Partnering with Law Enforcement

A cadre of ADL experts supplies critical information about extremists and terrorists to law enforcement.

They uncover public information about extremists and terrorists hidden on the Internet. They monitor extremist events. They share what they find with law enforcement, from local police to the FBI and U.S. Secret Service. Their names and recent work can't be described here, because it figures in current investigations and court cases.

They are ADL Investigative Researchers: people whose expertise on extremists and terrorists is used by law enforcement an average of 700 to 1,000 times a year to help investigate threats, arrest suspects, provide testimony at trials - and sometimes send extremists to prison.

"Our department deals with hard-core haters," says Dr. Mark Pitcavage, ADL Director of Investigative Research and Co-Director of the ADL Center on Extremism. "Our job is to help law enforcement nail these guys when they cross the line from hate thought to hate action."

"Our knowledge of extremists and relationships with law enforcement lead to concrete results no other nonprofit can claim," says ADL Civil Rights Director Deborah Lauter, who oversees the Center on Extremism.

PREVENTING TERRORISM

In the summer of 2008, ADL's Midwest Investigative Researcher discovered a radical convert to Islam who seemed potentially dangerous. Because of this intelligence and information received from an independent source, the FBI opened an investigation that led to the suspect's arrest in 2009 on terrorism-related charges. In June 2010, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III commended this researcher in a Director's Letter saying she helped prevent a "potentially devastating terrorist attack."

EXPOSING WHITE SUPREMACISTS

The stabbing victim, an African American man in Phoenix, could only remember one detail about his primary assailant: the man's left arm was encased in a red cast. When the Phoenix Bias Crime Unit asked for her help in late 2007, ADL's Southwest Investigative Researcher not only provided information on several suspects, but even unearthed photographs of one - white supremacist Chad Kerns - who was wearing the red cast in question. As a result, Mr. Kerns and four other suspects were arrested in December 2008, and he was later convicted and sent to prison for 10 years. In a 2009 Letter of Commendation, City of Phoenix Public Safety Manager Jack F. Harris cited this researcher and ADL as "a constant source of up-to-date, valid information about the white supremacist criminal groups victimizing the people in the City of Phoenix and Maricopa County."

SOVEREIGN CITIZEN EXPERTISE

The sovereign citizen movement is a little-known but growing group of extremists who believe the government has no authority over them. Their tactics include shooting police officers; filing bogus liens to harass and retaliate against public officials; and defrauding property owners with schemes that promise to eliminate their mortgages. In March 2010, Dr. Pitcavage testified as an expert witness in the federal trial of a Michigan sovereign citizen, Larry Wilcox, who was subsequently convicted for using bogus liens and mail fraud against a federal judge. "I cannot overstate how impressive I thought your testimony was," wrote one prosecutor to Dr. Pitcavage afterward.

RECOGNIZED FOR DECADES

ADL began "fact-finding" in the 1930s to monitor the rise of U.S. extremists such as the Ku Klux Klan and the German-American Bund (U.S. supporters of Hitler). ADL has since developed the world's most extensive archive of extremist publications, all now digitized in ADL's Rita and Leo Greenland Library and Research Center.

Today, Investigative Research develops law enforcement contacts and observes some 150 extremist events a year. It works closely with ADL analysts, some fluent in Arabic, who monitor extremists online and also provide information to law enforcement.

One major example: When an extremist known online as Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee threatened the creators of the "South Park" TV show, the FBI sought information about him from ADL's Islamic Affairs Department. The department had key information: it had tracked and archived hundreds of Al-Amrikee's postings and had even determined his real name: Zachary Chesser. The FBI arrested him in July 2010 for providing material support to Al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist organization based in Somalia. In October 2010, Mr. Chesser pleaded guilty to the charges.

"Law enforcement needs evidence of criminality to investigate someone," Ms. Lauter adds. "But ADL - like investigative journalists - may do so at any time using public information."

A TREASURE TROVE'

That's why James Cavanaugh, Special Agent in Charge (Ret.) of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Nashville Field Division, calls ADL's information "a treasure trove for us." In October 2008, he asked ADL for information about suspects in a plot to kill more than 100 African Americans, including then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. Since ADL Investigative Researchers had been tracking these individuals for some time, they were able to quickly provide the ATF with a dossier that helped it investigate the suspects, determine the scope of the plot and establish the suspects' links to a new white supremacist group.

"ADL knows who the haters are," says Special Agent in Charge (Ret.) Cavanaugh. "It would take us weeks and months to gather this information, but ADL already has it. You guys don't know how valuable you are."

ADL knows the value of law enforcement. We honor the work of its dedicated men and women with several major awards, including: the William and Naomi Gorowitz Institute Service Award; the Helene and Joseph Sherwood Prize; the Chief Giovanni Palatucci Courageous Leadership Award; the Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer Memorial Foundation Award; and the SHIELD Award.

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FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, shown here at ADL's Annual Meeting, commended an ADL Investigative Researcher in July 2010 for providing information that helped prevent "a potentially devastating terror attack."

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'ADL knows who the haters are, it would take us weeks and months to gather this information, but ADL already has it.'