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Friday February 10, 2006

ADL recounts threats, assassination attempts

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

Morris Casuto is a friendly guy, but getting to know the bomb squad on a first-name basis is pushing it.

For seven years, from 1993 to 2000, a self-proclaimed “Lone Wolf” white supremacist made making Casuto’s life hell one of his top priorities.

The San Diego ADL regional director found his name — with an X through it — emblazoned along with swastikas on local synagogues. Racists visited his house, leaving vandalism, electronic devices (which turned out to be radios, not bombs) and, perhaps most chillingly, a balloon shaped like the grim reaper.

“This was all done to show me they knew where we lived and to make me a spectacle and my family a spectacle in front of our neighbors,” said Casuto, in town for an Anti-Defamation League-sponsored speech Monday, Feb. 6 at Congregation Sherith Israel, in which he and local Regional Director Jonathan Bernstein recalled some of the unpleasant side effects of keeping close tabs on extremist groups.

When Casuto first broke in with the ADL 33 years ago, it wasn’t unusual to keep the doors wide open; anybody who felt like it could stroll right in. Good luck trying that now.

As fewer people become affiliated with hate groups, the hangers-on have grown more and more extreme. Most of the less violent members of hate groups have quit over the years, meaning those who have stuck around are the truly nasty ones.

That’s something Bernstein can personally attest to. He vividly remembers the day a decade and change ago when, out of the blue, a friend in the FBI called him up and told him there was a militia group plotting to kill him.

“And the next thing he said was, ‘But don’t worry,’” recalled Bernstein with a laugh.

Luckily, one of the militia members recruited to kill Bernstein was actually an undercover FBI agent.

Prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, the ADL had released a dossier on dangerous militia groups, and, following the explosion, the media often called Bernstein, based out of Houston at the time, to answer questions about militias. Militia groups were not pleased, and hatched a plan to blow up the ADL office.

Bernstein was informed every step of the way as the militia members amassed more operatives and assembled a 200-pound fertilizer bomb.

On the day militia members planned to place the bomb in the men’s room on the same floor as the ADL office, the FBI swooped in and made the arrests. Chillingly reminiscent of Oklahoma City, an adoption agency was only one floor below the ADL.

At the trial of militia leader Ray Lampley, Bernstein testified that, contrary to Lampley’s claim, he hadn’t been harassing the militia leader. In fact, the two had never met.

“It was a little eerie to sit in the courtroom with people who wanted to kill me,” said Bernstein.

Casuto’s life has been relatively normal ever since white supremacist ringleader Alex Curtis was busted in 2000 after an extensive effort by the FBI and San Diego Police that involved authorized wiretaps and the cultivation of informants.

Prior to his run-in with Curtis, Casuto had a contract taken out on his life by a Southern California skinhead group, and his and his wife’s license plate numbers revealed on white power telephone hotlines.

Still, both Bernstein and Casuto said they didn’t regret their career choices for a second.

“The last thing you want to do is provide these people with the information that they can decide where you live, how you live and what you do,” Casuto said.

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