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Gun-Control Activist Accused Of Being NRA Spy

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The Associated Press

Published: August 7, 2008

PHILADELPHIA - A gun-control activist who, from Sarasota, championed the cause for more than a decade and served on the boards of two anti-violence organizations is suspected of working as a paid spy for the National Rifle Association. Now, those organizations are expelling her and sweeping their offices for bugs.

The suggestion Mary Lou McFate was a double agent is contained in a deposition filed as part of a contract dispute involving a security firm.

Neither the NRA nor McFate responded to calls from The Associated Press.

McFate, 62, a former flight attendant and sex counselor, is not new to the world of informants.

She infiltrated an animal-rights group in the late 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 a group called States United to Prevent Gun Violence. She also twice pushed unsuccessfully to join the board of the nation's largest gun-control group, 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 is planning to search its offices for listening devices and computer spyware.

The Brady Campaign and other groups said that they are also researching whether McFate's alleged spying constituted a crime.

"Under some circumstances, it could be trespass," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former prosecutor. But "if they're open meetings, it may be underhanded and sneaky, it may not be illegal."

At States United, McFate served as federal legislation director, meeting with members of Congress on Capitol Hill and writing letters.

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 business dispute reveal that McFate worked as a subcontractor for Beckett Brown and that the firm's clients included the NRA. They also show that McFate had billed the firm for unspecified intelligence-gathering services, submitting, among other things, a request for a $4,500-a-month retainer in 1999.

Bryan Miller, executive director of Ceasefire NJ, said he feels betrayed by McFate. Miller's brother, an FBI agent, was shot to death in 1994.

"To have somebody that I consider a friend, have been with dozens of times, shared meals with, treated as a friend, to have her be an employee, a subcontracted spy for the NRA, is just mind-boggling. It's so venal," Miller said.

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