The Alex Odeh case, Frogue, and the ADL

IN THIS MORNING'S LA Times (Evidence emerges), we learn that “new information sheds light on the planning and execution of a bomb plot that killed Alex Odeh in Santa Ana in 1985.”

It could be that, after all these years, we may soon find out who killed Alex Odeh.

Denizens of the SOCCCD, does that name ring a bell?

You remember Steven J. Frogue, right?

In March of 1995, Ked Francis, then a reporter for the Irvine Valley College Voice, interviewed then-SOCCCD trustee Frogue. At one point in the interview, Frogue seemed to praise a local Holocaust denial organization, the IHR:

There is a group, right here in Orange County, called the Institute for Historical Review...they have raised questions about some of this stuff. I've looked at some of their publications, kind of strange and definitely new, I've never seen anything like it before. There's somebody that wants to engage in the debate about the Holocaust. In 1984 their headquarters in Torrance was burned to the ground. Maybe that guy was back from his CIA stint. The guy who killed Alex Odeh, I don't know. It was not terribly long after that the FBI reported most of the terrorist actions in the United States in that previous year had been by pro-Israeli groups....

In those days, Frogue seemed obsessed with two organizations: (1) the IVC Academic Senate, to which he attributed various plots and intrigues, and (2) one of the IHR’s fiercest critics, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish civil rights organization (not to be confused with the Jewish Defense League or JDL, a militant organization).

In an article for the Voice ("Trustee calls IVC senate 'intellectual spur posse'," 3/23/95), Francis reported:

Trustee Steven Frogue continued his month-long attack on the Irvine Valley College Academic Senate and the Anti-Defamation League at a Feb. 27 Board of Trustees' meeting, despite attempts by fellow trustees to reign him in.

Frogue labeled the reading of IVC Senate resolutions condemning his conduct as an "intellectual drive-by shooting"…. The IVC resolutions, read by Senate President Peter Morrison, called for Frogue to "cease his interference in the affairs of the faculty" and condemned his Jan. 23 comments criticizing the ADL and questioning the group's role in Professor Richard Prystowsky's course on the Holocaust.

…Members of the Board of Trustees tried various tactics in an unsuccessful attempt to limit Frogue's comments and keep the meeting focused on its agenda.…The trustees' actions did not dissuade Frogue from again attacking the ADL and its supporters as "thought police" and engaging in an extended diatribe focusing on a Jan. 31 ADL letter criticizing his previous comments.

The only forceful opposition to Frogue at the meeting was presented by Trustee Harriet Walther…She called Frogue's comments associating the ADL with espionage "outrageous" and his statements are "similar to those being promulgated by organizations that are Holocaust deniers."

…In an interview with The Voice, Frogue called Walther's comments a "part of the big lie campaign—tell a lie that's so stunning that it leaves people speechless. I never said that...it's just appalling."…In the same interview, Frogue questioned whether groups that deny the Holocaust exist. He also hinted at possible links between an alleged ADL activist Frogue identifies as Tom Gerard and the death of Middle East peace activist Alex Odeh, whom he had mentioned at the Jan. 31 Board meeting….

Late in 1996, LA Times reporter Michael Granberry profiled Frogue (”Studying the Lessons of Steven J. Frogue,” 11/25/96). There, we’re told that, according to Walther, Frogue “made a public statement at [a board] meeting implying that the ADL was responsible for the slaying of a Middle East peace activist named Alex Odeh.”

OK, so Frogue evidently thought that the ADL was involved in Odeh’s death.

Evidently, the FBI thinks otherwise. Now, we may find out the truth.

In this morning’s Times article, we learn that:

Federal and local authorities have uncovered new evidence in the bombing that killed a prominent Arab American civil rights leader in Santa Ana 22 years ago today, in one of the first acts of modern-day terrorism in the United States.

The undisclosed evidence, including statements from a now-deceased informant, is not expected to immediately solve the slaying of Alex Odeh, but law enforcement officials familiar with the long-running investigation said the information provided new details about how the attack on the onetime Western regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was planned and carried out.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that the evidence developed in recent months by the FBI and Los Angeles Police Department in a Joint Terrorism Task Force could help investigators eventually bring charges in the case.

…Alex Odeh, 41, was killed and seven people were injured Oct. 11, 1985, when a bomb exploded as he opened the door to the committee's Santa Ana office.

The attack occurred 12 hours after Odeh appeared on a local television broadcast and criticized the news media for linking the Palestine Liberation Organization to the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro.

Within days of Odeh's death, the FBI said it believed the militant Jewish Defense League was behind the attack as well as two other bombings months earlier on the East Coast.

The link, authorities said at the time, involved the explosive devices used in all three incidents. The JDL was founded in 1968 by Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who moved to Israel in 1970 and founded the Kach Party, which called for forcibly removing all Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. He was assassinated in New York in 1990 by an Arab extremist.

