Defenders of Newman note that the report was published and distributed during the 1988 Presidential campaign of
Marxist psychologist and political activist
Lenora Fulani. Fulani went on to garner a quarter of a million votes and became the first African American and first woman to achieve ballot status in all 50 states. In a 1991 interview, Newman described the criticisms as "absurd" and the product of jealousies on the left, and claimed that the majority of social therapy clients don't involve themselves in his political activities. In the
Boston Globe in 1992, Fulani claimed "the entire thing is a lie", and cited what she described as Political Research Associates ties to the Democratic Party. Berlet's claims of
cultism have been disputed by some of Newman's peers in the therapeutic milieu. According to British psychologist Ian Parker, "Even those [Newman and Holzman] who have been marked by the
FBI as a 'cult' may still be a source of useful radical theory and practice. Like a weed, a cult is something that is growing in the wrong place. We would want to ask 'wrong' for who, and whether it might sometimes be right for us. We have no desire to line up with the psychological establishment to rule out of the debate those who offer something valuable to anti-racist, feminist or working-class practice."
The report and the FBI The report also figured in a 1993 lawsuit filed in the
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Fulani and Newman against the
FBI and
Janet Reno. FBI documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed that the FBI had classified Fulani's New Alliance Party as a "political cult" which "should be considered armed and dangerous." A copy of
Clouds Blur the Rainbow was amongst the items that were contained in the FBI files. Newman, Fulani and the New Alliance Party challenged the FBI in the lawsuit, asserting the FBI "political cult" labeling had violated their constitutional rights, and was using private third-party organizations to evade federal guidelines prohibiting investigations of political organizations in the absence of evidence of criminal activity. In her ruling on the case, Federal judge Constance Baker Motley ruled that the "political cult" charge "could not be directly traced to the 1988 FBI investigation", and that "any stigmatization which NAP suffers could be traced to a myriad of statements and publications made by private individuals and organizations, many of which preceded the FBI investigation. Berlet, while upholding the charge of cultism, was critical of the FBI, noting that FBI characterizations were "not a protection of civil liberties but a smear of a group."
Washington City Paper reporter Kelvyn Anderson wrote at the time that the FBI investigation "sends a chilling political message: Groups outside of the political norm operate at their own risk and should expect state-sanctioned surveillance and intrusion into their affairs." Lenora Fulani referred to the report in a public address in 2006, saying:
"It was all a pack of lies – making false allegations of anti-Semitism and cultism against me and Dr. Newman. It was fairly vicious.". In an article on
BlackElectorate.com, Fulani characterized the book as a "diatribe" written by "white leftists." ==References==