This HumaneWatch special collection includes 13 files containing more than 1,500 pages of material comprising the files of former Humane Society of the United States Board member Susan Pepperdine. We obtained these documents in late 2010 from a third party. Ms. Pepperdine has confirmed their authenticity for us, and we are publishing them with her permission.

Generally, these documents concern a tumultuous period of time in HSUS's history, involving:

1. an attempt by then-HSUS President John Hoyt to merge HSUS with the Michigan Humane Society in 1987; and
2. the attempts of a minority group within HSUS's Board to promote institutional accountability, following their discovery that Hoyt and HSUS Treasurer Paul Irwin had been receiving lavish extra compensation approved by a small “Deferred Compensation Committee.”

Full descriptions of each of these 13 PDFs are below. (Historians will also want to download our complete inventory of the entire collection, conveniently cataloged in a single Microsoft Excel file.)

Tirana & Harmon Correspondence | Media Clippings | Michigan Merger | Board Correspondence | Audit Documents | Legal Correspondence | Legal Documents | Governance Documents | HSUS Directors | Combined Financial Documents | HSUS Publications | Miscellaneous Correspondence | Miscellaneous Notes

Background

Hoyt was unsuccessful in merging HSUS with the Michigan Humane Society (MHS), in no small part due to revelations about the character and history of then-MHS director David Wills. Those revelations included a past felony conviction and a faked résumé.

Upon discovering that a small Board committee had discreetly authorized extra compensation “perks” for Hoyt and Irwin, the dissenting board members formed an Audit Committee to investigate the matters. The full HSUS Board unanimously approved the creation of this Audit Committee, which then hired Washington, DC attorney Gail Harmon to write a full report and offer her opinion on whether Board members and HSUS executives had violated any laws, and whether HSUS itself had incurred legal liability.

Harmon concluded that because the “extra” compensation (which included real estate deals and payments from "dormant" HSUS accounts) had not been reported on HSUS’s federal income tax return, the HSUS Board and executives were in serious legal jeopardy. (The full Harmon & Weiss Report can be found here.)

In response, other board members hired attorney Jacob Stein to write a second “independent” report on the situation. (Stein was Board Chairman Bill Wiseman’s personal attorney, which was a conflict of interest since the Harman report implicated Wiseman personally.)

Stein’s report had similar findings of fact as Harmon’s but came to different conclusions. Stein did not believe that the HSUS board and its officers were in legal limbo.

Later, an effort commenced (and it's not clear who initiated it) to contact the California Attorney General with a request for an investigation of HSUS’s alleged fiduciary malfeasance. The California AG’s office did contact HSUS, writing that “Information obtained by this office reveals that certain principals of the organization have engaged in a course of conduct that, in our opinion, is a violation of fiduciary duties owed to the charitable beneficiaries.” It’s unclear how the investigation ended.

Documents

Each set of documents can be downloaded individually. An inventory of the complete "Pepperdine Papers" is also avaliable. Please right-click on the name and select “save file as” to save each PDF to your computer. We recommend this option since some files are quite large.

Click HERE to download a Microsoft Excel file containing a complete inventory of the documents in each PDF above.

1. Tirana & Harmon Correspondence
   
   This document contains correspondence to and from Gail Harmon and Bardyl Tirana. Harmon was the attorney in charge of the initial HSUS Audit Committee report in 1988. Tirana was HSUS board member Samuel Bowman's personal attorney, and represented him for the purpose of inspecting HSUS’s books and records.
    
2. Media Clippings
   
   This file contain a series of newspaper clippings from the late 1980s. It includes pieces from syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, who in 1988 and 1991 wrote about the internal strife at HSUS.
    
3. Michigan Merger 
   
   These documents pertain to the proposed merger in 1987 between HSUS and the Michigan Humane Society, including a transcript of a TV interview with then-MHS President David Wills; Wills’ guilty plea for breaking & entering; and a letter about Wills from the Washington Humane Society.
    
