Reports Of Agents’ Racist Campout Were Made With Help Of Nra It Appears Claims Were A Smear Campaign Launched By A David Duke Supporter

For several weeks last month, the news media carried reports of a rowdy, racist event, an annual redneck campout in the hills of Tennessee where federal agents got drunk, made obscene jokes about blacks and hung a banner warning, “Nigger check point.”

It was the first mention most people had ever heard of the Good Ol’ Boys Roundup, an annual three-day campout for law-enforcement officers and federal agents, but the reports were disturbing enough to prompt hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and an investigation by the Justice Department and expressions of alarm by President Clinton.

But now, it turns out, the most damning accounts of the “Good Ol’ Boys Roundup” - including a 90-second videotape showing the banner and tales of agents selling “nigger-hunting licenses” - were made to the National Rifle Association by a former Fort Lauderdale police officer after he was prevented by the Roundups’ organizer from distributing David Duke campaign literature and from expressing “white power” sentiments at the gatherings.

The tape - now considered widely suspect - and stories were, in turn, apparently fed to a Washington newspaper by an official of the rifle association, which has characterized agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as “jack-booted thugs.”

The source of the videotape and stories was identified as Richard Hayward, a former Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police officer by Justice Department officials, by a former president of the rifle association and by the organizer of the Roundups.

Through the years, Hayward has supported David Duke, the one-time head of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Roundups’ organizer, Gene Rightmyer, a former ATF agent, said he had had several run-ins with Hayward over Hayward’s attempts to display “white power” insignias and distribute campaign literature for Duke at the Roundups.

Hayward has since had a falling-out with the rifle association, which he characterized in a recent interview as “totally unethical, a bunch of liars.”

On the other hand, Hayward insists that his videotape is genuine and his stories are true, although Justice Department investigators and civil rights leaders have doubts about both.

Hayward said that last spring he offered the rifle association his allegations of racism at the Roundups - coincidentally at the very time that the rifle association was undertaking a new membership drive with mailings that once again attacked ATF agents.

By Hayward’s account, an official of the rifle association turned the videotape and allegation over to The Washington Times, which published an article about the Roundup, focusing on allegations of racism.

The other news media soon followed suit, casting a shadow over the ATF just as congressional hearings were about to get under way into the agency’s role in the Waco siege.

An NRA spokesman now says that the association’s leaders had doubts about the videotape from the start.

Rightmyer, the Roundups’ organizer, suspects Hayward himself had helped hang the derogatory banner at the entrance to the 1990 Roundup, then videotaped it in an effort to impress Duke.