Congressman Won’t Comment on Endorsement of Anti-semitic Book

The administrative assistant to Rep. John G, Schmitz. (R. Calif.) told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency yesterday that for the time being the Congressman would not comment on a request he had from the B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League to repudiate his endorsement of an anti-Semitic book. The aide, Robert Greier, told the JTA that the ADL’s letter reached Schmitz Tuesday.

Harvey B. Schecter, the ADL’s Western states fact-finding director. said Schmitz wrote the foreword to and commended “None Dare Call It Conspiracy,” a book by Gary Allen which. according to Schecter, “revives the anti-Jewish propaganda campaigns of the 1920s, carried out by agents of the late Henry Ford Sr. through the Dearborn Independent, which were revived in the 1930s by Father Charles E. Couglin, the notorious radio priest.” Schecter’s charges were published in the California Jewish Voice, a Jewish weekly of Los Angeles. The paper quoted Schecter as saying that Allen is “a long time John Birch Society pamphleteer and speaker,” and that his book is “currently being distributed free on a massive scale by the John Birch Society.”

The anti-Semitic cannards of the Dearborn Independent were taken from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic forgery of the 19th century. They were subsequently repudiated by Ford. Rep. Schmitz, whose home is in Santa Ana, is listed in the Congressional Directory as a member of the John Birch Society and as a Lt. Col. in the US Marine Corps Reserves. He teaches political science at Santa Ana College.