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<font size=3><br>
</font><h1><font size=4><b>Four articles about repression against the
radical environmental movement appeared in the Seattle Times today.
Posted below are two of them. Please visit the Seattle Times website and
participate in the forum discussion on "Is ecosabotage
terrorism?"</font> </b></h1><font size=3> <br><br>
</font><h1><b>Is ecosabotage terrorism?<br><br>
<br>
By <a href="mailto:hbernton@seattletimes.com">Hal
Bernton</a></b></h1><font size=3>Who is a terrorist?<br>
<br>
After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, it was
clean-cut Timothy McVeigh, a brooding loner — infused with hatred of the
government — who was convicted and put to death for that crime.<br>
<br>
After 9/11, which claimed the lives of more than 2,900 people, it was the
bearded visage of Osama bin Laden.<br>
<br>
This year, the Bush administration has touted the arrests of terrorists
of a different kind — homegrown militants who have embarked on arson
attacks to protest treatment of animals and the environment.<br>
<br>
During the past three years alone, FBI counterterrorism agents have
conducted at least 190 investigations into property crimes claimed by the
Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). None
of the crimes injured or killed people.<br>
<br>
"Terrorism is terrorism — no matter what the motive," declared
FBI director Robert Mueller on Jan. 20, when he announced the indictment
of 11 people in an alleged conspiracy that involved 17 attacks. Those
include arsons at a ski resort in Vail, Colo., a horse slaughterhouse in
Oregon, a federal wildlife research center in Olympia and the University
of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture.<br>
Is it terrorism?<br>
<br>
FBI says yes, even though environmental militants target property, not
people. <br>
<br>
More indictments are expected in the months ahead as federal grand juries
meet in Seattle, Eugene, Denver, San Francisco and other cities. Most of
those indicted earlier this year could face decades in federal prison. A
few may face life sentences, if tried and convicted.<br>
<br>
Some balk at putting the terrorism label on activists who have targeted
property — not people.<br>
<br>
In the post-9/11 era, they say that the word tilts the criminal-justice
system against defendants and helps the Bush administration justify a
broader infiltration — and surveillance — of groups that protest
government policies.<br>
<br>
Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union indicate that
the FBI has monitored the activities of some environmental, animal-rights
and peace groups.<br>
<br>
"You couple spying on political dissenters with grand jury subpoenas
and a series of arrests, it's had a huge effect," said Alejandro
Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center.
"There is a serious danger of chilling dissenting points of
view."<br>
<br>
The FBI decision to run these investigations through a counterterrorism
branch also has been questioned by its own Office of Inspector General,
which in a 2003 report recommended that the cases should be handled by
its criminal division.<br>
<br>
In Oregon, the power of the terrorism label also generated concern from a
federal judge. In a 2002 hearing in Portland, U.S. District Court Judge
James Redden told a federal prosecutor not to use the word
"terrorist" in the trial of Jacob Sherman, an Oregon man
inspired by ELF to set fire to three logging trucks.<br>
<br>
"Basically, he [Redden] thought it was a fairness issue, and that it
could prejudice the jury," said Andrew Bates, a defense attorney for
Sherman, who avoided trial through a plea agreement.<br>
<br>
Redden's concern underscores the lack of a universal definition for
terrorism. Even within the U.S. government, there still is no unanimity,
according to the Government Accountability Office.<br>
<br>
For example, the State Department, when assessing violence abroad,
defines terrorism as "premeditated politically motivated violence
perpetrated against non-combatants" — in other words, attacks
designed to injure or kill people.<br>
<br>
Other federal laws and codes use a broader definition of terrorism that
can include attacks on property as well as people. The statutes define
domestic terrorism as acts of violence intended to influence the conduct
of government or "intimidate or coerce a civilian
population."<br>
<br>
Even those definitions are open to interpretation. For example, the vast
majority of attacks on abortion clinics, including those that have killed
at least six people since 1993, are not classified by the FBI as
terrorism.<br>
<br>
Among federal prosecutors in Oregon, there is no debate that the ELF and
ALF arsons add up to terrorism.<br>
<br>
They say the attacks have posed a danger to humans, including
firefighters who respond to put out the blazes, and were intended to
further a political agenda.<br>
A slaughterhouse was burned in Oregon, for example, to protest the
killing of wild horses brought in from the range.<br>
<br>
The overall goal of the ELF — defined in a 2001 pamphlet distributed by
its North American press office — is to use "direct action in the
form of economic sabotage to stop the exploitation and destruction of the
natural environment."<br>
<br>
Handling a case as terrorism can influence the number of arson and other
charges that a prosecutor may seek from a grand jury. And, if terrorism
is proved as a motive for arson, federal sentencing guidelines recommend
substantially longer prison terms.<br>
"There was never any question about how these [crimes] would be
treated," said Stephen Peifer, a Portland-based assistant U.S.
