Wayne's World
Brock, David
IN MAY THE NRA WILL DECIDE WHETHER IT WANTS TO BE WAY 101 E S A MODERN POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OR AN "EXTREMIST" WORLD GROUP SPRUNG FROM A LIBERAL'S WORST NIGHTMARE. BY DAVID BROCK 0 n the 5th...
...They had a mandate to beef up the NRA's political activism and defeat legislators who stood in their way...
...There were a lot of cash donations and some checks...
...After falling off by at least 300,000 in the wake of the 1994 GOP takeover, membership recruitment and retention has stabilized...
...Even Tanya Metaksa, who turned out to be both a highly effective administrator and a successful lobbyist despite her history with Knox, began to overshadow her former mentor...
...NRA board member Kayne Robinson, deputy police chief in Des Moines, also noticed a perceptible change in the makeup of the board as more and more Knox supporters were elected...
...LaPierre, Hammer, and Metaksa would now fall victim to the political machinations they had either tolerated or participated in...
...Carter first fired Metaksa, and then Knox: as he told board members privately, "The leaders of the revolution had to be executed...
...TAS, MAY 1993 The American Spectator • May 1997 81 actions, they told her "he was just a little overzealous but meant well," Hammer wrote...
...Any time you have a vacuum at the top," says Barr, "the other side—the gun control movement and President Clinton—will try to step in and seize the moment...
...Even if that means we have to garnish wages and attach property...
...WAYNE WAS A STAR Over the years, LaPierre, now a best-selling author and talk-radio personality, had grown more self-confident and become a prominent figure in the conservative movement in his own 42 May 1997 • The American Spectator right...
...Metaksa had hired a former Virginia schoolteacher turned lobbyist and political consultant, Wayne LaPierre, to work in her shop...
...Like Robert Brown, Robinson supported Knox's candidacy for the board in 1991...
...At the end of the contentious meeting— relying on a parliamentary distinction between recess and adjournment—Hammer declared that it was illegal and its actions not binding...
...He recommended that, rather than apologize, LaPierre respond: "If the jackboot fits, wear it...
...Ward Industries landed a big contract to provide buses for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, and received a $3 million loan from the BCCI...
...I asked him if he knowingly broke the law in California and he said yes...
...Knox further contended that sections of Dodd's bill "are exactly the same as the German law...
...Fernandez, Dreher, Payne, and other activists in Roberti's district all say that, once the Carone group spent funds to collect signatures to get the recall effort on the ballot—which Carone says cost about $6o,000— they saw few signs of typical campaign activities such as advertising or the distribution of leaflets...
...I said the chances of passage were 50-5o and Wayne said lo percent...
...I asked him [Howard] if he broke the law in California and he said yes...
...I was the chairman of the nominating committee and I know how that worked," says Sue King...
...The committee then moved to appoint an internal comptroller reporting to the board rather than to LaPierre and held a vote of no confidence in the EVP...
...A plot was hatched to catapult the second vice president, Marion Hammer, a Florida gun-rights activist more in the Knox mold, into the top position over Washington...
...There is "a difference between 3.5 million united NRA members, and some scattered band of paranoid hatemongers...
...did not fully disclose the sources of contributions it did report...
...mother point of controversy—the big new building in Fairfax—was approved by a committee of the board chaired by Knox, which rejected a staff proposal to buy a smaller building...
...banning foreign visitors from buying guns...
...For more than twenty years, the highly secretive NRA has been driven by labyrinthine internal power struggles and periodic palace coups...
...NRA presidents are historical figures...
...In his writings he argued for the unfettered right of citizens to bear arms as a check on government abuses, and adopted stances that were to the right of the NRA's...
...Ojfi Visit The :American Spectator Online at Nvww.spectator.org The American Spectator • May 1997 83...
...Carone, a smooth-talking former banker who is a specialist in turning around troubled companies, has been the architect of the anti-LaPierre campaign...
...It became apparent to me that this was a power grab for his own personal benefit, with no benefit for the NRA," King claims...
...LaPierre, who had not seen the direct-mail piece before it went out, apologized for the use of "overblown" rhetoric...
...They couch things in hateful terms — `I'm going to make this resolution and I hope it kills you.' We're discussing policies...
...Health care may (or may not) be too costly...
...The change had come in response to concerns that a hostile group—even gun-control advocates—might join the association, pack its meetings, and win control...
...Like Carone, Colman became interested in gun politics in the late 198o's over the assault weapons issue and ran for the NRA board in 1994 as a Knox candidate...
...She began acting like the chief executive officer...
...No major gun-control legislation has moved through Congress since...
...We were never called in together...
...Also faulted were various lax management practices, including instances where large amounts of money were paid to vendors without the benefit of a formal contract, making it difficult to control costs or evaluate performance...
...By tradition, the NRA's first vice president moves into the presidency (which functions as a chairman of the board...
...What is involved is the turning over of the assets and the reputation of the NRA to people who have absolutely no track record and who are not remotely qualified for it," says Kayne Robinson...
...When Tom Washington died in December 1995 before finishing out his term, Hammer succeeded him, and Knox moved up from second to first vice president of the organization...
...The appeal, pitched to attracting new members after the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents— in which U.S...
...Using a provision of the bylaws adopted at Cincinnati that allows candidates for the NRA board to be nominated by petition of the membership, Knox ran for a seat on the NRA board the next year...
...If these vocal dissidents are voted out, there is a good chance stability can be restored to the association...
...That measure, coming in the wake of the Kennedy and King assassinations, banned the mail-order sale of guns and ammunition...
...In early 1996, Colman showed up at Wayne LaPierre's office at NRA headquarters and told LaPierre of plans to remove him as executive vice president and give him a new job with a higher salary— chairman of NRA Affairs—in which he would undertake various public relations efforts on behalf of the association...
...Though Knox has been coy about his interest in the EVP slot, "I looked Neal Knox right in the eye and asked him, 'Do you want to be EVP?'" Sue King recalls...
...Running the NRA, of course, is more akin to running a political campaign than a business...
...Now Robinson regrets the opening...
...John F. Kennedy, Jr...
...I think Carone and Howard are the most dangerous threats to the NRA going," says California gun rights activist Gene Dreher, one of the co-founders of the Carone group...
...Neal...
...Neal has always had a following of very radical people...
...Senator Craig, who has stayed neutral in the fight so far, told me, "I've served on the board through three executive officers and I'm not committed to any one person or another, but to NRA...
...But the point remains: No matter who made the Metaksa appointment, the impetus for it was the appeasement of Knox's "craziness...
...Even long-time NRA critic Dave Edmondson, who lost his post as head of the NRA Texas affiliate and was kicked out of the organization for complaining publicly about the deficits, agrees: "NRA had a very good year last year...
...Her record on state legislation during her three-year tenure is 83 wins and i loss...