After the FBI's comments about the JDL and the Odeh investigation, JDL leader Irv Rubin called the alleged link "absurd, obscene and outrageous" and accused the FBI of slander.

But even as the bureau later softened its public comments linking the JDL to the attack, its investigation continued to center on the possibility that members of the organization knew more than they were admitting about who had planned and carried out the attacks.

Over the years, in fact, the FBI focused on several onetime JDL members in its investigation of Odeh's death.

In 2005, former JDL member Earl Krugel was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for plotting to bomb a Culver City mosque and the field office of U.S. Rep. Darrell E. Issa (R-Vista), who is an Arab American. Rubin was also charged in the bomb plot.

As part of a plea agreement, Krugel promised to help federal authorities in the Odeh investigation and was said to have provided the names of several people mentioned by JDL leader Rubin as being involved in the bomb plot.

One source close to the probe told The Times in 2005 that three of the people were former JDL members Keith Fuchs, Andy Green and Robert Manning, all of whom had been publicly identified as possible suspects in the case as far back as 1988.

Fuchs and Green are believed to be living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Manning is serving a life prison term in California for the 1980 letter bomb slaying of Patricia Wilkerson, a Manhattan Beach secretary who was killed when she opened a package intended for her boss, who prosecutors said was having a business dispute with a JDL member.

Less than two months after he was sentenced to prison in Phoenix, Krugel was slain by a fellow prisoner. Former JDL leader Rubin died in November 2002 after leaping from a balcony at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center, where both he and Krugel had been held since their arrest in December 2001. Authorities termed Rubin's death a suicide….

Both Rubin and Krugel attended SOCCCD board meetings to protest Frogue’s proposed “forum” on the Warren Commission, which was to invite four “experts,” two or three of whom were associated with a notorious anti-Semitic organization, Liberty Lobby.

See:
• Night of the Nazi
• Oh, what a night! Nazis and JDL thugs.

Today in Nobel Prize winners! (Rebel Girl)

Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and longtime-London-residing Doris Lessing has won the Nobel Prize of Literature – finally. The author of The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist and numerous other works, including an appreciation of her cats (check it out, Chunk) is 87 years old.

Rebel Girl hopes that the School of Humanities will use its rights to the electronic marquee to celebrate this long-overdue honor. She herself plans to host an impromptu party in Lessing's honor in the lounge late Thursday afternoon.

Come on by!


Check out Why Lessing Deserves the Nobel Prize from the Guardian.

From the New York Times: “Doris Lessing, the Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and London-residing novelist whose deeply autobiographical writing has swept across continents and reflects her engagement with the social and political issues of her time, yesterday won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy described her as ‘that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.’”

Ten years of Bowdlerizing excellence!

WELL, HERE WE ARE in 2007, struggling against Raghu Mathur and his appalling friends to submit HONEST Accreditation reports to the commission.

It's not the first time. In fact, we've been through worse!

Let's return to a more innocent time: spring, 1997, in beauteous Irvine, California....

A few weeks after Mathur’s illegal appointment as interim President of IVC (April), Professor Rebecca Welch, who had been serving as the chair of the college’s accreditation “self-study,” resigned in protest over Mathur's ascendancy.

Months later, Mathur appointed his crony (and union Old Guard pal) Ray Chandos as chair. By local tradition (if not law), the chair of this committee is supposed to be jointly decided by the Academic Senate and the college President. The senate held a vote in which Connie Spar was chosen (to be recommended) by a wide margin over Ray. This did not stop Mathur from appointing Chandos as head of the Accred self-study.

What follows are bits of some relevant newspaper articles.

April 2, 1998
Controversy arises over Chandos appointment
By Jason Chittenden
Staff Writer [The IVC Voice]

Contributing to the tension on campus, Irvine Valley College President Raghu Mathur appointed Ray Chandos as Accreditation Self-Study Chair on March 23 despite the Academic Senate's vote of 15-4 in support of Connie Spar for the position….

April 21, 1998
College: Harsh report softened?
EDUCATION: Committee members say south- county accreditation report was altered.
By KIMBERLY KINDY
The Orange County Register

Harsh criticisms directed at the embattled South Orange County Community College trustees were removed from a draft report prepared for Irvine Valley College's accreditation review, according to district records released Monday….

[Kindy's article included the following comparison: Original draft vs. Chandos' draft:]

HOW DRAFT REPORT DIFFERS FROM ORIGINAL

ORIGINAL
"General community perception of the current board majority holds that (it) ... is not an 'independent body' but rather operates at the whims of a small vocal group of faculty, notably the faculty union leadership."

CHANDOS' DRAFT
"...the board is an independent policy-making board capable of reflecting the public interests..."

