Nate Hochman Profile picture
Sep 7, 2023 13 tweets 5 min read Read on X
For over a decade, the ADL used undercover spies to conduct a vast, coordinated, and potentially illegal campaign of espionage against the John Birch Society.

Until this year, that campaign was a secret.

It was uncovered by a historian digging through historical archives. 🧵 Image
In March, GWU historian Matthew Dallek published a book about the John Birch Society (JBS), a hard-right anticommunist org that was prominent in the 60s and 70s.

During the research process, Dallek was given access to a trove of internal ADL documents from that time period. Image
What Dallek uncovered was “a lengthy, multidimensional, and previously undisclosed counterintelligence operation waged by the ADL to infiltrate and dig up damaging information about” JBS, spanning from 1959 to the 1970s—and involving current and former US intelligence officials.
The ADL's spies — which included police officers, accountants, religious leaders, journalists, and members of civil society — used code names to pose as Birchers, feeding intel back to the ADL.

The tactics they used to collect that intel were highly secretive—and often extreme: Image
"Some of the ADL’s financial investigations, from using third parties for credit checks to fishing for data about individuals’ trusts, may even have been illegal," Dallek wrote.

But for the ADL, the ends "justified the morally questionable means, which included outright spying."
According to Dallek, the ADL utilized a kind of proto-doxxing: Spies "searched for connections between the society and respectable individuals and institutions, to embarrass them into renouncing" JBS.

As a result, "Birchers...sometimes found their careers in jeopardy."
This was carried out through the ADL's close relationship with members of the media, which it leveraged to threaten Birchers, derail JBS events, and coordinate public pressure campaigns—an early version of the advertiser boycotts the ADL uses against figures like @elonmusk today.

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One of the key figures in this operation was Isadore Zack, a former counterespionage expert for the US Army.

During WWII, Zack worked in "domestic intelligence" — i.e., spying on other Americans — as detailed in this 2001 piece from a local paper:
patriotledger.com/story/special/…
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After the war, Zack became director of "fact-finding and public relations" for the ADL’s New England region, overseeing "a cadre of ADL spies."

Unsurprisingly, Dallek writes, those spies "employed techniques that were on par with government-backed clandestine operations." Image
Under Zack's leadership, the ADL worked directly with US intelligence agencies. Zack was in regular contact with the FBI, feeding intel to J. Edgar Hoover's Subversive Trends of Current Interest Program, which "recorded thousands of pages of material" about JBS. Image
It wouldn't be the first—nor the last—time the the ADL worked with government intelligence agencies to take down political dissidents.

As @shellenberger documents here, the group has a long history of illegal espionage, extending well into the modern era.
The point here isn't that you should agree with the politics of the JBS — a group that was known for kooky, fringe conspiracy theories — or any of the other groups that the ADL has spied on.

The point is that in a free society, ideas should be hashed out in the public square.
Since its inception, the ADL has sought to undermine that principle, and has opted instead for the use of subterfuge tactics against its ideological opponents.

It's not a "noble" organization that has simply lost its way; it's been like this from the start. #BanTheADL

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More from @njhochman

Oct 16
This guy is from the reddest congressional district in North Carolina.

Just an unbelievable betrayal.
This is a serious—even existential—problem in red America.

Any conservative who's done work at the state level knows that the deep-red states often have the most egregiously liberal Republicans. This is something @RMConservative talks about a lot:
This is true across the board, on any number of key issues. It's something I discovered almost immediately after getting into politics. My first few big breaks were investigative pieces about the mind-bogglingly bad state of local GOPs in the deepest-red parts of the country. Image
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Read 6 tweets
Oct 1
Charleroi, PA is a working-class town of just over 4,000 people. In the past two years, it's been flooded by thousands of Haitian immigrants.

We spent a week on the ground there. The town is completely overwhelmed.

I wrote about the crisis for @im_1776
im1776.com/2024/10/01/cha…
Nestled in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Mon Valley—about 30 miles from Pittsburgh—Charleroi is a poor, primarily white working-class community.

Less than 18% of the residents have a bachelor’s degree, and the median household income is less than $45,000 a year.


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The town was once fed by the region’s booming steel industry, and a glass-making plant based in Charleroi itself—a creation of the Belgian immigrants who settled there.

As late as the 1990s, locals say it was still a wonderful small town to grow up in:
Read 12 tweets
Sep 21
The Guardian's Jason Wilson just wrote a hit piece about me and @America_2100.

Just to give you a sense of how sloppy it was: It's only been up since this morning, but they’ve already had to issue two corrections.

These are the questions he emailed me yesterday. Beyond parody: Image
The hit was supposed to be about our reporting in Charleroi, Pennsylvania—where we've spent the past week, on the ground, reporting on the consequences of a flood of Haitian immigrants into the small working-class town. (See below).
But Wilson couldn't even do the bare minimum research for his reporting. For example—this morning, when the piece went live, it claimed that we had "only recorded interviews with older white residents of the town." Image
Read 8 tweets
Sep 13
This how every single argument for mass immigration goes.

Step 1: "Oh, you have concerns about [X group] coming into your country? Well, here's one person from that group who's good. What do you think of that, huh? Do you hate this person, too??"Image
[when presented with evidence that said person isn't representative of said group writ large]

Step 2: Actually, all those bad things you just mentioned are America's fault. And anyways, it's good for them to come here. I don't have to explain why. It just is.Image
[no, I think that would probably be bad for us]

Step 3: Honestly, who even is "us"? Who is "we"? Does America even exist? Do you know what America is? Because other people think America's something else. So how can you be so sure that America is anything at all?Image
Read 10 tweets
Sep 7
Seeing lots of stories like this on the local Springfield social media pages.

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I wrote this, on the topic of Haitian immigration, back in March:

"That’s the double-edged sword of 'assimilation': The people become more like their adopted home, but their adopted home also becomes more like them."

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Anyways, this is an important thread. This story has to go nuclear—it should be one of the only things that elected Republicans are talking about right now:
Read 4 tweets
Sep 7
One of the equally admirable and frustrating things about Americans is how open-minded they are. Even when their town is literally getting invaded by Haitians, their first instinct is to try to patiently explain to the invaders why they need to behave themselves. Image
Imagine the Romans meeting the barbarians at the gates and going, "I have read about some of your countries and it was scary. I understand why you left. But there's a huge cultural difference. So if you want to be part of this great city then you need to understand our culture."
Just to clarify: Obviously, the kind of "open-mindedness" this guy is demonstrating—while heartbreaking—is not admirable in any kind of aspirational sense. As I said to Will below, it's a sort of modern corruption of a traditionally American virtue:
Read 5 tweets

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