Probe Asked on ATF Whites-Only Retreat : Congress: Armey cites reports of Tennessee gathering loaded with racist epithets and slogans. Evolution into ‘Good Ol’ Boy Roundup’ is described.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) called Thursday for a congressional hearing into reports that South Carolina agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had organized a three-day whites-only retreat where racist epithets and slogans were rampant.

In a letter to the chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, Armey said that he is “deeply disturbed and offended” by newspaper accounts describing how ATF officers in the Greenville, S.C., bureau coordinated a “Good Ol’ Boy Roundup” in the Tennessee mountains last spring. Armey urged the chairman, Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), “to call the appropriate representatives from the ATF . . . before your subcommittee at the earliest possible opportunity.”

According to reports first published in the Washington Times, T-shirts were sold at the retreat that showed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s face under a target and O. J. Simpson dangling from a hangman’s noose. Another T-shirt featured the image of a black man splayed across the hood of a white police officer’s vehicle under a caption that read: “Boyz on the Hood.”

Armey’s request for a hearing followed ATF Director John W. Magaw’s acknowledgment that federal officials had begun an investigation three weeks ago when the incident came to the department’s attention.

“Everyone at ATF knows of my intolerance for discrimination and harassment,” Magaw said. “If an inquiry finds that anyone is involved in these practices, I will do everything in my power to mete out the strongest possible discipline.”

A Treasury official said that the agency’s investigation involves as many as 12 current and former ATF employees, who were reportedly involved in the May 18-20 event in Ocoee, Tenn.

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The gathering attracted 341 people and was organized by former ATF agent Gene Righmyter. Officials said the event has been staged every spring since 1980 as a form of recreation for law enforcement officers from across the nation.

Magaw, in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” said that ATF agents started the event as a “family situation” with raft trips and picnics. Starting in 1985, he said, “it became racist in nature, anti-black.”

Federal officials said that allegations of racist behavior by ATF agents could not have come at a worse time. The bureau, already under mounting criticism for its handling of the Branch Davidian confrontation two years ago near Waco, Tex., is also defending itself against a lawsuit brought by black agents claiming that they were victims of racist behavior in the agency’s field offices. The lawsuit argues that ATF supervisors have failed to respond to black agents’ complaints of racial slurs, harassment and other forms of workplace discrimination.

In a separate statement, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) said he was embarrassed by reports that employees of a federal law enforcement agency may “have participated in, and perhaps organized while on duty, a gathering in my state characterized by open and blatant displays of racism.”