4. Board Correspondence
   
   This file contains volumes of correspondence to and from board members, board committees, and HSUS executives. Most of the correspondences deals with requests for information and concerns about, and defenses of, the actions of the Deferred Compensation Committee, which helped funnel compensation to HSUS executives in relative secrecy. (Note: This file is nearly 700 pages long. Please download it before reading or printing.)
    
5. Audit Documents 
   
   This set of documents includes HSUS’s revenue history from 1979 to 1990, HSUS financial statements and auditors’ reports from 1980 to 1985, and financial statements and reports for HSUS’s trust funds.
    
6. Legal Correspondence
   
   This PDF includes interrogatory letters from attorney Gail Harmon to John Hoyt and Paul Irwin, letters from HSUS board member John Mettler stating his concerns, and correspondence with the California Attorney General’s office.
    
7. Legal Documents
   
   This file includes "Form 990" tax returns for HSUS from the years 1980 through 1986. It also includes 990s for the National Humane Education Center for the years 1983 through 1986. NHEC was a defunct shell corporation controlled by HSUS that was used to funnel compensation to Hoyt and Irwin. This PDF also includes employment agreements for Hoyt and Irwin, and a draft of a class-action civil lawsuit (never filed, to our knowledge) against HSUS.
    
8. Governance Documents
   
   This file includes copies of HSUS’s by-laws, minutes of various HSUS Board committee meetings (including the now-infamous "Deferred Compensation Committee"), a record of the HSUS nominating committee, HSUS’s board members at various points in time, and third-party papers on good governance procedures for organizations.
    
9. HSUS Directors
   
   These are files from a folder that Susan Pepperdine labeled “HSUS—Directors.” They include a copy of HSUS's full Deferred Compensation Plan, letters from attorney Gail Harmon, and letters from the Audit Committee.
    
10. Combined Financial Documents
    
    This file includes copies of balance sheets for HSUS’s board-designated funds from 1983 to 1986, insurance policy details for Hoyt and Irwin, and a proposed 1990 HSUS budget.
     
11. HSUS Publications
    
    This set includes brochures for several HSUS annual conferences in the 1980s, a few copies of HSUS’s annual “report of the president,” and more recent printouts from HSUS’s website.
     
12. Miscellaneous Correspondence
    
    This file contains a smorgasbord of uncategorized documents including letters from John Mettler and Bardyl Tirana, a statement from the HSUS Board regarding Jack Anderson’s columns, and news articles about alleged embezzlement at the Michigan Humane Society.
     
13. Miscellaneous Notes
    
    This batch of documents includes a claim that HSUS spent half a million dollars as a result of executive misconduct, a draft letter to a state Attorney General from “board members,” and typed notes (unattributed, although we understand that they are Susan Pepperdine's) regarding complaints against Hoyt and Irwin.

This file contains a 1988 letter to DC attorney Jacob Stein from John "Speedy" Mettler, who was then a Board Member of the Humane Society of the United States’ Board of Directors. Stein is a personal injury attorney. He is now a partner in the same law firm (now renamed) for which he worked in 1988.

This letter concerned a plan by the HSUS Board leadership to hire Stein (then the personal attorney of Board Chairman Bill Wiseman) to “investigate” some shady financial dealings between a “Deferred Compensation Committee” (a subset of the Board that was never legally empowered) and HSUS’s top two executives (Paul Irwin and John Hoyt). These matters had already been investigated by attorney Gail Harmon, and the Board already had her report.

In a previous letter to the HSUS Board’s Vice Chairman, Washington attorney Bardyl Tirana had already warned HSUS about the wisdom of hiring Stein to do a second review of the facts. Tirana thought Stein’s attorney-client relationship with Wiseman constituted a massive conflict of interest, and he feared that Stein’s report was only being sought as a pretext to sweep Harmon’s report under the rug:

William Wiseman, using the power of the chair, after soundly criticizing the “Harmon” report as unbalanced and unfair, announced that he had a plan. He then proceeded to state that “Jake Stein (his personal attorney) has an idea that will get everyone off the hook by starting a procedure that will resolve all of these matters.” You were described as the “new Independent Counsel” and Mr. Wiseman repeated that this would get the Board “off the hook” and said, “we need outside independent counsel of unchallengeable prestige.”

