Militias Say They Blew The Whistle On Racist `Good Ol' Boys' Party

WASHINGTON - Two black agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, one retired and one active, today depicted the organizer of the "Good Ol' Boys Roundup" for law officers as a man who went out of his way to insult blacks.

Larry Stewart, assistant special agent in charge at the ATF's Atlanta office, recalled meeting roundup organizer Gene Rightmyer at a training event in Georgia in 1985.

In testimony prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Stewart said he and two other black agents, Dondi Albritton and William Stringer, were involved in a discussion when Rightmyer approached the group and "without any provocation, looked toward Mr. Stringer and Mr. Albritton and stated, `You were born trash, you'll live and die trash.' "

Earlier in his career, Stewart recalled roundup invitations being distributed to white agents at the Atlanta office. He was not given one.

"I assume, Mr. Chairman, that I was not one of the `Good Ol' Boys,' " he told committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "While no one indicated to me that racist material, signs, skits, etc., were present . . . I got the distinct impression no African Americans were present or were ever invited to this event."

The weekend of picnics, volleyball, rafting and beer drinking, held each spring since 1980, allegedly featured the sale of T-shirts with racist themes and, in 1990, an entrance poster containing a racial slur and a racist skit with a Ku Klux Klansman and character in blackface.

Meanwhile, Rightmyer issued a statement through his lawyer saying, "Over the 16-year history of this event, I am aware of perhaps three or four isolated instances of racist conduct by a very small number of attendees."

He said they were never authorized or condoned and he took "steps to ensure that the conduct was not repeated."

Hatch said Rightmyer was invited to testify but did not respond.

Treasury Undersecretary Ronald Noble told the hearing the department's inspector general has determined that employees of the ATF, Secret Service, Customs Service, Internal Revenue Service and Federal Law Enforcement Training Center have attended at least one roundup.

However, he said, "some of the accounts of the ATF's involvement may have been particularly exaggerated."

Rightmyer suggested that an extremist militia group was exaggerating a few racist incidents over the years to discredit the ATF. In interviews published yesterday in The Washington Post and The New York Times, Rightmyer said a militia group known as the Gadsden Minutemen is hostile to the ATF because of its role in regulating firearms.

The Post today quoted Mike Kemp, communications director for the Gadsden Minutemen, as saying the militias organized a campaign against the roundup with the goal of delivering a "sucker punch" to ATF. Kemp was quoted as saying the militia operation carried the code name "Operation Achilles Heel."

Kemp said that the Minutemen showed a videotape of racist scenes at the 1990 roundup to the National Rifle Association, which shares a dislike of the ATF. From there, the videotape wound up with the Washington Times.