Planet Money - The NRA's Secret Tapes

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Soon after the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, leaders of the National Rifle Association held a conference call to craft their response. Secret tapes from this call obtained by NPR's Investigations team reveal how the NRA developed what would become their standard response after decades of school shootings. | Listen to the original Up First episode: n.pr/nratapesLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. Hi, Planet Money listeners. Amanda Aronchik here. We had a very different plan for today's show, but after yesterday's shooting at an elementary school in Texas, we decided to share this story. A warning, this episode deals with guns and school shootings. The NRA's annual meeting begins on Friday in Houston, just a few hundred miles from Uvalde, Texas. Former President Donald Trump is slated to headline the event.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is also expected to speak. It's a moment that's eerily similar to one that occurred more than two decades ago, when the NRA's annual event was set to begin in Denver just days after two gunmen killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. NPR's investigations team recently published a story showing how the NRA's response in that moment, back in 1999, set the organization's strategy with regard to school shootings. Reporter Tim Mack obtained secret recordings of top NRA leaders at that time. In those recordings, they debate possible courses of action. And where they landed then feels something like the NRA's playbook today.

Tim Mack led the reporting with Tom Dreisbach of the investigations team. Columbine was one of the worst school shootings the country had ever seen, and everyone was trying to figure out how to respond. Schools postponed pep rallies and games, TV shows and movies were pulled from the schedules, concerts were canceled. But there was one event that remained on the schedule, and in Denver, not far from where the shooting took place. It was the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association. It would seem to me that good manners would dictate not to come into a place that's suffering the kind of tragedy and grieving and loss that this community is now suffering.

Denver's mayor, Wellington Webb, asked the NRA, the most powerful gun rights organization in the country, to cancel. Thousands of the NRA's members were expected in Denver for this annual meeting, which is a kind of combination gun show, Second Amendment rally, and policy meeting. It was a meeting set to take place just miles away from Columbine. And so the NRA's leaders had to ask themselves, what do we do? It's going to be a bad situation no matter what we do. The question is, how do you make a bad situation as least bad as you possibly can? This tape is from an internal conference call

that took place the day after the shootings, April 21st, 1999. This is the same concern, obviously, that everybody has, is that at the same period where they're going to be burying these children, we're going to be having media within 10 miles of our convention center, the world's media, trying to run through the exhibit hall looking at kids fondling firearms, which is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible juxtaposition.

To journalists, the NRA is often a black box. And this tape that you're hearing was never supposed to be made public. For more than 20 years, it wasn't. Then just recently, NPR's Washington investigative correspondent, Tim Mack, heard from a source. The source was on that call and taped it. And this black box started to open. The NRA is just one of the most powerful and controversial organizations in the country, right? And sometimes because of its centrality to this, the conversation about gun politics or our

politics in general, there's a tendency for people to imagine what it must be like behind the scenes or what an organization must be like, whether for good or evil. And here what we actually have is we actually can put you in the room. We can actually put you on the phone call where these people in real time are struggling to deal with this crisis as it unfolds. The decision the NRA would make was about much more than Columbine and the crisis of that particular moment. In the next two decades, school shootings would number in the hundreds, and the decision executives made on their public stance in Denver in 1999 would echo again and again when the NRA responded to the next mass shooting, and the one after that, and the one after that.

But how they got there, that was surprising. And it's coming up after this break. All right, we are back. I'm Tom Dreisbach. And our guide to this story is NPR's Washington investigative correspondent, Tim Mack. Tim recently got a hold of these secret tapes from the NRA conference call that took place just one day after the Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado. And on this call, top NRA leaders were trying to figure out what to do about this big NRA meeting coming up about 10 days away. We're all here. Mary Corrigan, Craig, Jim Land.

