NRA Mired in Red Ink for 4 Years, Documents Show : Finances: Gun lobby ran a $69-million deficit from 1991 to 1993. But an official says the group is solid.

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Assn., engaged in a vigorous struggle against gun control, has operated in the red for four years and has been forced to deplete its cash reserves and investments drastically, according to confidential NRA documents.

The documents, prepared for the NRA board of directors and obtained by the Associated Press, show that the powerful gun lobby ran cumulative operating deficits of $69 million from 1991 to 1993. An additional $3-million deficit is projected for 1994.

The trend prompted a former NRA executive vice president to say the organization’s leadership is spending money like “young heirs who came into an estate built up by their parents and grandparents.”

The largest components of recent spending, according to the documents, have been expensive fund-raising efforts and construction of a shimmering six-story headquarters in Fairfax, Va.

The internal balance sheets show that over four years, NRA officials have drawn down the group’s assets--mainly cash accounts and investments--from $103 million in 1991 to a projected $47 million in 1994.

NRA officials, including President Thomas Washington, Treasurer Wilson H. Phillips and Executive Vice President Wayne R. LaPierre, declined to comment.

But in a recent television broadcast, a key NRA executive said the group is on solid financial ground. “The NRA is in great shape,” Tanya Metaksa, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, said on National Empowerment Television.

An accountant who specializes in tax-exempt organizations, however, said the documents depict a group in financial distress.

“I think some might say that the organization borders on insolvency,” said James Nesbitt, a senior managing partner at BDO Seidman who reviewed the documents at the Associated Press’ request.

J. Warren Cassidy, executive vice president of the NRA from 1986 to 1991, gave a similar warning: “The people who run this place now are like a couple of young heirs who came into an estate built up by their parents and grandparents who say, ‘What was wrong with those frugal old folks?’ They are spending money like drunken sailors.”

The documents’ portrayal of worsening finances is just one problem plaguing the group, long one of Washington’s most powerful and effective lobbies.

The Internal Revenue Service recently began an audit to determine whether the NRA should retain its tax-exempt status.

Meanwhile, the group’s increasingly aggressive tactics left it with a recent public relations nightmare after one of its fund-raising letters referred to federal agents as “jackbooted government thugs.”

The group eventually apologized, but not before one of its most prominent members, former President George Bush, resigned his membership in protest.

According to balance sheets distributed to the NRA’s board, the group ran a deficit of $9.6 million in 1991, $37.4 million in 1992 and $22 million for 1993--for a total of $69 million. Its preliminary figures projected an additional deficit of $3 million for last year.

At its annual convention in Phoenix last month, the NRA put the deficit at $52 million.