ecoterr bak

this is really a sub-cat of cointelpro, see also DHS and fusion ctr, police, pvt intel

neglected? see activist suppress and dapl

see ECO - ECON TERROR 2 3/18

capt ecoterror914 817

see bak format problems here

11/18

NBC News is reporting the Trump administration is ending a program that provides grants to groups fighting domestic terrorism. The Countering Violent Extremism grant program is run by the Department of Homeland Security and was established during the Obama administration. It supports organizations fighting hate groups, including white supremacist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and racist groups.

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/pipeline-protest-necessity-defense-tar-sands/

AN ACTIVIST IN Montana was sentenced on Tuesday in a case that has become both a touchstone for industry-friendly legislators pushing to increase penalties for pipeline protest and a measure of the U.S. legal system’s ability to recognize the emergency presented by climate change.

On October 11, 2016, while the Dakota Access pipeline protests were in full force, climate activists approached above-ground valve sites on five tar sands pipelines in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Washington state. After calling the pipeline companies to give warning, they turned the valve wheels in a coordinated attempt to stop the flow of tar sands oil.

Tuesday’s sentencing hearing tested a Montana court’s willingness to apply the severe penalties already available for use against pipeline protesters. For halting the flow of oil through Enbridge’s Express pipeline for several hours, Leonard Higgins, a 66-year-old retired information technology manager for the state of Oregon, faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine for charges of misdemeanor trespass and felony criminal mischief. Higgins was sentenced to three years’ probation and $3,755 in restitution to the pipeline company.

“I’m relieved and actually a bit bewildered. It’s unexpected to me. I came very much prepared and expecting to do some jail time at least,” Higgins told The Intercept. “This is a case where both in terms of the severity of the charges and the large amount of claimed damages, I think they were using it to chill the possibility that others might do similar protest.”

Enbridge had initially claimed more than $200,000 in losses, a figure later reduced to $25,630, including $16,000 worth of replacement chains to secure valves along the pipeline against future tampering.

“The courts and the juries are not hammering individuals in the way these corporations would like to see, so they attempt to use the restitution process to grossly inflate their damage numbers with hope that threatening the citizen with $200,000 might chill others from committing similar acts,” said Lauren Regan, Higgins’s attorney.

“Enbridge respects the court’s decision,” said company spokesperson Michael Barnes. “It is our intention to donate any court-ordered payment in this case to local area first responders. … We believe it’s important to support the people who every day focus on the safety and wellbeing of the community and the environment.”

Although the sentence is lenient in light of the possible penalties Higgins faced, it does not represent a full win for the activists. Higgins’s legal team had hoped Judge Daniel Boucher would allow them to argue that, given the severity of the climate threat, he had no choice but to act — a strategy known as a necessity defense. But Boucher said that since Higgins appeared to fear harm to his children and grandchildren, rather than an imminent threat to his own life, the defense could not apply. In his denial, Boucher wrote, “The energy policy of the United States is not on trial, nor will this court allow Higgins to attempt to put it on trial.”

Since a goal of the valve action was to set legal precedent for future climate protesters, Higgins’s legal team plans to appeal the denial, demanding a retrial. The move would not open the door to a more severe sentence. Judges assigned to valve turner cases in North Dakota and Washington also rejected the necessity defense, and the activists’ legal teams are also appealing.

The valve turners’ best chance lies in Minnesota, where a judge has made the unusual decision to allow the necessity defense to be used at trial. Emily Johnston and Annette Klapstein are facing felonies in the state for shutting down Enbridge Lines 4 and 67. Steve Liptay, who filmed their actions, and Ben Joldersma, who provided additional support, also face charges. The four activists have to prove that “the harm that would have resulted from obeying the law would have significantly exceeded the harm actually caused by breaking the law, there was no legal alternative to breaking the law, the defendant was in danger of imminent physical harm, and there was a direct causal connection between breaking the law and preventing the harm.” Enbridge is appealing the judge’s decision.

Higgins said that if he had any regret about his effort to disrupt the Montana pipeline, it would be that he failed to anticipate that those filming would face charges alongside those turning the valves. Reed Ingalls, a 23-year-old student at Evergreen College, who livestreamed Higgins’s action, still faces trespassing and criminal mischief charges. “I wish we had not been so naïve as to think the journalists and folks doing the livestreaming would be protected by the First Amendment and would not be arrested,” Higgins said. Sam Jessup, a 32-year-old carpenter from Vermont, recently received a suspended two-year sentence, to be served as probation, for livestreaming the valve action on the Keystone pipeline in North Dakota.

“The act itself was out of a sense of desperation that we don’t have time for incremental change,” Higgins told The Intercept. “It’s possible we already squandered the chance we had. We’re walking right along the edge of the cliff.”

WHILE THE VALVE turners have asked the justice system to recognize their actions as a rational response to a climate emergency, legislators, law enforcement, and oil and gas industry operatives have used the shutdowns as justification to frame environmental activists as terrorists.

The valve turners were recently mentioned in a letter sent by legislators to Jeff Sessions, asking if pipeline activists could be charged under terrorism laws.Meanwhile, the American Legislative Exchange Council cited the valve turners in urging states to pass the “Criminal Infrastructure Protection Act,” a new model bill that would create harsher penalties for attempts, even if unsuccessful, to inhibit the operation of infrastructure like pipelines. Laws similar to the model have been introduced in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, and Wyoming.

It’s a theme that surfaced in another valve turner’s case in North Dakota. Michael Foster, a 53-year-old mental health counselor and father of two from Seattle, was sentenced to one year imprisonment and two years of probation, for halting the flow of oil through the Keystone pipeline for eight hours. He had faced a maximum sentence of more than 26 years.

In his closing statement, prosecutor Jonathan Byers compared Foster to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who justified murdering three people and injuring 24 with a rambling 35,000-word manifesto. “He thought that the industrialization of the U.S. and of modern society was going to create a disaster, so, because of his belief in his cause, he decided to do some of these things. It actually resulted in people’s death,” Byers said.

Byers then moved into a bizarre reflection on Sharia, or Islamic law. “Will we allow people who have a belief in Sharia law to allow people to commit honor killings because they believe that it will save them — is that what our society is going to be that we’re going to redraw the line to allow killing of even your own children?” he asked. Sharia says nothing about honor killings and does not endorse murder. In the U.S., it’s commonly invoked to stoke fears of immigrants and Muslims.

...

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/11/14/18329693.php

2006 11/14

Eye on the Opposition: It's no secret that The Humane Society of the United States doesn't see eye-to-eye with some people and organizations over animal protection. These groups typically have a vested interest in some form of animal use—it could be trophy hunting or cockfighting or greyhound racing—and they instinctively view The HSUS as a threat to the status quo.

To protect their own interests, these animal-use groups routinely resort to smear campaigns and high-powered spin control to confuse the public about their practices. The disinformation can be deafening at times. For these reasons, and others, The HSUS has launched its Eye on the Opposition campaign to keep tabs on those who would do animals harm. We will publish regular columns under this banner with the hope of lifting the fog of disinformation generated by others. We plan to set the record straight and unmask those who abuse animals for profit or leisure.

Legal Concerns: ALEC Looks to Turn Animal Activists into Domestic Terrorists

November 20, 2004

By Michael Satchell

The events of September 11, 2001 have re-ordered the lives and values of many Americans. Tough new anti-terrorism measures have been implemented, and freedoms and civil liberties long taken for granted have begun to erode. In the name of homeland security, travel restrictions, personal searches, identity checks, surveillance cameras, and military patrols are now everyday facts of life.

This new climate of heightened security has also provided an opening to target domestic lawbreakers. In their zeal to look tough, conservatives have cited groups like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) to justify pushing state legislation against so-called "animal rights and eco-terrorists"—despite the fact that destruction of property, stealing private property, and threatening violence are already serious offenses.

The punitive new laws—already on the books in Oklahoma and California, and currently proposed in Hawaii, Missouri, New York, South Carolina, and Washington state—not only increase penalties for the aforementioned (or lesser) crimes, but also seek to have a chilling effect on all forms of social and political activism. Some of these broadly written laws could potentially define any non-violent, law-abiding animal or environmental activist as a "domestic terrorist."

What historically has been a legally protected form of dissent and protest could suddenly become an act of domestic terrorism—non-violent animal advocates lumped into the same category with legitimate targets like foreign hijackers and home-grown arsonists. The HSUS and our friends in law-abiding animal-protection and environmental groups are all potential criminals under new state statutes.

"We agree with the criticisms of those who resort to violence in the name of animal protection," says Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The HSUS. "But we don't want to allow political opponents of animal and environmental protection to leverage legitimate societal concerns about terrorism in order to institute indefensible restrictions on non-violent and long-permissible forms of dissent."

It's already too late in some states. Last April, for instance, Oklahoma enacted a new law against trespassing on a farm. Causing a disruption (whatever that means) or damaging property is now punishable by a felony jail term and a $10,000 fine. On January 1, California bumped up penalties for farm trespass from a citation and a $10 fine to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Similar measures came very close to passage in Illinois and Missouri, where the legislatures approved bans on photographing puppy mills. If not for conference committees, which stripped out the bans in the 11th hour, both bills would have become law.

The Man Behind the Curtain

So who or what are behind these new laws? The impetus for them comes from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a tax-exempt Washington-based organization that is financed to the tune of $5 million-plus annually by corporations. ALEC's main function is to bring together state lawmakers (2,400 of them are members, a number that reportedly represents a third of all state lawmakers) and corporate representatives in so-called "task forces" to draft "model" legislation on a raft of right-wing issues. These task forces cover such issues as health care, criminal justice, tax policy, education, economic development, and transportation.

But since 9/11, ALEC has also turned its attention to drafting laws aimed at "animal rights activists and terrorists." ALEC ominously calls its model legislation "the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act" (AETA). Once drafted, the legislation often finds a receptive audience among ALEC's "legislator members," who may be influenced by perks such as junkets to prime tourist destinations and Broadway theater tickets.

ALEC claims its model eco-terror act is justified because of the escalating violence by ALF, ELF, and similar groups. ALEC cites FBI statistics listing 600 criminal acts since 1996, with damages totaling close to $50 million. "The legislation specifically addresses actions that are designed to intimidate, coerce, invoke fear, or other forms of terror that are committed in the name of environmental or animal rights activism," ALEC argues.

That may be, but the proposed state laws based on the AETA model are written so broadly that such innocuous activities as fundraising, lobbying, photographing abuses, or even picketing and protesting could be treated as criminal acts. Consider this language, imported from ALEC's model legislation, contained in a Senate bill in Washington state:

" 'Animal rights or ecological terrorist organization' means any association…or combination of two or more persons with the primary or incidental purpose of supporting any politically motivated activity through intimidation, coercion, fear, or other means that is intended to obstruct, impede, or deter any person from participating in an activity involving animals, activity involving natural resources, animal facility, research facility…" (Emphasis added.)

Or these prohibitions in last year's House bill in Texas, which forbid: "Entering the facility to take photographs or a video recording with the intent to defame the facility or the facility's owner…" (Emphasis added.)

And "A person commits an offense if the person knowingly provides financial support, resources, or other assistance to an animal rights…organization for the purpose of assisting the organization in carrying out an act …" (Emphasis added.)

Broad and nebulous catch-all phrases like "other means," "obstruct, impede, or deter," "defame the facility or the facility's owner" and "provides financial support, resources or other assistance" would almost certainly violate constitutionally protected political activity and free speech.

Consider what such language could cover: It could cover nonviolent civil disobedience and other forms of activism, including demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, and fundraising. This legal overkill could make criminals out of bunny huggers. "Holding a bake sale to support tree sitters could be a terrorist offense," quips the Sierra Club's Andrew Becker.

The Chilling Effect

Threatening law-abiding activists with felony arrests and branding them with terrorist labels are ways of intimidating them from gathering information, demonstrating peacefully, committing acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, and other forms of constitutionally protected political dissent. To ratchet up the pressure, ALEC's animal and eco-terror law also allows plaintiffs to sue for triple damages, and calls for property forfeiture by defendants.

What's more, under the model laws, those found guilty would have their photograph and personal information posted on a statewide "terrorist registry" web site—as if they were convicted child molesters or other sex offenders. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, a hunting advocacy group of middling influence, has jumped on the anti-animal bandwagon and teamed with ALEC to help introduce the eco-terror legislation in several state capitals.

Animal-protection organizations, including The HSUS, have argued that these laws, particularly the measures passed in Oklahoma and California, are just thinly veiled attempts to prevent the investigation and documentation of abuses on factory farms and other commercial animal operations.

"The fact is, animal abuse often occurs on private land," says Pacelle. "There are times when documenting abuse on private lands is necessary for the prosecution of individuals committing acts of cruelty or for the exposure of systemic abuse that policy makers need to address. ALEC's model legislation is designed precisely to thwart those worthy aims."

When The HSUS investigates the myriad cruelties heaped upon animals in hog factories, egg production plants, slaughterhouses, puppy mills, canned hunts, fur farms and other animal enterprises, the activities are designed only to document conditions. "Investigating potential cruelty is a crucial function that we, and others, provide in order to allow an informed debate on how animals are treated in our society," Pacelle notes.

Tilting Right

Today's ALEC has swung far to the right of the organization founded in 1973 by conservative activist Paul Weyrich and a handful of state legislators, who were looking to oppose liberal groups on social issues like abortion and women's rights. In its joint critical analysis of the organization, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council call ALEC "an insidious…corrosive, secretive and highly influential power in state capitals across the nation."

In the 1980s, ALEC began tapping big business for support, and today some 300 large companies each pay up to $50,000, plus additional fees, each year to help draft favorable laws and influence state legislative agendas. As a tax-exempt matchmaker between legislators and corporate giants in the oil, insurance and airline industry (to name but a few), ALEC purports to be a bipartisan "good government" group operating in the public interest. In fact, its state legislative officers and ALEC's directors are overwhelmingly Republican, and represent the most conservative wing of the party.

What's more, ALEC brags on its web site that more than 100 legislative members "hold senior leadership positions in their state legislatures, while hundreds more hold important committee leadership positions." That's an important point given the nature of state legislatures: They are often made up of underpaid, part-time lawmakers, usually dealing with a confusing blizzard of bills in brief and often-frantic sessions.

ALEC's model bills can find a receptive audience in these chambers, particularly when the bills are pushed by senior leaders or committee chairs who have perhaps enjoyed a few of those previously mentioned perks. This arrangement survives in most states because of weak public-reporting requirements; lawmakers simply may not have to report their largesse.

ALEC's well-financed advocacy is proving to be remarkably effective for corporate America—and threatening to advocacy groups like The HSUS. In the 1999-2000 legislative cycle, the group introduced more than 3,100 pieces of legislation, and more than 450 new laws were enacted.

All this legislative activity under ALEC's banner raises an important point: How does a 501(c)(3) organization like ALEC deal with the lobbying restrictions placed on such non-profits? It's a question we couldn't answer by looking at the organization's Form 990, which it files with the Internal Revenue Service annually. We looked at five years' worth of 990s, from 1998 to 2002, and on every one of those forms, here's what ALEC reports for lobbying expenditures: zero.

"Legislators need to see through the smoke and mirrors of ALEC's efforts," concludes Pacelle. "Our nation's most important reforms—whether civil rights, women's rights, or environmental protections—have come through a blend of sound ideas and sensible and determined political activism. Such efforts need to be protected because our work as a society in halting the abuse of the weak and disempowered is hardly complete."

Journalist Michael Satchell is a former senior consultant for The HSUS.

http://www.hsus.org/about_us/about_hsus_pr...

fbi cointelpro 2

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/16/cointelpro_2_fbi_targets_black_identity

cointelpro "extremist" BLM report days before charlotte; six cop kill? events with no connection, so abstract term created

animal rights, veggie libel (tossed by ct in idaho and _ on 1st amend gds)

https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-october-16-2017/

trumpworld:

AN 1/17

...This isn’t the first time in recent months that GOP legislators have tried to push aggressively anti-free speech laws. In Washington State, Republican Senator Doug Ericksen has proposed a law that would create “a new crime of economic terrorism” which could allow for the arrest and prosecution of any protesters who “block transportation and commerce, cause property damage, threaten jobs and put public safety at risk.” Ericksen is likely well aware of the fact that “blocking commerce” succinctly describes pretty much every protest, ever. Republican Representative Kathy Lohmer of Stillwater, Minnesota, is floating a bill that further criminalizes and penalizes protesting on freeways. Lohmer’s legislation would increase fines from $1,000 to $3,000 and raise jail time from 90 days to a full year.

as predicted:

Trump-supporting Republican lawmaker is trying to legally define protests, like some of those erupting across the country against his candidate of choice, labeled a form of “terrorism.” In a statement issued Wednesday, Washington state Senator Doug Ericksen says he is drafting a bill that would allow for felony prosecution of protesters who “intentionally break the law...by obstructing economic activity.” Considering that almost all protest could be defined as getting in the way of business interests, Ericksen’s bill is an obvious attack on citizens’ First Amendment rights.

In an unvarnished look at the trickery we may see plenty of in Trump’s America, Ericksen says he will propose creating “a new crime of economic terrorism” which could be used against those whose protest activities “block transportation and commerce, cause property damage, threaten jobs and put public safety at risk.” Ericksen, who was Trump’s deputy campaign director in Washington state, said in the statement that he’s actually all for civil disobedience, even though he wants to make many kinds of protest—that is, constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly—felony offenses.

“I respect the right to protest, but when it endangers people’s lives and property, it goes too far,” Ericksen said. “Fear, intimidation and vandalism are not a legitimate form of political expression. Those who employ it must be called to account.”

Ericksen also threatened those who support protesters in their right to protest, stating, “We are not just going after the people who commit these acts of terrorism. We are going after the people who fund them. Wealthy donors should not feel safe in disrupting middle-class jobs.”

Since we’re on the subject of economic issues, it seems relevant to point out that an Associated Press investigation found during the first four months of 2013,Ericksen was “the biggest beneficiary of lobbyist expense accounts” of all Washington’s lawmakers. The AP report noted that lobbyists treated Ericksen to “free meals, drinks or golf...about every other day over the first four months of the year — and even more frequent[ly] if weekends are excluded.” Ericksen, who has been consistently poor on climate issues, had at the time just taken a leadership role in the state Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee. The investigation found that Ericksen accepted these gifts from lobbyists who overwhelmingly “represented energy and oil companies, such as BP.”

In a statement released earlier this year, Washington State Democrats communications director Jamal Raad said, "When big oil asks Doug Ericksen to jump, his only question is 'how high?'"

As Washington ACLU spokesperson Doug Honig noted to the Seattle Times, there are already laws in place that make it illegal to imperil people’s lives and property, so Ericksen’s bill is completely redundant. Honig also pointed out that the ambiguity of Ericksen’s “economic terrorism” could make protests like those in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline a crime. Speaking with Fox affiliate Q13 Honig noted Ericksen’s fundamentally un-American bill would have kept African Americans from protesting their treatment in the 1960s.

“Let’s keep in mind that civil rights protesters who sat down at lunch counters could be seen as ‘disrupting business’ and ‘obstructing economic activity,’ and their courageous actions were opposed by segregationists as trying to ‘coerce business and government,’” Honig said.

He added, “The statement throws out a lot of broad rhetoric, and we’ll need to see an actual bill. But we’re already concerned that some of its loose terms appear to be targeting civil disobedience as ‘terrorism.’ That’s the kind of excessive approach to peaceful protest that our country and state do not need."

