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Woman who aided fight against gun violence is linked to Md. firm that collected intelligence
Published on Wednesday, Aug 06, 2008
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA: A gun-control activist who championed the cause for more than a decade and served on the boards of two anti-violence groups is suspected of working as a paid spy for the National Rifle Association, and now those organizations are expelling her and sweeping their offices for bugs.
The suggestion that Mary Lou McFate was a double agent is contained in a deposition filed as part of a contract dispute involving a security firm. The muckraking magazine Mother Jones, in a story last week, was the first to report on McFate's alleged dual identity.
The NRA refused to comment to the magazine and did not respond to calls Tuesday from the AP. Nor did McFate.
The 62-year-old former flight attendant and sex counselor from Sarasota, Fla., is not new to the world of informants.
She infiltrated an animal-rights group in the 1980s at the request of U.S. Surgical, and befriended an activist who was later convicted in a pipe bomb attack against the medical-supply business, U.S. Surgical acknowledged in news reports at the time. U.S. Surgical had come under fire for using dogs for research and training.
McFate resurfaced in Pennsylvania and has since spent years as an unpaid board member of CeaseFirePA and an organization called States United to Prevent Gun Violence. She also pushed unsuccessfully to join the board of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
''It raises some real concerns with the tactics of the NRA. If they've got one person, maybe they have more. If they've done this dirty trick, what else have they done?'' said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, which planned to search its offices for listening devices and computer spyware.
The allegations against McFate stem from a lawsuit brought against officials with Beckett Brown International, a now-defunct security firm based in Maryland.
Boxes of documents filed in the dispute reveal that McFate worked as a subcontractor for Beckett Brown and that the firm's clients included the NRA. And they show that McFate billed the firm for unspecified intelligence-gathering services, submitting among other things a request for a $4,500-a-month retainer in 1999.
Get the full article here.
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