Mark Richey
also this guy goes by mhiver@webtv.net
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 11:24:43 -0700
Those who are not familiar with the machinations of Mark Richey AKA Mark Richie AKA POneill etc., and his buddy, Mr. Kersting, should be aware that Richey has been plying his divisive wares, spreading the ink from his poison pen in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 25 years and has been so diligent in his attacks on genuine anti-Zionists while either ignoring or patronizing actual Zionists that I and others have concluded that he must be in the employ of the Anti-Defamation League. In the late 80s, Richey, along with a man named Roy Bullock, the ADL's "top fact finder" (according to the late ADL spy chief, Irwin Suall), infiltrated the SF Chapter of the ADC (American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee) of which I had been a founding member but was no longer active.
In 1987, I was sent information that Bullock, who had been at the founding meetings of our Labor Committee on the Middle East, was an ADL spy and when I and the other LCOME co-founder asked him about it, his responses convinced us that the allegation was correct and we booted him out and did our best to inform other groups about him. In 1992, the SF Police Dept. arrested one of its officers after it learned he had been providing information for the ADL and South African intelligence services and I put two and two together and gave the media, Bullock's name. In the subsequent investigation, Bullock, who was working in partnership with the cop, acknowledged that he had some other people working with him in the Bay Area but their names were never revealed. He also mentioned, gratuitously, that he had infiltrated the ADC after a previous spy had been exposed and that that spy had gone on to become a lawyer. What was curious is that story wasn't true. No spy had been exposed, but it turns out that Richey is a lawyer registered with the California State Bar Assn., but who has never practiced and has never responded to the question as to why he hasn't. You can read about the ADL spy and the court case that followed on www.adlwatch.org
According to others at ADC, Richey was relatively quiet at meetings and eventually became a member of the chapter's board of directors. After differences with Palestinians in the chapter, Richey left and proceeded to attack them and other anti-Zionist activists, using his former position as an ADC board member as a badge of credibility. When the entire Arab community boycotted Alan Solomonow, the openly Zionist head of the Middle East Desk of the American Friends Service Committee chapter in SF, because of his open discrimination against Palestinian and Arab organizations and individuals, Richey put out a paper defending Solomonow, chiding the Palestinian and Arab community for its boycott.. After an early attempt to enlist me on his side failed, and this goes back over 20 years, Richey began attacking me as a liberal anti-Zionist and especially so after I was interviewed in the SF Weekly in 1984 and spoke about the control of the Democratic Party by the Zionist lobby at a time when the Demos were holding their convention in San Francisco. Those attacks have never ceased, the latest being his message, kissing up to Noam Chomsky after my article "Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict" was published in Left Curve and began circulating on the net. See http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html
While most of the evidence that Richey was an ADL agent was circumstantial, he made a slip a year ago or so when in an email exchange about Bullock, he revealed information about how he was exposed as such by the Inst. for Historical Review that was not part of the court testimony and has been otherwise publicly unavailable. Richey threatened to sue me for calling him an ADL agent some years back and I have since, on a number of occasions, invited him to do so, since there are many questions that I would have my own lawyer ask him, and how he knew about Bullock would be one of them.
By the way, Richey has never stopped his spying. He has maintained his membership in the Arab Cultural Center in SF and the people there are generally too polite to ask him to leave. I happened to be there a couple of months ago when a former Palestinian prisoner and a lawyer from the West Bank were there for a small reception and sure enough, agent Richey arrived. However, since the reception was private, he was not allowed in.
Before the internet, Richey had to reply on the postal service to do his mud slinging, but thanks to the internet he has a world wide reach. So I hope will this message. Those who belong to the many groups that he has posted his garbage to should also have an opportunity to know who they are corresponding with.
And oh, yes, he does not think the Israel lobby is much of a problem, it's all US imperialism as he wrote to Chomsky, nor does he talk about, as far as I can tell, boycotting, divesting or stopping aid to Israel.
I have sent a copy of this letter to Agent Richey, repeating my invitation for him to sue me.
Jeff Blankfort
Mazin Qumsiyreh adds: my own experience with Richey was when he exploited a difference of opinion on tactics between some chapters of Al-Awda to then claim Zionists manipulated Al-Awda and Zionists run Middle East Children Alliance etc. (august 2005) |