Contact information for Doug Ericksen’s office is listed on his website, should you have any thoughts you’d like to express about his proposed legislation. His office phone number—always the best way to reach a legislator—is (360) 786-7682.

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-loving-gop-lawmaker-proposes-bill-define-protests-form-terrorism

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/18/us/domestic-terrorists/index.html

Joseph Mahmoud Dibee and Josephine Sunshine Overaker are thought to be among the last members of the eco-terror group known as "The Family," said to be affiliated with ELF, the Earth Liberation Front, or the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

They are suspected to be involved in "at least 25 domestic terrorism criminal actions totaling over $48 million in damages, including the largest eco-related arson in history, a $26 million arson at the Vail Ski Resort," the FBI said.

These alleged crimes occurred in Oregon, Washington, California, Colorado and Wyoming, and date back to 1996 according to the FBI.

ELF made no secret of its responsibility for the Vail fire, and on October 19, 1998, issued a statement saying: "Vail Inc. is already the largest ski operation in North America and now wants to expand even further. The 12 miles of roads and 885 acres of clearcuts will ruin the last best lynx habitat in the state. Putting profits ahead of Colorado's wildlife will not be tolerated."

Other environmentalists denounced the fires, calling ELF a fringe group whose actions did far more harm than good.

On January 19, 2006, a federal grand jury in Eugene, Oregon, indicted Overaker, Dibee and two others -- since arrested -- on multiple charges related to their alleged role in a domestic terrorism cell.

The FBI says Overaker is fluent in Spanish. Dibee may have fled to Syria.

The FBI has led a long-running, multiple-agency criminal investigation dubbed "Operation Backfire" to combat violent elements of the environmental and animal rights groups, which remains open though not active. The case will remain open until Overaker and Dibee are located, apprehended and prosecuted, the FBI said.

12/29/2016

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/46b80bbfb3b54f34a6af2d11a2bae954

SAN DIEGO (AP) — An animal rights activist who vandalized a fur store and journeyed around the country freeing thousands of minks from farms has pleaded guilty to a federal charge in San Diego.

The San Diego Union-Tribune says (http://bit.ly/2hOZani ) Nicole Kissane pleaded Tuesday to a charge of conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

Prosecutors are expected to recommend an 18-month sentence.

In her plea deal, the former Escondido woman acknowledged damaging the mink businesses. She also acknowledged vandalizing a San Diego fur store and the homes of the business owner and the owner's parents.

She's agreed to pay more than $420,000 in restitution.

A co-defendant, Joseph Buddenberg, was sentenced in May to two years in prison.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/12/hawaii-san-diego-most-wanted/6341641/

FBI hunting Hawaii for most-wanted domestic terrorist

AP 5:26 p.m. EDT March 12, 2014

AP Animal Rights Bombings

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The FBI said Wednesday agents are hunting in Hawaii for the nation's most wanted domestic terrorism suspect.

The FBI office in San Francisco said the agency received "credible intelligence" that Daniel Andreas San Diego might be on the state's Big Island. Agents are searching for him in the island's eastern district of Puna and in the small, eclectic town of Pahoa.

San Diego, 36, is suspected to be an animal rights extremist. He is charged with exploding pipe bombs in front of two San Francisco Bay Area companies with ties to a lab that conducted animal experiments.

San Diego is atop the FBI's list of most-wanted domestic terrorists, and the agency is offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

Kai Sorte, who manages an organic deli in Pahoa, said FBI agents had visited the small, counter-cultural town about 18 months ago in search of San Diego. Sorte said he was interviewed again Monday and said FBI agents believe San Diego is looking for "some sort of cause or movement" to join.

"This town is a melting pot of a lot of different cultures," Sorte said.

Sorte said the agents didn't say why they returned to Pahoa.

FBI spokesman Peter Lee declined to comment on the nature of the "credible intelligence" that compelled agents from San Francisco to travel to Hawaii in search of San Diego.

This is the second and most specific alert the FBI has issued for him since he disappeared in October 2003 in San Francisco while being tailed by FBI agents. In 2011 the FBI said it had "substantive and credible" information that San Diego might have been in western Massachusetts after it received a tip prompted by an airing of the case on the television show America's Most Wanted.

San Diego's image appeared on electronic billboards from California to New York, including above Times Square, for about a week earlier this month.

Late last year, the FBI called on the public's help in locating San Diego, who was raised in an upper-middle class suburb of Marin County north of San Francisco.

His father, Edmund San Diego, was the city manager of Belvedere, a wealthy Marin County enclave. Edmund San Diego didn't return a phone call Wednesday. He has declined to talk about his son in the past.

San Diego, who was under 24-hour surveillance, gave the FBI the slip on the afternoon of Oct. 6, 2003, in downtown San Francisco.

He is charged with setting off three bombs at the two companies in the wee hours. No one was injured, and minor damage was done to the buildings, including shattered windows.

Two pipe bomb explosions struck an hour apart at biotechnology company Chiron Corp. on Aug. 28, 2003, and investigators said the second bomb was set to injure first responders. A bomb strapped with nails exploded at cosmetic maker Shaklee Corp. on Sept. 26, 2003.

The search for San Diego has spanned the globe. FBI officials have said they've talked with authorities in Germany, the United Kingdom, Costa Rica, France, Spain, Denmark, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Argentina, the Philippines and Chile.

San Diego has ties to animal rights extremist groups and is a vegan who doesn't eat food containing animal products, according to the FBI.

He also has unusual tattoos, the FBI says, including a round image of burning hillsides on his chest with the words "It only takes a spark" written below. The sides of his abdomen and back have images of burning and collapsing buildings.

San Diego has worked as a computer network specialist and with the Linux operating system and is skilled at sailing.

as predicted:

Since we’re on the subject of economic issues, it seems relevant to point out that an Associated Press investigation found during the first four months of 2013, Ericksen was “the biggest beneficiary of lobbyist expense accounts” of all Washington’s lawmakers. The AP report noted that lobbyists treated Ericksen to “free meals, drinks or golf...about every other day over the first four months of the year — and even more frequent[ly] if weekends are excluded.” Ericksen, who has been consistently poor on climate issues, had at the time just taken a leadership role in the state Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee. The investigation found that Ericksen accepted these gifts from lobbyists who overwhelmingly “represented energy and oil companies, such as BP.”

In a statement released earlier this year, Washington State Democrats communications director Jamal Raad said, "When big oil asks Doug Ericksen to jump, his only question is 'how high?'"

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-loving-gop-lawmaker-proposes-bill-define-protests-form-terrorism

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Criminalising_civil_disobedience

The coining of the term eco-terrorism is credited by many to the Executive Director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Ron Arnold.

In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the word 'terrorism' has become a potent political weapon. For years Arnold has blurred the boundaries between what constitutes civil disobedience and elevated vandalism to equal terrorism. The conflation of civil disobedience with terrorism is a calculated strategy.

Legislation using the cover of cracking down on 'eco-terrorism' - such as that currently being promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council - is percolating its way through the legislatures of a number of U.S. states. While vandalism and criminal damage is already illegal, the attraction of such legislation is in defining "terrorism" so broadly as to ban civil disobedience.

One of the most potent tactics employed over the last twenty years in the environment movement has been through organising peaceful civil disobedience protests. Such protests often result in an issue gaining widespread media coverage prompting public discussion of important public issues and, in some cases, resulted in environmental victories.

Groups that have a high media profile also have the ability to successfully raise funds from appeals directly to millions of citizens. For the conservative movement, legislating against civil disobedience under the guise of cracking down on 'ecoterrorism' would dramatically reduce both the media profile and fundraising capacity of groups such as Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network and local grassroots groups.

What makes the possibility of such a legislative crackdown possible is the existence of groups - including Earth First! and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society - that have condoned or undertaken damage to property but have stated their opposition to violence against individuals. Vandalism has also been widely attributed to other more shadowy 'groups' such as the Earth Liberation Front andAnimal Liberation Front.

For PR advisers to industry, the ability to portray the existence of at least some real environmentalists that support damage to property has been a boon.

In 1991 Greenpeace International was campaigning against the use of chlorine in the pulp and paper industries due to its toxic pollution problems. This campaign caused the huge US chlorine producer, Clorox to have the Public Relations division of Ketchum Communications draft a crisis management plan based on the assumption that Greenpeace would target the household use of chlorine.

In one of many scenarios canvassed, Ketchum pondered what to do in response to a hypothetical newspaper column calling for a boycott of Clorox products and Greenpeace pickets in front of supermarkets in 10 major cities. One component of a suggested action plan was "Industry association advertising campaign: 'Stop Environmental Terrorism' calling on Greenpeace and the columnist to be more responsible and less irrational in their approach".

In June 2001, the Frontiers of Freedom sponsored an "Eco-Terror" Conference, called "Eco-Terrorism & Extremism: The Costs Imposed on Americans," addressed by republicans, right-wing activists and wise use leaders, who were determined to try and make environmentalists the domestic public enemy number one, although this would change with September 11th. Speakers included Malcolm Wallop, Orrin Hatch, Congressman George Nethercutt, Ron Arnold from the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Steven J. Milloy"the Junkman" and R. J. Smith from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. According to FoF: "the extreme environmental movement is endangering lives, harming the environment, killing jobs and economic opportunity, and costing taxpayers millions of dollars".

At the conference Wallop and Arnold singled out Rainforest Action Network, which was labelled "one of the biggest law-breakers." More important though was that Congressman George Nethercutt outlined plans for what was described as a "a full-out legal assault on so-called 'eco-terrorism', including a bill that would convey mandatory prison sentences for violence against environmental and life-sciences research".

More recently Marc Levin, a lawyer and president of the American Freedom Center seized upon a report by Public Interest Watchattacking Greenpeace. After reviewing a number of incidents of damage to property attributed to the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, Levin sought to smear Greenpeace with the ecoterrorism tag. "While these acts of ecoterror are clearly illegal, few people realize that the money used to commit many of these crimes may have been illegally laundered through tax-exempt organizations whose donors - individuals and nonprofit foundations unaware of the laundering - receive tax deductions," he wrote in the New Jersey Law Journal.

Levin flagged the move by the U.S. Department of Justice to sue Greenpeace for the April 2002 boarding of a cargo ship approaching Miami that was laden with timber from the Brazilian rainforests. Without skipping a beat, Levin conflated Greenpeace's peaceful protest with ecoterrorism, which, he argued, justified an IRS crackdown. "Prosecuting ecoterrorists has proved difficult; they have a "cell" structure and lack centralized leaderships or membership rosters. But this is precisely why it is critically important that the IRS does its part to immobilize ecoterror groups by investigating how moneys flow through tax-exempt organizations to affiliates," he wrote.

It is a theme echoed by Neil Hrab from the Competitive Enterprise Institute in an article published in the 2004 edition of Organization Trends, a publication of the conservative Capital Research Center. Hrab complained of groups undertaking direct action that "seldom are they threatened with loss of their nonprofit tax status unless an outside party undertakes a difficult and costly challenge". [1]

In Australia draft legislation defining charities sought to disqualify groups involved in civil disobedience from qualifying for tax deductibility. The Executive Director of the corporate funded think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, Mike Nahan, was enthusiastic about the proposed changes, acknowledging that the disqualifying purposes "will threaten the charity status of several organisations".

"For example Greenpeace, which regularly engages in trespass and other breaches of the law, would have its charity status threatened by a requirement to not break the law," he wrote. [2] After an outcry from community groups the proposal has been shelved.

Government's have also used their broad discretionary powers in issung travel documents as a way of punishing advocates of civil disobedience. In September 2005 the Australian Government revoked the six-month visitors visa of Scott Parkin, an environmental and peace activist from the Houston Global Awareness Collective. Parkin was arrested, six weeks after he arrived in the country, on "character grounds" and imprisoned pending deportation. [3] Government officials refused to explain to Parkin or his lawyers the basis for re-assessing his status.

Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown suspects Parkin was arrested because of his campaigning against the military contractorHalliburton.[4] Two weeks ago Parkin spoke at a protest outside the Sydney office of KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary. [5] A barrister representing Parkin, Julian Burnside, has indicated he will lodge an appeal against his re-classification with the Migration Review Tribunal. "If all Mr Parkin has done to be assessed a security risk is to peacefully protest his opinions, then we are in serious trouble," Burnside said. [6]

Other SourceWatch resources

Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act

eco-terrorism hoaxes

Stop Eco Violence

Intimidating democracy

Intimidating foundations

Intimidating public interest groups

Australia Revokes Scott Parkin's Visa

Vandalism of John Gay's house

External links

Copy of Kethcum's Leaked Draft Clorox Crisis Management Plan (4.6MB Pdf file) See page 9

Greenpeace USA Media Release on Copy of Kethcum's Leaked Draft Clorox Crisis Management Plan

M. Martin "Congressman Blasts Eco-Terror", United Press International, June 14, 2001.

Marc Levin, "Beyond Simple Protest", New Jersey Law Journal, November 3, 2003.

Neil Hrab, "'Direct action' The Tactics of radical activism: part 1: how environmental groups use violent tactics to advance their agenda, Organization Trends, February 2004.

Mike Nahan, "'Charities' that are really political lobbyists must be exposed", The Age, August 8, 2003.

Jonathan Birchall, "Activists' hands tied for 7 years", Financial Times, October 24, 2004.

Bill Berkowitz, "Chilling dissent: As the Bush Administration ratchets up domestic spying the FBI is collecting 'research' reports on 'direct action' environmental groups produced by right wing think tanks", Media Transparency, January 25, 2006.

Category: Activism

http://www.alternet.org/media/why-are-media-organizations-so-reluctant-call-dylann-roof-terrorist

So far, we know that Dylan Roof, a 21-year-old white man, is in custody in connection with the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, S.C., where nine people were killed. Images of Roof circulating on social media show him wearing a black jacket bearing the flags of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia, both known for their histories of state-sanctioned racism and terror against black majorities.

The Daily Beast reports that a high school classmate of Roof’s said he “made a lot of racist jokes.” Sylvia Johnson, cousin of the pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (who was one of the dead), says a survivor told her Roof said, "You rape our women and you’re taking over the country. You have to go."

For many black people, it is clear that Roof’s alleged actions are an act of terror, making him a “terror suspect,” not a “shooting suspect.” But so far most media outlets have referred to Roof as the latter.

Anthea Butler, associate professor of religion and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania wrote for the Washington Post, media outlets have already found ways to legitimize his alleged crimes, a courtesy that is seldom extended to suspects of color.

“[T]he go-to explanation for his actions will be mental illness,” she wrote. “He will be humanized and called sick, a victim of mistreatment or inadequate mental health resources. Activist Deray McKesson noted this morning that, while discussing Roof’s motivations, an MSNBC anchor said ‘we don’t know his mental condition.’ That is the power of whiteness in America.”

After the Boston Marathon bombings, experts were called on to qualify what had happened as terrorism. There was no discussion of whether the Tsarnaev brothers could have had psychological difficulties. It leaves us with the question of whether or not there is a disconnect between how black and white people view violence against black bodies. Vox embedded a tweet from Jelani Cobb, associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut, who said that the first anti-terrorism law in U.S. history was the Klan Control Act and that the Charleston shooting clearly fits the definition of terror.

It is also key to mention that Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church has a very long history of fighting racism. Denmark Vesey, an abolitionist who was formerly enslaved, helped to found Emanuel in the early 1880s. In that same church, he plotted a slave rebellion, in 1822, but some other enslaved black people leaked the plan to their plantation owners and Vesey was consequently hanged along with more than 30 others.

Just last year, local activists unveiled a life-sized statue of Vesey in Charleston to honor him. Several local bloggers and radio hosts criticized the project because they believed Vesey targeted innocent white people during his slave rebellion plot. Jack Hunter of the Charleston City Paper wrote at the time, “Erecting a statue to honor Vesey is admitting that terrorism is sometimes justified, depending on the cause. But for civilized people, terrorism should never be justified — and neither should Denmark Vesey.”

Yes, Hunter actually used the words “civilized people” to rationalize why Vesey’s actions weren’t justified. During slavery. Such thinking may inform how some in the white establishment may view (or excuse) violence against black bodies.

Shay Stewart-Bouley, executive director of Community Change, Inc., a Boston-based organization dedicated to anti-racism work, told AlterNet that it’s hard for white people to see acts of violence against black people as acts of terror because it’s not personal for them. She added that unless it happens to a black person they know personally, like a family member or friend, it is hard for them to see violence like the Charleston shootings as terror.

“It’s abstract [for white people] in part because we still live in a very segregated society,” said Stewart-Bouley, who has led workshops in anti-racism since 2002. “By and large, we don’t interact on deep levels, so we don’t see the humanity in each other. More specifically, white people don’t see the humanity in people of color.”

This is a harsh reality, given that nearly 90 percent of newsrooms in America are staffed by white reporters.

Breea Willingham, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh who worked as a news reporter for 10 years, shares Stewart-Bouley's views. She told AlterNet that newsroom editors are simply uncomfortable labeling people who look like them as terrorists.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/5/13/as_internal_docs_show_major_overreach

As Internal Docs Show Major Overreach, Why Is FBI Spying on Opponents of Keystone XL Pipeline?

A new report confirms for the first time that the FBI spied on activists in Texas who tried to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Documents from the FBI reveal it failed to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened its investigation, which was run from its Houston field office. The files document "substantial non-compliance" with Department of Justice rules. The Tar Sands Blockade mentioned in that report was one of the main groups targeted by the FBI. Agents in Houston office also told TransCanada they would share "pertinent intelligence regarding any threats" to the company in advance of protests. We are joined by Adam Federman, contributing editor to Earth Island Journal and co-author of the new investigation published by The Guardian, "Revealed: FBI violated its own rules while spying on Keystone XL opponents." In February, he also revealed how the FBI has recently pursued environmental activists in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington and Idaho for "little more than taking photographs of oil and gas industry installations."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A new report confirms for the first time that the FBI spied on activists in Texas who tried to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The report is based on FBI documents obtained by The Guardian and the Earth Island Journal. The documents also reveal that the FBI failed to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened its investigation, which was run from its Houston field office. The files document, quote, "substantial non-compliance" with Department of Justice rules. Much of the FBI’s surveillance took place between November of 2012 and June 2014.

AMY GOODMAN: The Tar Sands Blockade mentioned in the report was one of the main groups targeted by the FBI. Agents in Houston also told TransCanada they would share, quote, "pertinent intelligence regarding any threats" to the company in advance of protests.

For more, we are joined by Adam Federman, contributing editor to Earth Island Journal, co-author of this new investigation that was published by The Guardian. It’s headlined "Revealed: FBI Violated Its Own Rules While Spying on Keystone XL Opponents." In February, he also revealed how the FBI has recently pursued environmental activists in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington and Idaho for, quote, "little more than taking photographs of oil and gas industry installations."

Adam Federman, thank you so much for joining us from Burlington, Vermont. Talk about this most recent exposé. How do you know the FBI was spying on those who are opposed to the Keystone XL?