attorney involved in the prosecution.<br>
<br>
<b>Post-9/11 indictments<br>
</b> <br>
During the second term of the Clinton administration, FBI, state and
local officials started searching for leads among the Eugene anarchist
community and others who joined in more militant environmental
actions.<br>
<br>
But the current indictments are coming down in a much different,
post-9/11 era, when terrorism is a central focus of the Bush
administration.<br>
<br>
Arson attacks in the Pacific Northwest fell off after the 2001 UW arson
fire. But elsewhere in the nation, there has been plenty of activity, and
the FBI ranks the ALF and ELF among the nation's top domestic-terrorism
threats.<br>
<br>
"There is no question as you look over the past several years at the
amount of damage, at the amount of criminal activity that has been racked
up by these various groups, that animal-rights extremists and
ecoterrorists are way out in front in terms of the damage they are
causing in the United States," said John Lewis, deputy FBI director,
at a U.S. Senate hearing last May.<br>
<br>
Since 1976, animal-rights and environmental militants have been involved
in more than 1,100 actions that have caused more than $110 million worth
of damage, according to FBI statistics.<br>
<br>
The FBI is worried that some groups want to ratchet up the violence.<br>
<br>
Huntington Life Sciences, a British company with operations in the U.S.
that uses animals in drug tests, has been a major target.<br>
<br>
In England, the birthplace of the ALF, three masked assailants beat
Huntington's managing director with baseball bats. An animal-rights
activist was sentenced to three years in prison for the crime.<br>
<br>
In the U.S., company researchers have received threatening phone calls
warning them to stop experiments with animals. Executives who work for or
do business with the company have had their homes and other property
vandalized.<br>
<br>
In 2003, two California companies with ties to Huntington were hit with
bombs, including one wrapped in nails, according to the FBI. The bombs
caused no injuries but the attacker appeared ready to harm people.<br>
<br>
"Now you will reap what you have sown. All customers and their
families are considered legitimate targets. ... No more will all the
killing be done by the oppressors," said a communiqué claiming
credit for the attacks from a group called the "Revolutionary Cells
of the Animal Liberation Brigade."<br>
<br>
The California attack appears to reflect a rift among some animal-rights
militants.<br>
The ALF advocates "direct action" attacks against property,
such as laboratories and slaughterhouses, but rejects harming
humans.<br>
<br>
Meanwhile, splinter groups believe that it may be morally justified to
injure or even kill a human being — if the action could save many animal
lives, according to Jerry Vlasak, a Los Angeles trauma surgeon who has
acted as a spokesman for the ALF since 2004.<br>
<br>
FBI officials say such beliefs justify investigating these cases
aggressively as terrorist acts.<br>
<br>
Earlier this year, an FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in
California disclosed how that agency recruited an informant to infiltrate
the movement.<br>
<br>
The affidavit details the two-year odyssey of an informant who was
granted authority to participate in illegal activity as she journeyed
about the U.S. She helped set up surveillance of three militants as they
allegedly prepared for sabotage of California targets, and was paid
$75,000 for her work, according to Mark Reichel, an attorney representing
one of the militants.<br>
<br>
<b>Who should investigate?<br>
</b> <br>
In making its 2003 recommendations, the FBI Office of Inspector General
said that funneling those cases from the counterterrorism to the criminal