...In any event, the plan was foiled, as some of Knox's ostensible supporters deserted him on a secret ballot and voted for Washington...
...Cassidy quit, but the die was cast—and that is how Knox got back in...
...I despise his ethics...
...Neal Knox is a "coward" and a "nut...
...They returned to Washington determined to fight...
...Now, we know, Fowler brought Tamraz to the White House...
...And he said 'Yes.'" But Knox—who has a penchant for backroom deals—was foiled once again...
...Not only was the board showing its independence, so was the staff...
...But it's the best health-care system in the world—not arguably the best, but the best...
...We should have never elected someone to the board who has engaged in election misbehavior...
...To LaPierre, this was another example of "Neal being Neal," his aides say...
...Henry thought he would put Becket in charge of the church, and he would control him, but he couldn't...
...the huge membership campaign was board mandated...
...She was to be Neal's person on the inside...
...In 1995, Knox again failed to oust Washington...
...Despite these setbacks, there is little question that Knox struck a chord and attracted a significant following among gun-owners with his zealous pamphleteering during the 1980's...
...I passed the hat at gun clubs and turned the cash over to Russ Howard," Payne says...
...I agreed to support a move to get rid of Cassidy and endorse Knox and his slate...
...Behind closed doors, the finance committee, which was packed with Knox supporters such as Ronin Colman and Russ Howard, received a hysterical report on the financial state of the organization written by Carone, complete with an unintentionally hilarious section on "what it means to be a chief executive officer...
...She continues, "I called Colman to complain about his bullying tactics...
...I thought Marion would be president for a year and then try to push out Wayne...
...But the names of the individuals and groups who donated never showed up on the contributor lists...
...Four past presidents of the NRA recently endorsed LaPierre's re-election and stated that after consulting themselves with Coopers & Lybrand, the NRA's independent audit firm, they 44 May 1-997 • The American Spectator found the NRA's fiscal trends to be "steady, positive and continu[ing] to build every year...
...During the campaign, the committee sought to distance itself politically from gun owners, who are thought to have heavily financed its operations...
...This was possible because the percentage of NRA members who vote in internal elections is often well below io percent...
...Even accepting some of the criticisms of LaPierre, then, the question still comes down to whether the dissidents are better qualified to run the NRA than LaPierre...
...GETTING THE HOUSE IN ORDER LaPierre supporters do concede that the NRA's financial house could be in better order and the association better managed...
...he lost both times...
...The way hospitals and doctors are financed is sometimes bizarre...
...Under LaPierre, the organization bought a new headquarters building in Fairfax, Virginia, went online with a new computer system, and began a series of programs designed to soften its image — a self-defense training school for women, gun-safety education for schoolchildren, and crime-fighting partnerships with local police departments...
...With Wayne as EVP [executive vice-president] and Tanya at ILA, Neal thought he didn't need to be EVP, because she was more aggressive than Wayne and he really cares only about the legislative side...
...Marion Hammer was outraged that the committee would misrepresent the financials for political gain...
...twice is coincidence...
...Then we really will have a health-care crisis...
...Defending an assault rifle made some people uncomfortable, because it has nothing to do with deer hunting...
...But he didn't keep the envelopes or the notes that were enclosed...
...When Hammer caught wind of this, she and several other senior NRA executives (along with LaPierre and Metaksa) crashed the meeting and presented their side of the story...
...The collateral damage inflicted on Republican fortunes on Capitol Hill and across the nation could also be high...
...Current NRA board member Manuel Fernandez had been a guiding force behind a group called Californians Against Corruption, which launched a campaign to recall California state senator David Roberti, the chief sponsor of the gun ban...
...Long-time Knox observers weren't surprised: Knox has always betrayed an ambiguity about exercising real political power, and the withdrawal struck some as a recognition that he is more effective as a dissident on the outside than as a player at the table...
...A pistol-packing grandmother, Hammer broke from the NRA and founded a gun-lobby group in Florida in the mid-1970's around the time of the Cincinnati revolt...
...Knox discovered that his board was more independent-minded than he had planned...
...But the pair soon had a falling out that was the beginning of Knox's very troubled history with the association, and which may be at the root of the present turmoil...
...And I asked him if it was true that he was saying that he and Neal were running NRA and he said yes...
...Bobby Kennedy was assassinated...
...If Neal is not the lead dog," says NRA board member Sue King of Houston, "he is going to bite the ass of the dog in front of him...
...Even Neal Knox, who appears to have triggered the current shoot-out with LaPierre, concedes the dissension is politically damaging...
...He is appealing the fine in the California courts...
...Colman says that the issue of restrictions on assault weapons occasioned yet another split "between the Tories and the hard-core" when it was first raised in the late 1980's...
...Continued on page 81) 45 ments are said to show that the bank used the Manatt firm to lobby the National Security Council in 1992 in an attempt to close down Morgenthau's Manhattan investigation...
...Last year LaPierre balanced the budget, downsized the national staff, and leased part of the headquarters building for $1 million...
...Alfonse D'Amato and then to found a cornputer-consulting firm...
...Some of the reserve monies were spent on modernizing the NRA," says Craig...
...FAMILIAR FACES As noted above, the fatal blow to Anthony Lake's nomination was the discovery that Roger Tamraz had used the CIA to lobby the NSC...
...He is buoyed by increasing signs of support...
...His votes on the executive committee evaporated the next day, and his resolution was never even introduced...
...It's a myth...
...His instrument of attack has been an audit of the finances of the organization designed to show that the NRA is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy...
...That's why Wayne told the press that NRA must 'be positioned in the mainstream.' If NRA is ever in the 'political mainstream' our gun rights will be a thing of the past...
...A man long dismissed by critics as too nice to lead, LaPierre seems to have come into his own in this trial by fire...
...The quote referred to the controversy in the wake of the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, when a fundraising appeal written by the NRA's direct-mail consultants that went out over LaPierre's signature referred to agents of the U.S...
...Not only would senior NRA staff and nervous legislators across the country jump ship...
...Knox has introduced a sinister element involving intimidation, threats, and pressure in the extreme...
...Privately, Carone and Colman were making more derisive comments about Knox...
...It was all fixed by Knox...
...If LaPierre can be faulted for not standing up to Knox sooner, he won't make the same mistake twice...
...Ross was off the board for a year, and got back on through a petition signature campaign in 1993...
...Even where the critics have a point, however, the difficulty in making their case stick is that Knox and his board supporters approved all of LaPierre's budgets, in some years increasing them by millions for their own pet projects...
...The whole study was a waste...
...Indeed, polls showed that a majority of NRA members, including President Reagan, favored the Brady law that the lobby adamantly opposed...
...The costly membership drive, the Carone study concluded, "was not, by and large, adequately tracked for cost effectiveness and efficiency...
