64 



been on the field for some time. I am not sure that they all arrived 

 late in the afternoon, as you would be led to believe. 



We have tried to be as truthful as we can about what happened 

 there that day. I am distressed and almost wish, Mr. Chairman, 

 that you had put us all up here under oath today to make sure that 

 the truth was told. Because I heard some things coming from Mr. 

 Oliveros that I do believe stretched the truth a good bit: tons of 

 grain? I saw that picture for the first time today. That is obviously 

 a picture of grain scattered on the ground, and I can only assume 

 that it was at some point in that 240-acre field, and certainly, none 

 of us could inspect every section of that field to determine that. 



As far as the no prior notification, I do not really understand if 

 it is the object to protect the wildlife species why someone would 

 not have at least contacted me as the sponsor of the hunt. I can 

 assure you that if I had thought the field was baited, I would have 

 stopped the hunt. I do believe that it was somewhat political, Mr. 

 Chairman, not political against me, but it was obvious because of 

 the publicity that had taken place that if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife 

 Service raided that field, there would be a good bit of press from 

 that, which there certainly was, and some of it not all good. 



But it was almost like it was a sting operation there, and I hate 

 to use those words, but that is how it appeared, and that is how 

 it appeared to everybody that I talked to. I can tell you that people 

 were quite upset with their Government for using the resources of 

 Government in such a manner that day. 



I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing us to be here today, and 

 hopefully, something constructive can come from this, and we may 

 end up with a glass of sweet lemonade from the lemon that we 

 have all had to take. 



The Chairman. Senator, I want to thank you, and I will assure 

 you that we are going to do something about this law. I cannot re- 

 hash what is done. I probably could have been more strident with 

 the officer in charge. I do not really think that he took everything 

 into consideration of what was occurring here. He thinks he has 

 done that professionally; that is his prerogative. I know this, that 

 there have been an awful lot of bridges burned because of this ac- 

 tion. It could have been avoided; it could have been enforced; it 

 could have been one person; it could have been two persons. The 

 whole thing could have been — I can imagine if I was that agent; 

 when the first shot was fired, go arrest that one individual; close 

 the hunt down; you could do that. To my understanding, there was 

 an alternative to the dove hunt, if you had actually been able to 

 set up a fishing event, some way to raise this money. 



Mr. Williams. Yes. 



The Chairman. Now, I have read some testimony from other peo- 

 ple in this room who say this is a good old boys' club. The law 

 stinks, and I think it is up to this Congress to change this law. And 

 again, my biggest drive in sitting in this chair — the gentleman 

 from Minnesota and the gentleman from California do not agree 

 with me — I do not like what I see occurring in this Government 

 today. I go down the street, and I challenge anybody in this room 

 to go down the street and ask anybody are you happy with the Fed- 

 eral Government today? And I will pay you a dollar for every per- 