“ECOTERRORISM”?: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE

VILIFICATION OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS

AS TERRORISTS

REBECCA K. SMITH capt 9/14 as ecoterrorsmith

https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/17299-38-2smith

may 2005 tstimony inhofe

On May 18, 2005, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and

Public Works held a hearing entitled “Eco-terrorism Specifically Examining

the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.”175 The

Committee accepted statements from Senator James Inhofe; Senator David

Vitter; Senator James Jeffords; Senator Frank Lautenberg; Senator Barack

Obama; FBI Deputy Assistant Director John Lewis; Bureau of Alcohol

Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Deputy Assistant Director Carson

Carroll; New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner

Bradley Campbell; University of Iowa President David Skorton; and Center

for Consumer Freedom Director of Research David Martosko.176

a. Testimony of Senator James Inhofe

The first testimony at the hearing came from Senator James Inhofe, a

Republican from Oklahoma. Although Inhofe is the Chairman of the Senate

Committee on the Environment and Public Works,177 he has repeatedly

expressed disdain for environmentalists and environmental protection

efforts. Inhofe called the federal Environmental Protection Agency a

“Gestapo bureaucracy.”178 He was the only Senator to oppose the restoration

of the Florida Everglades.179 He has called the threat of catastrophic global

warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people.”180

Inhofe refers to mainstream environmentalists as “environmental extremists,”

“elitist organizations,” “alarmists,” and “fear-monger[ers].”181 He has stated

that nonprofit environmental organizations “demonstrate more interest in

hyping apocalyptic environmental scenarios to raise money for raw political

purposes” than in conserving the environment.182 The highest private sector

contributor to Senator Inhofe has been the oil and gas industry, which has

donated at least $999,023 to him since 1989.183

At the hearing, Senator Inhofe asserted that ELF and ALF are the

number one domestic terror threat in the United States “over the likes of

white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion groups.”184 Although he

compares ELF and ALF to Al Qaeda, Senator Inhofe admits that not a single

person has died as a result of direct action taken by ELF and ALF activists.185

b. Testimony from Other Senators

After Senator Inhofe’s statement, Senator James M. Jeffords stated

that he believed the police were already successfully countering th....

7 Ironically, the article made clear that Earth First!

activists did not believe that the tree spike which injured a logger had been

placed in the tree by a radical activist because no notice had been given to

the timber industry and the activists do not intend to hurt people.78 The

article quoted a timber industry representative stating, “I don’t think they’re

environmentalists, I think they’re terrorists.”79

Following the congressional hearing, the Congress enacted 18 U.S.C.

§ 1864(a)(2), which criminalized the use of a hazardous or injurious device on

federal land with the intent to obstruct or harass the harvesting of timber.80 A

hazardous or injurious device is defined as

[A] device, which when assembled or placed, is capable of causing bodily injury,

or damage to property, by the action of any person making contact with such

device subsequent to the assembly or placement. Such term includes guns

attached to trip wires or other triggering mechanisms, ammunition attached to

trip wires or other triggering mechanisms, or explosive devices attached to trip

wires or other triggering mechanisms, sharpened stakes, lines or wires, lines or

wires with hooks attached, nails places so that the sharpened ends are

positioned in an upright manner, or tree spiking devices including spikes, nails,

or other objects hammered, driven, fastened, or otherwise placed into or on any

timber, whether or not severed from the stump.81

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has also held that unmodified, highly

visible, plastic ropes tied between trees as part of a tree-sit protest qualify as

hazardous or injurious devices.82,,,,

When Judi Bari received her FBI files, they included the

Sheriff’s reports about the tree-spiking incident, and she learned that the

actual suspect for the spiking was a man named Bill Ervin.123 Ervin was a local

who openly admitted to spiking trees on his own property in an attempt to

dissuade Louisiana-Pacific from “accidentally” logging trees which were not

on their property.124

c. Death of David c

http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2014/08/21/daniel-mcgowan-environmental-activist-jailed-for-huffpost-blog-files-lawsuit-against-bureau-of-prisons/

Daniel McGowan may have been the first person thrown in solitary confinement for writing a HuffPost blog. Now he’ll be the first person to sue the Bureau of Prisons over it.

The environmental activist and former prisoner filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the prison system over an April 2013 incident in which U.S. Marshals threw him in a Brooklyn federal jail — ironically, for criticizing earlier violations of his free speech.

“The Bureau of Prisons does not like criticism and their reaction was unsurprisingly to try and crush someone who stepped out of line,” McGowan told HuffPost Tuesday in an email.

After a federal judge labeled him a terrorist in 2007 for arson committed with the Earth Liberation Front, McGowan spent years in some of the federal prison system’s most restrictive prisons, the communication management units (CMUs). The Bureau of Prisons denies it, but internal prison files strongly suggest McGowan was placed there because of his continued outspoken association with the environmental movement.

Serving the final months of his sentence in a Brooklyn halfway house in 2013, McGowan continued to speak out. He detailed how he was placed in the isolated special prisons in a HuffPost blog entry.

Three days after writing that post, the marshals threw him in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center. He was placed in solitary and told that he would be soon taken back to one of the CMUs. Inmates call them “Little Guantanamo.”

“I had just served over five years in prison and was acclimating to life on the outside only to be yanked back to prison,” McGowan said. “It was terrifying.”

After his lawyers interceded, McGowan was released the next day back to the halfway house. But in a separate, multi-plaintiff lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons for how it creates and runs CMUs, McGowan’s lawyers argued that the entire incident was a startling example of their larger claim that the special units are used to punish political speech. Even the federal government later admitted in that case that McGowan was jailed contrary to the established law that inmates may write articles under their own bylines.

Although a judge dismissed McGowan’s claims in the lawsuit against the CMUs in July 2013, he is now forging on against the Bureau of Prisons for what he says was a case of unconstitutional retaliation.

“McGowan was arrested for his criticism of the government, plain and simple,” his lawyer David Rankin told HuffPost in an email. “Communication management units are wrong now, they were wrong then, and trying to tell that to the world should not get you thrown back in prison.”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/07/23/blacklisted/

The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept.

The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.

Over the years, the Obama and Bush Administrations have fiercely resisted disclosing the criteria for placing names on the databases—though the guidelines are officially labeled as unclassified. In May, Attorney General Eric Holder even invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent watchlisting guidelines from being disclosed in litigation launched by an American who was on the no fly list. In an affidavit, Holder called them a “clear roadmap” to the government’s terrorist-tracking apparatus, adding: “The Watchlisting Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that, if disclosed … could cause significant harm to national security.”...

“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out.” Shamsi, who reviewed the document, added, “These criteria should never have been kept secret.”

The document’s definition of “terrorist” activity includes actions that fall far short of bombing or hijacking. In addition to expected crimes, such as assassination or hostage-taking, the guidelines also define destruction of government property and damaging computers used by financial institutions as activities meriting placement on a list. They also define as terrorism any act that is “dangerous” to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation.

This combination—a broad definition of what constitutes terrorism and a low threshold for designating someone a terrorist—opens the way to ensnaring innocent people in secret government dragnets. It can also be counterproductive. When resources are devoted to tracking people who are not genuine risks to national security, the actual threats get fewer resources—and might go unnoticed.

“If reasonable suspicion is the only standard you need to label somebody, then it’s a slippery slope we’re sliding down here, because then you can label anybody anything,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent with experience running high-profile terrorism investigations. “Because you appear on a telephone list of somebody doesn’t make you a terrorist. That’s the kind of information that gets put in there.”...

There are a number of loopholes for putting people onto the watchlists even if reasonable suspicion cannot be met.

One is clearly defined: The immediate family of suspected terrorists—their spouses, children, parents, or siblings—may be watchlisted without any suspicion that they themselves are engaged in terrorist activity. But another loophole is quite broad—”associates” who have a defined relationship with a suspected terrorist, but whose involvement in terrorist activity is not known. A third loophole is broader still—individuals with “a possible nexus” to terrorism, but for whom there is not enough “derogatory information” to meet the reasonable suspicion standard.

Americans and foreigners can be nominated for the watchlists if they are associated with a terrorist group, even if that group has not been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. They can also be treated as “representatives” of a terrorist group even if they have “neither membership in nor association with the organization.” The guidelines do helpfully note that certain associations, such as providing janitorial services or delivering packages, are not grounds for being watchlisted.

The nomination system appears to lack meaningful checks and balances. Although government officials have repeatedly said there is a rigorous process for making sure no one is unfairly placed in the databases, the guidelines acknowledge that all nominations of “known terrorists” are considered justified unless the National Counterterrorism Center has evidence to the contrary. In a recent court filing, the government disclosed that there were 468,749 KST nominations in 2013, of which only 4,915 were rejected–a rate of about one percent. The rulebook appears to invert the legal principle of due process, defining nominations as “presumptively valid.”

Keystone XL Activists Labeled Possible Eco-Terrorists in Internal TransCanada Documents

By Steve Horn

Documents recently obtained by Bold Nebraska show that TransCanada - owner of the hotly-contested Keystone XL (KXL) tar sands pipeline - has colluded with an FBI/DHS Fusion Center in Nebraska, labeling non-violent activists as possible candidates for "terrorism" charges and other serious criminal charges.

Further, the language in some of the documents is so vague that it could also ensnare journalists, researchers and academics, as well.

TransCanada also built a roster of names and photos of specific individuals involved in organizing against the pipeline, including 350.org's Rae Breaux, Rainforest Action Network's Scott Parkin and Tar Sands Blockade's Ron Seifert. Further, every activist ever arrested protesting the pipeline's southern half is listed by name with their respective photo shown, along with the date of arrest.

It's PSYOPs-gate and "fracktivists" as "an insurgency" all over again, but this time it's another central battleground that's in play: the northern half of KXL, a proposed border-crossing pipeline whose final fate lies in the hands of President Barack Obama.

The southern half of the pipeline was approved by the Obama Admin. via a March 2013 Executive Order. Together, the two pipeline halves would pump diluted bitumen ("dilbit") south from the Alberta tar sands toward Port Arthur, TX, where it will be refined and shipped to the global export market.

Activists across North America have put up a formidable fight against both halves of the pipeline, ranging from the summer 2011 Tar Sands Action to the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade. Apparently, TransCanada has followed the action closely, given the level of detail in the documents.

Another Piece of the Puzzle

Unhappy with the protest efforts that would ultimately hurt their bottom-line profits, TransCanada has already filed a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) against Tar Sands Blockade, which was eventually settled out of court in Jan. 2013. That was just one small piece of the repressive puzzle, though it sent a reverberating message to eco-activists: they're being watched.

In May 2013, Hot Springs School District in South Dakota held a mock bomb drill, with the mock "domestic terrorists" none other than anti-Keystone XL activists.

"The Hot Springs School District practiced a lockdown procedure after pretending to receive a letter from a group that wrote 'things dear to everyone will be destroyed unless continuation of the Keystone pipeline and uranium mining is stopped immediately," explained the Rapid City Journal. "As part of the drill, the district's 800 students locked classroom doors, pulled down window shades and remained quiet."

This latest revelation, then, is a continuation of the troubling trend profiled in investigative journalist Will Potter's book "Green Is the New Red." That is, eco-activists are increasingly being treated as domestic eco-terrorists both by corporations and by law enforcement.

TransCanada Docs: "Attacking Critical Infrastructure" = "Terrorism"

The documents demonstrate a clear fishing expedition by TransCanada. For example, TransCanada's PowerPoint presentation from Dec. 2012 on corporate security allege that Bold Nebraska had "suspicious vehicles/photography" outside of its Omaha office.

That same presentation also says TransCanada has received "aggressive/abusive email and voicemail," vaguely citing an incident in which someone said the words "blow up," with no additional context offered. It also states the Tar Sands Blockade is "well-funded," an ironic statement about a shoe-string operation coming from one of the richest and most powerful industries in human history.

Another portion of TransCanada's PowerPoint presentation discusses the various criminal and anti-terrorism statutes that could be deployed to deter grassroots efforts to stop KXL. The charge options TransCanada presented included criminal trespass, criminal conspiracy, and most prominently and alarmingly: federal and state anti-terrorism statutes.

Journalism Could be Terrorism/Criminal According to FBI/DHS Fusion Center Presentation

An April 2013 presentation given by John McDermott - a Crime Analyst at the Nebraska Information Analysis Center (NIAC), the name of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded Nebraska-based Fusion Center - details all of the various "suspicious activities" that could allegedly prove a "domestic terrorism" plot in-the-make.

NAIC says its mission is to "[c]ollect, evaluate, analyze, and disseminate information and intelligence data regarding criminal and terrorist activity to federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies, other Fusion Centers and to the public and private entities as appropriate."

Among the "observed behaviors and incidents reasonably indicative of preoperations planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity" is "photography, observation, or surveillance of facilities, buildings, or critical infrastructure and key resources." A slippery slope, to say the least, which could ensnare journalists and photo-journalists out in the field doing their First Amendment-protected work.

Another so-called "suspicious activity" that could easily ensnare journalists, researchers and academics: "Eliciting information beyond curiosity about a facility's or building's purpose, operations, or security."

Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic - producers of the documentary film "Triple Divide" and co-editors of the investigative journalism website Public Herald - are an important case in point. While in the Tioga State Forest (public land) filming a Seneca Resources fracking site in Troy, Pennsylvania, they were detained by a Seneca contractor and later labeled possible "eco-terrorists."

"In discussions between the Seneca Resources and Chief Caldwell, we were made out to be considered 'eco-terrorists' who attempted to trespass and potentially vandalize Seneca’s drill sites, even though the audio recording of this incident is clear that we identified ourselves as investigative journalists in conversation with the second truck driver," they explained in a post about the encounter, which can also be heard in their film.

"We were exercising a constitutional right as members of the free press to document and record events of interest to the public on public property when stripped of that right by contractors of Seneca."

Activists protesting against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) during its April 2013 meeting in Arizona were also labeled as possible "domestic terrorists" by the Arizona FBI/DHS Fusion Center, as detailed in a recent investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy.

"Not Just Empty Rhetoric"

It'd be easy to write off TransCanada and law enforcement's antics as absurd. Will Potter, in an article about the documents, warned against such a mentality.

"This isn’t empty rhetoric," he wrote. "In Texas, a terrorism investigation entrapped activists for using similar civil disobedience tactics. And as I reported recently for VICE, Oregon considered legislation to criminalize tree sits. TransCanada has been using similar tactics in [Canada] as well."

And this latest incident is merely the icing on the cake of the recent explosive findings by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian about the National Security Agency's (NSA) spying on the communications records of every U.S. citizen.

"Many terrorism investigations (and a great many convictions) are politically contrived to suit the ends of corporations, offering a stark reminder of how the expansion of executive power -- whether in the context of dragnet NSA surveillance, or the FBI treating civil disobedience as terrorism -- poses a threat to democracy," Shahid Buttar, Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee told DeSmogBlog.

http://www.nationofchange.org/print/38605

rod coronado broke parole by facebk friending

After filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Richmond, Virginia, Police Department for police training documents, Mo Karn received much more than expected in return: homeland security and crowd control guides that show how the police target protests.

The police filed for an emergency court order yesterday to prohibit Karn from publicizing any of the documents, which should never have been released. The cops’ reasoning? “Defendant Mo Karn is a known and admitted anarchist.”

The documents, however, have already been published online. And buried in the training guides are insights into three trends in law enforcement that have been occurring not just in Virginia, but nationally: the demonization of protest, the militarization of police, and turning local cops into “terrorism” officials.

The Demonization of Protest

The Richmond Police Department’s Emergency Operations Plan

includes a section on “civil disturbances.” While this sounds innocuous, “civil disturbances” are defined so broadly as to include what the police call “dissident gatherings.”

“The City of Richmond is a target rich environment” for antiwar protesters, the document says. And it warns that police and homeland security have reason to be increasingly concerned:

“Current training and intelligence reveals that protestors are becoming more proficient in the methods of assembly.”

Militarization of Local Police

Such a depiction of “assembly” (a First Amendment right) as a “disturbance” and a threat is all the more troubling when put in the context of the other police department guides. Richmond’s Crowd Management Operating Manual is for the police unit assigned to large protests (no experience required). Among the tools that the crowd management team are issued include riot shields, chemical agents, cut tools, helmets, body armor, cameras, video cameras, batons, gas masks, and a “mass arrest kit.”

Deputizing Local Cops as Counter-terrorism Officials

This militarization of local police is accompanied by another trend in law enforcement since September 11th: deputizing local cops to becoming “homeland security” and counter-terrorism officials. According to the Homeland Security Criminal Intelligence Unit Operating Manual, “The Richmond Police Department is under contract with the FBI to provide assistance through staffing, intelligence and equipment.” And one member of the homeland security unit is assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The result? Documents like the Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment. The 2009 document was created by the Virginia Fusion Center, of which the Richmond Police Department is part. Fusion centers are ostensibly designed to gather terrorism intelligence from multiple police agencies, and make us safer. In practice, they routinely label activists as “terrorists.” Among the “terrorist threats” identified in Virginia were animal rights activists, environmental activists, and anarchists.

According to the threat assessment, “The Virginia Federation of Anarchists has held two conferences in Richmond in November 2007 and January 2008? and “Anarchist protesters at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. spilled over into Prince William County.”

Karn, meanwhile, wears her scarlet circle ‘A’ with pride, and has no problem being labeled an anarchist. The FOIA was submitted by the Wingnut Collective, a Richmond anarchist group, as part of their police accountability project.

In his court motion warning that Karn is an “anarchist,” Richmond’s Deputy Assistant Attorney Brian Telfair doesn’t allege the possibility of any violence or property destruction. Instead, he cites a blog post by Karn about acquiring government information through legal requests. The title? “FOIA Rocks!”

will p

A U.S. Army training manual that instructs troops how to recognize terrorist organizations includes environmental groups like Earth First!, and lists the Animal Liberation Front alongside al-Qaeda.

The declassified manual was created by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, which says “This handbook is designed to specifically provide trainers, leaders and soldiers a ‘hip pocket’ reference to identify all the known logos used by insurgents, terrorists, paramilitary and other militant groups worldwide.”

Among the listings are a page on “Environmental Terrorists,” with images of Earth First! t-shirts and patches, and “animal liberation” t-shirts that have been sold by national non-profits since the 1990s.

Other terrorism threats identified in the United States include the Weather Underground, which dissolved in the 1970s.

[img]

The 60+ page guide does include information on groups which, unlike Earth First!, have actually harmed human beings. However, this training guide offers no information on the types of threats these groups pose, and in doing so presents non-violent activists as violent threats. For example, one page on terrorism groups in the United Kingdom lists the Animal Liberation Front side-by-side with Al Qaeda.

As Ali Abunimah notes at ElectronicIntifida.net notes, the guide also conflates insurgent groups with entire communities:

on page 31 of the army guide itself, a simple Palestinian flag appears next to the name “Abu Nidal Organization (Sunni).”

The group, notorious in the 1970s, is designated as “inactive” by the US Department of Homeland Security-funded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland…

In any case, even if the Palestinian flag were indeed the logo of any specific organization, the guide provides no warning or caveat that the Palestinian flag by itself should not be “recognized” as the symbol of a “terrorist, insurgent or militant” group given its global recognition as the flag of a country.

What’s especially troubling about a guide like this is that it is created “to assist units in identifying groups by their logos found in videos, magazines, newspapers, graffiti and other types of media.” In other words, it’s meant to be a cipher for decoding First Amendment activity that might be created by “terrorists.”

