Racism Allegations Spark Inquiry Into State Reserve Unit

The state adjutant general’s office is investigating an allegation by a member of the little-known State Military Reserve that a training lecture at Van Nuys Airport last month included anti-black and anti-Jewish material.

Other members of the group said there was no such material.

The accusation was made by Eric G. Forster of Santa Monica, a loan executive with a Calabasas bank, in a letter to the adjutant general, who commands the state’s military department. The department includes the better known California National Guard and Air National Guard, as well as the State Military Reserve, a 1,500-person auxiliary force of unpaid volunteers.

Forster said the lecture included the showing of a videotape produced by a group founded by the former head of the John Birch Society. It included charges that U. S. government agencies are heavily infiltrated by communists and that Israel is a secret ally of the Soviet Union, which benefits from Jewish American spies, Forster’s letter said.

Former Israeli Airman

Forster, an Israeli-born Jew who said he is a former warrant officer in the Israeli Air Force, was a first lieutenant in the military reserve’s 3rd Aviation Group, based at Van Nuys Airport. He set off the investigation by writing the adjutant general for permission to resign his commission.

Forster complained in his letter that the uniformed lecturer, a military reserve lieutenant colonel, told about 50 members of the unit at their regular training session on Jan. 18 that:

“Israel has been selling U. S. military intelligence secrets to the Soviet Union for the last 20 years. . . . Israel is alone responsible for the inferior U. S. military posture vis-a-vis the Soviet Union . . . . and American Jews have been known to supply Israel and Russia with military secrets.”

The lecture was presented by Lt. Col. Richard Callaghan, provost marshal of the military reserve’s 3rd Infantry Brigade, based at the Armed Forces Reserve Center at Los Alamitos.

Callaghan, a Costa Mesa real estate salesman, said Monday he had been instructed by the adjutant general’s office and by his attorneys not to discuss the accusation with anyone until the investigation is completed. He said, however, that he has given the same lecture hundreds of times to other groups “and I never had a complaint like this before--I never had a complaint, period.

“I am pro-Israeli and anti-PLO,” Callaghan said.

Another member of the unit, who asked not to be named but said he is Jewish, contradicted Forster. He said that he heard “no racial slurs at all” in the lecture and accompanying videotapes, “nothing against Judaism or anybody else.”

“Forster took everything out of context,” he said. “We have several high-ranking officers who are practicing Jews and they didn’t take it that way.”

He said there were no complaints from black members of the unit who were present. None of the black members could be reached for comment.

No Official Comment

There will be no official comment until the investigation is concluded, said Col. Don Foley, a spokesman for the adjutant general’s office in Sacramento. He said the investigation is being carried out by the inspector general’s office of the State Military Reserve, a separate organization from the National Guard. The report is due by Feb. 15.

Foley said it was not immediately clear whether a lecture such as the one described by Forster would violate the rules of the State Military Reserve. The reserve is subject to its own regulations, not those of the National Guard or Army, which have regulations against political propagandizing and ethnic slurs.

“I doubt there’s an SMR regulation that applies specifically to the rather bizarre set of circumstances that were alleged, but common sense should tell anyone that, in a uniformed situation, were the allegations to be proved correct, we’d need to take a strong look at that briefing and the individual who gave it,” Foley said.

Forster said the lecturer showed two videotapes, including one credited to the Western Goals Foundation, a political group founded in 1979 by the late Rep. Larry P. McDonald (D-Ga.), who was then chairman of the John Birch Society. McDonald and 268 others died when a Soviet fighter plane shot down a Korean jetliner in 1983.

“The film had anti-black, racist segments,” Forster wrote.

In an interview, Forster said the videotape contained insulting caricatures of thick-lipped blacks and asserted “that American blacks had been recruited by the Soviet Union as terrorists.”

Bob Sparks, an attorney for Western Goals, based in Arlington, Va., said the description does not fit any videotapes distributed by the foundation, and that the group does not produce racist or anti-Israel material.

“Western Goals has a staff of six, and four of them are black,” Sparks said.

He said Western Goals may have produced the other videotape Forster said was shown, without credits, which alleged that Soviet Bloc spies had heavily infiltrated the U. S. government. “That sounds like one of theirs,” he said. “Their films relate to subversion here and abroad.”

The training session was supposed to discuss the possibility that the unit may be dissolved, Forster said, but instead became a lecture on subversion.

‘Crawling With Spies’

“I thought it was a little bit unusual to hear an officer in the uniform of the United States Army saying that the FBI and CIA were crawling with communist spies and that the President was a fool for not knowing what was going on in the country,” he said.

Forster said he was disturbed by the anti-black cartoons but did not object. A black sergeant was sitting nearby, he said, “and I felt bad for the black members of the unit, but that was before I knew he was going to start in on the Jews 10 minutes later.”

The other Jewish officer said he remembered the cartoons, not as insulting caricatures, but as political cartoons from African newspapers, presumably drawn by African cartoonists.

He said Forster misunderstood references in the lecture to an Israeli spy operation in the United States, which the Israeli government has publicly acknowledged and apologized for, and the fact that an American was arrested on charges of giving government documents to the Israelis.

A spokesman for the 3rd Infantry Brigade said he could not comment on a matter under investigation by a higher headquarters.

The commander of the 3rd Aviation Group, Col. Charles Beck of Olivenhain in San Diego County, said the same. Beck, who was at the training session, said he stood by earlier reported statements that he heard no racist statements.

Called Outspoken

Two military reserve officers who said they knew Callaghan and had heard him lecture on terrorism, described him as blunt-spoken but not a racist. “I’ve never heard him utter a word that could be construed as racist,” said one.

Forster said he was in the Israeli Air Force from 1958 to 1962.

He immigrated to the United States in 1963, became a U. S. citizen, and joined the State Military Reserve “as a way of doing good volunteer work, because I enjoyed the work and the people.” He was a logistics officer in the group, which plans ways to utilize civilian-owned aircraft in an emergency, he said.

Forster said he had also seen newspapers and other literature of the Aryan Nations, a white supremacist group allied with American Neo-Nazis, left on tables at meetings of the unit, but did not object. “I didn’t want to point the finger at anybody, and I figured it’s anyone’s right in this country to leave political material someplace if they want to, as long as it was not discussed as part of the training.”

The other Jewish officer said he has attended almost all the group’s meetings “and I’ve never, ever seen any Nazi-type newspapers or material of any kind. I would certainly have noticed such a thing.”

He said he thought that Forster should resign and apologize “for taking this wonderful bunch of guys, and just dragging them through the mud” by making his charges public.

Forster and others who attended the meeting agreed that there was a heated confrontation between Forster and Callaghan after Callaghan brought up Israel. “I became extremely upset and I’m afraid I used some obscenities,” Forster said.

“After the meeting, two of the others came up and told me they basically agreed with me but I should have kept my mouth shut rather than talk to a superior officer that way.”