...TRICKY MANEUVERS In December, Carone called a meeting of the finance committee in Dallas...
...Today membership stands at 2.8 million, up from 2.5 million in 1991...
...Paul Payne, a volunteer in the Roberti recall campaign, says, "These guys are a piece of work...
...It's sophomoric to think you can make a five-year business plan and stick to it," says board member Kayne Robinson...
...The two factions have been having at each other for weeks—in paid advertisements in the leading gun magazines, on Internet websites, and in a furious exchange of widely circulated personal letters...
...Given the NRA's record of pumping millions into campaigns to elect pro-gun legislators to office —the vast majority of them Republicans—a hobbled NRA could make maintaining GOP control of Congress that much more difficult...
...Knox has branded the incumbents "self-serving, irresponsible, incompetent...
...In the normal course of events, Knox would have succeeded Hammer in 1998, after she served two one-year terms...
...Neal Knox had loyalty to no one, and nothing, but himself...
...Because LaPierre's ideological bona fides are impeccable (not to mention Hammer's and Metaksa's), the argument Knox had used in all prior internecine battles—that his opponents were insufficiently vigilant on behalf of the Second Amendment—could no longer wash...
...To get control of the NRA, are Carone and Colman willing to sacrifice Knox...
...By the time the NRA board met in a Washington suburb in February, the fight had spilled into the press for the first time...
...It was character assassination against Wayne...
...CETTINC OUT OF CONTROL Knox's allies soon saw yet another side of his politics that proved equally discomforting...
...Others can run by petition...
...In 1978, when Fowler was Democratic Chairman of South Carolina, Jimmy Carter named the former South Carolina governor John West as ambassador to Saudi Arabia...
...The bill became law...
...In a 1994 Shotgun News column, Knox wrote that gun-control advocates may have been behind the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, as well as the assaultrifle slayings of school children in Stockton, California, in 1989, in order to generate support for tighter restrictions on guns: Someone has said: "Once is happenstance...
...Six Knox supporters deserted on the final vote...
...Even more of a political neophyte than Carone, Colman soon started throwing his weight around, according to NRA President Hammer...
...They ended up with a report that is politically tainted, done by people with a conflict of interest...
...Speaking of Sarah Brady of Handgun Control, Inc...
...Well, why can't you possess a military weapon...
...LaPierre's supporters thus want to do more than simply keep their man in power...
...Consulting, on which critics say the costs exceeded the revenues generated—was co-signed by Knox...
...Knox denies that his financial situation has any bearing on his NRA activities...
...Even if the dissidents lose, of course, Knox is not going away...
...The dissidents now have no leader and agenda for the NRA's future other than jobs for themselves...
...Says Kayne Robinson, 'Wayne fights well in carrying the flag for the NRA, but he doesn't fight his friends well...
...It all looks very neat until you find you're up to your ass in alligators...
...I don't intend to stand by and let the NRA be turned into the John Birch Society and made irrelevant...
...In late 1995, California's Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) levied the highest fine in its history— $8o8,000 —against Californians Against Corruption and specifically Russell Howard, for willfully violating the state's campaign finance disclosure requirements in 404 instances...
...After that terrible ordeal, Mr...
...In 1984, Knox was kicked off the board for lobbying against the NRA-supported McClure-Volkmer bill...
...If LaPierre goes, Metaksa, his appointee, would probably go too...
...others were rarely even considered...
...An overhaul of the sort Hillary Clinton envisions is not only unnecessary, it's certain to reduce, not expand, the amount of health care Americans receive (price controls always lead to less of the controlled commodity...
...John Dingell, then an NRA board member, in an NRA promotional video that was produced during Knox's tenure at ILA in the early 1980's...
...With Tanya Metaksa as his campaign manager, Knox ran for the job of NRA executive vice president twice in the mid-1980's...
...82 May 1997 • The American Spectator This was strong stuff, but it cut to the heart of what the fight for NRA's image was all about...
...They've turned the corner...
...Another way of looking at the dynamic, of course, was that the two savvy operators, Richard Carone, a California petroleum management executive who chairs the NRA's finance committee, and Ronin Colman, saw an opportunity to use Knox's reputation and his grassroots political machine to take out LaPierre and advance their own interests...
...At stake is whether the NRA, the most feared special-interest lobby in America, remains an important force in American politics or consigns itself to the margins...
...Reagan Counselor] Ed Meese told Harlon, 'Don't ever send me this man Knox to see me again,'" says Warren Cassidy, who succeeded Knox as ILA director...
...In the states, NRA did more than play defense: thirty states now allow citizens the right to carry concealed weapons...
...But when one is leading a sensitive political organization like the NRA, it can be an enormous negative...
...King, who organizes women's sports shooting in Houston, herself ran for the board in 1993 with Knox's support...
...His second move came at the annual meeting that year...
...Carone says he never handled any of the money...
...Indeed, Richard Carone's performance in his maiden foray into the political arena would seem to make him a most unlikely candidate to save the association from its current troubles...
...When Knox refused to assure the NRA board that he would follow the association's policies in the future, he was removed, and several of his supporters subsequently lost their seats...
...The sportsmen generally are not committed to the view that the Constitution created a means for citizens to arm themselves in resisting government authority, and they are therefore more amenable to limited controls and restrictions, such as waiting periods, especially on certain handguns and assault weapons...
...But friends of the NRA on Capitol Hill such as Rep...
...You don't deal away what's right for the cause and what's right for the issue...
...After years of in-fighting, led by hard-liner Knox, these traditionalists have been all but vanquished as a political force within the association...
...Then came the public relations disaster following the Oklahoma City bombing...
...Writing in the May 1997 issue of Soldier of Fortune, NRA director Robert Brown recounted the scene: "...I spoke with directors who attended Knox's customary 'secret meeting' the night before the elections...
...Emergency rooms are often swamped...
...But Knox was getting anxious...
...there is no reason to think that Knox's shoe-string operations, the Hard Corps Report and the Firearms Coalition, did not also suffer...
...Indeed, the term was first used to describe the ATF, Knox says, by Democratic Rep...
...history, has announced a string of new initiatives, including extending the Brady law to require gun dealers to sell child safety locks with every handgun...
...Out went the apolitical retired generals who were running the NRA as a sportsmen's club and conservation league and were planning to move it, in line with their interests, from Washington to Colorado...
...The NRA also undertook a massive direct-mail campaign to increase its membership, which had been falling precipitously...
...More than one Knox supporter has told me, "Neal is still doing battle with the ghost of Harlon Carter...
...In his writings, Knox assailed Cassidy, who was the head of ILA when the NRA endorsed a ban on cop-killer bullets, for "wimpiness...
...At an NRA board meeting in February, a resolution sponsored by the Knox forces authorized the payment of $30,000 in "consulting fees" to Howard in connection with the Carone audit, but board sources say the understanding is that the money is to be funneled to his legal defense...
