Through his role in Confederate heritage organizations and his political activities, Hines has been a champion of Southern culture and symbols, chief among them the Confederate battle flag. After the 2000 South Carolina primary, Hines wrote a letter to the Washington Times stating, "This brouhaha has caused many people to look afresh at the issues in the War of 1861-65, to the decided benefit of the memory of the Confederate cause."

But Hines has had his run-ins with his fellow neo-Confederates as well. He's been in the center of a power struggle between Confederate groups, marked by a 15-year legal and political struggle with John Edward Hurley, president of the Confederate Memorial Association. Hurley claims Hines tried to take over the association and turn it into a fundraising front for conservative political causes. The cost of the fight forced the association to sell off its $500,000 museum building at 1322 Vermont Ave. in Washington D.C., and continues to wind its way through the courts.

"I'd rather sell it than turn it over to those people," Hurley says. The great-grandson of a Confederate cavalry officer, Hurley has sometimes been depicted as a kook because of the flurry of lawsuits and inflammatory charges he's leveled at Hines over the years. Hurley insists the trouble began because Hines, along with conservative politicians and political operatives, tried to turn CMA from a cultural heritage museum into a fundraising operation.

"There was a move to radicalize the CMA in the early 1980s," Hurley says. "They wanted it to become a far-right radical institution. I don't think there was any question about that."

Hurley says the last straw came in 1986 when Hines and Navy Rear Admiral James Carey tried to use CMA to raise money for wars being fought in Afghanistan and Nicaragua. "They planned a 'freedom fighter' night, to raise money for the Contras in Nicaragua and the Committee for a Free Afghanistan. I canceled it. I wrote a polite letter to these guys, saying thanks but no thanks. I didn't realize at the time I was poking a stick in the eye of an 800-pound gorilla."

Hines did not return calls for this story, though he once told the New York Times that "John Hurley's like [President Ford's would-be assassin] Squeaky Fromme. He'll do anything to get press attention."

Hurley's latest claim is that the Bush administration rewarded Hines for his South Carolina work by sending a Confederate Memorial wreath to Hines' faction on Memorial Day, 2001, a charge the White House denies. But it's hard to get to the bottom of the politics of the Confederate Memorial wreath-laying.

Every year on Memorial Day, the White House sends four memorial wreaths to honor America's fallen soldiers. Those wreaths are sent to the mast of the U.S.S. Maine, a battleship from the Spanish-American War, the Spanish-American War Memorial, the Confederate Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknowns.

To Yankees and liberals, the notion that the president sends a Confederate Memorial wreath at all might be shocking, but it's a long-standing bipartisan tradition. In fact, during the 2000 presidential campaign, Fox News revealed that Al Gore gave Hines' organization $40 for a wreath to be placed at the memorial in 1992. A Gore spokesman said at the time that Gore knew nothing of Hines' right-wing ties and was simply honoring fallen Confederate soldiers.

Hurley claims that infighting between his Confederate group, which used to organize the White House wreath laying, and Hines' organization led the first Bush White House to stop sending the wreath in 1990 -- but that the second Bush administration resumed the practice and began sending the wreath to the Hines faction. The New York Times reported on the elder Bush's decision at the time, saying the president had canceled the wreath laying "anxious to sidestep the squabble." Now the White House insists the first Bush administration didn't cancel the wreath laying, but rather changed the day the wreath arrived, from Confederate Memorial Day on June 3 to national Memorial Day on the third Monday in May. Administration sources as well as the U.S. Army Military District of Washington, which oversees wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington, say the wreath laying continued annually under Clinton.

Undeterred by the White House explanation, Hurley continues to insist that the Hines' group now getting the wreath is "payback" for Hines' work on Bush's behalf. And he hasn't given up on payback of his own. After Hines' role with the anti-McCain mailing came to light, Hurley filed a complaint that Hines had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act -- because of previous lobbying work for the government of Cambodia -- a violation punishable by up to $10,000 in fines and five years in jail. Hurley said he personally called Attorney General John Ashcroft's office "three or four times," but that his complaint never went anywhere.

"They just refuse to move on it," Hurley says, adding that "Ashcroft and Hines are pretty buddy-buddy." It was Hines who arranged Ashcroft's 1999 interview with Southern Partisan, where Ashcroft praised Confederate heroes like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee as "patriots," which dogged his effort to become attorney general. But Hurley says he's not giving up.

"I won't step aside, especially for people like [Hines]. I'm a real Southerner. You can't try to pull this muscle on me."

Recent Stories