Blue Cross resists pressure on ADL

The state's largest health insurer is under mounting pressure to withdraw its support of the Anti-Defamation League's No Place for Hate program, but is showing no signs of backing down.

At a meeting Tuesday night, the Watertown Town Council unanimously backed a resolution urging Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts to stop supporting the program. It also voted to send a letter to Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national head, requesting he appear before the council to discuss whether his organization considers the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923 as genocide.

Meantime, a collection of 25 Armenian groups from the area last week sent a letter to Blue Cross-Blue Shield CEO Cleve Killingsworth also urging the company to drop its support. "Blue Cross-Blue Shield should not be associated with genocide denial," the letter said.

John J. Curley, a senior vice president of government affairs for Blue Cross-Blue Shield, told town officials and a crowd of 60 at the Town Council meeting that the company does not intend to end its relationship with the No Place for Hate program, which promotes antiracism and other antiviolence efforts.

Curley said he and company executives met with leaders from the ADL's New England office last month seeking clarity on the issue, and now feel comfortable with the assurances they received over the league's position on the Armenian genocide.

"Our relationship is with the local ADL, and we're very satisfied with the response we got," said Curley. "If it was ambiguous, we would have ended our partnership." Robert Crestan, civil rights counsel for the ADL's New England office, said in a telephone interview Thursday that the Watertown Town Council's resolution was "unfair."

"I think it's disturbing that Blue Cross is being targeted since they've done such good work in the community," Crestan said.

Curley said the company provided money to No Place for Hate from 2001 through 2006, but since then has offered only space at its headquarters for meetings and functions. The current absence of financial assistance "shouldn't be a reflection" on the company's continuing interest in the program, said Curley, who added it "may" resume funding the program in the future.

The developments are the latest chapter in a controversy that flared up in the summer of 2007, when Watertown, home to a large and vocal Armenian population, pulled out of the No Place for Hate program because of what critics said was the ADL's refusal to acknowledge the genocide. Other towns followed.

Under pressure from local ADL leaders and the Armenian community, Foxman last year called the atrocities "tantamount to genocide." But that has not entirely quieted critics.

The Town Council's president, Clyde L. Younger, vice president Mark Sideris, and Councilor Jonathan Hecht implored Blue Cross-Blue Shield to join the Watertown board in approaching national ADL leaders for clarification on the league's stance.

"Getting involved in national and international politics is not something we do," said Curley.

Curley did say the company was "not pleased with the tone and tenor" of an Aug. 22 statement by Foxman that was posted briefly on the New England chapter's website.

"There is simply no basis for the false accusation that we engage in any form of genocide denial, and we believe this characterization of ADL crosses the boundary of acceptable criticism and falls into the category of demonization," Foxman's statement read.

"It was not helpful," Curley said.

Councilor Vincent Piccirilli said many local Armenian-Americans and their supporters feel there is a gap between what the local ADL leaders and its national leadership have said about the deaths.

"Most of the citizens of Watertown are somewhat dismayed with the talking around the issue and the failure to come clean," said Piccirilli. "This kind of two-faced action and statement" is not helpful to resolving the dispute, he said.

"I am disappointed at your lack of concern about the difference between the oral assurances you've received locally and the national ADL," Hecht told Curley.

But the ADL's national office insisted there is no division between the organization's local and national entities.

"There's only one position: there is no 'one position in Boston and one position in New York,' " said Crestan, civil rights counsel for the ADL's New England office. "We think it's a clear statement."

David Boyajian, an activist from Newton, said he was pleased with the council's unrelenting posture. "I'm very happy they passed the resolution and I hope Blue Cross-Blue Shield will follow the principled actions of the 13 towns," as well as the Massachusetts Municipal Association, he said, "and sever ties with No Place for Hate and any other ADL-sponsored program."

Councilor Stephen Corbett, who drafted the resolution, expressed frustration that the issue was still being debated more than a year after Watertown dropped its participation in the No Place for Hate program as a protest against the ADL's stance.

"I see the situation as not having changed at all," said Corbett. "It's a fairly straightforward thing we're looking for. This is a matter of principle."