This has real-world consequences, as groups like Earth First! are putting their bodies on the line through tree sits, road blockades, and non-violent civil disobedience to stop environmental destruction. The Marcellus Shale campaign against fracking is just one example. Teaching military and law enforcement that these activists are on par with al-Qaeda, and that anyone who wears this logo is part of that threat, could have dangerous consequences. will p

CMD identified nine states that have been inspired by ALEC’s “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” to crack down on videographers documenting abuses on factory farms. These so-called “ag-gag” bills erode First Amendment rights, and threaten the ability of journalists and investigators to pursue food safety and animal welfare investigations.

o date, 49 major American corporations have dumped ALEC, including some of the largest firms in the world.

Read the full report here.

Trevor Aaronson is author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism (Ig Publishing, January 2013). He is also co-director of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. mostly anti-muslim? cf alternet

Bill Moyers: Outrageous Bill Known As “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” Seeks to Silence Big-Ag Whistleblowers (VIDEO)

July 13, 2013 |

Muckrakers and activists have been working to expose the brutality of industrialized meat production since Upton Sinclair’s writing of The Jungle in 1906. But an ALEC [2]model bill known as “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” would make it a crime to film at animal facilities — such as factory farms or slaughterhouses — with the intent to “defame the facility or its owner.” So-called “ag-gag” laws that appear inspired by the ALEC model have been passed in several states. This report, produced by Okapi Productions, LLC [3] and the Schumann Media Center, Inc. looks at the effect of these laws on both our food supply and our freedom of speech.

See more stories tagged with:

bill moyers [4],

alec [5]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/bill-moyers-outrageous-bill-known-animal-and-ecological-terrorism-act-seeks-silence

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/bill-moyers-0

[2] http://billmoyers.com/segment/united-states-of-alec/

[3] http://www.okapiproductions.com/

[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/bill-moyers

[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/alec

[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/22/sherwin-smith-tennessee-terrorism_n_3480930.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

A Tennessee state official reportedly told residents who were concerned about dirty drinking water that complaining about water quality could be considered "an act of terrorism."

The controversial comment was made by Sherwin Smith, the deputy director of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's (TDEC) Division Of Water Resources, during a May 29 meeting organized by Tennessee state Rep. Sheila Butt (R-Columbia).

"You need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have basis," Smith said, according to audio obtained by Statewide Organizing For Community eMpowerment (SOCM), a Knoxville-based civic action group. "Because federally, if there's no water quality issues, that can be considered, under Homeland Security, an act of terrorism."

The comments came during a discussion over poor water quality in Tennessee's Maury County, where residents have said people have gotten sick from drinking the water.

...

A U.S. Army training manual that instructs troops how to recognize terrorist organizations includes environmental groups like Earth First!, and lists the Animal Liberation Front alongside al-Qaeda.

Other terrorism threats identified in the United States include the Weather Underground, which dissolved in the 1970s.

As Ali Abunimah notes at ElectronicIntifida.net notes, the guide also conflates insurgent groups with entire communities:

on page 31 of the army guide itself, a simple Palestinian flag appears next to the name “Abu Nidal Organization (Sunni).”

Unless you’ve been holed up in a tree-sit somewhere, you’re likely intimately familiar with the NSA’s mammoth Prism internet dragnet ops. Well now, The Guardian‘s Earth Insight blogger, Nafeez Ahmed,presents this epic connect-the-dots game detailing how paranoid the feds are about how climate change and its attendant calamities could disrupt the national political equilibrium — paranoia that could easily drive them to use their sweet spy gadgets to keep a watchful eye on green groups.

The Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations in coming years. The revelations on the NSA’s global surveillance programmes are just the latest indication that as business as usual creates instability at home and abroad, and as disillusionment with the status quo escalates, Western publics are being increasingly viewed as potential enemies that must be policed by the state.

This is so not what we meant when we said these issues were urgent, people!

Ahmed points to piles of documents that suggest that federal agencies are growing ever-more nervous about the havoc climate change might wreak on national security, while at the same time also growing ever-more suspicious of citizens who are working to stop environmental destruction. We already kind of knew this: Activists from Tim DeChristopher to the Keystone XL blockaders have been locked up, smeared as terrorists, and even barred from participating in activism. But Ahmed makes a pretty convincing case that this may well be the tip of the iceberg.

FBI documents confirmed “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector” designed to produce intelligence on behalf of “the corporate security community.” A [Partnership for Civil Justice Fund] spokesperson remarked that the documents show “federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

In particular, domestic surveillance has systematically targeted peaceful environment activists including anti-fracking activists across the US, such as the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, Rising Tide North America, the People’s Oil & Gas Collaborative, and Greenpeace.

Sound a little implausible? Well it’s not to 350.org, Greenpeace USA, and CREDO Action, all of which have joined theStopWatchingUs coalition in protesting the NSA’s indiscriminate collection of Facebook protest selfies and G-chats.

To add ecological insult to creepy surveillance injury, that massive churning NSA dragnet “spy center” south of Salt Lake City where the government plans to store all this information? The one that will require a colossal and constant stream of 65 megawatts of electricity? It will be mostly coal-powered, natch.

http://grist.org/politics/the-feds-get-seriously-creepy-about-climate-change/

DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a year-long investigation: "Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”

The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details how state/regional "fusion center" personnel monitored the Occupy Wall Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012. Personnel engaged in this activity at fusion centers include employees of municipal, county and federal counter terrorism/homeland security entities. Such entities include local police departments, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (including U.S. DHS components such as the Transportation Security Administration).

The report also examines how fusion centers and other counter terrorism entities that have emerged since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have worked to benefit numerous corporations engaged in public-private intelligence sharing partnerships.

While the report examines many instances of fusion center monitoring of Occupy Wall Street activists nationwide, the bulk of the report details how counter terrorism personnel engaged in the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC, commonly known as the "Arizona fusion center") monitored and otherwise surveilled citizens active in Occupy Phoenix, and how this surveillance benefited a number of corporations and banks that were subjects of Occupy Phoenix protest activity.

While small glimpses into the governmental monitoring of the Occupy Wall Street movement have emerged in the past, there has not been any reporting-- until now-- that details the breadth and depth of the degree to which the nation's post-September 11, 2001 counter terrorism apparatus has been applied to politically engaged citizens exercising their Constitutionally-protected First Amendment rights.

The report reveals for the first time:

How law enforcement agencies active in the Arizona fusion center dispatched an undercover officer to infiltrate activist groups organizing both protests of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the launch of Occupy Phoenix-- and how the work of this undercover officer benefited ALEC and the private corporations that were the subjects of these demonstrations.

How fusion centers, funded in large part by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, expended countless hours and tax dollars in the monitoring of Occupy Wall Street and other activist groups.

How the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has financed social media "data mining" programs at local law enforcement agencies engaged in fusion centers.

How counter terrorism government employees applied facial recognition technology, drawing from a state database of driver's license photos, to photographs found on Facebook in an effort to profile citizens believed to be associated with activist groups.

How corporations have become part of the homeland security “information sharing environment” with law enforcement/intelligence agencies through various public-private intelligence sharing partnerships. The report examines multiple instances in which the counter terrorism/homeland security apparatus was used to gather intelligence relating to activists for the benefit of corporate interests that were the subject of protests.

How private groups and individuals, such as Charles Koch, Chase Koch (Charles' son and a Koch Industries executive), Koch Industries, and the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council have hired off-duty police officers-- sometimes still armed and in police uniforms -- to perform the private security functions of keeping undesirables (reporters and activists) at bay.

How counter terrorism personnel monitored the protest activities of citizens opposed to the indefinite detention language contained in National Defense Authorization Act of 2012.

How the FBI applied "Operation Tripwire," an initiative originally intended to apprehend domestic terrorists through the use of private sector informants, in their monitoring of Occupy Wall Street groups. [Note: this issue was reported on exclusively by DBA/CMD in December, 2012.]

The report is authored by Beau Hodai, DBA Press publisher and Center for Media and Democracy contributor.

-..

These Cincinnati and New Orleans conferences were the only two ALEC events to be protested prior to the 2011 Scottsdale SNPS. The only instance of any criminal act perpetrated by an “anarchist”-- or by any other individual-- also happened to be the only arrest of any kind associated with either of these two protests-- and, as records show, this arrest (for simple vandalism and resisting arrest) was a far cry from the claims of “violent tactics” reported by Dowhan to her AZDPS superiors at ACTIC on November 17. Nevertheless, records show that these, and related, claims largely laid the foundation for the massive PPD presence (including the 58 off-duty officers employed by ALEC/Kierland and the presence of the “mobile field force”/TRU) set out for Arizona ALEC protestors during the 2011 SNPS.

alec goes after whistleblowers:

AlterNet [1] / By Jim Hightower [2]

Why It's Literally Sickening to Ban Whistleblowers from Exposing Cruelty at Factory Farms

April 24, 2013 |

In most state legislatures today, "off the wall" has become the political center, and bizarre bills are no longer unusual.

Still, it seems strange that legislators in so many states — including Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and Vermont — have simultaneously been pushing "ag-gag" bills that are not merely outrageous, but downright un-American. Each is intended to quash free speech by banning journalists, whistleblowers, workers and other citizens from exposing illegal, abusive or unethical treatment of animals that are incarcerated in the factory feeding operations of huge corporations.

Our nation's founders mounted a revolution to establish our free-press and free-speech rights, enshrining them in the First Amendment to ensure the free exchange of ideas — even when the Powers That Be didn't like the message that such freedoms produce. In fact, the Founders knew from hard experience that the protection of those freedoms was especially essential when the Powers That Be have something they're eager to hide from the citizenry.

Yet here comes a mess of so-called "conservatives" attempting to use state government to outlaw messengers who shine a light on corporate wrongdoing — turning those who expose crimes into criminals. Even kookier, these repressive laws declare that truth-tellers who so much as annoy or embarrass the corporate owner of the animal factory are guilty of "an act of terrorism."

Oddly, each of these state proposals is practically identical, even including much of the same wording. That's because, unbeknownst to the public and other legislators, the bills don't originate from the state lawmakers who introduce them. Instead, they come from a Washington-based corporate front group named ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council.

This infamous "bill mill" periodically convenes its corporate funders to write model bills that serve their special interests. Then ALEC farms out bills to its trusted cadre of state lawmakers across the country, who introduce them as their own, not mentioning the corporate powers behind them.

The secretive ALEC network produced the model ag-gag bill in 2002 and began shipping it from state to state under the ominous tile, "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act."

The freedom-busting terrorists in this fight are not those who reveal the abuse, but the soulless factory-farm profiteers in the corporate suites and the cynical lawmakers who serve them.

Actually, factory farms are not farms at all. They are corporate-run concentration camps for pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys and other food animals.

Held in corporate confinement, these creatures of nature are denied any contact with their natural world, instead being crammed by the thousands into concrete-and-metal buildings, where they are locked in torturously tiny cages for the duration of their so-called "life" — which is nasty, brutish and short. All this merely so food giants like Tyson Foods, Smithfield and Borden can grab fatter and quicker profits. Their abusive industrial system is so disgusting that America's consumers would gag at the sight of it.

That's why they're desperate to keep you from knowing what goes on inside. Nonetheless, word has been getting out, as animal rights advocates, consumer groups, reporters, unions and others have exposed some of the realities of animal confinement to the public, including showing wretch-inducing photos and videos. Rather than cleaning up their act, however, the industrial food powers have simply doubled down on disgusting by getting industry-funded state legislators to go after anyone who reveals their ugly secrets.

Their attack on whistleblowers will gag you almost as badly as viewing the gross animal abuse. But, really, who do they think they're fooling? If they have to pass a law that says, "Don't look here," people will naturally wonder what they're hiding — and will demand to see it and change it. Six states have passed ag-gag laws, and six more are presently moving toward passage. To see what your legislature is doing — and to join the fight to stop factory farming everywhere — go to humanesociety.org.

See more stories tagged with:

factory farm [3],

ag gag [4]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/food/why-its-literally-sickening-ban-whistleblowers-exposing-cruelty-factory-farms

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jim-hightower-0

[3] http://www.alternet.org/tags/factory-farm

[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/ag-gag

[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

http://grist.org/news/ag-gag-bill-chokes-in-tennessee/ and CA

effects of solitary http://act.alternet.org/go/33250?t=5&akid=10422.1076705.-w0HYy

Recently an ag-gag bill died in California, while bills in Arkansas and Tennessee inched closer to approval. No matter, according to Potter and Stepanian — activists still won. In mobilizing to address a common enemy, activists have forged unlikely but powerful alliances....

t appears ag-gag bills can’t even hoof it in farm country: Tennessee joins a roster of states who are strangling ag-gag bills before they can reach the killing floor.

Tennessee lawmakers had narrowly approved a bill that would have required anybody who filmed animal abuses to turn over the footage to law enforcement within 48 hours or risk being fined. That would have prevented undercover animal activists from documenting systematic animal abuse by agricultural workers, helping factory farms get away with cruelty.

But Gov. Bill Haslam (R) called BS on the bill and said that he plans to veto it. From a statement issued by the governor on Monday:

First, the Attorney General says the law is constitutionally suspect. Second, it appears to repeal parts of Tennessee’s Shield Law [which protects journalism] without saying so. If that is the case, it should say so. Third, there are concerns from some district attorneys that the act actually makes it more difficult to prosecute animal cruelty cases, which would be an unintended consequence.

For these reasons, I am vetoing HB1191/SB1248, and I respectfully encourage the General Assembly to reconsider this issue.

Ag-gag bills have been spreading through the U.S. faster than mystery disease at a Chinese swine farm. Some have become law, but others are being withdrawn, defeated, or vetoed. Grist’s Susie Cagle produced this interactive map last month to provide an overview.

Last Wednesday, a California state lawmaker withdrew AB 343, the nation's fourteenth proposed Ag-Gag bill in response to overwhelming public disapproval. While representatives in California, New York, and Minnesota repealed the bills shortly after introducing them, Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Vermont are still considering them. The nation's first Ag-Gag laws were passed in Kansas, Montana, and Missouri in 1990-1, aimed at criminalizing photographers and videographers with intent to defame the facility. In all, seven states have enacted Ag-Gag laws, six have pending laws, and three have withdrawn.

One reason behind the emerging focus on farm-reporting at the state-level is the introduction of the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act," a federal terrorism law drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of corporate representatives and an increasing number of state representatives (ALEC). The corporations work with ALEC to draft "model legislation" which are introduced in states across the country. As journalist and author, Will Potter, puts it, ALEC's bill is a "'wish list' of legislative language from which state lawmakers can pick and choose to satisfy their constituents." The 12 Ag-Gag bills introduced in 2012 and 2013 (all but Kansas and Montana) are based on the ALEC model, whose supporters include Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, and associations that represent pork, dairy, cattle, poultry producers and farmers of corn and soybeans.

HUMANE SOCIETY INVESTIGATION: An investigation by the Humane Society of the United States uncovers abuse of downed dairy cows, cows too sick or too injured to stand, at a California slaughterhouse. What’s more, the meat is being served to children through the National School Lunch Program.

AARON MATÉ: That undercover investigation by the Humane Society resulted in the largest meat recall in U.S. history. In the last two years, activists have also caught on camera employees of a Tyson Foods supplier in Wyoming flinging piglets into the air, workers at Bettencourt Dairies in Idaho shocking cows, and the searing of beaks off of young chicks at Sparboe Farms in Iowa. In the case of Tyson and Bettencourt, the employees were charged with cruelty to animals. In the case of Sparboe Farms, the company lost one of its biggest customers: the fast food giant McDonald’s.

AMY GOODMAN: But the videos have also sparked a reaction in the oppose direction: criminalizing those who blow the whistle. A front-page article in The New York Times this weekend noted that a dozen or so state legislatures have introduced bills that target people who covertly expose farm animal abuse. These so-called "ag-gag" bills, as they’re known, make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms or apply for a job at one without disclosing affiliations with animal rights groups. They also require activists to hand over undercover videos immediately, preventing them from publicizing findings and sparking public outcry or documenting trends.

ANDREW STEPANIAN: Well, I was convicted of using a facility in interstate or foreign commerce for the purposes of causing more than $10,000 worth of damage to Huntingdon Life Sciences, which was a biotech firm that was doing testing on animals. They had a facility in New Jersey, three in the U.K. and a satellite office in Tokyo. What they alleged my personal involvement was, was that I organized demonstrations against the Bank of New York and Deloitte & Touche, both of which had financial involvement with Huntingdon Life Sciences. Both companies severed their financial relationships with Huntingdon Life Sciences. And I was unapologetic about being involved with those campaigns. In one instance, I was stopped by local police. They took my ID. And I was completely transparent about being involved with this demonstration. The local police didn’t find a reason to cite me with an infraction, and they let me go. But 18 months pass. The FBI finds a reason to say that I was guilty of conspiracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about why you were protesting Huntingdon.

ANDREW STEPANIAN: We were protesting Huntingdon Life Sciences initially because there were five undercover investigations, the first by a woman by the name of Michelle Rokke, who was wearing a hidden camera, that worked inside Huntingdon Life Sciences, depicting some of the worst cruelty to animals that was shown to date at that time. And—

...

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Andy Stepanian, animal rights activist, imprisoned at a high-security CMU, Communications Management Unit, in Marion, Illinois. He’s co-founder of The Sparrow Project. Do you think you would have been treated this way if you hadn’t released undercover video of animal abuse?

ANDREW STEPANIAN: Well, to clarify, that that undercover footage that was released is what inspired me to get involved myself, so I wasn’t the one that released it. I saw it, and it motivated me to get involved with the SHAC campaign. So, I don’t think they attributed that footage to me. I think they understood who released that footage. So I don’t think—

AMY GOODMAN: And was that person charged?

ANDREW STEPANIAN: That person had some legal consequences, but most of it was taken care of, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: So now you’re out. What effect has your imprisonment had on you?

ANDREW STEPANIAN: Mostly psychological. I mean, I have—I repeatedly have nightmares. I sleep not well. But it’s not nightmares of violence. It??s more just repeating situations that I was in, whether it be solitary confinement or, you know, this kind of urge to go home, that kind of thing, just revisiting moments in prison. So I don???t know if that would qualify as what people would normally consider post-traumatic stress disorder, because I’m not remembering, say, a stabbing or something that happened in prison. I’m remembering moments that I think were more emotionally upsetting for me.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what happened in Southern California at a slaughterhouse that McDonald’s used as a supplier and how animal rights activism led to them severing ties with this company?

ANDREW STEPANIAN: There was a group called Compassion Over Killing that sent an undercover investigator into, I believe it was called Central Valley Meats. It was a meat supplier for major fast food chains. And when that undercover investigator was there over the course of a few months, it showed systemic problems of egregious animal abuse. And while this egregious animal abuse was happening, there was actually members of the USDA or other auditing, you know, agents there, witnessing it happening but not reporting it.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at an Associated Press piece, and it says, "The suspensions occurred after an animal welfare group’s covert video showed cows that appeared to be sick or lame being beaten, kicked, shot and shocked in an attempt to get them to walk to slaughter. ... The video appears to show workers bungling the slaughter of cows struggling to walk and even stand. Clips show workers kicking and shocking cows to get them to stand and walk to slaughter."

ANDREW STEPANIAN: These are all examples of systemic problems that are happening not just at Central Valley Meats, but are happening all across the country. And I think factory farm industries and the lobbyists that represent them understand that. And these things happen in order to maximize their profits. So, as these lobbyists are defending their profits, and they hire middle agencies like the American Legislative Exchange Council, they start petting bills like these ag-gag bills, that Will will be able to describe in great detail, that will target undercover investigators. They’ll target photographers, videographers, that expose cruelty like this, and try to prevent it from seeing the light of day. In some cases, one of the laws—I believe it’s in Florida—will actually go as far as saying that a journalist that redistributes or syndicates this footage is subject to criminal charges, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: And the fact that if you work at one of these companies, you have to reveal that you’re with an animal rights group, on penalty of being imprisoned, of being convicted, being indicted?

