Pat and Becky Hannigan

Pat Hannigan and her daughter Becky were as close as any Mother and daughter could be. They did virtually everything together -- much to the frustration of many young men. Becky, a slim and pretty blue-eyed blonde, was just out of high school. Pat was a veteran of the school of hard knocks. Divorced when Becky was a baby, and deeply suspicious and distrustful of men, she was totally devoted to Becky, and sought out activities and interests that the two of them could share. After they attended a POW/MIA ceremony at the State Capitol, they decided they wanted to help, so they did, joining up with Minnesota Won’t Forget POW/MIA, Inc. in 1990.

They were dream volunteers for the organization, because of the time they were willing to devote to it. Becky had no job, and worked at the organization office every day with no pay, and was joined by her Mother in the evening. Pat worked as an administrative assistant for a St Paul elementary school.

Almost all of their free time was devoted to the organization, processing orders for merchandise during the day and evening, operating merchandise sale booths at public events during the weekend. It came as no surprise when both were elected to the Board of Directors, and it was a natural for Pat to assume the job of Treasurer when the first elections for that post were held, after the Executive Director’s wife was persuaded to give up that post. There had been complaints by organization members that allowing the Executive Director’s wife to hold the job of Treasurer gave the appearance of impropriety, and made fund-raising difficult. He had refused to make a change until mid 1992, when one of the Board members -- Ken DuFresne, was appointed to the job. But DuFresne decided not to run for re-election to the Board after a few months, and at the next election, Hannigan was elected. As part of her job at the elementary school, she managed three checking accounts, and so was more qualified than anyone else to manage the organization account.

Almost immediately, there was a problem. The Executive Director refused to turn over the check book to Pat. When DuFresne was Treasurer, the Executive’s wife had continued to handle the duties of Treasurer, and DuFresne had simply acted as a figurehead, rubber-stamping whatever she had disclosed to the organization. Pat took her job more seriously, and expected to do a hands-on job of handling her responsibility. The Executive Director refused to let her have the checkbook, but after several months, relented and turned it over to her.

At about the same time, troubles developed within the organization. Working in the office every day, the Hannigans saw more than anyone else what took place in the organization. They became suspicious of statements made by the executive Director and his wife, especially when they announced that they might have to close the office down because nobody was interested in the POW/MIA issue any more. At the time, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs had just concluded a year of hearings on the issue, and the entire Country was waiting for the final report to be released by the Committee. When the Executive Director’s wife disclosed that her husband was being laid off from his job and might have to leave the State to find work, and then began labeling costly items in the office as personal property, other Directors became alarmed.

When they realized that the Executive Director had taken home all of his personal items from the office, as well as the organization’s financial records and key data, they decided to act. One of the Directors, a young man by the name of Dan Forby, began organizing an effort to take action against the Executive Director. Forby had been in the office when a moving company returned a call from someone in the organization who had requested an estimate to move the office furnishings.

To gain a numerical edge on the Board, Forby contacted an MIA family member who had recently resigned from the Board, and, explaining the Executive Director’s actions, convinced the family member to withdraw his resignation and rejoin the Board for the purpose of removing the Executive Director.

But the effort failed.

Word of their plans leaked to the Executive Director, and he took action to persuade others in the Veterans community, and two MIA family members who supported him, that the Directors were telling lies about him in order to take over the organization.
After a contentious confrontation between the parties, two of the Directors resigned from the organization. They had considered themselves to be the Executive Director’s close friends, but became convinced that he was lying to them.

There were still enough Directors to remove the Executive Director -- until the Executive Director persuaded Forby to change sides. He did so, according to Forby, by telling Forby that his actions were part of a secret plan to rescue a POW. Forby, a naïve young man who had never served in the military, believed them, and thereafter worked surreptitiously against the Hannigans and the other Directors, informing the Executive Director of their plans and suspicions. When the two sides confronted each other, Forby changed his stories to support the Executive Director.

With Forby changing sides, a stalemate developed, as there were not enough votes to remove the Executive Director from his post. Active in the veterans community, the Executive Director had been gathering support and encouraging a campaign of abuse against the dissident Directors. The Directors and the family member were strangers to the Veterans. Thus, when additional information surfaced that appeared to prove that the directors were telling the truth, nobody was willing to listen.

The evidence came from the State Attorney General’s office.

One of the dissident Directors, --the MIA family member -- was concerned that the Executive Director had taken the organization’s financial records home, and called the Attorney General’s office to obtain copies of financial records that the organization was required to disclose. His call was answered by investigator Ann Hensley, who berated him because no one had responded to calls and letters from the Attorney General for two years. She said the Attorney General had banned any fundraising in January of that year, and when no response was received from the organization, had revoked the organization’s certification in March. The Attorney General’s complaint was that the organization had failed to disclose the very financial information that the family member was looking for.

Thus, when the Executive Director handed over the checkbook to the Treasurer, he not only failed to tell her that the State had revoked the Organization’s Certificate and banned any fundraising, he proceeded to organize several major fundraisers.

The family member gave Hensley Pat’s address, and Hensley mailed a letter to her. Pat, shocked at the implications of the information contacted the Executive Director.

When the Executive Director’s wife learned that Pat was aware of the Attorney General’s actions, she left the office and refused to return, and would not talk to anyone on the phone for several months. The Executive Director, on the other hand, sprang into action with a damage control story that the dissident Directors’ lies had caused his wife to have a nervous breakdown. Forby told the Directors that it was not true, but as might be expected, the general POW/MIA community was outraged, and friends of the Executive Director began a campaign to persecute the Directors.

