This archive contains materials related to the Humane Society of the United States, collected in the 1980s and ’90s by Harold D. Guither, an agriculture economics professor at the University of Illinois. Guither retired in 1995, and his papers are in the University of Illinois Archive.

Some of this material informed the writing of Guither’s 1998 book Animal Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement.

Below are links to, and summaries of, the major documents within each PDF. Because the files are large, we strongly suggest you save them to your hard drive before opening them, by right-clicking and selecting “Save Link As.”

Fundraising Material | Governance, Speeches, and Interviews | HSUS Publications | HSUS Catalogs | Miscellaneous Files | Assorted Oversize Papers

For a full listing of the documents, download this spreadsheet.

Fundraising Material

This file includes an HSUS calendar, holiday appeals, membership fundraising letters, requests for money in conjunction with specific issues, promos for HSUS’s VISA card, and a promo for HSUS’s pet “registration” service.

Governance, Speeches, and Interviews

This file includes the text of a speech that then-HSUS President John Hoyt gave to the California Farm Bureau Federation in 1990, Guither’s notes from an interview with Hoyt, year-end financial statements for 1991 and 1992, HSUS correspondence with Board nominees, and proposed amendments to HSUS’s bylaws.

HSUS Publications

This set includes catalogs of HSUS’s specialty items and audio/visual material, and “Close-Up Reports” for a variety of issues(such as animal research, ivory trade, whaling, and pet overpopulation).

HSUS Catalogs

This document is a collection of HSUS gift catalogs from 1998 and 1999. Products offered by HSUS include boxer shorts with dog prints, a cat floor mat, holiday cards, address labels, Sherpa bags, and dog bowls.

Miscellaneous Files

This set includes writings from former HSUS Vice President Michael W. Fox in the early 1980s, a 1991 article from The Animals’ Agenda magazine titled “HSUS in Hot Water Again,” and reports from HSUS’s North Central Regional Office (which covered Illinois, where Guither lived).

Assorted Oversize Papers

These larger handouts include a copy of a New York Times ad co-signed by HSUS titled “A Joint Resolution,” a separate New York Times ad from Animal Rights International, and an anti-meat handout from the Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM), which later changed its name to the Farm Animal Rights Movement.

We believe reproducing this material constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

This HumaneWatch special collection includes 13 files containing more than 1,500 pages of material comprising the files of former Humane Society of the United States Board member Susan Pepperdine. We obtained these documents in late 2010 from a third party. Ms. Pepperdine has confirmed their authenticity for us, and we are publishing them with her permission.

Generally, these documents concern a tumultuous period of time in HSUS's history, involving:

1. an attempt by then-HSUS President John Hoyt to merge HSUS with the Michigan Humane Society in 1987; and
2. the attempts of a minority group within HSUS's Board to promote institutional accountability, following their discovery that Hoyt and HSUS Treasurer Paul Irwin had been receiving lavish extra compensation approved by a small “Deferred Compensation Committee.”

Full descriptions of each of these 13 PDFs are below. (Historians will also want to download our complete inventory of the entire collection, conveniently cataloged in a single Microsoft Excel file.)

Tirana & Harmon Correspondence | Media Clippings | Michigan Merger | Board Correspondence | Audit Documents | Legal Correspondence | Legal Documents | Governance Documents | HSUS Directors | Combined Financial Documents | HSUS Publications | Miscellaneous Correspondence | Miscellaneous Notes

Background

Hoyt was unsuccessful in merging HSUS with the Michigan Humane Society (MHS), in no small part due to revelations about the character and history of then-MHS director David Wills. Those revelations included a past felony conviction and a faked résumé.

Upon discovering that a small Board committee had discreetly authorized extra compensation “perks” for Hoyt and Irwin, the dissenting board members formed an Audit Committee to investigate the matters. The full HSUS Board unanimously approved the creation of this Audit Committee, which then hired Washington, DC attorney Gail Harmon to write a full report and offer her opinion on whether Board members and HSUS executives had violated any laws, and whether HSUS itself had incurred legal liability.

Harmon concluded that because the “extra” compensation (which included real estate deals and payments from "dormant" HSUS accounts) had not been reported on HSUS’s federal income tax return, the HSUS Board and executives were in serious legal jeopardy. (The full Harmon & Weiss Report can be found here.)

In response, other board members hired attorney Jacob Stein to write a second “independent” report on the situation. (Stein was Board Chairman Bill Wiseman’s personal attorney, which was a conflict of interest since the Harman report implicated Wiseman personally.)

Stein’s report had similar findings of fact as Harmon’s but came to different conclusions. Stein did not believe that the HSUS board and its officers were in legal limbo.

Later, an effort commenced (and it's not clear who initiated it) to contact the California Attorney General with a request for an investigation of HSUS’s alleged fiduciary malfeasance. The California AG’s office did contact HSUS, writing that “Information obtained by this office reveals that certain principals of the organization have engaged in a course of conduct that, in our opinion, is a violation of fiduciary duties owed to the charitable beneficiaries.” It’s unclear how the investigation ended.

Documents

Each set of documents can be downloaded individually. An inventory of the complete "Pepperdine Papers" is also avaliable. Please right-click on the name and select “save file as” to save each PDF to your computer. We recommend this option since some files are quite large.

Click HERE to download a Microsoft Excel file containing a complete inventory of the documents in each PDF above.

1. Tirana & Harmon Correspondence
   
   This document contains correspondence to and from Gail Harmon and Bardyl Tirana. Harmon was the attorney in charge of the initial HSUS Audit Committee report in 1988. Tirana was HSUS board member Samuel Bowman's personal attorney, and represented him for the purpose of inspecting HSUS’s books and records.
    