Who all is on this conference call? It's everyone that's important in the NRA. We're talking the executives, the officials of the organization, senior staffers, lobbyists, outside advisors, PR consultants. And it really underlines just how critical this moment is for the NRA, right? They're in total panic mode, everything just flying at them. And they've never really dealt with something quite this dramatic before. What are the stakes for the NRA? What is their dilemma in this moment? So they've got a number of serious problems. Firstly, is a financial one, right? This conference, which they do every year,

costs millions and millions and millions of dollars to put together. It's their biggest, it's their marquee event. And it's also one of those events where they spend a lot of their time fundraising. A lot of the money they take in every year comes as a result of the person-to-person connections that come as a result of this conference. So money is a big issue. Another issue is it's really one of those kind of pump-it-up kind of conferences where people network, it's where friends get together, it's where gossip is exchanged. It's just the most important thing for this community. The three options are one, go ahead full speed, keep the

radio going, keep the billboards going, do the exhibit hall, do the board, do the meeting as planned. Two would be to cancel the exhibit hall and do the business meetings of the association. And the third option would be to cancel everything. So who is that speaking just there? So the voice you hear laying out the options, this guy named Wayne LaPierre. He's someone who has been the head of the NRA for decades. But what you hear in this tape and what you get a sense of if you talk to people who've known him over these decades

is that he's a really kind of weak-willed leader. He's a deeply anxious person. And what you hear in these tapes is him laying out the options, but really not weighing in at all about what to actually do. So we have all these top leaders of the NRA, and we have them going through these three options as Wayne LaPierre laid them out. What do they see as like the pros and cons of each approach? What do they see as like the pros and cons of each approach? So one of the options is scaling down their convention.

And one of the people who is supporting this view is this guy named Angus McQueen. And if you talk to people who have known Angus McQueen well, they'll describe him in two ways. They'll say he's a genius, but he's also a bit of a jerk. He's the head of this messaging arm of the NRA, this PR firm called Ackerman McQueen. But is there a way we can have our cake and eat it too? Can we say out of a deference to the sensitivities in Denver, we are going to move our meeting 100 miles away. We are going to cancel the exhibit aspect of the meeting,

but we are going to still invite our members in Colorado to meet. Our officers will be there, and we are going to conduct our business. We still then would have tremendous press opportunity to advance our point of view, which is a very strong one. opportunity to advance our point of view, which is a very strong one. He's trying to thread this needle between seeming responsible and not being deliberately provocative in a way. That's right. And this is really what the tape is about, is that if they're too differential, it'll be like they're culpable for these shootings.

It'll be as if they were acknowledging defeat and adopting the media's narrative that they're responsible for the shootings at Columbine. So that's one of the possible paths, the sort of middle ground. What's the pro and con of just canceling the whole thing because of what just happened in Columbine? Is there anyone who says, let's just cancel it all? Well, I think that there's real resistance from the NRA to cancel it all with the money spent on this, with all the travel plans. Would it be smart to use language like rescheduled and postponed instead of canceled? What do you mean? It implies an expectation to continue on with our business as usual,

but just at a more, a less sensitive time. There's, there's, there is an emotional difference between postponing and canceling. One big con is that if they cancel it, they won't have an opportunity to respond to the criticisms that are going to come their way. It's like they're ceding the ground to all the people who would criticize the NRA. They won't be able to respond as quickly. Yeah. Let's not forget that there's some pride involved here, right? That if they were to cancel, it would seem to them and their members and the media and everyone else as if they were accepting defeat in this arena. And so there's a lot of resistance to that idea.

Listen here to Jim Land. He's a top official of the NRA at this time. Listen here to Jim Land. He's a top official of the NRA at this time. I gotta tell you, we gotta think this thing through because if we tuck tail and run, we're going to be accepting responsibility for what happened out there. That's one very good argument, Jim. On the other side, if you don't appear to be deferential in honoring the dead, you end up being a tremendous shithead who wouldn't tuck tail and run. So it's a double-edged sword. That guy right there talking to Jim Land, that's Tony Makris. He's a strategic advisor for the NRA and has been working with the NRA for many, many years. I don't know what the answer is, but I know this.

It's far worse to go out there and be painted as a bunch of insensitive, disrespectful turds than it is to say, we're sorry it happened and we'll bow out. It's so remarkable to hear them talk about how they come across. I guess I'm used to the NRA being very, just being very confidently not caring about how they come across to people who might be their political opponents, right? That they're not so worried these days about seeming maybe a little insensitive. And yet here on this call, they're really worried about seeming maybe a little insensitive. And yet here on this call, they're really worried about seeming insensitive. I think it's a testament to how powerful the NRA has become

in the modern era that like 20 years ago, you know, there's a lot less security for the NRA. It's not as powerful as it has become today. It hasn't grown to the size that it's become today. It doesn't have as much money as it has today. And so it survives based on how the public perceives them at this point. And this is an NRA that no longer exists. There are a couple other voices that are important on the call. This guy named Kane Robinson. He's an official in the organization, longtime NRA secretary. How do we look, Kane? Is there something concrete that we can offer, not because guns are responsible, but because we care about these people? Is there

anything? Does that look crass? You mean the legislative? No, I'm talking about something concrete. Like a victim's fund. We create a victim's fund and we give the victim a million dollars or something like that. Does that look bad or does it look... Well, I mean, that can be twisted, too. I mean, why are you giving money? You feel responsible.

