Court Files Disarm NRA’s Charges of ATF Thuggery : Rights: Gun lobby’s claims of brutal force appear to be blown out of proportion. A 1992 Ohio case is an example.

From personal experience, Louis E. Katona III says, he knows exactly what the National Rifle Assn. means when it calls the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a renegade agency of “jackbooted government thugs.”

On May 8, 1992, Katona contends, his home in Bucyrus, Ohio, was invaded by three overzealous, foulmouthed ATF agents who wrongfully seized his valuable weapons collection and then assaulted his wife, causing the death of their unborn child.

Katona’s complaint against the ATF has become a centerpiece of the NRA’s public relations attack on the agency--and was cited most recently last week in a full-page NRA newspaper ad defending its point of view and calling on the news media to investigate such horror stories.

But a close reading of the voluminous record in Katona’s tenacious legal battle against the ATF does not support the NRA’s bald contention that he was the hapless victim of a brutal federal force.

Instead, the record shows that on the day in question, Katona himself opened his home to the agents in response to a valid search warrant; that the agents were dressed in business suits and did not brandish weapons; that a videotape made by Katona of the search does not show any improper behavior by the agents and that Katona’s lawyer at the time, who witnessed the search, does not support claims that Mrs. Katona was assaulted.

Even Katona’s current lawyer, James H. Jeffries III, says the ATF’s handling of the case showed stupidity and incompetence, but not Gestapo-like tactics.

“There’s just no professionalism in that agency,” Jeffries said in an interview. “They are the bottom-feeders of law enforcement--not very good, not very smart, not very motivated.”

The yawning gap between fact and interpretation in this case offers a clear measure of how inflamed passions have become over the gun-rights issue in this country, particularly in the aftermath of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. In such an atmosphere, horror stories of government brutality take root in the public psyche as readily as seedlings in a fertile field.

As an agency specifically charged with enforcing restrictions on firearms, the ATF naturally finds itself the object of deep suspicion. Yet even under the currently intense circumstances, it is still remarkable when a regulatory bureau of fewer than 4,000 people is depicted as an elite, malevolent force bent on trampling the constitutional rights of citizens.

Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot (R-Iowa), an NRA member who has studied the Katona case and other controversial incidents, says he has concluded that the organization has used these stories to draw a misleading picture of the ATF.

“The ATF is neither out of control nor does it violate the Bill of Rights,” said Lightfoot, who heads the House subcommittee that oversees the agency.

ATF officials attribute the criticism to their no-win task. Ever since the government began taxing firearms under the Revenue Act of 1791, the regulation of gun owners has been controversial.

“If the angel Gabriel was in charge of regulating firearms,” said Les Stanford, an ATF spokesman, “he would be taking flack.”

Of course, the NRA and disgruntled gun owners such as Katona are not the only ones finding fault with the ATF. In recent years, the General Accounting Office--the investigative arm of Congress--has produced numerous reports detailing serious deficiencies within the agency, ranging from inadequate auditing expertise to a pattern of insensitivity toward minority and female employees to numerous misjudgments in the Branch Davidian confrontation near Waco, Tex.

But as for a pattern of abuse of civil liberties, officials note that the courts have not upheld any of the 230 complaints filed by gun owners and that the grievances represent only a fraction of the more than 10,000 searches conducted by the ATF in the past decade. When the GAO questioned 421 licensed firearms dealers, only four said they considered the ATF “too zealous.”

Truth is often the first casualty in contentious political clashes. And the story of how Louis Katona became a part of NRA lore is a case study in how a combination of incendiary rhetoric, hard-fought litigation and spotty press reports can gradually cloud the facts.

Many key players in the Katona case simply refuse to tell their side of the story. Because the case is still being litigated, most law enforcement officials--including the ATF agents directly involved--will not comment. Katona, meanwhile, has taken to appearing regularly on television and radio programs, giving the account that is the centerpiece of his pending multimillion-dollar civil suit against the government.

According to Katona, 34, he was away from his real estate office on an errand when the ATF agents showed up on May 8, 1992. They waited until he returned and then asked him to escort them to his home so they could inspect his extensive firearms collection.

The ATF’s search warrant was based on information provided by Bucyrus Police Chief Joe Beran, who alleged that Katona had forged the chief’s signature on applications for ATF approval of Katona’s purchase of a variety of machine guns, grenade launchers and other heavy-duty firearms. Under law, local law enforcement officials must approve acquisition of these weapons.