Mettler also neatly lays out the relationship between the HSUS Board’s “Deferred Compensation Committee” (which was never legally constituted, yet met in secret and extended unauthorized perks to Hoyt and Irwin); the “Audit Committee” (which was unanimously approved by the Board and which hired Gail Harmon); and the later “Select Committee” (which was stacked with those implicated in the Harmon report and their sympathizers, and which hired Jacob Stein):

I might point out that Ms. Harmon was also an “independent counsel” but since Mr. Wiseman and others were incriminated in her report, Mr. Wiseman preferred to ignore both the Audit Committee (appointed by the Board) and the Harmon report because there were too many questions raised in the Harmon report that made him, the Deferred Compensation Committee, and some of the executive staff all look bad. So using the chair to his advantage. Chairman Wiseman appointed a “select” committee, stacked heavily with his own sympathetic directors, to try and bury the Harmon report once and for all ...

As you should be well aware, the “Select” Committee was carefully designed by Chairman Wiseman to supersede, and in effect ignore the work done and report issued by the earlier Audit Committee and its attorney, Gail Harmon. (This committee incidentally was unanimously authorized by the Board of Directors in December, 1987). Is Chairman Wiseman, who is under such criticism for having aided and abetted the Hoyt-lrwin activities, really to be part of this “select” committee? Is John Hoyt to be part of it? Or are they simply included to be sure the Harmon report is effectively obliterated?

Download June 21, 1988 Letter from HSUS Board Member John Mettler to Attorney Jacob Stein

This file contains a 1988 letter from attorney Bardyl R. Tirana to O.J. (“Joe”) Ramsey, then the Vice Chairman of the Humane Society of the United States’s Board of Directors. Tirana was a former Washington, DC School Board member, and a campaign aide to Jimmy carter who supervised the activities surrounding Carter’s 1976 Inauguration. He later served the Carter Administration as director of the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. (President Carter later merged that agency into FEMA in 1977.)

Three HSUS Board Members retained Tirana in 1988 that year to represent HSUS’s interests, after details emerged of shady financial dealings between a “Deferred Compensation Committee” (a subset of the Board that was never legally empowered in the first place) and HSUS’s top two executives (Paul Irwin and John Hoyt).

This letter concerns, among other things, Tirana’s legal fees—which HSUS’s Board was obligated to pay. (HSUS’s by-laws permitted Board members to be reimbursed “for necessary expenses incurred in fulfilling their duties.”)

It became “necessary” for an outside lawyer to investigate HSUS’s Board after the three dissenting Board members questioned the decision of HSUS’s Board to buy then-HSUS-president John Hoyt’s house from him in 1987 and lease it back to him rent-free.

They also questioned a land deal that benefited HSUS Treasurer Paul Irwin (who would later succeed Hoyt as HSUS President). Irwin had invested in a vacation home property in Brightwater, Maine. HSUS later reimbursed him for the property with $85,000 in HSUS funds. John Hoyt signed the checks.

These and several other instances of Board mismanagement were detailed in a lengthy independent investigatory report submitted to the Board's Audit Committee in April 1988 by Washington, DC attorney Gail Harmon. Tirana’s letter makes it clear that HSUS’s top leaders sought to bury that report, and to replace it with a less critical investigation conducted by Washington attorney Jacob Stein—who was also the personal attorney of HSUS Board Chairman Bill Wiseman.