Well, you're true. It can be twisted, but we feel sympathetic and respectful. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting to hear them talking about, you know, raising money for the families of these victims and the people who were injured, and yet they see a pretty big downside to giving those families money. I think here's why this particular slice of tape was so important. It's because you hear the NRA in real time, considering a softer tone,

you hear them talking about a million-dollar victim fund, or even apologizing, saying we're sorry in the wake of a mass shooting. They talk about sympathy and respect in terms of PR terms, right? How's the public going to view the NRA as sympathetic and respectful? Not how can we be sympathetic and respectful? I think what you ought to do is you move forward with your meeting, is you move forward with your meeting, everything that you had planned to do,

but you issue a statement of sympathy and start talking about the fact that this country needs to stop blaming everybody but the perpetrators. So the person you're hearing there is this woman named Marian Hammer. She was the first female president of the NRA, and she's a fierce lobbyist who has been working in NRA circles for many, many years. People describe her as kind of like this tiny but fierce figure. years. People describe her as kind of like this tiny but fierce figure. Anyone who's anyone in the NRA fears her because she's so assertive and dominant and powerful in the organization. That the warning signs have been there. Why have they been unable to deal effectively and to

protect our students? But, you know, those are like soundbites. But you issue an expression of sympathy, but you have to go forward for NRA to scrap this and the amount of money that we have spent. We have meeting insurance. Screw the insurance. The message that it will send is that even the NRA was brought to its knees, and the media will have a field day with it. Which is, we can't let the public think that they brought us to our knees.

We can't let the public think that the NRA had a negative day or a negative week or a negative month as a result of this tragedy. And this is kind of the framing for the whole conversation. Right. And you also hear her talk about how guns aren't responsible. That it's society that's responsible. It's warning signs in the community that have nothing to do with them. I mean, I remember I was just about to turn 12 years old when Columbine happened. And I remember a lot of the discussions were about, you know, was this related to the movie The Matrix coming out where there were, you know, a lot of shootings in that, or the music

of Marilyn Manson, or video games. And a lot of that was in the discussion, maybe even more than guns back then. That's right. The NRA was really behind a lot of these questions, whether it was violent video games, movies, violent music, whether the government was just not competently enforcing existing laws about guns. They were trying to change the conversation from firearms to culture. Here's NRA lobbyist Randy Schooneman.

But at the same time, in terms of what membership is going to say, it seems to me that they're going to be resentful over the fact that, to state the obvious, they have nothing to do with Satan worshipping neo-Nazi, Hollywood-driven, punk rock-driven murder and mayhem. heard all this about, you know, PR and the media coverage that they're worried about and how to, you know, change potentially the conference to make the media coverage seem better. Do they talk at all about gun laws and politics at this stage? They talk about gun politics, but it's almost like it's a done deal. Like it's baked into the cake how people are going to respond. What they're basically doing is they're putting together a coalition to respond. And you hear Wayne LaPierre kind of hint at how they're going to put this coalition together. Well, I was talking to Nicholson's office this morning, and what they told me is they're

planning on sending them all to school, because what they wanted us to do was secretly provide them with talking points. When he mentioned secretly providing people with talking points, who's he talking about there? Well, Nichols is Don Nichols. He's a member of the Republican Senate leadership and at the time is the Senate majority whip. And so what we're hearing is Wayne LaPierre saying, okay, well, Senate Republicans are asking us for secret talking points. They're asking us to lead the messaging on this because they're going to go to schools and have conversations with people in their communities. These senators are and they don't really know what to say.

