[Tralfaze McWatt]

How did the ADL get so cozy with the FBI? What presidential or congressional committee authorized their cozy relationship? The ADL obviously didn't help the FBI in preventing the 9/11 terrorist attack, so why should the FBI trust the ADL to provide special insight on terrorists?

[LarryLied]

The ADL has the political muscle to force the FBI to coordinate with it. There is no other answer. It is one thing for an agency to have someone speak before any group. It is another to have a group such as the ADL work in conjunction with a Federal agency.

Imagine the stink, rightly, if the Christian Coalition or the Catholic League did this. Imagine if those groups put out a CD-ROM of left wing "extremists" and sent it to hundreds of law enforcement agencies across America.

[SauronOfMordor]

The FBI can use the ADL to maintain dossiers on people and groups who the FBI has no legal authority to monitor; investigate people and groups that the FBI has no probable cause to be hassling; and throughout it all have the data uncovered be immune from FOIA requests and Congressional inquiry. It can be a very cosy relationship

Of course, the danger is that when you use the ADL as your organizational memory, your viewpoints start to become whatever the ADL wants them to be