investigative division would free up more terrorism investigators to
pursue threats such as those posed by Islamic fundamentalists.<br>
<br>
The FBI has rejected that suggestion, saying the investigations are best
handled by counterterrorism agents, since the groups are often organized
like terrorist cells.<br>
Some outside the agency question the FBI's ranking of those groups as a
top domestic-terrorism threat, since they haven't killed or injured
people.<br>
<br>
Among the domestic-terrorism incidents included in the FBI database,
individuals with ties to white-supremacist and other anti-government
groups killed six people and injured more than 135 people since
1996.<br>
<br>
During the past decade, the Justice Department has uncovered numerous
right-wing plots to assassinate police officers, judges, politicians and
civil-rights figures, as well as to amass missiles, explosives and
chemical weapons, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's
Intelligence Report.<br>
<br>
"In my opinion, they [the FBI] are mistaking the frequency of
incidents with the overall threat," said Mark Potok, editor of a
report that monitors extremist crimes for the Southern Poverty Law
Center.<br>
<br>
<i>Seattle Times researcher Gene Balk contributed to this story.<br>
Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or
<a href="mailto:hbernton@seattletimes.com">hbernton@seattletimes.com</a>
<br>
</i>Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company<br>
<br><br>
</font><h1><b>An activist-turned-informant</b></h1><font size=3>By
<a href="mailto:hbernton@seattletimes.com">Hal Bernton</a><br>
Seattle Times staff reporter<br>
<br>
EUGENE, Ore. — The arsonists hit before dawn, laying down fuel-soaked
sheets and jugs of gasoline to torch 35 SUVs at a Chevrolet
dealership.<br>
<br>
The communiqué from the saboteurs — acting under the banner of the Earth
Liberation Front — proclaimed a new, more militant era, when the sins of
the "rich who parade around in their armored existence" would
no longer go unchallenged.<br>
Federal, state and local officials converged on the scene after the March
2001 attack, sifting through charred wreckage for evidence — just as they
had in more than a dozen other major arson attacks around the West
claimed by the ELF or the Animal Liberation Front.<br>
<br>
The investigation hit a dead end. As in the other attacks, prosecutors
couldn't muster enough evidence to charge anyone.<br>
<br>
"If you don't get a break, arson is a really tough case to
make," said Thad Buchanan, a retired Eugene police captain involved
in the investigations. "Most of your evidence burns up."<br>
<br>
Three years after the Eugene fires, investigators finally got their
break: A sinewy, tattooed heavy-metal guitarist named Jake Ferguson
agreed to cooperate and donned recording wires to meet with other
activists.<br>
<br>
Soon, the secrets of the underground network thought responsible for the
attacks began to be exposed.<br>
<br>
Ferguson was a high-profile participant in some of these crimes,
according to court documents and court statements by defense attorneys
with access to unreleased documents.<br>
<br>
Is it terrorism?<br>
<br>
FBI says yes, even though environmental militants target property, not
people. <br>
<br>
It is unclear whether he had any role in the Eugene fires. But he admits
to helping out in at least four arsons, including a 1998 fire at a
federal facility in Olympia, according to a court statement by Craig
Weinerman, a federal public defender involved in the case.<br>
<br>
As federal prosecutors prepare for trial this fall, Ferguson's tapes and
testimony will likely play a large role in the fate of 13 men and women
accused of a conspiracy to carry out 17 acts of arson and sabotage
between 1996 and 2001.<br>
<br>
Most of those accused now face spending decades in prison if convicted.