ANDREW STEPANIAN: Yeah, they are trying to go one step further to try and stop these people from even getting in there to obtain this footage, by trying to have all employees disclose. And in some cases, some of the employees that have been caught doing this, there have been—even predating these ag-gag laws, there have been instances where they've tried to get them on false ID or breaches of terms and agreements with the company itself.

AMY GOODMAN: What does "ag-gag" mean?

ANDREW STEPANIAN: I mean, ag-gag is a term that came up—it’s kind of like a trending tag right now—referring to agricultural gag laws. And what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to silence activists. They’re trying to gag them. And these laws clearly exist for the purpose of silencing and gagging what is First Amendment-protected speech and journalism that is showing systemic cruelty in order to try and make the world a better place for animals.

AMY GOODMAN: Andy, you are co-founder of The Sparrow Project. What is this?

ANDREW STEPANIAN: Well, Sparrow Project was kind conceived from my jail cell when I was in prison. I didn’t always have people on the phone to talk to or, you know, people to commingle with. But I often had pretty wonderful experiences with the birds that would kind of dance between the razor wire outside my cell. And they were symbols of freedom for me. And so, when I got out, through, you know, building relationships with penpals, I decided that I was going to create a kind of DIY or boutique PR agency that would represent activists and journalists, hopefully around the world. And I??ve kind of gotten off to a slow start, but I’m kind of happy with where I am now in life, because I’m trying to bring that inspiration that I saw in those sparrows and find the small things that inspire others and make the world a better place.

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/4/9/former_animal_rights_prisoner_on_ag_gag_laws_secretive_prison_units_detention_of_daniel_mcgowan

Daniel McGowan Released After Lawyers Confirm He Was Jailed For HuffPost Blog

Posted: 04/05/2013 1:02 pm EDT | Updated: 04/05/2013 5:25 pm EDT

UPDATE: 5:25 p.m. -- Lawyers for environmental activist Daniel McGowan said in a statement Friday afternoon that he had been returned to his halfway house in Brooklyn. They added that they had confirmed McGowan was jailed by federal marshals on Thursday for his Huffington Post blog post -- on the basis of a prison regulation that was declared unconstitutional by a judge in 2007.

Their statement read:

Daniel McGowan has been released from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where he was taken into custody yesterday and is back at the halfway house where he has been residing since his release from prison in December. Yesterday, Daniel was given an "incident report" indicating that his Huffington Post blog post, “Court Documents Prove I Was Sent to Communication Management Units (CMU) for My Political Speech," violated a BOP regulation prohibiting inmates from "publishing under a byline." The BOP regulation in question was declared unconstitutional by a federal court in 2007, and eliminated by the BOP in 2010. After we brought this to the BOP's attention, the incident report was expunged.

The Bureau of Prisons did not immediately return a request for comment.

The earlier story ...

NEW YORK -- The jailing of environmental activist Daniel McGowan is under review, a Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) official said Friday morning.

McGowan, who pleaded guilty to arson linked to the Earth Liberation Front in 2006, was serving out the final months of his seven-year sentence in a Brooklyn halfway house when he was jailed by federal marshals Thursday morning, allegedly for writing a commentary on The Huffington Post critical of a harshly restricted federal prison unit in which he had spent time.

Tracy Rivers, a residential reentry manager for the BOP in New York, told HuffPost Friday morning, "We are reviewing this case to determine if the actions that were taken were appropriate."

Rivers declined to say more about why McGowan was moved to the Metropolitan Detention Center, citing privacy issues. But she noted that a determination would be made in McGowan's case by the end of Friday.

In general, Rivers said, prisoners can be punished for violating a BOP rule that prohibits giving interviews to the news media without official approval. But that rule says nothing about prisoners writing blog posts.

McGowan's wife, Jenny Synan, told HuffPost that neither he, his lawyers nor a BOP official she talked to about the case had heard of a regulation prohibiting prisoners from writing blog posts.

In a statement Thursday, McGowan's lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights said, "If this is indeed a case of retaliation for writing an article about the BOP retaliating against his free speech while he was in prison, it is more than ironic, it is an outrage."

UPDATE: 1:25 p.m. -- Daniel McGowan may soon leave jail. His attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Rachel Meeropol, told HuffPost Friday afternoon, "We have been told by the BOP that he will be sent back to the halfway house today."

NC Legislators Sneak in "Ag Gag" Bill as Butterball Employee Pleads Guilty to Animal Cruelty

by Rebekah Wilce [1] — April 10, 2013 - 7:17am

Topics: Agriculture [2], Animal Rights [3], Politics [4]

Projects: ALEC Exposed [5], Food Rights Network [6]

Share/Save Share this [7]

A three-week investigation at a Butterball turkey farm in North Carolina by an animal welfare activist with a hidden camera documented workers beating birds with metal bars [8], stomping and kicking them, and throwing them violently into metal cages by their necks (video below). Mercy for Animals, the non-profit organization responsible for the investigation, turned the footage over to prosecutors in December 2011, and the police raided the facility. Five workers were charged with criminal animal cruelty, and a top-level Department of Agriculture official was convicted for obstruction of justice in February 2012.

How did North Carolina state Senators Brent Jackson, Wesley Meredith, and Jim Davis respond to the scandal? On April 2, 2013, the same day that the fifth Butterball employee pled guilty, they introduced a bill called the "Commerce Protection Act [9]." It didn't mention animal agriculture, so it might have flown underneath the radar. But as independent journalist Will Potter pointed out [10], the bill is yet another "ag gag" bill [11], with similar language and provisions to at least ten others moving across the country in 2013.

Specifically, the bill would ban photography at a place of employment, make it a crime for anyone to make false statements on a job application (such as when an animal welfare activist applies for a job at an agribusiness operation for the purposes of an investigation), and make it mandatory to turn any recording over to authorities within 24 hours. Many of the investigations targeted take weeks to document a pattern of abuse, including the North Carolina Butterball investigation -- these investigations would be made illegal.

(Source: Mercy for Animals)

As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported [12], "ag gag" bills have passed in Iowa, Utah, and Missouri; the first similar bill was introduced in Florida in 2011. Since then, similar bills have been introduced in a handful of states each year since. The larger number of bills introduced just in the first several months of 2013 prompted Grist to ask if 2013 will be "the year of ag-gag bills [13]."

In the last few weeks, the mainstream media have taken note. Two days after CMD's coverage traced the bills back to their "ideological ancestor" -- an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) bill called the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act [14]" -- the Associated Press took up the story. The AP article quoted ALEC spokesman Bill Meierling: "At the end of the day it's about personal property rights or the individual right to privacy," he said. "You wouldn't want me coming into your home with a hidden camera." On April 7, ALEC and ag-gag were featured in a rare spot on the front page [15] of the New York Times.

The investigations undertaken over the years by citizen journalists and animal welfare advocates have helped to uncover inhumane farming practices and serious food safety violations. Banning these investigations will likely generate even more serious scandals.

For more information on each of the "ag gag" bills introduced since 2011 -- and their historical predecessors in ALEC and elsewhere -- please see CMD's SourceWatch resource here [11].

by RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

Published: April 6, 2013

On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets into the air. And at one of the country’s largest egg suppliers, a video shows hens caged alongside rotting bird corpses, while workers burn and snap off the beaks of young chicks.

Enlarge This Image

The Humane Society of the United States

A worker in Tennessee striking a horse.

Enlarge This Image

The Humane Society of the United States

A worker wrapping a horse’s leg after it was chemically burned.

Enlarge This Image

The Humane Society of the United States

A worker kicking a pig at a Wyoming farm.

Each video — all shot in the last two years by undercover animal rights activists — drew a swift response: Federal prosecutors in Tennessee charged the horse trainer and other workers, who have pleaded guilty, with violating the Horse Protection Act. Local authorities in Wyoming charged nine farm employees with cruelty to animals. And the egg supplier, which operates in Iowa and other states, lost one of its biggest customers, McDonald’s, which said the video played a part in its decision.

But a dozen or so state legislatures have had a different reaction: They proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups. They have also drafted measures to require such videos to be given to the authorities almost immediately, which activists say would thwart any meaningful undercover investigation of large factory farms.

Critics call them "Ag-Gag” bills.

Some of the legislation appears inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business advocacy group with hundreds of state representatives from farm states as members. The group creates model bills, drafted by lobbyists and lawmakers, that in the past have included such things as “stand your ground” gun laws and tighter voter identification rules.

One of the group’s model bills, “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act,” prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to “defame the facility or its owner.” Violators would be placed on a “terrorist registry.”

Officials from the group did not respond to a request for comment.

Animal rights activists say they have not seen legislation that would require them to register as terrorists, but they say other measures — including laws passed last year in Iowa, Utah and Missouri — make it nearly impossible to produce similar undercover exposés. Some groups say that they have curtailed activism in those states.

“It definitely has had a chilling effect on our ability to conduct undercover investigations,” said Vandhana Bala, general counsel for Mercy for Animals, which has shot many videos, including the egg-farm investigation in 2011. (McDonald’s said that video showed “disturbing and completely unacceptable” behavior, but that none of the online clips were from the Iowa farm that supplied its eggs. Ms. Bala, though, said that some video showing bird carcasses in cages did come from that facility.)

The American Farm Bureau Federation, which lobbies for the agricultural and meat industries, criticized the mistreatment seen on some videos. But the group cautions that some methods represent best practices endorsed by animal-care experts.

The videos may seem troubling to someone unfamiliar with farming, said Kelli Ludlum, the group’s director of Congressional relations, but they can be like seeing open-heart surgery for the first time.

“They could be performing a perfect procedure, but you would consider it abhorrent that they were cutting a person open,” she said.

In coming weeks, Indiana and Tennessee are expected to vote on similar measures, while states from California to Pennsylvania continue to debate them.

Opponents have scored some recent victories, as a handful of bills have died, including those in New Mexico and New Hampshire. In Wyoming, the legislation stalled after loud opposition from animal rights advocates, including Bob Barker, former host of “The Price is Right.”

In Indiana, an expansive bill became one of the most controversial of the state legislative session, drawing heated opposition from labor groups and the state press association, which said the measure violated the First Amendment.

After numerous constitutional objections, the bill was redrafted and will be unveiled Monday, said Greg Steuerwald, a Republican state representative and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

The new bill would require job applicants to disclose material information or face criminal penalties, a provision that opponents say would prevent undercover operatives from obtaining employment. And employees who do something beyond the scope of their jobs could be charged with criminal trespass.

An employee who took a video on a livestock farm with his phone and gave it to someone else would ???probably” run afoul of the proposed law, Mr. Steuerwald said. The bill will apply not just to farms, but to all employers, he added.

Nancy J. Guyott, the president of the Indiana chapter of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said she feared that the legislation would punish whistle-blowers.

Nationally, animal rights advocates fear that they will lose a valuable tool that fills the void of what they say is weak or nonexistent regulation.

Livestock companies say that their businesses have suffered financially from unfair videos that are less about protecting animals than persuading consumers to stop eating meat.

Don Lehe, a Republican state representative from a rural district in Indiana, said online videos can cast farmers in a false light and give them little opportunity to correct the record.

“That property owner is essentially guilty before they had the chance to address the issue,” Mr. Lehe said.

As for whistle-blowers, advocates for the meat industry say that they are protected from prosecution by provisions in some bills that give them 24 to 48 hours to turn over videos to legal authorities.

“If an abuse has occurred and they have evidence of it, why are they holding on to it?” said Dale Moore, executive director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

But animal rights groups say investigations take months to complete.

Undercover workers cannot document a pattern of abuse, gather enough evidence to force a government investigation and determine whether managers condone the abuse within one to two days, said Matt Dominguez, who works on farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States.

"Instead of working to prevent future abuses, the factory farms want to silence them,” he said. “What they really want is for the whistle to be blown on the whistle-blower.”

The Humane Society was responsible for a number of undercover investigations, including the videos of the Wyoming pig farm and the Tennessee walking horses.

Video shot in 2011 showed workers dripping caustic chemicals onto the horses’ ankles and clasping metal chains onto the injured tissue. This illegal and excruciating technique, known as ???soring,” forces the horse to thrust its front legs forward after every painful step to exaggerate the distinctive high-stepping gait favored by breeders. The video also showed a worker hitting a horse in the head with a large piece of wood.

The Humane Society first voluntarily turned over the video to law enforcement. By the time the video was publicly disclosed, federal prosecutors had filed charges. A week later, they announced guilty pleas from the horse trainer and other workers.

Prosecutors later credited the Humane Society with prompting the federal investigation and establishing “evidence instrumental to the case.”

That aid to prosecutors shows the importance of lengthy undercover investigations that would be prevented by laws requiring video to be turned over within one or two days, Mr. Dominguez said.

?????At the first sign of animal cruelty, we’d have to pull our investigator out, and we wouldn’t be able to build a case that leads to charges.???

A version of this article appeared in print on April 7, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Videos Show Cruelty on Farm, And Taping Becomes the Crime.

exposés. But, problem solved: Big Ag's lawyers and lobbyists have simply coughed up a nasty legalistic hairball called the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act." Yes, it's an "Ag-Gag" bill that criminalizes use of cameras to expose the horrors inside CAFOs and prosecutes participants as terrorists.

You'd think such a repressive act would gag a legislature, but Iowa, Missouri, and Utah have already passed it, and at least 10 other states are considering it. To keep up and fight back, go to www.organicconsumers.org.

"Shocking: Reporting Factory Farm Abuses to be Considered "Act of Terrorism" If New Laws Pass," www.alternet.org, January 24, 2013.

hightower

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)

Home > Shocking: Reporting Factory Farm Abuses to be Considered "Act of Terrorism" If New Laws Pass

AlterNet [1] / By Katherine Paul [2], Ronnie Cummins [3]

Shocking: Reporting Factory Farm Abuses to be Considered "Act of Terrorism" If New Laws Pass

January 24, 2013

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org [4].

How do you keep consumers in the dark about the horrors of factory farms? By making it an ??act of terrorism” for anyone to investigate animal cruelty, food safety or environmental violations on the corporate-controlled farms that produce the bulk of our meat, eggs and dairy products.

And who better to write the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act [5], designed to protect Big Ag and Big Energy, than the lawyers on the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force at the corporate-funded and infamous American Legislative Exchange Council [6] (ALEC).

New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska are the latest states to introduce Ag-Gag laws aimed at preventing employees, journalists or activists from exposing illegal or unethical practices on factory farms. Lawmakers [7] in 10 other states introduced similar bills in 2011-2012. The laws passed in three of those states: Missouri, Iowa and Utah. But consumer and animal-welfare activists prevented the laws from passing in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York and Tennessee.

In all, six states now have Ag-Gag laws, including North Dakota, Montana and Kansas, all of which passed the laws in 1990-1991, before the term “Ag-Gag” was coined.

Ag-Gag laws passed 20 years ago were focused more on deterring people from destroying property, or from either stealing animals or setting them free. Today’s ALEC-inspired bills take direct aim at anyone who tries to expose horrific acts of animal cruelty, dangerous animal-handling practices that might lead to food safety issues, or blatant disregard for environmental laws designed to protect waterways from animal waste runoff. In the past, most of those exposes have resulted from undercover investigations of exactly the type Big Ag wants to make illegal.

Wyoming’s HB 0126 [8] is the perfect example of a direct link between an undercover investigation of a factory farm and the introduction of an Ag-Gag law. The bill was introduced mere weeks after nine factory workers at Wheatland, WY-based Wyoming Premium Farms, a supplier to Tyson Foods, were charged with animal cruelty following an undercover investigation [9] by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). HSUS activists videotaped workers kicking live piglets, swinging them by their hind legs and beating and kicking mother pigs. Charges were filed in late December. In January, State Rep. Sue Wallis and Senator Ogden Driskill introduced Wyoming’s Ag-Gag bill which would make it a criminal act to carry out investigations such as the one that exposed the cruelty at Wyoming Premium Farms.

Wallis and Driskill both have ties to Big Ag. Wallis was the subject of a conflict-of-interest complaint filed in 2010 by animal welfare groups. The groups accused her of improper and fraudulent abuse of her position as a legislator after she introduced a bill allowing the Wyoming Livestock Board to send stray horses to slaughter [10]. At the time she introduced the bill, Wallis also was planning to develop a family-owned horse slaughter plant in the state. Both Wallis and Driskill are members of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association. Driskill has accepted political contributions [11] from the livestock industry and Exxon Mobil, a member of ALEC.

Most of the Ag-Gag laws introduced since 2011 borrow the premise, if not the exact language, from model legislation designed by ALEC. ALEC’s sole purpose is to write model legislation that protects corporate profits. Industry then pushes state legislators to adapt the bills for their states and push them through. The idea behind the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act [5] is to make it illegal to “enter an animal or research facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other or other means with the intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its owner.”

In other words, these laws turn journalists and the investigators of crimes into criminals.

Many of the legislators involved in ramming through state Ag-Gag bills have ties to ALEC [12], including Missouri??s Rep. Casey Guernsey. Guernsey’s top donor in 2010 was Smithfield Foods, itself a target of undercover investigations that exposed widespread abuse of pigs. Of the 60 Iowa lawmakers [13]??who voted for Iowa's Ag-Gag laws, at least 14 of them, or 23%, are members of ALEC

ALEC’s interest in large-scale factory farm operations, or in industry-speak, Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), can be traced to one of its staunchest members, Koch Industries. Koch Industries once owned the Koch Beef Company, one of the largest cattle feeders in the U.S. When neighbors of one of the company’s huge cattle-feeding operations opposed a planned expansion, claiming it would pose health concerns, Koch persuaded local legislators to rule in its favor. ALEC subsequently wrote the “Right to Farm Act [6],” a bill to bar lawsuits by citizens claiming that neighboring farms, including industrial farms, are fouling their air and water.

Ag-Gag bills a threat to animals, public health and the environment

Under U.S. laws, farm animals don???t get the same protection as other animals, such as dogs and cats. Anti-free speech Ag-Gag bills only serve to leave farm animals even more vulnerable to the routine pain and suffering on factory farms. The three federal statutes that address animal welfare, including the U.S. Animal Welfare Act, do not apply to animals raised for food. The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act regulates animals raised for food, but applies exclusively to slaughterhouses, where animals may spend only a short time before they are killed. That leaves the states to regulate the often-barbarous treatment of animals raised for food.

But as we’ve seen with the Ag-Gag bills, state laws often are written by big corporations. Nowhere is that more obvious than in states where cruel methods of treating animals are exempted from state laws on the basis of their being classified as “customary.” Who decides [14] if a certain practice is “customary” even if most thinking people would consider that practice cruel? Corporations that own and operate CAFOs in that state.

Apart from the obvious ethical concerns, Ag-Gag laws also threaten public health and the environment, and undermine workers’ rights and free speech laws. Undercover investigations at factory farms have exposed the mishandling of meat, eggs and milk in ways that could potentially lead to health risks including mad cow disease, salmonella, e-coli and others. One investigation [15] in Chino, Calif., revealed widespread mistreatment of “downed” cows ??? cows that are too sick or injured to walk. The facility is the second-largest supplier of beef to USDA's Commodity Procurement Branch, which distributes the beef to the National School Lunch Program.