ORIGINAL
"...this board has repeatedly violated the California Open Meetings Act ... such repeated violations have resulted in additional lawsuits now underway and in a general breakdown of confidence."

CHANDOS' DRAFT
Statement was omitted from draft report.

ORIGINAL
"In the past, the board has interviewed the chancellor's final recommended candidates. More recently the board has instead directed the selection process itself..."

CHANDOS' DRAFT
"The governing board selects the college president under the employment procedures for executive positions, and delegates the evaluation of the president to the district chancellor."

ORIGINAL
"The president (Irvine Valley College President Raghu Mathur) makes every effort to review budgets and expenditures, though his unfamiliarity with college-wide budgeting and state fiscal concerns requires him to rely extensively on the advice of others, notably, specific board members' preferences..."

CHANDOS' DRAFT
"The president is well informed of state allocations and other income projections early in the budget development cycle." [End]

April 22, 1998
College District's Self-Evaluation Draft Draws Fire for Its Omissions
• Education: Critics say items critical of South Orange County trustees were omitted from the faculty administration report being sent to accreditation agency.
By ROBERT OURLIAN
LA TIMES STAFF WRITER

…Critics of the majority of the Board of Trustees charge that a draft report of a "self-evaluation" prepared by faculty and administrators was altered to remove lengthy passages critical of trustees.

The editing—while not illegal—shows an attempt to cover up problems at Irvine Valley College, one of the campuses administered by the South Orange district, critics charged….

4/25/98
College District Not at Risk, Trustees Say
• Education: leaders offer assurances on quality and accreditation after the latest flap, over criticism edited from a report.
By ROBERT OURLIAN
LA TIMES STAFF WRITER

Leaders of the South Orange County Community College District hastened to offer assurances Friday that educational quality is being maintained and that accreditation is not at risk as students threatened to leave the district to attend other colleges...Criticism is intensifying over faculty contentions that a draft college accreditation report on the school system's administration was "sanitized" when criticism of trustees was removed. But administrators said the process has retained its integrity....

May 1, 1998
OC Weekly
A Clockwork Orange
by Matt Coker

ERASER HEAD: Stinging criticism of the South Orange County Community College District board of trustees was reportedly removed from a self-evaluation prepared by a committee of faculty students and staff for Irvine Valley College's accreditation review, it was disclosed on April 20. Key passages detailed board micromanagement and violations of the state open-meeting law. Language blaming the district's state financial-watch status on the board's refusal to heed the advice of its own financial experts was apparently excised. The Irvine Valley professor who headed the eight-member committee reportedly said he edited many statements out of the report for length's sake. But it wasn't short enough for trustees, who complained the sanitized version was still too critical of them. Accreditation officials invited committee members to send them an alternative report if they believe the final version is inaccurate....

Behind closed doors

OUR BOARD, here at the SOCCCD, is known for, among other things, its “persistent and defiant misconduct” re the Brown Act, a law that forbids “secret” discussions by "legislative" bodies: school boards, city councils, and the like.

Ah, but infamy is fleeting. It looks like the Capo school district’s board are the new paragons of arrogance, incompetence, and secrecy. Check out this morning's LA Times: "Capistrano Unified secret meetings criticized":

Capistrano Unified School District trustees routinely violated the state's open-meetings law, discussing in secret topics such as construction contracts, how to silence a district critic and ways to prepare parents for bad news about schools, all of which should have been debated in public, according to a report released by the Orange County district attorney's office Tuesday.

Trustees tried to keep the community from participating in district decision-making and to manipulate public opinion, the report said.

"That such discussions are undertaken in secret by a body charged with the community's most important obligation, to adequately educate its young, is nothing short of disturbing," said the report by Assistant Dist. Atty. William J. Feccia.

The 58-page report is the latest blow to the beleaguered southern Orange County district, which this year saw its former superintendent and another top administrator indicted on felony charges of using public funds to influence an election and create an enemies list. Although the alleged violations of the state's open-meeting law do not meet the bar for criminal prosecution, if the district disputes the findings, prosecutors could file a lawsuit to prove the violations occurred, the report said.

…Though most of the district's 56 schools are well-regarded, its trustees and administrators have been mired in conflicts in recent years. Critics have loudly protested the location of a new high school, opposed attendance boundary changes and fought construction of a $35-million administration complex while hundreds of classes were being held in aging portables….

Really, you should read the whole article. For me, it’s like déjà vu.

The OC Reg covered the story, too. They note that

The district attorney's recommended actions follow on the heels of a lawsuit earlier this year against the district, when the district agreed to record its closed-session meetings for one year and have trustees undergo Brown Act training as part of a February settlement agreement. However, the district admitted to no wrongdoing in that settlement. The district attorney's report, by contrast, insists that the district confess to the alleged violations.

