Supporters, Foes Talk About Frogue

An author who espouses the view that Israeli intelligence officials were involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination addressed trustees of the South Orange County Community College District on Monday on behalf of a support group for Trustee Steven J. Frogue, the target of a recall.

Last year, Frogue invited the author, Michael Collins Piper, and others for a seminar on the assassination of President Kennedy, including Piper’s view that Israeli agencies played a key role.

The proposed seminar brought a storm of criticism and resulted in the recall campaign against Frogue, who has denied criticism that he is anti-Semitic.

Piper, waiting to address the trustees Monday, said, “For the first time, I think in history, someone was not allowed to speak on the assassination of JFK.”

He defended Frogue, saying, “The only crime I see that Steve Frogue has committed is inviting me here to speak.”

Piper and Irv Rubin, chairman of the Jewish Defense League, both addressed the trustees, speaking after a long closed session and the business portion of the meeting, which continued past 10:30 p.m.

About 50 people came to hear Piper, and another dozen turned out in support of Rubin. But many of them drifted away as the business meeting stretched on.

Waiting his turn to address the board, Rubin said of Piper: “He is a Jew-hater par excellence. And I would say that to his face.”

Of Frogue, Rubin said: “We will be on his case from now until he leaves office. We think he’s an evil, evil man.”

Piper has written critically about the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish interest group, and the Holocaust--although Piper now says he is “tired” of the Holocaust.

He refuses to recognize the accepted historical figure of 6 million Jewish Holocaust deaths. But he says he is not a Holocaust denier and says his father and uncles worked on Holocaust relief as U.S. servicemen.

Piper said his principal reason for speaking to trustees was to promote his book “Final Judgment,” written about the JFK assassination, which occurred three years after the author’s birth.

Endorsing Piper’s visit was the group Friends of Steven J. Frogue, which opposes Frogue’s recall.

Through a college spokeswoman, Frogue said he did not sanction either the group or the visit by Piper. However, also through the spokeswoman, he said he supports their right to free speech.

Frogue is a second-term trustee who has served as the president of the South Orange County Community College District board overseeing Saddleback College in Mission Viejo and Irvine Valley College in Irvine. Together, the two campuses serve 33,000 students.

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As president last year, Frogue proposed the seminar, which he would teach, to delve into different views of the JFK assassination.

The seminar was denounced by students, faculty members and local Jewish and civil rights groups as being intolerant and racially motivated.

Frogue also appeared last fall before the Orange County Human Relations Commission, alarming commission members with a “detailed denunciation of the Anti-Defamation League as well as defense of the extremists he invited as speakers,” commission officials said in a letter to trustees.

In response, Frogue has said in several public statements that he considers the Holocaust a great atrocity and that he respects people of the Jewish faith.

In the latest blow to Frogue last month, state Republican chairman Michael Shroeder announced the state party had endorsed the recall of Frogue, who is registered as a Republican even though the election of trustees is nonpartisan.