www.activistcash.com/organization_blackeye.cfm?oid=136Humane Society of the United States
2100 L Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037
Phone 202-452-1100 | Fax 202-258-3051 | Email wpacelle@hsus.org
Black Eye
HSUS and its affiliates have received embarrassingly low scores from established charity watchdog groups. Worth magazine gave HSUS a “D” rating for spending as much as 53 percent of its expenses on fundraising. And online rating service Give.org noted that the huge HSUS corporate family does not have an active governing board overseeing the overall structure, and criticized the organization for holding only three board meetings during 2000, two of them on the same day. Charity Navigator gave only one star (out of four) to HSUS’s Earth Voice International, and zero to the Humane Society of the United States Wildlife Land Trust.
Hiring the Animal Liberation Front
Even seasoned animal-rights veterans were surprised in April 2000 when the Humane Society of the United States sent John “J.P.” Goodwin on an anti-fur junket to China. Goodwin was not just any animal activist: he was then an avowed member of the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Less than a year later he was formally identified as an HSUS legislative affairs staffer; Goodwin would later change his rhetoric to match HSUS’s corporate policy of not endorsing violence as a protest tactic.
Goodwin, a high-school dropout who had previously co-founded the Texas-based Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, pulled no punches when it came to his priorities. “My goal is the abolition of all animal agriculture,” he had written to one Internet activist mailing list.
Goodwin himself has been arrested and convicted for being the ringleader of a gang that vandalized fur retailers in multiple states during the 1990s. The animal-rights newspaper Animal People News profiled Goodwin in 2000, noting that he “gleefully announced a string of Animal Liberation Front mink releases and arsons against furriers and fur farms” while a “spokesman” for the underground terrorist group.
Goodwin also fielded press inquiries after a Petaluma, California, slaughterhouse arson in February 1997, and shocked the public with his comments on the March 1997 arson at a farmer’s feed co-op in Utah. Referring to a fire that caused almost $1 million in damage and could easily have killed a family sleeping on the premises, Goodwin told The Deseret News: “We’re ecstatic.”
J.P. Goodwin doesn’t represent HSUS’s only intersection with the animal rights movement’s violent underbelly. Miyun Park, a Washington, DC anti-meat activist hired by HSUS in 2005, was acknowledged in 1999 as a financial benefactor of No Compromise magazine, a publication that supports the ALF and promotes arson and other violent tactics. And in the investigation leading to the 2005 animal-enterprise terrorism trial of six SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) activists, Park was among those named in at least six federal wiretap warrants.
And Ariana Huemer, an HSUS government-affairs employee, may figure in the case of fugitive animal-rights bomber Daniel Andreas San Diego. An FBI evidence recovery log from the search of San Diego’s car describes a check Huemer wrote to him. San Diego, currently on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list, is presumed responsible for 10-pound shrapnel bombs detonated in 2003 at two California biomedical research companies. One of these bombs was accompanied by a “secondary” device, timed to detonate after paramedics and firefighters arrived on the scene.
A Horrible ‘Waste’
During 1998 and 1999, the Humane Society of the United States reported to the IRS that it made small financial contributions toward the operation of WASTE.org, an Internet website that was then the main distribution point for the “communiqués” of the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
In addition to hosting the ALF’s “Frontline” mailing list, WASTE.org hosted a list for the HSUS-coordinated “Inter Campus Animal Advocacy Network” (I-CAAN); the official mailing lists of a Minnesota group called Compassionate Action for Animals (CAA); and mailing lists for approximately a dozen other organizations. CAA, originally called the Animal Liberation League, was started by activist Freeman Wicklund -- who has spoken openly about his desire for other activists to “embrace the Animal Liberation Front.”
Questions remain about HSUS’s support of the WASTE server. In 1999 HSUS’s operating budget was over $50 million, and it already operated at least four other e-mail lists -- all operated from its own network servers. Why did the group need an outside server for its I-CAAN mailing list? And why use this particular server, one that also happened to host a terrorist group’s press operations, instead of one of hundreds of other commercially available services?
In 2002, HSUS’s website began to articulate a policy of not supporting animal-rights violence. In December of that year, the Center for Consumer Freedom reported on the past financial connection between HSUS and WASTE. Although HSUS has stated that it no longer supports the server, WASTE still listed it as a financial donor as of June 2005, as it has during every year since 1998.
Share and Share Alike
Some of HSUS’s hefty fundraising expenses have ended up in the pockets of the notorious fundraising company Share Group, Inc. The telemarketing firm made headlines during the 2000 Democratic National Convention when the DNC and the Gore 2000 Presidential Campaign both dropped Share Group after a reporter pointed out that former owner Michael Ansara was still involved in the company. Ansara had been ordered to surrender control of Share Group, after he pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy charge related to a money-moving scheme for Ron Carey’s 1997 Teamsters Union presidential reelection campaign.
In the fundraising business, returning 30 to 35 percent of funds raised to a given charity is considered acceptable. But according to reports from New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Share Group kept $2.18 million between 1999 and 2000, and passed on only $273,560 to HSUS -- a return rate of only 11 percent.
In New York, Share Group only gave HSUS $16,543 of the $1.08 million it raised during the year 2000 -- a return of only 1.53 percent. In 2004, Share Group raised over $1 million in HSUS’s name, but HSUS wound up paying over $173,000 for the privilege. This dismal record probably didn’t surprise HSUS: back in 1996, Share raised $60,045 and returned nothing.
The 2001 Letter of Agreement between the two groups shows that HSUS agreed to a minimum guarantee of only 1 percent of the gross receipts. The Illinois Attorney General’s office reports that HSUS paid Share Group over $1.87 million for 2001 fundraising that netted less than $750,000 to the animal-rights group -- a negative 150 percent return.
International Rumor Mongering
In 2000, the Humane Society of the United States was refused entrance to the 16th meeting of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) Animals Committee for “filing false accusations about CITES member nations.”
HSUS had made wild allegations to the CITES Secretariat about illegal trade in ivory between Namibia and Taiwan, and Zimbabwe and China, supposedly in exchange for military armaments, equipment, and helicopters. When pressed for documentation, HSUS declined to supply any. The CITES Secretariat issued an official Notification (#2000/060) about the HSUS-instigated allegations, noting that absolutely no evidence existed to support HSUS’s claims.
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