Some could wind up with life sentences if found guilty at trial.<br>
<br>
So far, Ferguson remains free and hasn't been charged with any
crimes.<br>
<br>
But his cooperation with investigators has made him a notorious figure
among militant environmentalists: Ferguson has received threatening phone
calls and been repeatedly trashed on activist Web sites as a turncoat,
snitch and worse.<br>
<br>
In an interview with The Seattle Times, Ferguson declined to comment on
the alleged crimes and bristled at accusations that he was the first to
fold.<br>
<br>
"I didn't roll; people rolled on me, and I was faced with a
situation where I could go to jail for the rest of my life,"
Ferguson said.<br>
<br>
A devoted father who liked guitar, Ferguson lived in the Whiteaker
neighborhood of Eugene, a collection of aging wooden homes. It's a place
where people can find shelter in aging buses parked in a front yard or a
yurt that features access to an organic garden and wood-fired sauna, and
— in years past — weekly meetings to debate anarchist philosophy.<br>
<br>
He was known for being into his music, playing lead guitar in a band at a
local bar. He also trained in Aikido, and, friends say, was devoted to
his young son, who lives with his mother.<br>
<br>
There was another side to Ferguson, as well.<br>
<br>
In 1999, he was arrested on charges of carrying a concealed weapon in his
pickup — a 9 mm handgun, according to Eugene court records.<br>
<br>
He also has struggled with a heroin addiction, and at times displayed a
volatile temper, according to Micah Griffin, a former bandmate.<br>
<br>
"There was a certain aura about him," said a former housemate.
"He was the bad boy. And there was a certain attraction to that in
an anarchist movement full of pirate talk."<br>
Ferguson earned some of his early activist credentials when he joined the
marathon Warner Creek logging protests of 1995 and 1996.<br>
<br>
Protesters spent more than 300 days blockading a road that led to a
14-acre patchwork of old-growth timber scheduled to be cut in a
burned-over area of the Willamette National Forest.<br>
<br>
At Warner Creek, Ferguson was a tactician, someone who helped fortify the
lines by digging ditches and building barricades.<br>
<br>
In a documentary titled "Pickaxe," a bearded Ferguson smiles as
his head pokes above the walls of a log stockade strung across the
road.<br>
<br>
"We've had schoolkids from Vermont come here to do all-night watch
shifts with their teachers," Ferguson told the interviewer.
"It's really been an inspirational place for activists from all over
the country."<br>
<br>
The protest spurred nonviolent civil disobedience around the region, with
hundreds arrested before the Clinton administration finally backed off
from logging that tract.<br>
There was tension about how far to take the protests: Some people held
fast to civil disobedience in the traditions of the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. and Gandhi.<br>
Others thought violence could be justified against an industrial society
doing plenty of violence against the Earth.<br>
<br>
"It was a constant debate, and people weren't just sitting in a
room, they were sitting in the middle of the road, so the argument was
based on the reality of what might be happening that day," said Tim
Lewis, an activist who produced the "Pickaxe" documentary.<br>
<br>
Those camped out included Kevin Tubbs, a Nebraska-reared son of a Vietnam
Marine veteran. Then 26, Tubbs already had made a name for himself as an
animal-rights activist with a passion for rescuing stray animals.<br>
<br>
At Warner Creek, Tubbs tied himself on top of a wooden tripod set in the
middle of a road. It was rigged so that the smallest bump from a logging
truck would dislodge the structure, and "bring me crashing to my
death," he told an interviewer in the documentary.<br>
<br>
The protest also drew Bill Rodgers, a soft-spoken, balding man who loved
to hike, explore caves and read books. He had a mystical streak, taking
the nickname "Avalon," from "The Mists of Avalon," a
novel about King Arthur told from the perspective of a druid
priestess.<br>
<br>
Others who joined the Warner Creek protest don't recall any special
bonding among Tubbs, Rodgers and Ferguson.<br>
<br>
But court documents and statements by attorneys allege that in the years
to come, the trio — sometimes working side by side — would help carry out