Years ago, when Wendy and I sued the SOCCCD board over its Brown Act violations, at one point, the court required similar recordings.

Guess what?

That’s right. The board flat didn’t do it.

TEN YEARS AGO:

9/19/97
Second lawsuit filed vs. college district
By KIMBERLY KINDY
The Orange County Register

A second lawsuit that accuses South Orange County Community College District board members of violating public meeting laws was filed Thursday.

An Orange County Superior Court judge also signed a ruling against the board on the first lawsuit Thursday, saying board members violated the Brown Act in April when they appointed an interim president at Irvine Valley College behind closed doors. The judge had made an oral ruling two weeks earlier.

In the second lawsuit, Irvine Valley Professor Roy Bauer accuses the board of violating the Brown Act on July 18 when it met in closed session and emerged with a plan to reorganize the administration at both Irvine and Saddleback colleges.

Three board members walked out of that meeting in protest, trustee Dave Lang said.

"In my estimation, there have been violations of the Brown Act," Lang said in an interview. "I have made that known very well to them (fellow board members) when I walked out of the meeting in July."

Suck up and smack down

THE BIG ISSUES at the SOCCCD continue to be (1) Accreditation and (2) the “50% law.”

ACCREDITATION. Just in case anyone was wondering, there’s no chance the Faculty Senate Presidents of our two colleges will be signing the Accreditation Focused Midterm Reports.

The Irvine Valley College report will be forwarded to the commission on October 11th (Thursday). The Saddleback College report will likely be forwarded tomorrow.

To learn why these reports will be sent unsigned by faculty leaders, just view the discussions of the reports that occurred at the August and September meetings of the SOCCCD Board of Trustees (items 7.1 and 7.2 respectively). (Luddites: click on the pretty blue words.)

A colleague and friend—a grizzled district veteran—enjoys saying that Chancellor Raghu Mathur embraces a “suck up and smack down” management philosophy, which is pretty obvious. Unsurprisingly therefore, Mathur has ordered Saddleback College President McCullough and Irvine Valley College President Roquemore to achieve signage.

But it ain’t gonna happen.

THE “50% LAW.” As you know, the district just squeaked by, fifty-percent-wise, for 2006-2007, but non-instructional expenditures have been trending upward for five years, and so the worry is that the district will be out of compliance for 2007-2008. That’s why a special committee (DRACula) was formed to study the matter and make recommendations. The committee seems to be making rapid progress.

Evidently, data regarding 2007-2008 expenditures were distributed by the district at the recent DRACula meeting. I’m told that projections have been made based on that data, and the picture is not good.

Instructional spending, again, is supposed to be at 50% or higher.

Try 46%.

The Song Remains the Same (Rebel Girl)

YESTERDAY Columbus Day was observed, and Rebel Girl's son, a kindergarten student, returned home with the construction paper ship in a bottle pictured above. The "poem" printed on the sail with the drinking straw mast reads:

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus called aboard his crew.
Mighty strong and brave was he,
As he sailed across the sea.

It seems to Rebel Girl that, during her elementary school years, Columbus Day marked the beginning of a season that ended with Thanksgiving. She spent much of that time with her long black hair plaited into two braids, clutching ears of corn and colorful gourds. She screamed at the parade of explorers and pilgrims disembarking from their white-sailed ships: "Welcome to our shores!" and "We will teach you to plant corn!" In the play, the pilgrims taught her how to bow her head and give thanks. Her feathers were construction paper, her brown dress was fringed with yarn, her feet were bare but her hair was real.

She was an all-purpose Indian in the school pageants, retired after Thanksgiving so that the children more apt to be cast in the Nutcracker might take the stage.

It's all coming back to her.

MEANWHILE, as an unconscious part of their private observation of Columbus Day, Rebel Girl's family finally gave in and called Roto-Rooter about the sluggish kitchen sink drain which had, over the weekend, while Rebel Girl tried one solution after another, resulted in much dishwashing being done in the adjacent bathroom sink.

The plumber arrived, a burly overly polite fellow who kept calling Red Emma "sir." His story finally came out: he was a marine, happy to be back after two tours, carrying shrapnel in his body, hoping to move with his wife to Murrieta, buy a house and become a parole officer. He had been in the original assault on Fallujah.

Rice was the culprit. The plumber warned us about too much faith in the InSinkErator. I wouldn't put anything down there, he said, except, maybe, lettuce.

Rebel Girl has a Brand New Blog

The Mark on the Wall is for all you writers and readers out there: check it out by clicking on this link. She describes it as a literary weblog for Orange County and the border regions of Los Angeles and San Diego.

It's no Dissent but it's something. This week she's all a twitter about Janet Fitch reading in Laguna Beach. Last week it was Jack Kerouac and Virginia Woolf.