HumaneWatch

Most people are discouraged to learn that the “Humane Society” of the United States gives a minuscule fraction of its income to actual pet shelters.

Well, here’s some more bad news: HSUS has a long history of financial mismanagement. And we have some insider documents from a former HSUS Board member that put one set of sticky situations in perspective.

Let's go back to the (HSUS) future, shall we?

Wouldn’t it be nice if your employer bought you a $310,000 house to live in, rent-free? Or if you could buy a vacation plot up in Maine, and your office would simply reimburse you? Or if the organization you worked for maintained a little “shell” corporation to funnel extra cash to you on the sly?

And wouldn’t it be nice if you could get away with this without anyone complaining?

These aren’t the kind of perks that the rest of us get. But then, the rest of us don’t work at HSUS. A scandal in the late 1980s tore apart HSUS’s governing Board. It concerned insider wheeling-and-dealing between HSUS’s President, Treasurer (a man who would later become President), and a special Board “Committee” whose collective hands were buried deep in the financial cookie jar.

“Exhibit A” is a 1988 Report prepared by Washington, DC attorney Gail Harmon.

About 40 of the 50 United States require nonprofit organizations to apply for special licenses before they can raise money from the states’ residents. Usually administered by the Attorney General or Secretary of State, these applications are cumbersome, expensive … and a fantastic source of paperwork if you’re researching the applicants. Especially now that most state governments are putting tons of documents online, in the interest of satisfying “sunshine” and “transparency” laws.

West Virginia is one of those states with a Consumer Protection statute that requires a fundraising license. One of the Humane Society of the United States’s many affiliated organizations (the Humane Society Wildlife Land Trust) has had such a license for the past decade. And, lo and behold, the office of West Virginia’s Secretary of State recently put its charity filings on the Interwebs.

Part of the application process in the Mountaineer State involves submitting a report (prepared by an outside accountant) verifying that the organization’s books are in good shape. This is typically done as a way of making sure individual donors aren’t getting ripped off by a fly-by-night “charity” looking for a quick score. (And the animal protection world has certainly had its share of those.)

So when the Humane Society Wildlife Trust’s West Virginia license came due for annual renewal during the last decade, HSUS’s Chief Financial Officer usually submitted a copy of the “Consolidated Financial Statements” for HSUS and its entire network of affiliated groups. (For some reason, the 2004 audit wasn’t provided.) And since the West Virginia Secretary of State is sharing all the documents, they’re now part of the public record—and part of the HumaneWatch document library.

A handful of HSUS senior staffers, past and present, have roots in the radical fringes of the animal rights movement. Six years before becoming CEO, HSUS's Wayne Pacelle hired former Animal Liberation Front spokesperson John "J.P." Goodwin. Pacelle himself came from the anti-hunting Fund for Animals, and cut his activist teeth sabotaging deer hunts. Matthew Prescott, who runs HSUS’s shareholder-activism campaign, came directly from the über-crazy People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). And HSUS recruited the leadership contingent of the Washington, DC-based group Compassion Over Killing (COK)—essentially an even more rag-tag version of PETA.

HSUS senior campaign manager Paul Shapiro founded COK in the mid-1990s when he was a prep-school student. Miyun Park, who teaches at Humane Society University and was a vice-president at HSUS until last year, also helped run COK, as did HSUS staffer Josh Balk and HSUS lawyer Carter Dillard.

COK, like PETA, has always been a vegan advocacy organization—and unabashedly so. (At least it’s open about it, unlike HSUS.) And perhaps unsurprisingly, the group openly supported violent criminals under Shapiro’s leadership.

In the mid-1990s, COK targeted a DC furrier called Miller’s Furs. (Back then, COK mainly protested fur sellers and circuses.) At one point, the group published Miller’s home address as a tool for angry activists targeting him and his family.

By early 1997, COK was actively recruiting members for a new cell of the terrorist Animal Liberation Front, just to pressure this one fur retailer.  The Winter ’97 issue of The Abolitionist, COK’s official magazine, featured an article announcing that “members [are] needed” for the “MF-ALF” (which stood for “Miller’s Furs–Animal Liberation Front”). The article included suggestions to “smash a window… throw a paint bomb… burn Miller’s Furs down.” Some of the listed “benefits” of joining included the “nervous breakdown” of the fur salon’s owner.

Yikes. Judging from the records archived by the Internet Wayback Machine, COK later scrubbed this article from the Internet. (Clicking here, you can still read the rest of the issue, but not the ALF recruiting ad.)

We’re still working our way through filing cabinets full of unusual and interesting research materials about the Humane Society of the United States, and eventually it will all find its way to the HumaneWatch Document Library. Today we came across a collection of papers we obtained a few years ago from Texas Tech University.

The Texas Tech library is the final resting place of 13 boxes of papers and 10 scrapbooks that belonged to the late Amy Freeman Lee (1914-2004). In addition to being a cultural philanthropist and a co-founder of the San Antonio Symphony, Lee was a Board Member of the Humane Society of the United States for a record 35 years.

In late 2006, we asked a Special Collections librarian at TTU to send us copies of anything in the Amy Freeman Lee Collection that referenced HSUS. Our request was honored, and the result of that research is 208 pages that you can view here. (It’s a large file, so we recommend that you save a copy instead of browsing it online.)

Different people will find different portions of this material fascinating, so we won’t hazard a guess about what may be the most interesting tidbit. But it’s a treasure trove of information for anyone looking to understand what HSUS used to be—which is the first step toward recognizing just what it has become.

The more you dig into the history of the Humane Society of the United States, the harder it is to escape the conclusion that it (and its top spokespersons) used to be much more honest about their goals and ideas.

More PETA-like, if you will.

Today's HSUS campaigns are focus-grouped and carefully calibrated for mass appeal (and maximum fundraising impact). But it's almost like they also  mask a deeper desire to lead everyone—somewhere.

Somewhere distinctively PETA-ish.

Given what we know about today's HSUS's institutional anti-meat feelings, for instance, it shouldn't come as a surprise to read that HSUS leaders were once quite open about their desire to promote a vegetarian revolution. So saith Vegetarian Times, anyway.

Has HSUS always been a vegetarian stealth-bomber? Let's take a look.

Today’s look into the history of the Humane Society of the United States comes through the courtesy of a HumaneWatch reader who sent me a document I'd never seen before. It's a 33-year-old newsletter from something called the National Association for Sound Wildlife Programs. (I can't find any evidence that the organization exists anymore.)

I'm posting a brief excerpt from this 1977 publication in the HumaneWatch document library, because I think it shows a rather radical approach (even for its time) of preferring animals over human beings. Even in cases where the only thing people have to go on is a wild guess.

If you care about hunting, fishing, zoos, aquariums, wildlife conservation, or the private ownership of exotic animal species as pets, you’ll want to read this. It’s a rare glimpse into the mindset that gave us some of today’s (in my opinion) more backward policy approaches to wildlife. And HSUS was right in the thick of it.

Here’s what this document shows.

Google may eventually take over the universe, but for now I'm okay with that because the Google Books service is an exceptionally cool research tool. I'm constantly finding old material I didn't know existed, just because it's suddenly text-searchable.

Here’s one gem: a 1981 statement from HSUS detailing why it officially supports pursuing rights for animals.

The excerpt on the right gets to the meat of matter. It’s from the May 1982 issue of Vegetarian Times and it details HSUS’s explicit endorsement in 1980 of the animal rights position:

... there is no rational basis for maintaining a moral distinction between the treatment of humans and the treatment of other animals.

I don't think HSUS has ever repealed this policy statement; if I'm wrong, I feel confident the group's lawyers will let me know.