a wave of arson attacks on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front and
Animal Liberation Front.<br>
<br>
The first ELF attack took place a month after the Warner Creek protests,
a failed attempt to burn down a Willamette National Forest ranger
building. Two nights later another ranger station burned down.<br>
<br>
In the years that followed, the saboteurs hit 15 other targets with a mix
of stealth and bravado, sometimes spray-painting the ELF or ALF initials
at the scene. They used homemade bombs, sometimes consisting of 5-gallon
jugs filled with gasoline and detonated with electronic timers. But they
left scant evidence behind.<br>
<br>
To make headway, investigators needed somehow — some way — to penetrate
the underground.<br>
<br>
"It was very difficult. It was a very tight group. We knew that it
was going to be a long, slow process," said Buchanan, the retired
Eugene police captain.<br>
<br>
<b>Unexpected lead gives investigators "a red flag"<br>
</b> <br>
Around the time of the Chevrolet dealership fire, police and federal
investigators got an unexpected lead.<br>
<br>
Shortly after the arson, a woman reported a stolen vehicle and believed
that Ferguson had taken it, according to Buchanan. She then had a change
of heart and withdrew that report.<br>
<br>
A few days later, another woman showed up at the Eugene police station
and asked for information about the stolen-vehicle report and the fire at
the dealership, according to police and federal sources.<br>
<br>
Police were surprised by this query.<br>
<br>
Could Ferguson — and this truck — have been involved with the fires?<br>
<br>
"It was a tremendous red flag," Buchanan said. "Before
that, we had never head of Ferguson. He wasn't on our radar."<br>
<br>
Investigators located the truck. But a search didn't turn up evidence
that linked the fires to Ferguson, according to Buchanan.<br>
<br>
But Ferguson was still a suspect when federal investigators began looking
into the dealership fire again. By then, ELF and ALF attacks in the
Pacific Northwest had ebbed, but other actions were continuing
elsewhere.<br>
<br>
In Eugene, a federal grand jury summoned numerous witnesses, including
several of Ferguson's friends.<br>
<br>
By the summer of 2004, Ferguson would tell friends that "the
feds" were closing in on him, even following him as he drove through
town.<br>
<br>
"Most of the time he joked about everything, and it was hard to know
when to take him seriously," said a former housemate. "But the
one time he really seemed serious, he said that they [federal
authorities] were trying to get him for [the dealership] fire."<br>
Several defense attorneys say they've seen no evidence that Ferguson
participated in the dealership fires.<br>
<br>
Federal prosecutors decline to discuss Ferguson, though U.S. Attorney
Karin Immergut said in a news conference that inside information was of
"critical importance" in cracking the case.<br>
<br>
Ferguson did not say who put the federal officials on his tail, what
information persuaded him to cooperate or what kind of deal, if any, he
struck with prosecutors.<br>
But by September 2004, Ferguson was cooperating with investigators,
according to defense attorneys who have gained access to numerous FBI
affidavits.<br>
<br>
In some of those documents filed in court, Ferguson appears as
"CW-1" (Confidential Witness 1) or simply "CW"
(Confidential Witness), according to Weinerman, a defense attorney for an
alleged co-conspirator in some of the arsons. In indictment papers that
outline the crimes, Ferguson appears as a "person known to the Grand
Jury," according to a motion filed by another defense attorney.<br>
<br>
In these documents, Ferguson, as CW, talks about joining Tubbs on a 1998
road trip from Eugene to Olympia. There, they joined with Rodgers in an
arson attack on a federal wildlife-research facility. The group had an
unreliable vehicle, a van that kept breaking down. Eventually, it had to
be dropped off at a Federal Way repair shop, according to an FBI
affidavit.<br>
<br>
In late 2000, Ferguson claimed to have joined Tubbs and three other
people to scout out another target — an Oregon poplar farm, which would
eventually be set fire to on May 21, 2001, along with the UW Urban
Horticulture Center. And as an informant, he would later return to the
area to point out landmarks to an FBI agent.<br>
<br>
To bolster the case against other alleged cell members, Ferguson also