Ag-Gag bills also keep employees and others from blowing the whistle on environmental violations. Huge amounts of waste are generated by the billions of cows, pigs and chickens on factory farms. Much of that waste, full of antibiotics, growth promoters and synthetic hormones, finds its way into our waterways and municipal water supplies. State and federal laws require CAFOs to minimize their environmental damage, but the laws are often not enforced. One of the ways to expose violations is through undercover investigations.

And then there’s the matter of free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union has been an outspoken opponent of Ag-Gag bills. In a letter [16] opposing the proposed Ag-Gag law in New Hampshire, the executive director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union wrote that the proposed law “has serious implications for two fundamental rights protected by the U.S. and New Hampshire constitutions: the right to freedom of expression and the right against self-incrimination.”

There’s still time to stop Ag-Gag laws in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska

The majority of Americans see Ag-Gag laws for what they are: just another attack on consumers’ right to know. According to a poll [17] conducted last year by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 71% of Americans oppose the laws. When consumers learn that 99% of the animals raised for food are raised in factory farms, they generally agree that lawmakers should focus on strengthening animal cruelty laws, not prosecuting the whistleblowers.

It was public outrage that killed proposed bills in seven states last year. Here are the three latest bills to be introduced, and links to petitions telling lawmakers in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska to reject the proposed laws:

New Hampshire: HB110 [8]

Primary sponsor: Bob Haefner (R) ; Co-sponsors: Majority Leader Steve Shurtleff (D), Rep. Tara Sad (D), Senator Sharon Carson (R), and Bob Odell (R)

This is a 7-line bill written to look as if its main concern is the protection of animals. However the bill would require whistleblowers to report animal abuse and turn over videotapes, photographs and documents within 24 hours or face prosecution – a clear attempt to intimidate and deter people from conducting undercover investigations. Lawmakers know that in order for anyone to prove a pattern of abuse in factory farms, they must document repeated instances of cruelty. A video or photograph of only one instance will be dismissed as a one-time anomaly, which will get the agribusiness company off the hook.

Sign the petition [18] to stop New Hampshire's Ag-Gag bill.

Wyoming: HB0126 [19]

Co-sponsors: Rep. Sue Wallis (R), Sen. Ogden Driskill (R)

Introduced within weeks after nine workers at a Wyoming factory farm were charged with abuse [9]. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sue Wallis, is planning to build horse slaughterhouses in Wyoming and other states. If this bill had been law in 2012, it would have prevented activists from exposing horrific acts of cruelty at Wheatland, WY-based Wyoming Premium Farms, a supplier to Tyson Foods.

Sign the petition [20] to stop Wyoming's??Ag-Gag bill.

Nebraska: LB 204http://openstates.org/ne/bills/103/LB204/ [21]

Introduced by Sen. Tyson Larson (R), Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh (R), and Sen. Ken Schilz (R)

The bill would make it a Class IV felony for any person to obtain employment at an animal facility with the broadly defined "intent to disrupt the normal operations," It would require animal abuse reports to be filed within 12 hours. Co-sponsor Sen. Launtenbaugh has advocated in the past for horse slaughtering.

Sign the petition [22] to stop Nebraska’s Ag-Gag bill.

See more stories tagged with:

farming [23],

agriculture [24],

cafo [25],

animal cruelty [26],

ag gag law [27],

ag gag [28],

food safety [29]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/environment/shocking-reporting-factory-farm-abuses-be-considered-act-terrorism-if-new-laws-pass

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/katherine-paul

[3] http://www.alternet.org/authors/ronnie-cummins

[4] http://globalpossibilities.org/

[5] http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/wp-content/Images/alec_animal_ecological_terrorism_bill.pdf

[6] http://alecexposed.org/wiki/Environment,_Energy,_and_Agriculture

[7] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ag-Gag_laws

[8] http://openstates.org/nh/bills/2013/HB110/

[9] http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2012/12/Wyoming_Premium_charges_122412.html

[10] http://www.examiner.com/article/rep-sue-wallis-r-recluse-plans-horse-slaughter-facility-despite-clear-conflicts-of-interest

[11] http://influenceexplorer.com/politician/driskillogden/994abb24b0d04df783778707f7a8a6ac

[12] http://www.thisdishisvegetarian.com/2012/07/behind-Ag-Gag-laws.html

[13] http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/Ag-Gag-american-legislative-exchange-council/5947/

[14] http://yulr.org/natural-law-the-law-and-factory-farming-in-the-united-states/#_edn1

[15] http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2012/11/hallmark-meat-company-settlement-111612.html

[16] http://nhclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Testimony_HB_110_1_15_2013.pdf

[17] http://www.aspca.org/Pressroom/press-releases/021712

[18] http://www.organicconsumers.org/ocaactions.cfm?actionnum=9290

[19] http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2013/Introduced/HB0126.pdf

[20] http://www.organicconsumers.org/ocaactions.cfm?actionnum=9287

[21] http://openstates.org/ne/bills/103/LB204/

[22] http://www.organicconsumers.org/ocaactions.cfm?actionnum=9289

[23] http://www.alternet.org/tags/farming

[24] http://www.alternet.org/tags/agriculture

[25] http://www.alternet.org/tags/cafo

[26] http://www.alternet.org/tags/animal-cruelty

[27] http://www.alternet.org/tags/ag-gag-law

[28] http://www.alternet.org/tags/ag-gag

[29] http://www.alternet.org/tags/food-safety

[30] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

http://www.alternet.org/print/environment/shocking-reporting-factory-farm-abuses-be-considered-act-terrorism-if-new-laws-pass ag gag update 1/13

Eco-terrorism is a term believed to have been coined by Ron Arnold, the Executive Director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. [1]

In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the word 'terrorism' has become a potent political weapon. Since the 1980s, Arnold has blurred the boundaries between nonviolent civil disobedience and more contentious tactics such as vandalism and sabotage - which have on the whole been rejected by mainstream environmentalists - and elevated property damage to equal terrorism as a societal threat. More recently, he has been joined by other prominent anti-environmentalists including self-styled "eco-terrorism expert" Barry Clausen and Nick Nichols, the now retired chair of PR firm Nichols-Dezenhall. (After Nichols retirement the company was renamed Dezenhall Resources).

The deliberate conflation of civil disobedience with terrorism by Arnold, Clausen and Nichols has paved the way for the introduction of draconian legislation, such as the so-called Ecoterrorism Prevention Act of 2004 [1], to ban or increase penalties for civil disobedience protests.

Contents ??[hide]

1 Origins

2 Linking environmentalism with terrorism

3 Legislation

4 Other SourceWatch Resources

5 References

6 External links

Origins

Arnold, considered by many as the 'father' of the Wise Use movement, first used the term in a 1983 article in Reason Magazine. However, the tactic of linking environmental protest to violence in the public's mind dates back to 1977, when supporters of the Marxist turned right-wing extremist Lyndon LaRouche told police that acts of violence were planned during protests against the construction of a nuclear reactor at Seabrook, New Hampshire. The FBI subsequently concluded that the allegations had been fabricated. [2],[3]

During the 1980s, the equation of environmentalism with violence was assisted by what researcher Bron Taylor has described as the "martial rhetoric" of some radical environmentalists, in particular the willingness of early Earth First! activists to advocate sabotage as a legitimate tactic. However, in a 1998 paper published in the journal??Terrorism and Political Violence, Taylor concluded that "[t]here is, nevertheless, even after 18 years of radical environmental action, little evidence that radical environmentalists intend to maim and kill their adversaries or to foster 'terror' among the general populace." [4]

Among the eleven principles for a strategic "monkeywrenching" (or sabotage) campaign outlined by Earth First! founder Dave Foreman in his 1985 book Ecodefense, nonviolence was primary:

Monkeywrenching is nonviolent resistance to the destruction of natural diversity and wilderness. It is never directed against human beings or other forms of life. It is aimed at inanimate machines and tools that are destroying life. Care is always taken to minimize any possible threat to people, including the monkeywrenchers themselves.

In advocating for the legitimacy of of tree spiking, Foreman claimed - naively, some might argue - that injury to workers was unlikely because of the safety measures in place to protect workers in large timber mills. Because of the "remote" risk of injury to chainsaw operators associated with spiking the base of trees, Foreman recommended against using this particular form of spiking.

Nonetheless, tree spiking was seized upon by the logging industry as evidence of a violent agenda behind radical environmentalism. In 1987, when an employee of logging company Louisiana-Pacific was seriously injured by a bandsaw blade which shattered when it struck a 60 penny nail, company president Harry Merlo dubbed the incident "terrorism in the name of environmental goals". While Earth First! was condemned by state officials and the media, it later emerged that the chief suspect, against whom no charges were laid, was a 50 year old "survivalist" with no connection to Earth First! [5]

In 1990, Earth First! activist Judi Bari, prompted by concerns that the radical environmentalist movement's support for "tree spiking" was allowing the timber industry to drive a wedge between timber workers and environmentalists, led Earth First! in Northern California and Southern Oregon to renounce the controversial tactic.??[6]

Linking environmentalism with terrorism

Since 1990, there have been numerous attempts by industry front groups, PR firms and conservative think-tanks has to associate environmental activism with terrorism. For instance:

In 1991 a leaked memo from Ketchum Public Relations, hired by the Clorox Corporation to develop a crisis management plan, detailed proposed responses to a number of hypothetical scenarios, including a Greenpeace direct action at Clorox factory. Among the recommended tactics was the launch of a "Stop Environmental Terrorism" public relations campaign. [7] [8] Download pdf extract from Ketchum's plan for Clorox

In 1994, Barry Clausen and???Rogelio Maduro, an associate editor of LaRouche's 21st Centry Science and Technology magazine, published a photocopied newsletter called Ecoterrorism Watch, which featured a review of Clausen's book Walking on the Edge: How I Infiltrated Earth First.[9]. Clausen, who spent a year "undercover" with Earth First!, wrote the book after he was apparantly fired by his timber industry sponsors for failing to produce any evidence of "terrorism" beyond demonstrations and minor vandalism. [10], [11]

In June 1998, Arnold and Clausen were among witnesses to appear before the U.S. Congress' House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime during its Hearing on acts of ecoterrorism committed by radical environmental organizations.[12]. The primary advocate for the 1998 "eco-terror hearings" was Californian Congressman Frank Riggs, in whose office, in October 1997, Earth First! activists protesting against logging company Pacific Lumber had pepper spray applied to their eyes while immobilised by "lock on" boxes. [13]

In 2002, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Nichols-Dezenhall co-sponsored a conference titled "Stopping Eco-Extremism: A Conference On Legislative, Legal And Communications Strategies To Protect Free Enterprise". The speakers included Nichols and former Louisiana Pacific media relations official Kelly Stoner, who was billed as the executive director of an organisation called Stop Eco-Violence. The domain name used by the Stop Eco-Violence website was registered by Nichols-Dezenhall employee Ryan Knoll in November 2001.[14],[15]

In 2003, an article written by??Marc Levin of the American Freedom Center, entitled "Terrorism in the Name of the Earth: Flush out eco-terrorism money", appeared in the National Law Journal, Front Page Magazine, The American Enterprise, the Austin Review and the San Francisco Chronicle. In the article, Levin claimed that "acts of eco-terrorism" attributed to the Earth Liberation Front were funded by money "illegally laundered through tax-exempt organizations" and cited the Public Interest Watch report Green-Peace, Dirty Money: Tax Violations in the World of Non-Profits before going on to accuse Greenpeace of committing "numerous acts of eco-terrorism".[16]

Legislation

The term 'eco-terrorism' would be defined into law by draft legislation as The_Animal_and_Ecological_Terrorism_Act which proposes provisions to target those deemed to have encouraged, assisted or financed offences under its extraordinarily broad definition of 'terrorism'.

In an article for Tom Paine, Karen Charman noted that the draft legislation would effectively ban environmental and animal rights advocacy. The Texas bill, she wrote, defines an "animal rights or terrorist organization" as "two or more persons organized for the purpose of supporting any politically motivated activity intended to obstruct or deter any person from participating in an activity involving animals or... natural resources." [17]

"'Political motivation' means an intent to influence a government entity or the public to take a specific political action," the bill states.

By such definitions, the Green Party of the United States would certainly qualify as guilty of eco-terrorism for its various demonstrations and support of political actions to influence government or the public. And so would the over one hundred other such parties in all democracies on the Earth. However, such parties all include change through the legislative process itself and support change through peaceful means. Such lobbying or influencing would seem to be illegal under the Act.

There have been individuals who have been prosecuted and convicted in the U.S. for various forms of vandalism undertaken with an environmental motivation, albeit without to date causing injury to individuals. There have also been groups or factions within them - such as Earth First! - that have rejected traditional non-violence as precluding damage to property and embraced vandalism as a tactic. Many groups - both conservative and from within the environmental movement - have rejected the distinction and disowned such actions.

While conservative groups routinely denounce both peaceful protests and vandalism as the equivalent of terrorism, they remain silent about violent attacks against environmentalists and animal rights activists.

Conservative groups have succeeded in mobilising conservative elements within law enforcement agencies to monitor and investigate 'eco-terrorism'. However, the same agencies have no equivalent monitoring or investigation of patterns of violence against environmentalists.

Other SourceWatch Resources

Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act

Animal Liberation Front

Criminalising civil disobedience

Earth Liberation Front

Eco-terrorism hoaxes

Police counter-terrorism training exercises

Stop Eco-Violence.

References

? Ron Arnold, "The Birth of a Buzz-Word: Eco-Terrorism", The Indypendent, September 17, 2007. This was a response by Arnold to an article on the word.

External links

Copy of Ketchum's Leaked Draft Clorox Crisis Management Plan (4.6MB Pdf file)

Greenpeace USA, Clorox Company's Public Relations "Crisis Management Plan" Leaked to Greenpeace", Media Release, May 10, 1991. (Pdf file)

Tom Regan, "ACLU accuses FBI of 'spying' on activists: Civil liberties group says FBI used 'terrorism' as a pretext for improper surveillance and interviews", Christian Science Monitor, May 19, 2005.

"Homeland Eyes, Right and Left", Editorial, New York Times, May 27, 2005. (Sub req'd) (A copy of the article is posted??here.

Michael J. Kavanagh, "The Terror Of Our Ways: Conflating environmentalists and terrorists is all the rage", Grist, July 8, 2005.

Jeffrey St. Clair, "The Great Green Scare",????Counterpunch, October 3, 2005.

Bryan Denson and Mark Larabee, "U.S. accuses 7 of eco-sabotage: Agents link suspects in Oregon and elsewhere to a three-year string of crimes," The Oregonian, December 9, 2005. "The government Thursday announced the most extensive bust of eco-saboteurs in U.S. history, charging seven people with a series of arsons and vandalism that plagued the Pacific Northwest for nearly three years.. ... Federal authorities employed a provision of the USA Patriot Act to close in on the alleged saboteurs. The law allowed them to obtain search warrants from U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas M. Coffin in Eugene and search in other states for evidence."

Michael Janofsky, "11 Indicted in Cases of Environmental Sabotage", New York Times, January 21, 2006.

Judith Lewis, "Earth to ELF: Come In, Please: Does the radical environmental group really exist?", LA Weekly, December 22, 2005.

Michael Donnelly, "Charred SUVs and the End of Citizen Eco-Activism: America's Newest Political Prisoners", Counterpunch, June 14, 2007.

Indypendent Staff, "The Birth of a Buzz-Word: Eco-Terrorism", The Indypendent, September 17, 2007.

Stephen Lendman, "Green Scare State Terrorism",???Global Research, April 28, 2008.

Categories: ActivismEnvironmentCivil liberties (U.S.)

cointelpro1

update 12/31/2012

1/1/2013

GREEN IS THE NEW RED WILL POTTER 2011 City Lights

leafletting Marsh insurance exec ( does biz with HLS) exec cul-desac sec guard starting videotaping them; they did back; guard testified they surrounded him using military commands p11 neighbor gives leaflet to cops as evidence; house had been vandalized some mos before; arrested but not told fopr what. 2 wks? later 2 FBI agents ask him to spy, say they can ruin his life p 13 girlfriend Kamber lose scholarship, they'll come visit her later; dad co-signed loan; name of boss. 14 if he does not cooperate by trial date, he'll be put on domestic terror watch list p13 doubt/fear creep in; afraid to tell co-defendents.

Stop Huntingdon Ani Cruel startd in UK riot, after a yr of trying to shut down beagle beeder (docile, small, like ppl) 20

ore atty grabbed for madrid bomb b/c of fingerprint screwup; used CS gas Saddam used on Kurds 21 grabbed a couple dogs and ran (other ppl used decoys); one guy held by police dog bite till grabbed; beat but inspired other actions, and the kennel /breeder closed; then cats

HLS exposed by mult undercvr opps kill 70-180k animals a year testing cleaners, cosmetics, pest etc for P&G, colgate palmolive 23; better defended by razr wire and lawyers.

Sen Jud cmtee hearings Animal Rights: activism vs criminality"; 2005? fbi dep asst dir for ctr-terr said alf/elf did 1100 crimes 110mil$ damage; ani rights and eco-terr is fbi's "highest domestic terror priority" 25

ani rights accustomed to charges, house search and computers taken. but now helicopters, guns, multi-agy task forces 25

WP does c&c to ashcroft press conf profile of terrorists w/ shac ppl **

FBI hires "Anna" to infiltrate prior to G-8 in GA; romantic involvment w/ Eric McDavid got 20 yrs as terrorist 28*** http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2008/june/ecoterror_063008 ??http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2006/january/elf012006

http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/mcdavid-sentenced/434/

http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/elle_anna/421/

Despite press conf on 7 bad guys, no raise threat level' ridge says our job is go out enjoy this great country and "have some fun" 28

Rush called Harper a terr for throwing marine flares in front of whaler to disrupt hunt 29 ; had 100 agents fbi on his case, most wiretaps of any dom terr investigation 31; his gma calls to ask if he's a terr 32

ch 3

tough to define word; if too narrow not useful and if too broad can be used on anyone.

no one agrees on def, even diff us angencies; patr act 2001 said any actitivites "dangerous to human life" intended to influence the gov't [odd? you'd think this wd go the other way? as WP observes later?]; so civil disobedience fits vague terms 37.

...extended commentary on term/legal...

John Lewis fbi: told WSJ no other movment has brought about so much violence, destruction and vandalism 45 but then wp give C&C to ex neo-nazi tried to buy sarin gas and C4 explosives [tried? sting?]; anti-abort Waagner sic stockpiled weapons, broke out of jail, sent 500 powder envelopes, assoc w/ Army of God 45

wm krar big bonb, 9 machine guns 60 pipe bombs and 100k ammo 45

antiabort did 24 assaults, 15/arson bomb; 1977-2009 8 murders 46 none classed by fbi as domstic terror; olympic bomber is but a lone wolf aberration; james powers homeland sec of penn says McVeigh not ter, just angry w/ gov't; terror criminal makes no diff [?] 47 why no rt wing on list? WP says b/c rt wingers no not threaten profits (see analysis at end of bk).

