With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

For the story behind the story…

Monday July 3, 2000; 11:20 AM EDT

White House Tried to Use Gun Tax to Ban Hunting

The Clinton administration misappropriated at least $45 million
in taxes paid by gun owners, which were supposed to underwrite a
“sportsmen’s trust fund” but were earmarked instead for a
variety of pet causes – including a group dedicated to the
elimination of hunting.

The White House’s shell game with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
money was first uncovered when the General Accounting Office
submitted the results of its investigation into conservation tax
expenditures to the House Resources Committee earlier this year.

“In at least one instance, pressure was applied to an employee
of the USF&WS,” reported American Rifleman Magazine in March,
“to fund a grant proposal submitted by a zealous animal rights
group, The Fund for Animals, which is dedicated to the
elimination of the very hunting heritage that those monies are
collected to support.”

USF&WS monies were also misspent to bankroll another type of
“wildlife,” says the magazine, with tax dollars from gun owners
going to pay for bureaucrats to travel to Brazil, Holland and
Japan and reimbursement for lavish meals, liquor and limousine
rentals.

Another Clinton-Gore proposal earmarked $30 million in Duck
Stamp fees and hunting excise taxes to turn Palmyra Atoll -
located 1,000 miles south of Hawaii – into a national wildlfe
refuge. Total number of ducks to be saved: ten – the entire duck
population on Palmyra – at $3 million per duck.

This latest Clinton scandal came to light largely through the
efforts of one man, James M. Beers, a career civil servant with
the USF&WS, who told Congress he smelled a rat when higher-ups
began to pressure him to approve the Fund for Animals grant.

Beers refused, noting that the radical anti-gun group wanted to
use hunters’ tax money to distribute anti-hunting literature in
public schools and other public venues.

“I was badgered and intimidated to change my finding,” Beers
testified. “A few months later I was curtly told I would be
moved to a non-existent, lower-grade job in Massachusetts.”

Then things got really ugly, Beers said.

“I was locked out of my office, the police came to the building
to keep me from entering and I was threatened, in an unmarked
envelope left at my front door on a Sunday morning, with the
loss of my retirement for five years and the loss of my health
coverage forever if I did not retire immediately.”

Beers did retire – but then went straight to the authorities.

Mr. Beers, meet Linda Tripp, Betty Lambuth, Dennis Sculimbrene,
Johnny Chung and a whole host of other Clinton administration
whistleblowers who were similarly victimized for trying to get
the truth out.