Pat brought her information to the next Board meeting of the organization to disclose it to the membership. The Executive Director brought his children to the meeting to discourage criticism of him in their presence, and he invited several relatives also, to stack any vote against him. Two family members who supported him were also present to defend him, as he had convinced them that their fellow family member was trying to smear the Executive Director’s reputation in an effort to take over the organization. The meeting was a circus, and the dissident family member walked out, leaving Pat alone to face what amounted to a lynch mob.

The Executive Director produced a letter from the organization bookkeeper saying that the bookkeeper had contacted the Attorney General during the previous month. His explanation for the letter was that it showed that the Executive Director had been working on the problems with the Attorney General all along. What the letter did not say is that the accountant’s purpose for contacting the Attorney General was to prepare the financial disclosure forms for the Executive Director, as he had done the previous year -- the forms that the Executive Director had failed to turn over to the State.

Instead of questioning the Executive Director’s actions, the members attacked the Hannigans for making trouble, but Pat stuck to her guns and refused to leave her post as Treasurer.

Pat negotiated a deal with the Attorney General’s office to restore the organization’s certification, and turned over the organization’s financial records to the Attorney General. The Executive Director would later claim that he negotiated the restoration, and turned over the records. He further increased the level of distrust by spreading a rumor that the Treasurer and the family member -- both single -- were lovers. They had never talked to each other outside of board meetings prior to the trouble, and have never socialized since.

Hannigan would pay a heavy price for her stubbornness. The Executive Director, having already created an atmosphere of hate against her, carried out a deliberate and successful campaign to destroy her reputation.

The campaign began when the Executive Director instructed the postal carrier to deliver the organization mail to another address -- a pizza restaurant in the same mall as the organization office. The manager there said the Executive Director gave him instructions not to give any of the mail to the treasurer.

By this time, after a series of threatening phone calls from the Executive Director, Pat was terrified of him, but stubbornly, she refused to resign her post. Instead she would go to the office at night to get the organization’s bills so she could pay them. She began to notice that bills were not arriving as scheduled. She informed the other Directors of her difficulties and suspicions.

In late August, the organization conducted its biggest fund-raiser of the year -- a booth at the Country’s biggest State Fair, where POW/MIA merchandise was sold. The booth was manned by volunteers under the supervision of Dan Forby. Each night, Forby counted the revenues, registered the amount with the Fair office, and was supposed to bring the money to the organization office. He was supposed to place the money in a cash box in the Executive Director’s desk, for the Treasurer to pick up and deposit. But, that’s not the way it happened.

Pat became concerned when no money was brought to the office. She said that when she asked Forby about it, he said he had the money at home but would bring it to the office later. But, no money appeared. Hannigan reported the matter to the other dissident Directors, and the dissident family member confronted the Executive Director about it after a POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony at the State Capital, in September. The Executive Director said nothing. The next day, a distraught Pat Hannigan called the family member to report that the Executive Director had called her and accused her of stealing the missing funds.

The family member went directly to Forby where he worked as a clerk at a J.C. Penney store in Edina, Minnesota. Forby told him that he, Forby, had brought the money to the office, but it had never been deposited. Forby said he had thought it over and believed the only person who could have taken the money was Hannigan.

It was obvious to the dissident Directors that either Forby or the Executive Director , or both, were lying. To begin with, neither had access to the checking account, and thus, could not know if the money had been deposited. Shortly thereafter, the Executive Director went to the bank and persuaded the bank manager to turn over the checking account to him, saying the Treasurer had been stealing from the account. The Treasurer was removed as a signer for the account. The Executive Director, having intercepted the organization’s bills in the mail, then declared that Hannigan had not been paying the organization’s bills, and proceeded to pay them out of the checking account with new checks he had obtained at the bank. He changed the locks at the office.

Hannigan and the dissident family member attended the next Board meeting, where they said they intended to report the “theft” to the police. The Executive Director agreed that they should, and in the following days they did. But the Executive Director was not done. He announced that he had asked the organization tax accountant to audit the checking account to find out what happened to the "missing" money.

Meanwhile, Hannigan went into action to track down the money, which Forby had indicated amounted to $5,300.00.

She began contacting the organization’s vendors, and found two where the Executive Director or his son-in-law had recently made large purchases of POW/MIA merchandise with large amounts of cash in small bills, amounting to approximately $3,000.00. She confronted the Executive Director with the evidence, but his only response was to change his story concerning the amount of money reported missing -- to $2,300.00 -- and continued his campaign accusing her of theft. Nobody questioned the change, and nobody stopped to examine the facts. Forby had said all of the money was brought to the office, yet the executive Director had been caught red-handed spending the cash that was supposed to have been deposited in the bank. To this day, the POW/MIA community and the active veterans community believes Pat stole money from the organization.

When the accountant’s report came back and was presented to the Board, no money was found to be missing from the account ( except for the Fair booth money that had not been deposited ). He found only that approximately $25.00 had been deposited about two weeks after the check register said it had been deposited. Hannigan had also re-entered the check register information in a new check register, and the Executive Director used this as proof that she was covering something up. She was literally shouted out of the meeting.

Shortly after that, it was learned that many organization checks had bounced. The Executive Director thought the bills had not been paid, because he had the original invoices that he had diverted from Pat when