FBI Offers Insider Briefing

Date: November 4, 2009

In their common battle against terrorism at home and abroad, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are both committed to securing the lives and civil liberties of people and the communities they reside in.

This was the crux of a talk given by New Jersey FBI Special Agent in Charge Weysan Dun at an ADL Plains States event on October 19 at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Formerly of Omaha, Dun currently heads up the FBI's Newark office where he was the leading authority in the recent high-profile case of corruption and international money laundering. Nearly 90 people gathered to hear what Dun had to say about the FBI's latest work in counterterrorism and hate crime investigation.

Besides combating violent bigotry from "lone wolf" radicals and domestic groups of Klansmen, neo-Nazi skinheads and anti-Semitic black separatists, the ADL and the FBI are strong allies against international terrorism. Dun lauded ADL's outstanding training programs for law enforcement.

Following Dun's presentation, ADL's Associate Director Bob Wolfson gave an overview of ADL's current priorities. Wolfson also remarked on the cooperative training initiatives between the ADL and the FBI, including an innovative program called Law Enforcement and Society (LEAS): Lessons of the Holocaust. Developed in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the ADL and the FBI, LEAS draws on the history of the Holocaust to provide law enforcement professionals with a deeper understanding of their relationship to the people they serve and their role as proctors of the Constitution.

"This extraordinary Holocaust education program helps its participants to fully understand what is at stake when law enforcement fails to safeguard the freedom, rights and human dignity of all people," Wolfson said. "This, in the end, is what the FBI and ADL are all about."