Wildlife agents vindicated by tape; rancher and sheriff a nasty pair

(Editor's note: Listen in on the controversy in an audio library of excerpts from the federal agent's tape.)

By Mark Obmascik

In the eyes of Congress, Eugene Hussey was a real American hero.

Hussey, you may recall, was the 74-year-old Idaho rancher who found a federally protected wolf shot to death on his property in January. When federal wildlife agents showed up in March with a search warrant to find the bullet that killed the wolf, a nasty confrontation resulted. (200k)

According to most public descriptions, the feds behaved like jackbooted government thugs. Hussey's loyal local sheriff, who helped force agents off the ranch without executing the search warrant, said investigators' tactics were "heavy-handed and dangerously close to the use of excessive force."

Local county commissioners protested the agents' "high-handed actions," and a riled Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) said what they did was "inexcusable.''

Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) staged a special congressional hearing on the confrontation and bawled out the federal agents. The abuse of government power was so great in this incident that Chenoweth even talked of sponsoring a bill to ban federal wildlife agents from carrying guns on the job.

Of course, the agents themselves always insisted they were polite and professional. But Congress didn't believe them. After David Koresh at Waco and Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, the case of Eugene Hussey, innocent cowboy, clearly was another example of outrageous government conduct.

Eugene Hussey was a hero for politicians convinced that federal law enforcement had spun out of control. Eugene Hussey was front-page national news.

But Eugene Hussey and his congressional backers made a big mistake. They never thought anyone would uncover the truth.

It turns out that one federal agent carried a tape recorder while trying to serve Hussey with the search warrant. Dan Egan, a reporter for the Idaho Falls Post-Register, used the federal Freedom of Information Act to hear the tape and write a story about it this week. Although the rancher claims the tape is phony, the reporter said there's no doubt it's not.

The tape, Egan wrote, "shows the agents were mostly calm and professional during the exchange with Hussey...Hussey, on the other hand, (was) acting as the aggressor, far from the helpless old man painted by Idaho politicians critical of the investigation.''

At one point, an agent tried to give Hussey a copy of the search warrant.

Hussey's response: "I don't have to take a f---in' thing. Only from the goddamn sheriff. Nobody's doing a f---in' thing 'til he gets here."

The rancher threw rocks at the agents. (70k)

"Don't hit me with rocks, Gene," the agent said.

"I can hit ya on my f---in' property. Goddamn you," Hussey replied.

Hussey also called the law enforcement agents "federal turds" and obscenities.

How's that for a real American hero?

Strangely, no congressional defender of Hussey's has called the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to apologize for an unwarranted attack on the agency. Nor is anyone in Congress clamoring to find out what really happened to the wolf killed on Hussey's ranch.

Hussey still claims he has no idea who shot the wolf, one of 15 transplanted to Idaho from Canada under the Endangered Species Act. His defenders suggest that some unknown stranger spotted the animal while driving by Hussey's ranch--on a lonely gravel road 25 miles from the nearest town of Salmon, population 2,941--in the dead of January. This mysterious random visitor then killed the wolf, which was feeding on a calf that earlier died of natural causes, with a single perfect rifle shot in the chest.

To be sure, there's nothing unusual about telling tall tales in the backwoods of the West. The difference here is that Congress usually doesn't buy them.

Mark Obmascik's column appears weekly on Outside Online. An environmental columnist and reporter for The Denver Post, he can be reached via e-mail.