Download May 11, 1988 Letter from Bardyl R. Tirana to HSUS Board Vice Chairman Joe Ramsey

In this October 1988 letter, the accounting firm of Thomas Havey & Co. reviewed the tax implications of allowing HSUS president John Hoyt to live (rent-free) during 1987 in a house owned by HSUS. HSUS had purchased the home from Hoyt for $310,000, and then "leased" it back to him for zero dollars.

For tax purposes, Hoyt reported to the IRS that the rental value of the property was $600 per month. That estimate represented a significant perk for Hoyt. This letter reported "the fair rental value to be $1,200 per month."

HSUS provided other financial benefits to Hoyt as well, paying the real estate taxes and special assessments on the property (valued at $3,575.65 for 1988), as well as casualty and liability insurance and repairs costing more than $100.

Download 1988 Letter from Accountants Thomas Havey & Co. re: John Hoyt’s Rent-Free Use of an HSUS-Owned Home

In 1988 a group of HSUS Board members asked the Washington, DC law firm of Harmon & Weiss to prepare a report detailing the organizational consequences of several financial irregularities.

During the previous years, a small "Deferred Compensation Committee"—originally set up to handle retirement benefits for HSUS senior staff—had expanded its role to include the assignment of fringe benefits to HSUS's top executives. These perks included rent-free housing, and the use of an HSUS-affiliate shell corporation to funnel extra income to HSUS president and treasurer.

This file contains the lengthy report that Gail Harmon, Esq. prepared for the group of "dissident" HSUS Board members who were concerned about the tax implications, and HSUS's legal liabilities, arising from the Deferred Compensation Committee's behavior.

Download 1988 Harmon & Weiss Report to the HSUS Audit Committee

This document contains a collection of four columns by the late Jack Anderson, published by The Washington Post during 1988 (three columns) and 1991 (one column).

In these pieces, Anderson describes a financial scandal brewing at the Humane Society of the United States, related to unethical financial dealings between top HSUS executives Paul Irwin and John Hoyt and a secretive "Deferred Compensation Committee" of the HSUS Board.

The essays refer to a report prepared by the law firm of Harmon & Weiss, which described "self-dealing" by HSUS. The report concluded that HSUS had made "excessive compensation payments" to top HSUS staffers, payments which were not authorized by HSUS's full Board of Directors. These actions, the report added, "threaten the status of [HSUS] as a charity under the federal tax law and appear to constitute wasting of its assets."

Following the publication of the three 1988 columns and the Harmon & Weiss report, the California Attorney General issued an opinion that HSUS had "engaged in a course of conduct" that "violated" California's charity laws.

We believe reproducing this material constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Download Washington Post columns by Jack Anderson, 1988 and 1991

This is the Humane Society of the United States' annual "Report of the President" for 1988. It contains passages from then-HSUS president John Hoyt as well as a number of vice presidents.

In it, Vice President John Grandy notes: "We won a lawsuit which will go far toward guaranteeing that The HSUS and similar organizations have the right to bring legal actions on behalf of the animals in U.S. District courts across the nation."

We believe reproducing this material constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Download HSUS Report of the President, 1988

This is an opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, issued on February 16, 1988.

HSUS and its then-associate general counsel Roger Kindler had previously sued the Secretary of the Interior over the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's decision to expand hunting in wildlife refuges. A lower court had determined that HSUS did not have standing to bring the complaint.

The Court of Appeals reversed in part and affirmed in part the lower court's ruling.

Download Court of Appeals Ruling in HSUS v. Hodel, 1988

This is a one-page essay titled "Animal Retribution?" written by Wayne Pacelle and published in November 1988 by The Animals' Agenda, a now defunct magazine. In it, Pacelle makes clear his disdain for hunting as well as hunters, even calling them "coreligionists" and describing an anecdotal hunting injury as one of "rare instances of justice." Pacelle also refers to ants as though they were people (writing "an ant who..." instead of "an ant that...") while downplaying the threats of large animals by stating that a fly, too, can be dangerous.

We believe reproducing this material constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Download Wayne Pacelle 1988 Essay about Hunters