Katona, who previously had worked as an auxiliary officer on Beran’s police force, claims that the accusation against him resulted from an old vendetta. He contends that Beran had signed a stack of blank forms for him to use whenever he wished to acquire a weapon.

Nevertheless, the ATF had evidence that Katona submitted applications with Beran’s signature after the chief had written a letter to him in August, 1988, saying he would no longer sign them. Beran could not be reached for comment.

Katona rode to his house in the agents’ car, he says, because they had flattened the tires of his own car--a charge they deny. He also suggests that the agents resisted showing him the search warrant, but he did not make that allegation in his lawsuit.

Arriving at his house, Katona, whose father is a gunsmith, voluntarily unlocked the basement vault where he keeps his weapons and videotaped the agents’ activities. He alleges that the agents cursed and handled the weapons roughly, but he does not contend the weapons were damaged.

Soon after the search began, family attorney Jim Pry arrived after being called by Katona’s wife, Kim, 32. She had been working at the real estate office when agents showed up. Then Kim Katona, two months’ pregnant with her second child and admittedly overwrought, came home too.

“You can’t do this,” she recalled telling the ATF agents as she entered the basement room. “The guns are legal. He’s done nothing wrong. . . . These are his babies, his pride and joy.”

What happened next is in dispute.

Everyone present agrees that when Kim Katona tried to enter the room, her path was blocked by one of the agents, Steve St. Pierre, who said to the other officers: “Get her the hell out of here.”

The Katonas claim the agent then grabbed her hands and slammed her against a wall; the agent claims he simply stood in her path. Pry, in his deposition, said he could not corroborate Kim Katona’s account.

Pry was asked: “Did you ever see her grabbed?”

He replied: “My answer is no.”

Next question: “Did you ever see Mrs. Katona, Kim Katona, forcibly flung or pushed?”

Pry’s answer: “What I saw is her coming down the steps. I saw Mr. St. Pierre stop her right there so that she couldn’t gain access to us, and there was movement around.”

Kim Katona recalled that as she descended the stairs into the basement, her mother-in-law called to her from the kitchen: “ ‘Kim, get back up here; you’re pregnant. You’re going to lose the baby.’ ”

Immediately after the confrontation with St. Pierre, she said she told her husband: “ ‘I think something just snapped.’ ”

Once the agents departed, having confiscated 32 weapons during the four-hour search, the family felt as if its home had been violated. Kim Katona remembers that she cried for days. She says her husband laid on his bed the day after the raid, also crying.

Later that night, Kim Katona says, she began to bleed. Two weeks later, a dead fetus was removed from her womb. A year and a half later, she gave birth to another child.

The Katonas blame the ATF for the miscarriage. But ATF lawyers say Kim Katona’s doctor has provided no medical opinion that it was caused by her encounter with St. Pierre.

In September, 1993, Katona was indicted for forging the documents. He was acquitted and given his weapons back. Evidence at the trial supported ATF allegations that Beran’s signature was forged on some of Katona’s applications, but the government failed to prove that it was Katona who forged them.

Katona says he would never have prevailed if he had not spent more than $100,000 to hire a top-notch lawyer and paid $40,000 for two expert witnesses.

“I don’t think John Doe citizen has a chance,” he said. “You can’t go in there with a $2-an-hour attorney and win against ATF. The only reason it worked for me is I hired the best of the best.”

By hiring Jeffries, a former Justice Department attorney who lives in Greensboro, N.C., and his co-counsel, Robert Sanders, a former ATF official from Washington--both of whom specialize in high-profile cases of alleged overzealousness by the ATF--Katona got something else of value: publicity and a place in the national debate.

Katona’s case was picked up by the NRA and James L. Pate, a writer for Soldier of Fortune magazine. Pate introduced Katona to G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate figure who is a right-wing radio talk-show host. Katona also has testified before a congressional panel.

After appearing on Liddy’s talk show, Katona anticipates that he soon may be making public appearances with the radio host. He says he spends hours discussing his case with the press, making speeches and appearing on talk shows.

“All he’s thought about for two years is this whole stupid thing,” Kim Katona complained in a deposition, referring to her husband. “He never works anymore. All that is on the back of his mind is this ATF crap. That’s all he talks about anymore is ATF stuff. It’s a whole life now. . . .”

In a recent NRA television program featuring the Katonas, the ATF was blamed for destroying their happy home. “I felt like I had been raped,” Kim Katona said.

In January, E Pluribus Unum, a publication that appeals to gun owners in central Ohio, reported that Katona’s wife was seven months’ pregnant when she “suffered inconceivable atrocities at the hands of the BATF.”