Informant Might Have Stood Among Gun Safety Activists

MAP

Gun Legislation By State

Use this map to learn more about the requirements and laws concerning guns.

» LAUNCH INTERACTIVE GUN MAP

"Mary was very involved with everything: telephone calls, conferences, meetings -- everything," Hohlt said. "In our group, there are not a lot of secrets. But we don't expect everything we say openly is going to be passed along to the NRA."

On that June day the D.C. case was decided, McFate was among the several dozen advocates who listened as the lead attorney for the District gave his interpretation of the ruling and suggested how state groups might frame their reactions to the media, Hohlt said.

"A call like that would definitely be intended to be an internal call," said Robyn Thomas, executive director of the Legal Community Against Violence in San Francisco, which hosted the call.

According to Hohlt and Miller, McFate obtained a draft copy of an amicus brief prepared by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence in the D.C. case several days before the brief was filed.

McFate told a worker with the group that she might be able to enlist other supporters if she had an advance copy, Miller said. Given that such briefs are generally filed early enough that there is ample time for a response, a draft might be of questionable value to a courtroom opponent.

McFate's alleged connection to the NRA was described in the 2003 deposition of Timothy Ward, a former investigator with a now-defunct Maryland private detective firm, Beckett Brown Intl., which used McFate as a subcontractor. The deposition came amid a contract dispute involving company investor John C. Dodd III, who gave The Washington Post access to court and company documents.

In the deposition, Ward was quizzed about how his firm arranged a security contract with the NRA. Ward said McFate had the gun rights group as a client and in 1999 introduced him to her contact there, Patrick O'Malley. At the time, O'Malley was deputy executive director of the Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying unit. Ward did not discuss the nature of McFate's work.

O'Malley, who has since left the NRA, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Ward did not respond to a message seeking comment on McFate and the NRA.

McFate's work as an operative elsewhere is well documented. In 1989, the U.S. Surgical Corp. acknowledged that it had used McFate and another undercover operative to keep tabs on animal rights activists. The practice was necessary, the Connecticut company said, because of what it considered fanaticism among activists protesting the company's use of dogs in surgical training.

After McFate's role was made public, some activists said they had long been suspicious of her, given her persistent questions, her tendency to take voluminous notes and her support of violent action.

Fran Trutt, an activist convicted of trying to plant a bomb in the company parking lot in 1988, said at the time that McFate and other operatives encouraged her efforts and gave her money for bombmaking supplies. McFate denied that.

In the late 1990s, as a subcontractor for Beckett Brown, McFate recruited, hired and trained a local resident to infiltrate groups protesting the chemical spill in Louisiana, according to BBI documents. In a 1998 memo to Ward, McFate described her management technique, saying her operatives were trained to seek documents and to "discover plans for illegal activity and civil disobedience, discover support from national groups, and generally discover 'what they know.' "