...Last year, a Knox-backed proposal to pay officers such as himself salaries was turned down by the NRA board...
...When Neal got a majority of the nominating committee, it became self-perpetuating...
...Fernandez and several other activists say they were muscled out of Californians Against Corruption by Carone, who took over the organization by staging a "phony" board election and installing his friend Russell Howard, an ex-stockbroker and Neal Knox acolyte on the NRA board, as treasurer of the organization...
...Marion and Neal have their own agendas, always in the same direction, but not exactly parallel," says NRA board member Joseph Olson, a Michigan law professor who opposes the incumbent officers...
...They say they were forced to raise money on their own to air television commercials and print bumper stickers...
...Dole sent Elizabeth in his place...
...Behind the scenes, the passions, finger-pointing, and intrigue are more intense, and the name-calling among old friends even uglier: Wayne LaPierre is "an empty suit," while NRA President Marion Hammer is a "vindictive bully...
...He would take out a little pocket knife and slit the envelopes open...
...Wayne wants to be liked—particularly by his friends on Capitol Hill who don't like to stand up for the rights of those who elected them," Knox wrote in a recent letter to his supporters...
...She is the one who came to me and told me some things about Tom...
...THE KAMIKAZE PATRIOTS One such "kamikaze" was Ronin Colman, a Dallas-based manufacturer of electronic timers and chronographs for gun owners and now an NRA board member...
...Though the Supreme Court has ruled that campaign finance laws do not violate the First Amendment, Howard claims the requirements are an infringement on the right to free political expression...
...It wasn't the first time Fowler had crossed paths with Arab money...
...You have to frame the issue in terms non-gun owners can understand...
...This isn't about money," LaPierre declares...
...Or is this simply a tactical move designed to shift the focus off Knox and onto LaPierre...
...He gets NRA people to send him money and essentially competes with the NRA...
...Tom Washington, the moderate whom LaPierre had defeated for the EVP slot in 1991, was now in line to become NRA president...
...The American Spectator • May 1997 While the smooth LaPierre settled into the ILA job easily, Knox and Metaksa—who share not only absolutist views on the Second Amendment but a prickly, undiplomatic style—had a rocky ride, quickly alienating key Republicans in both the Reagan White House and Congress...
...The first move he made was to force the resignation of James Baker as the director of ILA...
...Wayne never made an effort to recruit a good slate for the board and they went into a permanent downward spiral," says one former NRA executive...
...burned into the wood was the wording of the bylaw amendment, written by Colman, that the Knox forces intended to introduce at the board meeting: it would have reduced the number of directors required to remove an officer from three-fourths to a simple majority...
...I gave Howard $2.00 cash out of my own pocket, and my name never showed up on the list and neither did the contribution...
...The president and vice presidents are volunteer posts...
...Having stirred up the anti-LaPierre controversy, Knox is in danger of being washed away by it, losing the stature and reputation he had—or thought he had—with his own supporters...
...The last straw was the revelation that association money had been spent to settle a sex-discrimination suit leveled at him...
...Everyone gets health care in this country—the poor, the uninsured, everyone...
...In the nominating committee, Knox's supporters were given lists of his preapproved candidates, Second Amendment fundamentalists drawn from the grassroots...
...During that conversation, he suddenly looked at me and said, 'Marion, I feel sorry for what you're going through because the minute you become president, Neal will turn on you and make life hell for you, too.' He then added, 'Knox wants it all and he doesn't care who he uses or who he destroys to get it...
...This would have effectively removed LaPierre from power...
...In the past two months alone, President Clinton, the most pro—gun control president in U.S...
...Brown says that Knox told him the reason he challenged Washington was, "Tom was elected by the old party, and they aren't in power anymore...
...Everything has been updated, and in all instances spending was approved by the board...
...Wayne and the current leadership of NRA have been remarkably effective under difficult political circumstances," says Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...The triumph of the harder-line faction finally came in 1991, when Wayne LaPierre, a long-time NRA lobbyist, was elected to the executive vice presidency (equivalent to the president and chief executive officer in other organizations) over board member Tom Washington, who represented the hunters and competitive shooters...
...Everyone agrees that LaPierre, 47, has faced a series of tough challenges...
...Knox, in fact, appeared to defend the prospect of ties between the NRA and the militias in an April 1995 interview with the Washington Post: "Unless those people have committed a violation of the law, I'm not going to say we can't have anything to do with those people...
...Bob Barr, the Georgia Republican who serves on the House Judiciary Committee, worry that the political fallout from the current controversy, which is more ferocious and much more public than any prior battle, could be permanent...
...The chairman of the state commission charged that the group deliberately concealed the sources of its financing, including a contribution from the NRA...
...NRA executives are consumed by internal politics and thus distracted from the external fight for gun rights...
...Though the NRA is supposed to invest revenues so that it can meet future service obligations to its life-members (much like the Social Security trust fund), it has spent much of that money in recent years to cover millions in deficit spending on operations...
...Now on the inside, Knox immediately sought to build a personal fiefdom, betraying an obsession with control that shocked and dismayed many who had supported his comeback bid...
...chief lobbyist Tanya Metaksa is "a scary little Russian Jewish princess...
...over time, the complexion of the NRA's membership would likely change, dwindling to the hard-core activists, as LaPierre's appeal to the center is abandoned and Knox's emphasis on political activism translates into fewer services for members...
...At the time, Knox backed LaPierre, but now the hard-liners are themselves split, with LaPierre and Knox leading bitterly opposed camps going into a hotly contested board election this month...
...There isn't enough primary care—regular doctor's visits—for many Americans...
...And if someone in this room doesn't know the difference, then there's the door...
...Tom Dodd's mail order gun ban beginning to move, President John F. Kennedy and the Dallas police were killed with mail-ordered guns...
...One-third of the 76-member board stands for election each year to a three-year term...
...the arrest of Timothy McVeigh, who was found to be in possession of an "I'm the NRA" decal, raised questions about ties between the anti-government militia movement and the NRA...
...By 1990, frustration among these Knox-style NRA activists was growing with both President Bush (who had run with NRA support in 1988 but had agreed to restrictions on the importation of assault weapons) and Cassidy, who was then the NRA's executive vice president and who seemed overly accommodationist...
...His wife, a local realtor, has been on what he calls "inactive status" for more than a year...
...For a polemicist trying to make a living selling newsletters, of course, controversy is to be courted...
...Sue King, a member of the Finance Committee, says, "I supported the idea, but they didn't get a professional group from the outside...
...I had to pay one of my neighbors $1,500 for flyers because when the bill came due," says Dreher, "Rick all of a sudden didn't have the money to pay for it...
...The fight is about power, personalities, and money—who controls the NRA's political agenda and the richest political action committee in the nation, not to mention multi-million dollar vendor contracts, fat salaries, and lavish perks...