FDn for Bio-Med research compiled list of crimes, only a person hurt and that was UK (pickaxe handles, cracked ribs, gash on head 48. many crimes in US involve pies 49

Geo Alexander hurt by spike, but had prev complained of dangerous conditons at La-P and ignored; co wd not pay his medical bills; La-P put up 20K$ reward, but sherrif thinks it was neighbor trying to keep loggers off his land 49-50. http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/American_Liberty/message/13446

Bari got 2 mil from fbi and another 2 mil from oakland 50

Fran Tutt set up by Perceptions Int'l, set up by self appt expert Jan Reber; paid Sapone and Marc Mead to befriend; he was told by PI when to bring bomb to US Surgical 51-2. tape of tutt played at trial, but goadings etc left out 52 offers of $

HHS head Louis Sullivan condemed ani rights terr 55 1990

Arnold pushed term in 80's but only circulated in freemkt niche; FBI head Freeh said not on radar but in june 1998 US House sub-comm "Acts of eco- terr by radical envrio orgs" Frank Riggs CA rep test that big stump, sawdust in office, locked to each other q tip then pepper spray (videotaped); trying to stop oldgrowth logging by Pacific lumber; rigss biggest recip of timber $ 56 (not brought up in testimony) ron arnolf test; staffer called "hate crimes"; earth1st infil Barry Clausen says anarchy and revol.

Oct 1998 ELF burned vail and Freeh took notice; by 2000 a task froce before on africa embassy bombs and 1st WTC bomb redirected 58

911: Greg Walden Rep Ore; Wa Times "eco-al-Qaeda" ; ind groups had PR firms work terr term; Clorox hired Ketchum; a mon after 911 Nichols-D got stopecoviolence.com ngo front run by kelly stoner, exLA-pacific ??--> AP NYT 58. http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/American_Liberty/message/13446

Travis Wagner res U of So maine found increased coverage but decrease in actual crimes 84-2006. 59

Soc for Toxicolgy conf hired Info Network Assoc co to spy on seattle activists; found schools and dating

Inkerman Gp id's threats including bumber stickers: ask me how 60

post 911 cops and press eager to do ctr-terror 60

Anti-Def league make $ training cops

2003 arnold hired by Ark Terr Res Ctr w/ doj $ 61 paid to defeat the fake threat he created

Op backfore portland

Cavel West: BLM employees making $ from selling wild horses 90 young healthy 65

around mcg arrest, b2 secretly ok's warreantles spy on americans 69; mos later we found phone co's turning over our records, and sec ppl had offices in HQ's 70

Wm Sullivan FBI domsst intel trying to get MLK said we may have to break law 71; Church Comm led to FISA 1978; in 25 yrs ct only nixed 4 requests, but b2 said too tight 71 McGowen has been on list for yrs before b/c wrote to prisoners and org protests at gop conv. 72

FBI has 100 Jt taks forces w/ local cops (vs fusion ctr that works with mult AGENCIES IN MULT JURISDICTIONS 72 OF THEM GOT 254MILLION$ P 76 ) DHS 1.6b$ for fusion? in 2006, has to ID potential threats TX found 2k F911 showed silly eg Peace Fresno

PETA and greenpeace claild peta conected to a/elf but even after infiltrate no charges 74

Stephens INc (fur) hired PI Global Options to spy on shac BK hired Diplomatic Tactical Services to spy on student/farm alliAnce trying to help in FLA;

BBI hired Sapone to infil LA gp

Josh Tulkin dep dir Chesapeake Climate Action Netowrk Maryland dtabase listed him as "terrorosm-environmental extremeism" 77 stete pol superint says fmr congr cand, puppet-maker and smeone who let anarchists use proprty for mtg fringe ppl who do not deserve 1st amend protection 77

shac ppl do deal, gov't does not want to expose activities b/c afrtaid on Church style 79 admit guilt but not name names shamrock, minaret, cointelpro

free cascadia 96 timber road block http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no6/cascadia.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIQZY593YGw ??Pickaxe - The Cascadia Free State Story 90 min

Pickaxe documents efforts to halt logging at Warner Creek, a federally protected forest in Oregon. Following a suspicious fire in 1991 that cleared the land, Congress suspended environmental regulations to allow logging in the area. Since arson was determined to be the cause of the fire, however, environmental activists argued that allowing logging at Warner Creek would set a bad example and possibly lead to similarly motivated forest fires. What followed was an 11-month battle complete with a 79-day hunger strike and an amazing blockade of a remote mountain logging road. This inspiring documentary shows the power of direct action, determination and good leadership.

McG pied Novartis ceo; went to "book club" mtg in SC 9/2000; burned Sup Lumber used helo to clearcut old growrth on puvlic land 86; pal Free Luers got 22 yrs for burning 3 SUV's 89 McG arrest threated w/ prison in teror wing if no cooperate.

SHAC chased HLS to NJ; used anti-apartheid tactics; in US exec found boulder on his car; son got mag Revovler 95

all movments have hard core, even gandhi; shac mistake was admitting sympathy

Stephens inc was invest co; when Royal bank of scot pulled out of hls, it stepped in w/ 33mil emerg loan

stratfor explains tripod strat: illegal, legal and symaptizers not involved. 97

dr spock convicted of conspracy ; Harper anti-stepens speech seen as encoraging ppl to harass w/ communication device [black fax?]; siad publish exec home info creates fear of bodily harm and used stalker law to bust; 10k emails read and 8300 ppl monitored 99 stickers and jon appl;ic at vegan rest evidence

punk music big recruit eg rod corondao 80's 101 but also part of DIY ethos. 101

HLS got delisted from stock xge in stages, and shac reseqrched arcane laws to keep pressure on; other co's and ind freaked; tried to use RICO laws, failed. so turned to 1992 ani enterprise protection act 103 (meat, fur, dairy, animal experiment lobbied for it). used only once on 2 guys that released mink; not tweaked/extended to reinterpret physical disrution" to loss of profits 104 on SHAC; 2 wks after stephens protest in little rock ark, gop sen tim hutchins intro'd bill to extend aepa w marion berry (both got steph $); eventually passed as part of bio-ter bill

HLS lawyer Mark Bibi worked w/ FBI and asst atty gen Chls McKenna 105

Prosec made bold claim: past crimes, done by other ppl, against other targets can somehow be a a true threat in the future w/o meeting incitement st'd 108

shac had policy not to filter coverage of illegal acts b/c did not want to accused of censorship (questioned when veiled rape threat made) 110; judge forbade HLS ppl to talk about work, does not allow expert on experimentation to testify b/c it wd cause confusion 111 co-def had beeen charged ok, but not that dropped???

pros brought in hard core ppl to endores shac in oder to screw them (Vlasak); judge tossed prospective juror for being vegetaruian, but allows mult ppl who worked for co's shac targetted 112 mar 2006 guilt all on all counts; Martosco said victory shd be extended to PETA etc

[freestate doc 44 min showed trench across road = destruction of fed prop, a felony] 54 this land is your land; then band punk; peter fefazio staffer says pres cos panetta on bd?] 1996? light, fight then log

AETA dems invited Humane soc to test but declined b/c they feared for horse slaughter bill, that endores eco-terr wd be spun against them. ACLU too busy to fight

WP invited to congr test, but token 1 of 4, and the dem who invited hom FAVORED the bill 117 bobby scott

1987 UC davis vet lab burned; fbi used dom terr term 1st x ALF; corps used lang for long time, but now pushed for state level laws 2, 2 8 11 states. [ALEC?]

fran tutt only one convictyed on fed charges, and she set up by corp; one alf conviction, 56 yo guy burgled 125 aninmals fron univ oregon, rabbits and hamsters 119 judged called it act of terr 120.

#1 claim in NYT and congr test is that ani rights ppl are violent, criminal terr 120

arson at arix and tx univ --> dem howard helflin of ALa amedned ani welfare act to target ppl who rescue animals; tx folowed chls stenholm 120

B2 wyngaarden ex NIH now off sci techn Pol had pushed for law since 85.

1992 AEPA meant to deter and get more convictions; did neither 122, # acts had been decling; attempt to add block access derailed by abortion murder? efforts shifted from tweaking existing to long game; some called for death penalty, others a dtatabase like sex criminals "Hands off our Kids Act" `123

Nat'l Animal Interest Alliance ed j walsh wanted "not-so-savage acts " like pies covered, used T word and hate124

next yr on 9/11 don young told ank daily news it might be a/elf

2002 stalled so went to ALEC 125 weyrich coined term moral maj for falwell; morph from hot button moral issues to corp shill cf expose by NRDC and Def of Wildlife http://www.alecwatch.org/report.html 2002? STATE lawmakers not well paid, some part time no staff, so percs look good 125 "scholarships" 98% $ corp of fdn (sisters?) 2000 5.69mil$ min 7k to 50K (wa , madison, TJ club) 126 hire $ = more power (votes?)

corps have veto; cj comm co chair CCA; 1996 law to dereg utilities chair by koch 126 says got 450 laws 1999-2000 127pharma and agribiz big players; 2003 report by liddy bourne 127 (--> vp strat heartland) report says the problem began with darwin, section on ALF excludes 4th principle to take all steps to avoid harm to animals or humans 127 if not heard by burning bldgs "perhaps it may be heard by cutting thrpats" 127

Patr act not good enough b/c req death or harm to human beings, so ALEC bill modeled on US Sportsman's alliance 1) expand to "deter" includes civil diso and document corp acts (even witnessing?!) 128 can't photograph animal testing or slaughter w/ intent to defame 2) attacks suporting infrastructure, including publicizing , so if siera club has bake sale to help treesitters, terror ??30 registry: name addy, photo and signature pubic website 128 *** Tenn Niceley into bill, got news from Rush

bulls on: Az (vetoes by gov?) , Ark, CA, HI, missouri, maine, s caro, so dakota, tenn tex

n caro prof says eco-terr want to destroy civilization

NC Hoard Coble comm chair: wants to expand AEPA to cover 2nd and tert target co's; "physically disrupt" --> damaging or interfering with" ; prohibits any action that instills a "reasonable fear" of ppl connected to animal enterprises industry 131

Brent McIntosh DOJ

glaxo exec siad hoax ask ID body, bottle beer to AA wife 132

jrnl balanced " stories, depend on official govand corp sources 133

RED scare; HUUAC led to blacklists; 1950 McCarran act req registry of reds, opposed by Truman; congr overrode veto 134 1948 12 members cpusa bd members indicted for conspring to overthrow govy; terrorist replaces commie as demon term 135 makes fair trial hard. later: aclu passed res 1940's no reds in leader, pushed out Eliz Gurley Flynn; Nat Lawyer's Guild beat up for not name names, surv by FBI, HUAAC denouced, but hung tough on AETA 172

WO Douglas opposed chilling deterrent of free sp 135

arnold ~ Hoot and charlotte's web 136

Adam Durand got 180 (max on 2 cts) days in jail 1500$ fine 100 hrs comm service for producing undercover doc on factory farms *** he did trespass? judge wanted to order destruction of video but cd not 2006

http://www.satyamag.com/dec06/edit.html

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/05/18/18240341.php

WP test end urge use ltd anti-terr res protect life not profits 137

academic basso test on her experiments (she is later suspended by univ for pattern of violations) 137

Bibo sent letrer imaginging what if shac tactics directed to mining, oil timber etc 139

Ch7; ppl who snitch in danger in prison 147

shac face 13 yrs in jail vs 21 murder, 8.5 sex, 6.5 arson 151

harper gets 3 yrs, w/ pal ordered 1mil$ resitition to burned lab; shac get 2-3x time of ppl who did acts *** 154

stratfor warned convictions of shac 7 would up activity

Nov o6 MLK dedicated; in medterms demos got both houses; gop6 co-

sponsors of AETA lost; duke c had resigned

but nat assoc for biomed res pushed; coord w/ another front Ani Ent Protection coalitionj: pharma, fur, beef 161 latter formed soley to lobby of aeta a front for fronts! ***

http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/internal-industry-documents-show-plans-for-labeling-activists-as-eco-terrorists-part-1-of-3/796/

NABR claimd incidents up 1k%, but counts civ dis, releasing burds in russia, wearing bunny suit for peta 161 college students handing out propaganda ??dangerous b/c "dmamging financial footing" 162

coalition scorecard showed 4 in senate; so rushed thru last biz day before recess by "unanimous consent" House had only 27 thus 6% yes gop controls both houses and prez ??AETA vote happens when most at mlk event; anti ppl did good capitol visit, vote sched for 6:30 pm but saw on tv happening at 2;30; public input bigtime ~ law; 5 guys on house floor passing bills asmebly line using obscure rule "suspension of the rules" which allows expedition of non-controversial issues: 40 min debate, up or down vote; most members dont show up, it's for naming bridges of praise of sport team win. jamesd sensenbrenner uses as front for Thomas Petri (sponsors) hawks from wisc, dairy and fur Am Vet Medic Assic http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Veterinary_Medical_Association

That's the message that Dr. Ron DeHaven, chief executive officer of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and a former head of the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, delivers in a new video which can be viewed on www.avmatv.org, the AVMA Media Library (www.avma.org) and YouTube. "I have a number of concerns," Dr. DeHaven says in the video.

attaboy; http://capitolwords.org/date/2007/08/03/E1714_on-the-retirement-of-dr-ron-dehaven-administrator-/ note dereg?

2006 PACs from agribiz 20mil$, pharma 11.5m$ vs USHS 123K anll green combo 514K$ 165-6; ushs 90Klobby; pfizer 11.8Mil$

peaceful protest -->terror only if they intent to hurt corp profits 167 ***

mlk ~ capitalism, need to shift thing oriented to ppl or; fbi had 3165 pp of records 168; P&G gave 3 mil to mem , dupont 1m mcD 169

kucinich only vegan, voted ~ Patr Act and iraq; art'l imp ~ cheney [cf nader on kpfa, he go tossed out of demos?

pom targetted, feinstein and inhoff sic

ucla edythe london nicotene res monkey, autopsy $ PM 175

brilliant strat: claim that winning but also need tougher laws and more funding 177

schumacher fur guy said ani rights shd be strangled, skinned alive and anally electrocuted 179 put signs in windows in caps

Ricardo Solano lead prosector of shac keynote at Ani Agric Allaince stakeholder's summit, promises to use new law 180 may 2007 6 mos after signing, another 18 mos till used 180.

2001 drought gov redirect water to upper klamath for suckerfish, militia declared war, blew up headgates, thret assass of feds [cf cheney?]

terr enhancement can add up to 20 yrs 182; nop def but 50 crime in list depending on motive 183 (criteria 1 #2 is must be intended to change gov or retaliate ~ gov actions 183 defense pt out that ani rights avoided hurting ppl; pre 9/11 never appled to prop damage; 75% of cases terr enhance goes thru 187 27 of 35 cases; creation of enhance had Pan Am bomb, WTC 1993, sarin subway japan;

rep scott mcInnis sent ltr to greenpeace etc to disavow teror oct 2001; sirra club offered $ for busting saboteur

judge aiken thrw book for actionsm but al gore said block bulldozers; pentagon pt out danger ; but activists now paranois of snitches

Mike Roselle fdr EF, ruckus RAN, in yippe days kept snitch b/c he had a car 201

PRISON

Marion not in Bur directory; even in FOIA no names of prisoners; 2 CMU's do not have to follow rules (als oTerre haute, has dr Help the Needy, 22 yrs for sending food and RX to iraqi kids [1/2 mil dead, no that's iran sanctions?] Rafil A Dhafir) lil guantanamo

tougher than SHU and SuperMax [hunger strike?] 15 min phone vs 300 min; 4 hrs visit/mop, no phys contact (~ gov policy and sci research) ; proposal to limit even more beaten, but then they trans 17 guys to terre haute and did it anyway 212 = CMU communication mgmt unit; dan'l McG had no discip problems but release denied w/o expl 214

US Bur of Pris says 211 int'l terr and 1k deomestic ones, but will not say who is in CMU 213 why there and how to get out

andy stepanian at marion;

experiemnt (not 1st; lexington HSU designed to reduce to state of submission for ideologal convdrsion acla 211; // warden at marion said purpose is "to control revolutionary attitudes in the prison system and society at large" 211 Ralph Aaaron ex

Eric Rudolph published long essays on Army of God www, mocks his victims

illegal to discrim on race, religiom etc but 70% terre h muslim,

wanrt to limit even more eg 1 one hr visit /mo 215

kamber sherrod at dmv got 3 cop cars, others detained at airport (that's how they dind out about dom terr designation) 217-8 cop waiting for tow truck ran plate for fun and got flashing msg "member of terr org" 218

WP could not write about chat w/ mcg or he's get dinged 219 mcg wroter about cmu on huffpo

luers said changed: watch ppl die and no reaction 222

Rod C still tailed; at SD talk responded to question of how to make incend device?, charged w/ distrib info on...mass destruction, threatned w/ 20 years 224; jury deadlock to mistrail; prosec siad they'd not stop, so he pled guilty ?! *** 224

FBI says 60 ecoterr 2004 but 7400 hate crimes in 2003 p 227

Obama admin: marie mason elf arsom MI state ; husb wore wire to entrap friends, she got 21 years, longest 229; same week 4 guys assualted black on obama election night got 10-1w years 229

shac conveiction upheld, goes against 1st and 2nd amend predecent, so trying for scotus 231

chris christie was prosetuor --> US atty NJ --> gov 231

chls mckenna --> head DHS NJ ~ crips, jihad and ani rights extmemists

chanting, chalk, wearing mask ok on own, but add up to terror; bandana get DNA test, tho no $ to get murderers off death row? 232

some activists got off, but judge said rearrest if more specific info can be forund, or if prosec can explain hopw speech = terror 233

CA passed law // AETA ?! TRACK Utah want to change law to go after DeChristopher 233 rep mike noel says no diff to burn down cattle operation; ws rep intro alec model law prohibits communication that "encourage" publ;icize" promorte" animal or ecolgical terrirism 234 bust those who ramin on premises after being asked to leave thuis no civ disob

DHS encourages drills; UC B drill had ani rights hlding hostages at gunpoint 235

Minneapolis jt task force tried to pay guy to infiltrate vegan potlucj before RNC 2008 for $ 236

DOJ isp Gen audit told FBI to go after bad guys, mass casualtis of critical infrastucture vs social protest and domestic radicals' criminal activities" 236 said purtting us at risk; 6 recs said stip looking at green and ani activists and tranfer those cases to criminal branch; fbi refused steven c mcgraw

after 911 2400 agents redirected for wall st white collar crime, so say no $ now to deal w/ it 237***

@005 Berne G thompson and 6 members Hse comm Homeland Sec crit focus on eco-terr at expense of RW 237 ;he proved right when irs plane, holc museum etc Hutaree xian militia geo tiller

pitts trib on fur rescue, up insurance rates = harm 239

state dept warned other countries to protect corp profits 240

palmer red menace against our way of life; 1947 fbi worried about It;s wonderful life;

clash of civs (muslim but also green) 242-3 hofstader paranoid style

AMA says ani rights must be shown to be anti-sci and threat to freedom of choice" 244

20 yrs later Yum sr vp congr test peta = "corp terrorists" wants vegan world

peter singer and arne naess sources

DHS 2008 report: eco-terr: env and ani rights militant in US" says "lead to new sys of governance and social relationships that is anarchist and ant-systemic in nature" *** 245

ed j walsh ani experimenter says not war fur, eat meat go to reodeos "quietly, but effectively promote dissolution of our culture" 245

summer 2008 ucsc 2 incend devises same times as Prop 2 ??pro USHS (2500 reward) ??ctr for consumer freedom says don't be fooled 247

hist of groups presecuted as ani rights pretty distinguushed.