2. Media Clippings
   
   This file contain a series of newspaper clippings from the late 1980s. It includes pieces from syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, who in 1988 and 1991 wrote about the internal strife at HSUS.
    
3. Michigan Merger 
   
   These documents pertain to the proposed merger in 1987 between HSUS and the Michigan Humane Society, including a transcript of a TV interview with then-MHS President David Wills; Wills’ guilty plea for breaking & entering; and a letter about Wills from the Washington Humane Society.
    
4. Board Correspondence
   
   This file contains volumes of correspondence to and from board members, board committees, and HSUS executives. Most of the correspondences deals with requests for information and concerns about, and defenses of, the actions of the Deferred Compensation Committee, which helped funnel compensation to HSUS executives in relative secrecy. (Note: This file is nearly 700 pages long. Please download it before reading or printing.)
    
5. Audit Documents 
   
   This set of documents includes HSUS’s revenue history from 1979 to 1990, HSUS financial statements and auditors’ reports from 1980 to 1985, and financial statements and reports for HSUS’s trust funds.
    
6. Legal Correspondence
   
   This PDF includes interrogatory letters from attorney Gail Harmon to John Hoyt and Paul Irwin, letters from HSUS board member John Mettler stating his concerns, and correspondence with the California Attorney General’s office.
    
7. Legal Documents
   
   This file includes "Form 990" tax returns for HSUS from the years 1980 through 1986. It also includes 990s for the National Humane Education Center for the years 1983 through 1986. NHEC was a defunct shell corporation controlled by HSUS that was used to funnel compensation to Hoyt and Irwin. This PDF also includes employment agreements for Hoyt and Irwin, and a draft of a class-action civil lawsuit (never filed, to our knowledge) against HSUS.
    
8. Governance Documents
   
   This file includes copies of HSUS’s by-laws, minutes of various HSUS Board committee meetings (including the now-infamous "Deferred Compensation Committee"), a record of the HSUS nominating committee, HSUS’s board members at various points in time, and third-party papers on good governance procedures for organizations.
    
9. HSUS Directors
   
   These are files from a folder that Susan Pepperdine labeled “HSUS—Directors.” They include a copy of HSUS's full Deferred Compensation Plan, letters from attorney Gail Harmon, and letters from the Audit Committee.
    
10. Combined Financial Documents
    
    This file includes copies of balance sheets for HSUS’s board-designated funds from 1983 to 1986, insurance policy details for Hoyt and Irwin, and a proposed 1990 HSUS budget.
     
11. HSUS Publications
    
    This set includes brochures for several HSUS annual conferences in the 1980s, a few copies of HSUS’s annual “report of the president,” and more recent printouts from HSUS’s website.
     
12. Miscellaneous Correspondence
    
    This file contains a smorgasbord of uncategorized documents including letters from John Mettler and Bardyl Tirana, a statement from the HSUS Board regarding Jack Anderson’s columns, and news articles about alleged embezzlement at the Michigan Humane Society.
     
13. Miscellaneous Notes
    
    This batch of documents includes a claim that HSUS spent half a million dollars as a result of executive misconduct, a draft letter to a state Attorney General from “board members,” and typed notes (unattributed, although we understand that they are Susan Pepperdine's) regarding complaints against Hoyt and Irwin.

NOTE: There are two versions of this file: a "low resolution" copy that's 10 megabytes in size, and a 132-megabyte "high-resolution" version. We recommend that you "right-click" on the one you want and save the file to your computer before reading or printing it.

This 208-page document contains selected portions (those related to the Humane Society of the United States) of the collection of papers left to Texas Tech University upon Amy Freeman Lee's death in 2004. Lee, a well-regarded artist and Texas philanthropist, was a member of the HSUS Board of Directors for 35 years—the longest-serving Director in the organization's history.

The papers were retrieved in November 2006 with the assistance of the Texas Tech University Special Collections Library.

Notable contents include:

• pp. 2-7: program from the 1992 HSUS Annual Conference
• p. 37: table of contents from The Humane Society of the United States News, Summer 1977, indicates that HSUS was engaged in "accredit[ing]" animal shelters 23 years ago
• p. 54: a May 1993 San Antonio Express-News op-ed written by Amy Freeman Lee, indicating that HSUS worked "pro bono" to upgrade and improve San Antonio's municipal animal shelter (a service for which today's HSUS charges tens of thousands of dollars)
• pp. 55-56: A "Report to the Board [of HSUS] Regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement," which describes how HSUS "has been working closely with ... The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth" to water down NAFTA—especially concerning animal-related federal laws that NAFTA (they feared) might supersede.
• pp. 79-82: program from the 1985 HSUS Annual Conference
• pp. 105-108: program from the 1972 HSUS Annual Conference
• pp. 109-112: program from the 1970 HSUS Annual Conference
• p. 117: agenda from the 1975 HSUS Annual Conference
• pp. 119-122: program from the 1973 HSUS Annual Conference
• pp. 129-132: program from the 1979 HSUS Annual Conference
• pp. 142-146: a cumulative list of HSUS Board members and their years of service, from the group's inception through October 1996
• pp. 147-150: a listing of "Speakers and Guests" at the HSUS 1996 Annual Conference
• pp. 161-165: program from the 1996 HSUS Annual Conference
• pp. 173-178: program from the 1989 HSUS Annual Conference
• pp. 181-182: list of HSUS "Officers and Staff in Attendance at the 1989 Annual Conference"
• pp. 203-204: 1993 HSUS direct-mail "Action Alert" urging members to lobby their U.S.Congressmen on a proposed marine-mammal law
• pp. 207-208: 1993 HSUS flyer against biology-class laboratory disscetion, published by HSUS's "youth education division" (Note: today this issue is more closely identified with PETA and other more obviously radical organizations)

We believe reproducing this material constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.