Feb. 27, 2005 Jewish leaders fume over WJC official's outburst By URIEL HEILMAN NEW YORK The leaders of several major American Jewish organizations are fuming after a World Jewish Congress official accused US Jewish groups of being rife with corruption, lying to the US government and mismanaging their expenditures. The official also threatened to name the organizations if their leaders push for an investigation of Jewish organizational life at the WJC, which has come under the scrutiny of the New York state attorney general's office for possible questionable accounting practices. This time, the man at the center of the storm isn't Isi Leibler, the gadfly and former WJC official that has been hounding the WJC for months over its own financial mismanagement, but the person the organization hired to take care of the mess spawned by Leibler's questions: Stephen Herbits. "I'm not going to sit by and let this organization take the rap for their behavior," Herbits said of unnamed Jewish organizational leaders in a profanity-laced interview published in this week's issue of New York Magazine. "If we get into that kind of pissing match, this organization ain't going down by itself." Defending WJC governing board chairman Israel Singer, Herbits, who is the WJC's newly elected secretary general, was quoted as saying, "There are no illegalities in Israel Singer's behavior, and that is not true of some of the leaders of those other organizations." The executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, said Herbits' vague accusations are outrageous and nonsensical. "I don't know which organizations he's referring to, but it ain't us. I don't even know how he would know. These are the allegations made against" the WJC, Hoenlein said. "We have nothing to do with this." The congress has been mired in controversy since late last summer, when questions surfaced about financial irregularities surrounding a $1.2 million pension account for Singer, and an ugly spat among the WJC's top officials became public. The congress hired Herbits, a longtime associate of WJC President Edgar Bronfman, to take a full accounting of the congress and put to rest charges that Singer improperly maintained a secret Swiss bank account with the $1.2 million and that the organization has been insufficiently financially transparent. At the WJC's plenary in Brussels in January, Herbits delivered a report he said cleared the WJC's name, and he subsequently was elected to head the organization by WJC's member groups around the world. Leibler, the group's senior vice president and its chief critic, was ousted from his post. The controversy has persisted, however, fueled by newspaper stories like this week's interview in New York Magazine. Herbits vitriolic remarks in the interview struck a nerve among Jewish organizational leaders who say they are upset not only that Herbits is slandering Jewish groups generally, but that he is doing damage to the Jewish people by making baseless accusations. "It's damaging, it's hurtful, its irresponsible," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "It's a charge which is a brush that covers all organizations." "He is now one of the international Jewish leaders by virtue of the fact that he has been appointed as the secretary general of the World Jewish Congress," Foxman said. "To strike out in this way is so irresponsible. He's got a choice: either to name names-if that's what he believes-or to apologize." Herbits did not return a call seeking comment.