We need to tell them. It's a frantic time for the NRA. And you can see that they're at the nexus of this entire conversation. You know, this is Jim Baker here. I mean, we've been through the various options, and based on everything I've heard, at this point, I think the best option, barring any other input from the governor

or any other credible authority out there, is to cancel the exhibit hall, recast our meeting as one of respect and sympathy. But at the same time, we're going to have to deal with the media and make the very points that Marion's making that this is not only not our fault, but we're goddamn sick and tired of being blamed for it. And here's why. So Jim Baker there, when he's talking about canceling the exhibit hall, that's the gun expo, where you have all these weapons and accessories and people are milling about in this giant convention hall. And then separately, there's what's called the members meeting. And this is something that the NRA has to have every year according to its rules.

Just think of like the political conventions where they nominate presidential candidates and there are all these people milling on the floor and proposing resolutions and seconding each other and arguing the pros and cons of each. And Wayne LaPierre is worried about this meeting getting out of control after Columbine and embarrassing the NRA.

You know, the other problem is the people you are most likely to get in that member meeting without an exhibit hall are the nut. That made that point earlier. I agree. The fruitcakes are going to show up. Whoa. Okay.

So that was Tony Macris calling, you know, the NRA members fruitcakes? It's some really astonishing tape, right? Because we're getting into the minds now of these senior NRA officials and they're disparaging their own members. Right. They acknowledge that there are these people who they consider to be kind of crazy. If you pull down the exhibit hall, that's not going to leave anything for the media except the members meeting and you're going to have the wackos with all kinds of crazy uh resolutions with all kinds of dressing like a bunch of hillbillies and idiots and and it's gonna it's gonna be the worst thing you can imagine. Wow.

Okay, so that's Mary and Hammer calling some of their own members wackos, hillbillies, idiots. I mean, it sounds like they're really almost embarrassed by some of their own members. I mean, there's always been this divide between NRA officials and their most right-wing members, right? this divide between NRA officials and their most right-wing members, right? That there are the people who are trying to run the organization, try to mainstream their view of gun politics. And then there are these members who are more ideological and more aggressive about what the Second Amendment should mean for America. And what you're hearing is they're worried that these people will show up after a mass shooting and embarrass the organization.

After the break, what the NRA ultimately decides to do about this meeting, and how that changed gun politics in America. All right, we are back. I'm Tom Dreisbach. We've been talking about the different camps within the NRA and this internal debate over what the organization should do about its big upcoming meeting after the Columbine shooting. That meeting was supposed to take place in Denver, Colorado, not far from the shooting. And some in the NRA said they should delay the meeting.

Some said, move it somewhere else. Some said, create a victim's fund. And others said, don't back down. Don't change anything. So Tim, what did they ultimately decide? What they really do is they land on a middle ground, that they're going to cancel the festivities and the exhibit hall, but they are going to still plan for the meeting itself. I think we're all kind of reaching consensus here. Nobody likes the situation, but I think what we have is a kind of architecture here for trying to make the best of it. And that's what we just have to work like hell for.

The strategy is to live another day at this point. You bet. hell for. The strategy is to live another day at this point. You bet. And what they're really relying here is on the strength of their message and the people who will deliver it. And that's Wayne LaPierre, of course, and the NRA president at the time, Charlton Heston. And for people who don't know, Charlton Heston was, you know, a longtime Hollywood actor. He was in Planet of the Apes, the version from the 60s. And then he went on to become the public face of the NRA in the late 90s and early 2000s. That's right.

All based on the strength of his kind of booming godlike voice. Literally. Wasn't he Moses? How can I lead this people out of bondage? What words can I speak that they will heed? So yeah, he plays Moses in the Ten Commandments, right? So that gives you a sense of the sort of almost moral authority he drew from his acting career. So we have the same right as all other citizens to be here, to help shoulder the grief, to share our sorrow, and to offer our respectful, reassured voice to the national discourse

that has erupted around this tragedy. Yeah, it's interesting hearing a lot of that message now coming through this incredible, you know, booming voice of Charlton Heston. Our words and our behavior will be scrutinized more than ever this morning. Those who are hostile towards us will lie in wait to seize on a soundbite out of context, ever searching for an embarrassing moment to ridicule us. So let us be mindful. The eyes of the nation are upon us today.