...Carone then dared Hammer to fire him as chairman of the committee and stated his "irreversible" conviction that not only LaPierre but also Hammer herself should be axed...
...A last-ditch million-dollar secret offer being proffered by the jittery Carone and Colman—in which LaPierre is being offered a "promotion" out of his managerial responsibilities and into a spokesman's job, sweetened with a percentage of the money he raises for the association—is met only with derision...
...And the volley of vicious personal attacks among board members and senior staff discredits the whole group...
...Though the current battle has exposed his agenda and tactics, he is still in line for the NRA presidency in 1998, and he told me he may oppose Marion Hammer for the job this May...
...As ILA director, Knox promoted both Metaksa and LaPierre into key NRA jobs...
...When NSC specialist Sheila Heslin recommended a cold shoulder for Tamraz, Democratic National Committee chairman Don Fowler produced a favorable memo on Tamraz from a CIA specialist (who later went to work for Tamraz) and paved his way to the White House...
...Carone got involved in the gun movement when a ban on semi-automatic weapons was proposed and then approved by The American Spectator • May 1997 the California legislature in 1989...
...When LaPierre asked Colman who had authorized him to make such a proposal, Colman said that Knox had...
...If millions of seriously ill Americans were being denied medical care, that would be a crisis...
...He makes the reasonable point that, of the million-and-a-half words he has written on guns over the years, only a handful of passages have proved provocative...
...At Cincinnati, NRA members were given the direct power to elect and fire NRA officers...
...Before the meeting, Knox had prepared a resolution establishing a subcommittee of the Finance Committee "to advise, counsel and direct the EVP, on business, personnel and financial affairs of the association...
...No, our healthcare system isn't perfect...
...The move to get rid of Cassidy brought people from all sides together, with some primarily motivated to toughen NRA's political stances, but many others alarmed by the organization's mismanagement...
...Assuming the self-appointed role of watchdog, Knox chronicled from the outside what he viewed as the organization's missteps, primarily in the legislative arena...
...Carone made sure Howard's name was attached to everything so he stayed clean...
...He was not renominated as a director by the nominating committee after seventeen years of service as retribution for publicly criticizing Knox's power-plays...
...Idaho Senator Larry Craig, a longtime NRA board member, also says the money was well spent...
...If the point was lost on LaPierre, it was vividly impressed upon him by the arrival of a hand-couriered package from NRA board member Howard Fezell, a Maryland lawyer...
...HCI), the leading gun-control advocacy group, Knox says: "Sarah is orgasmic...
...If there was an evil scheme, it was Marion trying to promote herself...
...Knox and his backers say LaPierre should be fired for mismanaging the association's finances and squandering its reserves...
...The question is: In what manner do you explain your position to those who are sitting in the middle...
...Finally, the board insisted LaPierre pour millions into upgrading an old computer system he wanted to ditch, before conceding two years later that he was right...
...I call them kamikaze patriots...
...When I asked him about this, he did not back off the point: He reminded me that Democratic Senator Tom Dodd of Connecticut, a major supporter of the act, was a lawyer at the Nuremberg trials...
...The group ended up $9 million in the black...
...He won, but the comeback was short-lived...
...Among other objections, Knox, ever the purist, believed the restrictions retained by the bill on the interstate sale of so-called Saturday-night specials—small handguns—were unacceptable...
...Knox believes that before the meeting Carter had already surrendered to the dictates of Bob Dole (who looms large in Knox's demonology) in not pushing for a vote in the GOP-controlled Senate because there was no assurance that the House would also vote on the bill...
...And we should have never hired a director to do work for the NRA...
...They are mounting a vigorous campaign in the current board elections to defeat Knox, Carone, and six other Knox supporters, achieving what Harlon Carter had failed to do after all—executing the leader of the revolution...
...No one knows for sure, but the game plan is clear: forcing a vote in Seattle to remove LaPierre and replace him with an acting EVP until a committee of the board finds a replacement, either Knox himself or one of his lieutenants...
...Prominent Southern Democrats soon began to do big business in the Kingdom of Saud, and one of these was Democratic National Committeeman Charles Ward, who owned a school bus assembly plant in Conway, Arkansas...
...He took the helm of an association with a $ic) million deficit, membership losses of a half-million, a collapsing headquarters building in downtown Washington, and an $8 million computer system that didn't work...
...The Carone audit is particularly misleading because it neglects to point out the favorable trend line on the NRA's finances...
...Politically, President Bush had turned his back on the association, and in the next two years, with Clinton's election as president, the NRA faced severe legislative challenges culminating in passage of the Brady law and a ban on assault weapons...
...Moreover, Knox has convinced himself that the young LaPierre was angling for his job even then...
...It turned up no single problem that we were unaware of and they had no substantiation for what they alleged...
...He is a bully and was on a witch hunt trying to force the EVP to resign and to get folks he didn't like fired...
...But that's not happening...
...LaPierre's supporters believe that the meeting was held before the end of the year as a deliberate set-up: it was the last chance to convince members of the committee that the NRA was going to end the year with a deficit and take actions based on that false premise...
...Its shortcomings can be remedied by tinkering, or at least by less-than-comprehensive changes...
...This is about my soul...
...Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as "jack-booted government thugs...
...You should see the way some of them [Knox supporters] talk—vitriolic vitriolic hatred spews out of their mouths...
...Knox told of a climactic moment in 1982 when he and LaPierre were called in to Carter's office and asked to assess the chances for getting a vote in the House on the McClure-Volkmer bill, which had essentially been designed to repeal the 1968 Gun Control Act...
...Tamraz brought Pharaon to Detroit...
...They used and abused the efforts of a lot of good people...
...many memben are now reconsidering their commitment to the association...
...Knox and his supporters would still be agitating, but they would never again be allowed to run board slates without opposition, as they have done since the early 1990's...
...To the United States...
...When Knox arrived, already on staff at NRA's Institute for Legislative Affairs was Tanya Metaksa, a Connecticut-born Smith College graduate and step-daughter of conservative writer John Chamberlain...
...Wayne was told by the board that Tanya was to be named," says Richard Gardiner, former director of ILA's state and local affairs division...
...When Baker, a highly regarded lobbyist, asked LaPierre to let him go, Baker said he could no longer face the "craziness" of Knox, who was calling him on a daily basis in an attempt to second-guess his every move and essentially run ILA himself...
...The fact is, he didn't mean well...
...In this sense, LaPierre and his team have followed a sophisticated political strategy much like Ralph Reed's at the Christian Coalition...
...Fighting short-term battles with the Clinton administration was an expensive proposition, as was the NRA's campaign to turn back the threat by electing a Republican Congress in 1994...
...three times is enemy action...
...The package contained a wooden 2x4...
