Rights group suspends analyst over Nazi collection
Human Rights Watch suspends senior military analyst Marc Garlasco after pro-Israel blog reports that he is 'obsessed with the color and pageantry of Nazism.' Garlasco describes himself as 'a military geek' whose hobby stems from his family history
Marc Garlasco is being suspended by Human Rights Watch "pending an investigation," said Carroll Bogert, associate director of the New York-based organization. The suspension was first reported Monday by The New York Times on its website.
"We do know he collects German and American World War II memorabilia, but we have questions as to whether we've learned everything we need to know," Bogert said.
Garlasco's collection was revealed last week on Mere Rhetoric, a pro-Israel blog. A blog posting said his hobby reflected an anti-Israel bias and showed he was "obsessed with the color and pageantry of Nazism."
Human Rights Watch has no evidence that Garlasco's hobby affected his analysis, and he "has never expressed any anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi statements," Bogert said.
Garlasco declined to be interviewed by the Times. In an essay posted Friday on The Huffington Post, a liberal political Web site and blog, Garlasco described himself as a "military geek" whose hobby stemmed from his family history. He noted that his German grandfather was conscripted into the Nazi army.
"I've never hidden my hobby, because there's nothing shameful in it, however weird it might seem to those who aren't fascinated by military history," he wrote. "Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people, including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things."
