
that run counter to the beliefs of some
religious groups.
This time the issue involves new
regulations by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture for nongovernmental agen-
cies that offer USDA-funded services
-7— including school lunches, feeding
programs for the elderly and summer
camps. The department expanded its
list of prohibited discrimination to
include sexual orientation, a step that
troubled Agudath Israel of America.
"The sexual orientation restriction,
as applied to recipients of services, is
one we don't find in statute and regu-
lation; the department has taken it
upon itself to add categories," said
Abba Cohen, the group's Washington
representative. "Jewish schools that
won't hire homosexual teachers would
not be able to get school lunches.
Agudah, along with Catholic and
Evangelical organizations, expressed its
concern to USDA and to Agriculture
Secretary Dan Glickman. Department
officials now say they'll take out the
disputed categories.
),
St. Louis Exhibit
Many of the more than 900 Jews who
boarded the St. Louis in Hamburg in
1939 hoped the German luxury liner
would take them to safety in the
United States. Instead, the "ship of the
damned" became an agonizing symbol
of the indifference of the world to
Jews fleeing the Nazi killing machine.
A new exhibit on the St. Louis at
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington seeks to restore as
much of that history as possible.
Jewish folklore implies that almost
everybody aboard the Sr. Louis per-
ished; the project tells a different story.
"Over half of the St. Louis passengers
survived," said Scott Miller, an exhibit
coordinator. He noted that 288 went to
England and others had waiting num-
bers for visas to the United States. The
tragic problem: the ones whose numbers
came up in 1943 and 1944 were already
at Auschwitz. Other passengers were
accepted by Belgium, the Netherlands
and France, which put them back in the
clutches of the Nazis after Hitler's con-
quest of those countries. I 1
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4/16
1999
Detroit Jewish News
23