...A certain level of fractiousness and ungovernability seems endemic in the almost religious fervor that many NRA members bring to the issue of the right to keep and bear arms...
...Increasingly secure in his position within the organization, Knox perhaps felt free to air publicly his The American Spectator • May 1997 more radical theories and rhetoric, which went beyond hard-ball political exhortations and shaded into deluded conspiracy-mongering...
...No matter which side wins, it is hard to see how the institution can emerge from the civil war undamaged...
...Others, including Carone himself, confirm that Payne was a volunteer fundraiser for the group...
...Howard says Payne is a liar who bears a grudge against him: "Henever raised any money for us and never gave me any money...
...says Tanya Metaksa, the director of NRA's Institute for Legislative Affairs (ILA) who is also targeted for removal by the dissidents...
...It must stay positioned in the mainstream if it's going to survive...
...Pharaon brought the BCCI to the U.S...
...Both Carone and Colman were to serve on the new committee, with Knox as chairman...
...Cassidy had joined the NRA board in 1977 allied with Knox and the Cincinnati militants but broke with him soon after...
...In came Knox—who left a job editing gun magazines in Arizona to become NRA's head lobbyist—and Harlon Carter, a former Texas border patrolman and commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who was elected executive vice president...
...Knox was able to harness this widespread support for a change in leadership to achieve his own political comeback and push the NRA's legislative program to the right...
...But they think there is a conspiracy on the NRA board itself to take their guns away...
...The tens of millions spent on direct-mail solicitations and advertising to sign up new members, he adds, produced a working asset for the association that accountants don't recognize but is real nonetheless...
...One NRA insider says, "One of the problems is that they have all been in each others' pants for so many years...
...It was Knox, not Carone or Colman, who stood to lose not only his reputation for decades of hard work on the gun issue but also the close friendships he had forged in those years...
...Though the Knox faction would later blame LaPierre for the cardinal sin of airing the NRA's dirty linen in public, Knox fired the first public salvo, announcing in the January 18 issue of the National Journal in a piece on the NRA's financial woes that he would seek "structural changes" in the NRA through an amendment to its bylaws that would make it easier for the board to remove LaPierre...
...The group failed to keep records of contributions and spending...
...I asked him if he told people on the staff if they didn't do what he said he would fire them and he said yes...
...She, too, was an early Knox protege—as ILA director he had authorized an NRA grant for Hammer's fledgling group in 1978...
...she signaled this by taking the chairmanship of the board's legislative policy committee, usually headed by the first vice president (Knox), for herself...
...So Neal had to kill Tanya politically...
...Now the dissidents were at the gates...
...By 1994, Knox appeared to have a majority on the NRA board and thus substantial control over the organization...
...In January 1989, with model "assault weapon" legislation from HCI having been filed in several states, and with the California Attorney General already having asked police for evidence to support his planned "assault weapon" ban, Patrick Purdey killed five kids and wounded 31 on a Stock41 ton, CA, schoolyard, using an AKIs it possible that some of those incidents could have been created for the purpose of disarming the people of the free world...
...Ward went to Saudi Arabia to drum up more business, and took along as his consultant none other than Donald Fowler...
...According to my sources, two individuals objected to his tactics...
...To what?' He was told 'To Neal Knox.'" 40 May 1997 • The American Spectator A prodigious organizer, Knox focused his energies on controlling the board's nominating committee, which names an official slate of director candidates, most of whom win automatically...
...Knox had at some length gone through the list of allegations against Tom...
...Knox, however, was furious—not with the direct-mail consultants, but with LaPierre...
...Since LaPierre made no effort to recruit candidates for the board, Knox's board slates were in effect LaPierre's as well...
...At a minimum, the organization's conduct of the Roberti recall does not inspire confidence in Carone's ability to reform business practices at the NRA...
...Indeed, the Shotgun News column led to profiles of Knox in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Rolling Stone—all of them eager to use Knox to discredit the NRA...
...AN OLD DIVISION Historically, the split in the NRA has been between Second Amendment political fundamentalists, who resist any gun controls on the fear that it will lead inexorably to confiscation of all guns owned by private citizens, and less politicized sportsmen, who join NRA primarily for the shooting sports activities it sponsors...
...I'll be supporting Wayne LaPierre to save the association...
...The group's almost three million members are confused by the backbiting and panicked by rumors of impending bankruptcy...
...Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, a longtime NRA supporter, shares Barr's concern...
...Brock (Continued from page 45) Howard kept the cash and gave the checks to Carone...
...LaPierre has in turn suggested that Knox and his backers would turn the NRA from the Cadillac of Washington lobbies into a clunker ready for the junkyard...
...When I was first elected to the board, I was going on with full intent of supporting Neal Knox and his agenda," she says...
...But, as Cassidy describes it, Knox is the sort of person who would go to the store to buy a dozen eggs and, if the store had only ten, return empty-handed and let his family go hungry rather than sacrifice his perfect ideal...
...Over lunch recently at his country club in Silver Spring, Maryland, Knox recounted in intricate detail each disagreement on legislative strategy he has had with Carter for the last twenty years...
...Colman says he has had little contact with NRA staff but concedes he has been "tough" on occasion...
...The dissidents, of course, disagree, presenting the association's membership with a classic conservative dilemma that seems to surface whenever conservatives seek power: When, if ever, should purism yield to pragmatism...
...Neal and Tanya are alike, and that's why they are in conflict now," says Richard Gardiner...
...government agents killed heavily armed people—seemed to link the NRA's rhetoric to the militia movement and bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh...
...To this day, at board meetings, Ross is still blackballed: "I eat dinner alone...
...On the basis of figures from NRA's third quarter, traditionally the worst quarter of the year for the association as fundraising inevitably falls off in the summer months, it appeared the organization would finish the year $4 million in the red...
...Worse yet, it was clear to Knox that Marion Hammer intended to make the NRA presidency more than just a figurehead post...
...One focus of criticism—the multi-million fundraising and membership prospecting contract with P.M...
...An FPPC spokesman says the agency still cannot confirm how much money was raised by the committee, nor can it verify how the money was spent...
...Knox may have had financial motives, as well, in coveting the EVP slot, which pays $19o,000 a year and provides a generous expense account...
...NRA officials say that Knox asked Metaksa to issue a $3o,000 check from ILA's coffers for Howard's legal defense, and she refused without board approval...
...LaPierre denies the charges, saying they are a smokescreen for a corporate take-over...
...Paul Payne says he raised money for the organization by speaking at local gun clubs in the Los Angeles area, where he works as a mechanic, but the money was not reported properly by the Carone organization...
...He's not exactly the bottom of the barrel, but other people could do a better job...
...This outcome would almost surely spell disaster for the lobby, which could eventually cease to exist in anything like its current form...
...They represent the fringe, people who won't increase the NRA's clout, but will diminish its clout...