be mindful, the eyes of the nation are upon us today. It's almost like Charlton Heston, it sounds like, is trying to talk to them to say, be careful because of Columbine, the cameras are really on us, you know, think about what you say before you say it. Is that him trying to kind of reign those folks in, at least, on behalf of the leadership. That really seems to be what's happening here, right? That you hear them translating what they were strategizing about into a warning for some of their own members, who behind the scenes, they expressed a lot of concern, would embarrass them. So they really had to be mindful about the message that they were sending at this conference, because it was an event that was highly covered by national press. I'm curious, you know, now that you and NPR

obtained these tapes and we've published excerpts from these tapes, what has the NRA said about all of this? So after NPR obtained these tapes, we reached out to the people who were on them for comment. And of course, we also reached out to the NRA before publication. What we did was we gave them transcripts of the clips that we were thinking about using. And the NRA responded. They called it a quote unquote hit piece that was coming. The NRA also said that we were invoking Columbine to promote an editorial agenda against them. And what's so interesting about this is that in responding this way, they're using the same playbook that they created and was shown in these

tapes from over 20 years ago. They're trying to change the topic from the core issues in these tapes. Could you just give a sense of where the NRA stands right now. The NRA is really in shambles financially. In 2018, they almost couldn't make payroll. That's a serious problem for any organization to be in. The New York Attorney General launched an investigation and after 18 months, accused the NRA and Wayne LaPierre and three others of contributing to the loss of more than $64 million in just three years. This is something that the New York Attorney General called fraud and abuse. Now, the NRA

was originally founded in New York, so the New York AG has jurisdiction over the organization. The NRA has said that her action, her office's action, is part of a politically motivated attack and that they've become a more accountable organization in the time since. So when we look back now at these tapes that you just obtained and can hear these executives, some of them who are still with the NRA, talk about the strategy. I mean, what do those tapes tell us about the NRA and gun politics and how those have evolved over the last two decades? You know, the tapes really show the NRA's policies and its playbook being developed in real time. Just take a listen to what Heston said back in 1999 to close out the convention this is all about. The dirty secret of this day and age

is that political gain and media ratings all too often bloom on fresh graves. That line, which was originally strategized on these NRA tapes, is something they use over and over again in the years to come. But they say it in slightly different ways. Take a listen to Wayne LaPierre talking after the shootings at Sandy Hook in 2012. Out of respect for the families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment.

While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectively silent. This theme that you can't talk about firearms policy after mass shootings continues throughout the years. Here's Wayne LaPierre after the shootings in Parkland in 2018. As usual, the opportunist wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain, the breakback speed of calls for more gun control laws, and the breathless national media eager to smear the NRA. So what do you think these tapes tell us about the NRA and gun politics over these last two decades? You look at the events after these tapes, the mass shootings that followed after Columbine. You had Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook and Parkland and all sorts of other mass shootings

that have occurred over the last 20 years. And then you look at what's actually occurred in terms of legislation responding to that. At the federal level, at least, there's been no significant gun control legislation passed since these tapes. And in the meantime, they've been able to advance gun rights legislation. And that's true even though the NRA is in such a weak position now. Yeah. What the NRA does so successfully is that they're able to mobilize its grassroots members. Politicians aren't really scared as much about the NRA's money. They're worried about getting yelled at at town halls and having their phone lines lit up and their email boxes flooded. And the people the NRA is most able to mobilize are these wackos, these so-called fruitcakes,

these hillbillies. So even though the NRA leadership was complaining about, you know, what they viewed as the quote-unquote fruitcakes, the wackos, those members who they denigrated in this way are really the source of strength for the NRA and the gun rights movement. Yeah. And the decisions, the strategy that they developed after Columbine on these secret tapes, they worked to help the NRA defend themselves in the wake of these mass shootings again and again and again. Tim, thanks so much.

Thanks a lot. This episode was originally produced by the Breaking News Investigation Team. For that full episode, go to n.pr slash nra tapes. We also link to the episode in our show notes. The original episode was produced by NPR's investigations team and the Enterprise Storytelling Unit. In investigations, Monica Estateva is the senior producer and Barry Hardiman is their senior editor.

Tim Mack reported this episode. Robert Little is the senior supervising editor on investigations. Bruce Oster leads NPR's Enterprise Storytelling Unit. And Liana Simstrom is the supervising producer. Sound design by Thomas Liu, with support from assistant producer Justine Yan. And Stu Rushfield engineered this episode. The Planet Money version of this episode was produced by Emma Peasley and edited by Jess Jiang and Molly Messick. It was engineered by Gilly Moon. Planet Money's executive producer is Alex Goldmark.

I'm Amanda Aronchik. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.