Ex-Officer Sentenced in Spying Case

Former police officer Tom Gerard, who fled to the Philippines after he was accused of spying for the Anti-Defamation League, pleaded no contest Friday to one charge of illegally accessing police computer records.

Gerard’s plea brings to a close the spying scandal that rocked the prominent Jewish civil rights group last year and outraged thousands of people and activist groups targeted by the league’s private intelligence operation.

Gerard, a onetime CIA agent who voluntarily returned from self-imposed exile to face charges, is the only person to be prosecuted in the scandal. He will serve 45 days in a work camp and pay a fine of $2,500.

Last fall, San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith agreed not to bring charges against the Anti-Defamation League after the group promised to pay up to $75,000 to Smith’s office to fight hate crimes.

Gerard, who at one point was an intelligence officer with the San Francisco Police Department, was accused of tapping into police computers and giving confidential information on hundreds of people to Roy Bullock, an undercover operative for the Anti-Defamation League.

Bullock has admitted that the two of them sold some of the information to an agent for the South African government. Bullock, who was never charged, also used data from Gerard in amassing intelligence files for the league on nearly 10,000 people and 950 groups, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

After the FBI began investigating the case, Gerard fled to the Philippines and resigned from the force. He left behind a briefcase filled with such items as false IDs, information about Central American death squads and a black executioner-style hood. From the Philippines, he threatened to expose illegal CIA support of death squads if he was prosecuted for his role in the Anti-Defamation League case.

Last month, a San Francisco judge dismissed felony charges against Gerard after the FBI refused to provide wiretaps and investigative files in the case.

To prevent the theft of confidential data in the future, Smith said, the San Francisco Police Department will require all computer users to have a personal password.