...and Harlon said 'io percent isn't good enough.'" Then, his voice trailing off, Knox says, "I always suspected Wayne had had a prior conversation with Harlon...
...She now claims that Knox promoted "the nasty little drill" against her will...
...The disagreements, he thought, were all in the family...
...Knox was subsequently fired when Carter concluded—wrongly, Knox says—that Knox was behind a planned protest of a Bob Dole speech to the annual NRA convention that year...
...He is motivated simply by power...
...Hammer is yet another erstwhile ally who has broken with Knox...
...Colman, whose candidacy for the board Sue King originally sponsored, "is our version of a jack-booted thug," she says now...
...He threw them in the trash...
...A man who lists his passions as chocolate ice cream and "Saturday Night Live," LaPierre is a consummate Washington insider who prides himself on presenting the NRA's hardline legislative agenda in terms that place Second Amendment rights squarely in the mainstream of American politics...
...It is our frank opinion that were the Board functioning as a business Board of Directors, current management would have been long gone," Carone concluded...
...On one side are several incumbent NRA officers, led by Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, and on the other is a band of dissident board members allied with gun-rights activist and writer Neal Knox...
...The NRA's cash and investments portfolio declined from a high of $80.6 million in 1991 to $50.9 million in 1996, with some $35 million of that pledged as collateral for the mortgage on the new headquarters building...
...Knox confirms the incident, saying that helping Howard is the "principled" thing for the NRA to do...
...Wayne has performed admirably in bringing NRA through a transitional period...
...One said, `...you'd never go to print with a story that sounds as bulls--- as this one because you'd get sued...and I'm not prepared to destroy a man's career and his life's work on the basis of what amounts to hearsay...
...I'm worried about the NRA [without him...
...Washington and I sat down and tried to mend our fences...
...He now claims, "I've stayed quiet all this time about Neal on the theory of not giving aid and comfort to the enemy...
...DAVID BROCK is an investigative writer for TAS...
...Knox has a different recollection: "Marion was pushing this...
...I watched Howard handle the mail in the recall headquarters...
...Today, King is the treasurer of the Committee for a Strong and Effective NRA, formed this past January to defend the current leadership against the threatened purge by Knox and his supporters...
...In June, the Knox forces called the first meeting in several years of the NRA executive committee, which is empowered to act for the board between its regular meetings...
...Knox subsequently confirmed this to LaPierre, who still did not take seriously the challenge to his leadership...
...LaPierre seems to have gotten the wake-up call...
...In 1962, with Sen...
...Overcoming his shyness with professional training in public speaking, LaPierre is a frequent guest on TV talk shows, hosts a syndicated weekly radio show, published a best-selling book, Guns, Crime and Freedom, and recruited Hollywood stars like Charlton Heston, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Tom Selleck to the NRA cause...
...Some NRA board members, including Sue King, allege that, among other motives in seeking control of NRA's finances, Carone wants the lobby to foot the bill for Howard's legal expenses in challenging the FPPC fine and even pay the $800,000 due if an appeal in California Superior Court fails...
...The NRA's membership dipped as well...
...In mid-March, fearing that he couldn't garner enough votes to be elected EVP in Seattle, Knox supporters pressured him to issue a statement withdrawing his candidacy...
...Neal got dragged into this by his board members," concedes Knox supporter Joseph Olson...
...By December, however, it was clear to LaPierre and his staff—and therefore to Knox and Carone—that the NRA would end the year with a surplus...
...Both Carone and Howard say that all of the money raised—one partial disclosure the group filed with the FPPC reported $141,000 in contributions—was properly spent on the recall...
...But 39 rather than fade from the scene, Knox demonstrated how a persistent personality can win political influence...
...But Carone and Colman were not really part of the family—and they would not be rebuffed...
...And if the NRA collaps36 M ay 1997 • The American Spectator es, they fear, it will be time for gunowners to bury their guns...
...By Knox's own account, he was fired by Carter for "trying to force a vote on a bill that was going nowhere...
...A soft-spoken man whose haircut and glasses evoke the 1950's, Knox thrives as a quintessential outsider, a rhetorical bomb-thrower uncomfortable in the corridors of Beltway power...
...Critics of the Carone report say it presents a distorted and self-serving view aimed at scaring the membership in the current board elections...
...Wayne is a very nice man...
...A spokesman for the FPPC has promised to "wage a full court press to collect...
...The political environment of the 1990's —which saw the passage of significant gun-control legislation for the first time since 1968 and also the rise of paramilitary militia groups— only exacerbated the fissures...
...If he raised money in the gun clubs, those people ought to wonder what he did with it...
...Reflecting the tension between the traditionalists and Knox, Warren Cheek, a former corporate secretary of the association, says, "These are people who view the NRA as a political party...
...flew to Florida to interview her for George...
...OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM If LaPierre is Ralph Reed, Neal Knox is Pat Robertson —a great preacher to the converted but not at all effective in taking the case to the political center...
...Fred Barnes, "What Health-Care Crisis...
...You can't be absolutist...
...Maybe too nice...
...Statements like that have made Knox the most loved and hated man in gun politics...
...Perhaps irritated with her independence and jealous of her success, Knox now says, "Tanya has been drinking too much of the Potomac water...
...Knox also registered as a lobbyist under the name "The Firearms Coalition...
...To the principles of the NRA...
...The fracture among the hard-liners came when there was no one left to turn on but each other...
...The only way out for Knox, it seemed, was to grab the all-powerful executive vice president slot for himself...
...The cash and investment portfolio, for example, has been rebuilt from a low of $41.7 million in 1994 to a projected $53.2 million in 1997...
...requiring proof of residency for legal immigrants to buy guns...
...In 1989, I heard [then NRA president] Joe Foss say that the reason you can't ban the bad guns is that you might end up banning the good ones," Colman says...
...Claims Cassidy: "Neal has a silly idea of what the American political system is...
...Wayne Ross, an NRA board member who has crossed swords with Knox, says, "Ever since he was fired from ILA by Harlon Carter, he hasn't held a steady job...
...Wayne has good judgment...
...Unlike Knox, who panders to the extremes, LaPierre made the hard call, telling the NRA annual convention in May that the association would have nothing to do with anyone "who supports—or even fantasizes about—terrorism [or] insurrection...
...and announcing his support for legislation to ban armor-piercing or "cop-killer" bullets...
...Nor has the attack on gun rights been confined to the political arena: then—NBC President Michael Gartner suggested repealing the Second Amendment altogether...
...After the Republicans took over Congress in 1994 and the threat from the Clinton administration appeared to subside, conservative organizations had trouble maintaining their membership rolls and raising funds...
...In a dramatic showdown at the board meeting a few months ago, LaPierre was saved by one of Marion Hammer's parliamentary maneuvers...