agreed to don a body recorder, and travel around the country coaxing at
least six of his alleged accomplices to talk about past exploits. Those
recordings included conversations with Tubbs reminiscing about the
Olympia attack, and Rodgers discussing his work on a how-to manual,
"Setting Fires with Electronic Timers."<br>
<br>
Ferguson's work made him a notable recruit in a broader FBI effort to
penetrate the ALF and ELF.<br>
<br>
<b>The feds begin to make arrests<br>
</b> <br>
The federal crackdown began early last December.<br>
<br>
Rodgers was among the first taken into custody. He was arrested at the
bookstore and community center that he had opened in Prescott, Ariz.<br>
<br>
"Never did I imagine that things would turn out like this. I have
been betrayed before and each time I was astonished, and saddened,"
Rodgers wrote from jail. "But this is the ultimate betrayal,
delivered straight into the hands of my enemies. On top of all that, I
can see that multiple parties are willing to blatantly lie and
exaggerate."<br>
<br>
He also wrote a will. Two weeks after his arrest, the 40-year-old Rodgers
pulled a plastic bag over his head and committed suicide. His girlfriend
received some 30 pages of letters, including a farewell note.<br>
<br>
"Certain human cultures have been waging war against the Earth for
millennia," Rodgers wrote. "I chose to fight on the side of
bears, mountain lions, skunks, bats, saguaros, cliff rose and all things
wild. I am just the most recent casualty in that war. But tonight I have
made a jail break — I am returning home, to the Earth, to the place of my
origins."<br>
<br>
Tubbs, who was arrested in Eugene where he worked at an adult bookstore,
made a different choice.<br>
<br>
Accused of involvement in at least nine attacks, he faces the possibility
of spending the rest of his life in prison. He has chosen to
cooperate.<br>
<br>
In a Jan. 31 letter, he appeared hopeful his assistance would earn him
release on bail so he could reclaim his job as an assistant retail
manager at an adult video and magazine store and share some time with his
family and six cats and two dogs.<br>
<br>
"I sincerely regret any involvement in the activities I am accused
of," Tubbs wrote U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Coffin. "I
was motivated only out of a desire for positive social change, but I have
long since realized events like those actually do more harm than good. To
prove this point, I am doing everything I can to help resolve this
complicated case as quickly and easily as possible."<br>
<br>
In a February court hearing, prosecutors portrayed Tubbs as a desperate
man willing to die for the cause and a flight risk. They persuaded Coffin
to deny the bail motion.<br>
<br>
<b>Ferguson has become a target for scorn<br>
</b> <br>
Ferguson, at least through early March, was still living in the Eugene
area. Though he's kept a low profile, he became a target of scorn in some
activist circles.<br>
<br>
"The reason why a community has been shaken to the core is this:
Jacob Ferguson," declared a posting on the Indymedia Portland Web
site.<br>
<br>
"In a community where there is distrust, even disgust for the
federal government and especially its law-enforcement operatives, Jake
pretended he was one of us. He was and is one of them."<br>
<br>
A former housemate was surprised to see him earlier this year driving one
of the ELF's despised symbols of industrial excess — a gray SUV. Ferguson
said it was a rental vehicle.<br>
<br>
Once this winter, Ferguson also ventured to an old Eugene hangout, the
Tiny Tavern.<br>
"I didn't know whether I wanted to hit him, or give him a hug,"
said Griffin, his former bandmate.<br>
<br>
Ferguson told Griffin about his difficult upbringing without his father,
who spent time in prison. Ferguson hoped his cooperation with the Justice
Department would spare his own son the same fate.<br>
<br>
Still, he feared he might have to serve as much as 10 years behind bars.
Throughout their meeting, Ferguson was full of tears, sorrow and
regret.<br>
<br>
"He said he had become a victim of his own crimes," Griffin
said.<br>
<br>
<i>Seattle Times researcher David Turim contributed to this report.<br>
Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or
<a href="mailto:hbernton@seattletimes.com">hbernton@seattletimes.com</a>
<br>
</i>Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company<br><br>
<br>
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