Staff Writer

Two prominent national Jewish leaders are defending a prospective owner of the Washington Nationals, saying his past as a Nixon White House aide who counted the number of Jews working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics is old news and that he has atoned for his transgression.

Malcolm Hoenlein, vice chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said that Fred Malek "has done wonderful things in terms of the Jewish community," including contributing money to Jewish causes, sitting on the board of the America-Israel Friendship League and interceding personally with the government on behalf of Jewish interests.

Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman also backed Malek. "One mistake does not an anti-Semite make," Foxman said about Malek, one of eight general partners in the Washington Baseball Club ‹ considered the front-runner in the battle to own the Nats.

The New York-based Hoenlein and Foxman both contacted WJW to defend Malek after being alerted to the issue by Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matthew Brooks, who called recent criticism of Malek "character assassination."

Malek, Brooks said, "has been a tremendous friend and supporter of the Jewish community" and an attendee at RJC events.

The Washington Post, Slate Magazine and liberal bloggers have all pointed to Malek's past in recent days in response to the complaints of congressional Republicans about another prospective owner of the Nationals, billionaire financier and outspoken George W. Bush critic George Soros.

Soros, a minority investor in the ownership bid of local entrepreneur Jonathan Ledecky, may be better known to some Jews from his 2003 comments at a Jewish Funders Network conference. At the time, he said policies of U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "contribute" to European anti-Semitism.

Jewish leaders say the controversies that have touched both Soros and Malek should not be a reason for concern for Nats fans now.

Noting that baseball is no stranger to controversial owners, ADL Washington D.C. regional director David Friedman said that "compared to Marge Schott" ‹ the former owner of the Cincinnati Reds who said, among other offensive comments, that Adolf Hitler was "good in the beginning, but went too far" ‹ Soros and Malek are hardly worrisome.

Calling the backgrounds and comments of both Malek and Soros "totally inappropriate and irrelevant" to owning a baseball team, Foxman lamented how "very sad" it is that today's "gotcha" politics have no boundaries.

In articles in Roll Call and The Washington Post last week, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and other House Republicans called Soros unfit to own the baseball team in the nation's capital for a variety of reasons ‹ his support for the legalization of medical marijuana, his conviction for insider trading in France and, most important of all, his $20 million of donations to Democrats in the 2004 election.

They did not criticize Soros for his comments related to anti-Semitism.

As the former personnel chief in Richard Nixon's White House, Malek counted the number of Jews working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the request of the president ‹ who was concerned about a "Jewish cabal" at the department making him "look bad."

Two Jewish employees were reassigned as a result of the count, although Malek has said he never knew any personnel changes were made based on his figures and would have refused to move employees if he had been asked.

Now chair of Thayer Capital Partners and a former owner of the Texas Rangers with George W. Bush, Malek was forced to resign as deputy chair of the Republican National Committee in 1988 when The Washington Post reported the story ‹ more than a decade after it appeared in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's The Final Days.

Marshall Breger, a law professor at Catholic University's Columbus School of Law who worked in the Reagan White House, said critics of Malek are "making a mountain out of a molehill." He also noted Malek's longtime support for the Jewish community.

"It's hard to say no to the president of the United States," Breger said about Malek carrying out Nixon's orders.

National Jewish Democratic Council executive director Ira Forman even defended Republican Malek, noting that he had apologized. Forman, though, did rip Republicans for making the past actions and political views of prospective Nats owners a public issue, calling Davis and his fellow GOPers purveyors of "crony capitalism" and "totally out of control" for trying to prevent an outspoken Democrat like Soros from owning the team.