...and did not file required campaign committee reports, according to investigators...
...Named as Baker's replacement was Tanya Metaksa, Knox's former deputy at ILA who had gone on to become legislative director for Sen...
...At this point, two young turk directors with backgrounds in finance and computers entered the picture, offering Knox the vehicle he needed to try to push out LaPierre: a confidential study of management practices on LaPierre's watch that they had written...
...Two months later, the day the House was expected to kill the bill, Sen...
...Sue King spoke against the payment at the meeting...
...In 1991, with the imprimatur of activists such as Soldier ofFor- tune editor Robert Brown, and also apparently of the retired Harlon Carter, who wrote a column in Guns and Ammo endorsing wholesale changes on the NRA board, Knox was re-elected to the board, along with more than a dozen of his followers...
...It is like Becket and Henry II...
...Last year, only 6 percent of the membership voted for the board...
...This alliance of dissidents was an uneasy one...
...This seems a stretch, even for a fellow with a conspiratorial bent...
...He says he would have won in 1987, had the bylaws not been changed that year to make the job subject to election by the board rather than the membership...
...BY DAVID BROCK 0 n the 5th of May, at this year's annual meeting of the National Rifle Association in Seattle, a bloody internal battle that threatens to destroy the powerful lobby will play out...
...And I'll match my vision for the future against theirs any day...
...Wayne Ross, an Anchorage lawyer and member of the Republican National Committee, represented the old-style establishment director that has become a dying breed...
...When she told Knox and Carone of Colman's BOY CLINTON FOUR YEARS AGO There is no health-care crisis...
...Colman's bravado came in handy when it was time for the dissidents to make their move...
...Following a recent appearance by LaPierre on CNBC's "Equal Time," co-host Dee Dee Myers, a strong gun control advocate, told me she considered the easygoing LaPierre 38 May 1997 The American Spectator "evil" because he was so effective in appealing to a middle-of-the-road constituency...
...LaPierre disputes this, saying that it was his idea to hire someone whose commitment to the gun issue could not be questioned by Knox...
...Though he denies the motives that King imputes to him, Carone confirms that he believes NRA should cover the legal bills of Howard, whom many in the Knox camp—perhaps unaware of the dubious history of the recall effort—view as a hero for taking on Roberti and refusing to disclose his contributors to the state...
...You can't win people to your side by making threats...
...According to Brown, who has also broken with Knox, "One potential appointee asked, 'An oath...
...And they're trying to do the same with NRA...
...Howard, who is not currently employed, has claimed he is "destitute...
...The BCCI brought a loan to Ward Industries, which brought Donald Fowler along for the ride...
...We had the votes [of the members]," Knox says sadly...
...Indeed, it is destructive...
...Knox, 61, won his first victory at the group's 1977 Cincinnati convention, when he led a grassroots revolt against the gentlemanly Old Guard who had supported the Gun Control Act of 1968...
...Knox now says he "wouldn't have worded it the same way," but still stands behind the substance of the column...
...Credited with getting Florida's concealed-carry law through the legislature, Hammer is a blunt-speaking, divisive figure with a flair for arcane parliamentary maneuvers and petty bureaucratic in-fighting—much, in fact, like Knox himself...
...The day the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on the Dodd bill, two votes were changed and the bill came out—because Martin Luther King was murdered...
...It was a devastating defeat, and it sent Knox's supporters into a tailspin...
...But he does concede that he has had "cash flow problems" making the mortgage payments on both his Silver Spring home, which has been on the market for two years, and a 3o-acre piece of property in rural Virginia...
...Alerted to the split by the National Journal report, the New York Times requested an interview on the Knox challenge with LaPierre, who was quoted as saying, "We don't want to be about training for war in the woods or extremism of rhetoric...
...The mainstream will wash us away...
...After passage of the Brady law and the assault-weapons ban in 1993 and 1994, the NRA spent record amounts to elect pro-gun representatives (and defeat Democratic incumbents) in the '94 congressional races...
...He is one of the best lobbyists on the planet," says David Gross, a Michigan lawyer and NRA board member who favors firing LaPierre...
...An inept administrator, Cassidy presided over large deficits and a decline in membership...
...This outcome would not only drive policy in a more radical direction, but also spell financial ruin for the association...
...One suspects that the case of Roger Tamraz may soon become central to the investigations of troubled Democratic fundraising...
...I'm not worried about Wayne, Wayne is very talented and he can find another job," Gramm told me...
...Knox's goal in Cincinnati —to make the NRA a political player—will have been defeated by Knox himself, a trick that not even Sarah Brady could have pulled off...
...As is often the case with Republican primaries, this narrow constituency of activists can produce leaders who are somewhat to the right of the membership as a whole...
...He's last ditch," dissident David Gross told me...
...EVP is just a staff job," he says...
...In successive annual elections by the membership, Knox ran a hand-picked slate of candidates, many of whom, according to Robert Brown and others, were required to take loyalty oaths in exchange for Knox's backing...
...Even LaPierre's opponents accept this analysis...
...He disseminated his views to the faithful in a newsletter called the Hard Corps Report, produced at home and for which he solicits donations...
...once successful in removing Cassidy, their divergent views on strategy, differing personal agendas, and opposing political and rhetorical styles soon led to the harder-core coalition itself splitting into two factions...
...Knox's people are rabid," he says...
...Until now, the association—whose whose image is as fragile as a Faberge egg—has weathered the cycles of internal instability and learned to accept the temporary political setbacks and opportunities for caricature by the media and political opponents that such turmoil engenders...
...At this point, Hammer, LaPierre, and Metaksa accepted a fact they had refused to face for months: They had woefully misjudged the intentions of the man who had put them in power...
...Knox clearly interprets these differences as really being about principle: he is, in his own mind at least, the only true defender of the Second Amendment...
...Knox suggested in one column, for instance, that the 1968 Gun Control Act was modeled on the gun-control laws put into effect by the Nazis, which in effect equates gun-control advocates with Hitler and fascism...
...So there were no records of who was giving what...
...Knox didn't have the votes to get rid of Warren Cassidy," Brown recalls...
...The night before the executive committee met, Knox held a secret caucus of supporters at a hotel near NRA headquarters where he held forth on LaPierre's shortcomings...
...She recently complained in correspondence of Colman's "abusive behavior [and] threats to staff...
...To his peril, Wayne LaPierre concentrated his energies solely on pressing the battle for gun rights in the external arena, ignoring the intramural politicking at which Knox is expert...
...Though NRA lost the gun ban vote on her watch, she organized gun voters to come out in record numbers in 1994, which President Clinton has said made the difference in tilting control of Congress to the Republicans...
...Wayne and I were called in, which was unusual...
...The mail balloting takes place until mid-April, and the results will be revealed at the Seattle convention in early May...
Vol. 30 • May 1997 • No. 5