[nader kpfa 17 sol ; corp criminal www ann-busch sponsor 2012 debates

@ Barry R Clausen -- Unreliable Informant / Media Expert

Dan Clore clore at columbia-center.org

http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/ag-forst/1999-March/013233.html

WALL STREET JOURNAL

March 2, 1999

Clausen's 'Eco-Probes' Draw Suspicion, But He Still Turns Up on TV, in

Papers

By BOB ORTEGA Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

EUREKA, Calif.

[no appeent connection to PR flacks]

enstrom claim of sci/academic suppression, but study legit, went after chicago 8 guy on term limit technicality, alied w/ tobacco, claremont, logue prop 23, san diego union trib

dan logue,

shannon grove, kristin olsen, berryhill, don wagner, diane harkey, allan mansoor, tim donnelly, mike morell, jim silva, martin garrick etc

LAKOFF kpfa

all politics is moral

98% of our thinking we are not conscious of

did not challenge on the policy (popular, polled well)

freedom and life; govt takover, death panel

name Obamacare (change focus)

3 groups of 8 points

gop guys: health care = product = flat screen TV

BO using IC clause accepts the metaphor

(vs promote the gen'l welfare)

scotus: eat your brocolli

deep diff is responsibility to others

using gop args even to ~ them just reinforces conserv part of brain (we all have one?)

left studies politics (enlightenment, rational) gop studies mkting and cogn sci

pvt depends on the public

we built the roads/commons that corps use to make$

corps tell you what to do all the time (news, chemicals, clothes size, etc)[hmo real death panels and vote not on value of person but on their own profits)

; pension is pay for work already done (vs grasshopper v ants)

how does this apply to agw?

28th amend?

moral politics 1996 family model

strict father discipl kids to not do feelgood, kids get discipline leads to prosperity (poor ppl deserve poverty)

gore 96 telecom led to re, trusted sv

Death of the Liberal Class (2010)

Death of the Liberal Class (ISBN 9781568586441) was published in October 2010 by Nation books. In it, Hedges argues that, for decades, liberals have surrendered the good fights to corporations and ruling powers. In a traditional democracy, the "liberal class" functions as a safety valve. By endorsing the basic structures of the prevailing system while endorsing the values of radicals, the liberal class makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. Yet, for motives ranging from self-preservation to careerism, the "liberal establishment," including the Democratic Party, churches, unions, the media and academia, purged radicals from its own ranks and, as a result, lost its checks on capitalism and corporate power.[19]

Big PICTURE

context is dirty tricks: true believers think that any method is justified to defeat evil/mortal danger to US. Plus ideological entrepreneurs get paid to lie. Xian/mkt faith provides lens/blinder to believe lies and to help others believe, since facts/truth do not matter (Bush 2 reaity -based journalism scoffed at).

Powell memo was blueprint to build right (mirror) as a sort of defense against progressive left (Hedges says also mandated offense; go after press? powell was general counsel to US Chamber of Commerce " there shd be no hesitation to attack the Naders, Marcuses, and others who openly seek the destruction of the system" p 176 media helps them, esp TV); Defund the Left is the offensive strategy which is broad/systematic, but concentrates on depriving the Democratic Party of campaign funding. Unions, tort reform?, vouchers privatize schools but also neutralize one of the larger and politically active teacher's unions. Conversely, free market faith also serves as a cover for the crass political strategy. If (preeminent historically) American economy ailing, there must be a reason/scapegoat: government regulation is unnecessary and harmful, provides a drag.

ACADEMIA:

Powell says get funders to pressure

1) Punish and intimidate academics for political/citizen action (ivy tower pinkos, "elitist" with the ultimate job security, but they are also experts so have some authority). ??Example Cronon. He pioneered eco-history, but since he's taking about past, generally politically safe (though Changes in the Land brilliantly explains how markts trash the planet).

Accuracy in academia/e is an outgrowth of the INCUBATOR

2) Science Suppression: (ultimate is death threats; Australia protective custody; suicide?) NB Enstrom mirror [JV Conspiracy Theory?]. Mann/Climategate?

Hansen had handler, White House censored his speeches.

Mann sued by ATI, Horner, attacked by Barton, ~ by Crichton at AEI talk; Oreskes says that Mann was identified as bud to be nipped; Soon and Baliunas disputed, lit rev (api funded) said c20 not warmest (“the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.??? Oreskes)

OMG Through the Looking Glass: NAS wood claims Mann sued some guys having harmless fun/parody (no mention of AG suit)

mcullagh says epa supressed science

Ben Santer also attacked; gcc accused him of "scientific cleansing" when bosnian war going on; granparents died in concentration camp. (appeared in jesse ventura conspir theory?!) how to spot manip listed under ben santer lie; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj8GlqiOAIs&feature=related explains the edit, and shows how it was further distorted by blogsphere

Climategate had huge effect; drop in polls, opened sci to damage to rep and house juduc witch hunts. (hack was pro, went after a number of other Canadian and a couple US targets). Press did not distinguih itself; slow to pick up on story (or at least the exonerations), trivialize it ("catty" comments by scclimate sci) or quote Morano, Milloy etc (for balance?) see mojo.

may have led to not just science is corrept and they will lie for $/grants [no one explains that most sci grants come from NSF etc that were in theory controlled by B2 admin, and that oil co's will pay more]

Under a new law, doctors in Pennsylvania can access information about chemicals used in natural gas extraction???but they won’t be able to share it with their patients.

BP goes after scientist emails on oil spill scope

3) ?

INFO: Privatize media , schools (xian/creationism, climate denial, wonders of free market)

disenfranchise poor people of color (votes)

get rid of unions (including teachers)

LEGAL: civil law (tort reform)

related to slapp suits (legal intimidation)

teracycle sued by scotts : http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2004/03/02/9808/

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2007/04/26/18275/ see ch in danaher book ??

corp personhood give right to lie, ~ search and seizure?

VT law on rbgh hormone overturned by ct.

corps going to ct to neutralize Dodd-Frank

"SLAPP suits," an acronym for "strategic lawsuits against public participation." They are, in effect, fines imposed on opponents of those who can afford to use them.

"Thousands of SLAPPs have been filed in the last two decades, tens of thousands of Americans have been SLAPPed, and still more have been muted or silenced by the threat," write law professors George Pring and Penelope Canan in their 1996 book, SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out.

In their investigation of the trend, Pring and Canan found that "filers of SLAPPs rarely win in court yet often 'win' in the real world, achieving their political agendas. We found that SLAPP targets who fight back seldom lose in court yet are frequently devastated and depoliticized and discourage others from speaking out--'chilled' in the parlance of First Amendment commentary."

...EG In Rhode Island, a resident of North Kingstown wrote a letter complaining about contamination of the local drinking water from a nearby landfill and spent the next five years defending herself against the landfill owner's attorneys, who charged her with "defamation" and "interference with prospective business contracts."

ECO-TERROR

spying on activists, especially "eco-terrorists" (green is the new red, Agenda 21). In the UK seven spies had relationshops (and even children) for up to nine years.

Veggie libel and animal enterprise (Inhofe, why? xian, free mkt, cow methane? )

dara; sending email is interstate commerce thus fed, a connection to" could be, insurer. investor or cleaning co or relatives; conspiracy:not done it but agreed to; circumstancial evidence enough; trying to disrupt profit, but van be made to repay (co determines cost); does not preclude peaceful protect (but not defined? odd?] laws always resp to actions; medical res always invoked; snitching common tactic

potter says eco-teror term coined by corps [actually arnold]. (dechris also in cmu? no ability to pass notes; 2 15 min.mo phone call? legal black hole; andy stepanian arrested for abovegd protest linked to shadow effort agist huntington life sci (300Mill$ damage?) said to be leader of ALF (vivisection)

potter arrested for hanging flyers on doornobs, gruntled journalist) for disorderly conduct; two weeks later 2 fbi agents told if he did not inform/infiltrate?! , he'd be put on domestic terrorist list (scap of paer w, 1st name and phone #) threatened his job, girlfriend, scholarship, dad cosigned on apt, they know where he works. "tell Camber we'll come see her later". said that another proteaster had long rap sheet. jf junkie (scary bald head tatoo) got him on fishing exped; led to biggest green roundup in hist. only time anyone ever hurt was in 80's by agent provoc who threw incend device at exec car/ no one hurt.

homeland pennsyl fmr dir james powers, said mcveigh not terrorist, just mad at gov't (spied on ppl attending who went to gasland)

ecoterr is proving grd for tactics to be used against left

shac ran a website, siad they would not oppose breakins to release or destroy property?! we can say what we want until there's talk of imanent action. email attack after some weeks on shac website led to terror 1-7 yrs. scotus refused to hear kevin jonas case (longest sent); arrests had less to do w/ action as w/ rank in org (and geography) in order to instill fear

AETA 2006 just dept, glaxosmith testified that hands tied (shac case had max wiretaps at that pt)

terror if targets animal enterprise, or any biz tied to A Ent (eg Fedex), if instill reasonable fear. 1st used ~ ca group had bandanas on face, chalk on sidewalk, chanted all led to climate of fear ?! case thrown out by good lawyers. mink release prosec as terror.

38-9 states have targetted laws "crop protection" ; pennsly ;ALEC skeet shoot by NRA, b'way shows, not passed in full anywhere, but new version wd include anyone who speaks in // w/ activists. AE protest ---- front pharma big $), biotech, UC,

ppl protesting carriage horses investigated

fusion ctr [joint errorism tak force)($ from post 911 climate) ppl deputized in joint terr task force w/ no training; cops, pvt intel? supposed to ctr stovepipes pre911; marsellus shale gasland

wash u student activist on doc circ to cops? who dating (often inaccurate) but designed to scare? [// Hunton & Wms]

RAN // alqida in press and gov't docs

2003 insp gen audit of fbi told to stop wasting $, refused

terror label gets cops more resources, path to advancements

fbi does not list attacks on mosques, kkk (except rudoplf) or abort clinics (as terror?).

Talk - Representation of Activists - Part I law students

may 2008 talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBlpXoSnKOs&feature=relmfu 28 min

toxexpo hired group to do threat assessement of animal rights ppl; activists of interest food not bombs radical,??

phone co's allows nsa etc to set up shop in bldg

//McC: three tiers:

1) extralegal PR

2) legal: ringl bros (uses rico mob law// ~NOW? on abortion?; Va some had masks [corp cops fbi? take pix; antimask law orig ~ KKK ) , cavo west animal (horse?) slaughter cf Op Backfire; ani rights are #1 domestic teror threat. ironically widespread public oppos to these issues now.

3) ?

Stop Ani Cruelty Now charged w/ conspiring to violate AETA b/c had website: post info about other ppl's actions (often snotty observations about co going to "pink sheets" (loss of %) published addy of execs (home).

fbi infil //AIM, MLK, SDS now Minneapolis approach by fbi big $ to infiltrate vegan potlucks (ahead of RN conv)

kids movie hoot soft core ecoterrorism, charlotte's web (ctr for consumer freedom ---) NRA says ani rights biggest threat to 2nd amend

...

pt 2 Attorney Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center speaking on the panel "Representation of Activists" at the "Animal Law: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqhiTa1VS4Q&feature=relmfu

"Representation of Activists" at the "Animal Law: Working with the Grassroots" conference May 16, 2008. The event was sponsored by the University of WA Student Animal Legal Defense Fund.

tried to stop logging after suit denied, so direct action, lockdown (to each other gate?) so she had to learn how to defend, then police misconduct; rep greenscare in Or economic sabotage ~aeta chilling efect //patriot act so any association w/ target means you can be wiretapped so can go after mainstream orgs; alec members were losing $ (eg huntington ) post 911 renamed terrorism act, will use 60's naacp ) ; labor also targetted (eg if striking ~ an organization that's also subject to say animal testing protest. civ lib def ctr... pt 3 ttorney Shannon Keith of the Activist Legal Fund CA pgp email encrtpy corps will hack pc to get briefs before trial/free no back door

28 min http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyPsEPhfJc4&feature=related may 2011

carlos montez/s fbi target

jake ferguson did 1st arson, mislead by cops about how much info they had, had him wear a wire. use huge prison sent threats to turn friends.

mcg //tea party: symbolic act ~ property to get awareness

fake "watch" fronts: (bunch run by capital research center [coal, tobacco, CTT])

crypto (since RWI is mirror, we should not be surprised by mirroring stategy, HOWEVER, when they try to destroy the original (invasion of body snatchers, stepford wive, but don't really try to take place, just cryptic coloration: use the good will //grassroots (populist, ~corp)

CFACT is fake pirg trying to kill real ones

o'keefe character assassinations

see also targets: eg van jones, Kerry, Clinton, Gore, Mann

Muskie (Canuck letter and attacks on wife, fake calls)

cointelpro

dumpster-diving

infiltration:

eco-terrorism laws (makes it easy to entrap?)

also related to press suppression

12:12 PM 3/15/2011

Mother Jones

Black Ops, Green Groups

Why did a private security firm spy on Greenpeace and other environmental outfits?

By James Ridgeway | Fri Apr. 11, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

A private security company organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. According to company documents [1] provided to Mother Jones by a former investor in the firm, this security outfit collected confidential internal records—donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos—from these organizations and produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies.

Supporting Documents

* August 20, 1998 Briefing (PDF) [1]

?? * Daron Work Report (PDF) [2]

?????? * BBI Report for Ketchum (PDF) [3]

* "Dow Global Tracking Team" Report (PDF) [4]

* Florida PI's Dumpster-Diving Attempt (PDF) [5]

* The "Glow-in-The-Dark Tacos" Emails (PDF) [6]

?? * Handwritten Document With Greenpeace Door Codes (PDF) [7]

?? * "Sat Surveillance" Outside Fenton's Home (PDF) [8]

* Nestle Project Billing (PDF) [9]

* "Our Operative Should Be Inquiring But Not Participatory" (PDF) [10]

* Possible Target Addresses (PDF) [11]

* Lawyer Doubts Dumpster-Diving's Legality (PDF) [12]

In addition to focusing on environmentalists, the firm, Beckett Brown International (later called S2i), provided a range of services to a host of clients. According to its billing records [2], BBI engaged in "intelligence collection" for Allied Waste; it conducted background checks and performed due diligence for the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm; it provided "protective services" for the National Rifle Association; it handled "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company and for Pirelli; it made sure that the Louis Dreyfus Group, the commodities firm, was not being bugged; it engaged in "information collection" for Wal-Mart; it conducted background checks for Patricia Duff, a Democratic Party fundraiser then involved in a divorce with billionaire Ronald Perelman; and for Mary Kay, BBI mounted "surveillance," and vetted Gayle Gaston, a top executive at the cosmetics company (and mother of actress Robin Wright Penn), retaining an expert to conduct a psychological assessment of her. Also listed as clients in BBI records: Halliburton and Monsanto.

BBI, which was headquartered in Easton, Maryland, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, worked extensively, according to billing records [3], for public-relations companies, including Ketchum, Nichols-Dezenhall Communications, and Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin. At the time, these PR outfits were servicing corporate clients fighting environmental organizations opposed to their products or actions. Ketchum, for example [4], was working for Dow Chemical and Kraft Foods; Nichols-Dezenhall, according to BBI records, was working with Condea Vista, a chemical manufacturing firm that in 1994 leaked up to 47 million pounds of ethylene dichloride, a suspected carcinogen, into the Calcasieu River in Louisiana.

Like other firms specializing in snooping, Beckett Brown turned to garbage swiping [5] as a key tactic. BBI officials and contractors routinely conducted what the firm referred to as "D-line" operations, in which its operatives would seek access to the trash of a target, with the hope of finding useful documents. One midnight raid targeted Greenpeace. One BBI document [11] lists the addresses of several other environmental groups as "possible sites" for operations: the National Environmental Trust, the Center for Food Safety, Environmental Media Services, the Environmental Working Group, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, an organization run by Lois Gibbs, famous for exposing the toxic dangers of New York's Love Canal. For its rubbish-rifling operations, BBI employed a police officer in the District of Columbia and a former member of the Maryland state police.

Beckett Brown's efforts to penetrate environmental groups and other targets came to an end when the business essentially dissolved in 2001 amid infighting between the principals. But the firm's officials went on to work in other security firms that remain active today.

Beckett Brown International began when John C. Dodd III met Richard Beckett at a bar in Easton in 1994. Dodd had recently become a millionaire after his father had sold an Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship on Maryland's eastern shore. Beckett ran a local executive recruiting and consulting business. Soon after they met, according to Dodd, Beckett introduced him to Paul Rakowski, a recently retired Secret Service agent, who had put in two decades protecting presidents and foreign heads of state and had become regional manager of the agency's financial crimes division. Rakowski told Dodd he had an idea for a new security business.

Dodd subsequently received a fax of a business plan for the new company. The sender's address at the top of the fax, according to Dodd, read: "11/02/94 USSS Financial Crimes Division/Forgery"???which suggested it had come from a Secret Service office. But Dodd was reluctant to put in the start-up money for the enterprise, because he didn't know who all the partners were. To impress him, Dodd says, Rakowski and his former Secret Service colleagues began taking him and his friends on special tours of the White House. "This wasn't a White House tour conducted by tour guides," he says. "They would take us…to areas that said 'Do not pass this line.'"

At one point, Dodd says, a senior Secret Service agent named Joseph Masonis arranged for him to tour a Secret Service facility. "To encourage me to invest in this company," Dodd notes, "they all said 'why not go up to technical security headquarters [of the Secret Service] and you will get an exclusive tour.'…They showed me everything....They were worried about someone flying way up high in a plane, miles from the White House, jumping out of a plane, skydiving, popping the chute and getting on the White House grounds without anybody knowing it. They were working on the technology to pick that up." Dodd says he was blown away by what he saw. (Masonis says, "I have never taken Mr. Dodd to any facility in D.C.") And at a waterfront party, Dodd says, he was introduced to and deeply impressed by George Ferris, a former naval special operations officer and an expert in demolitions.

Eventually, Dodd says, he agreed to be the sole investor of the new firm, and he put up $170,000, the first of what would be several loans at 15 percent interest. (His investment in the firm, Dodd estimates, would grow to a total of $700,000.) The company was officially launched in August 1995, named after Beckett and Sam Brown, a lawyer who helped get it started. Rakowski, Masonis, and Ferris were officials in the firm.

Business was good. In early 1997, Beckett Brown provided security services for Bill Clinton's second inauguration, landing a contract worth nearly $300,000. Early clients also included Phillip Morris, Mary Kay, Browning-Ferris Industries, and Nichols-Dezenhall, a Washington-based firm founded in 1987 by Nick Nichols and Eric Dezenhall that specialized in crisis communications, particularly for corporations involved in biotechnology, product safety, and environmental controversies. BBI provided protection for retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, Dodd says, and there was talk it might also get a job to guard the Rolling Stones.

By 1998, BBI had 22 employees working in five different divisions, along with subcontractors that it hired as operatives. The company also looked abroad for new opportunities and recruited more law enforcement and intelligence veterans. David Bresett, a former chief of the Secret Service's foreign intelligence branch, joined the firm as a vice president. (A company biography noted that Bresett, while detailed to the CIA, had directed the investigation that identified the terrorists who blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.) The firm retained Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, and earlier one of the government officials responsible for overseeing U.S. support of the Nicaraguan contras, as a consultant at $75,000 a year. "I did due diligence on a couple of customers," Cannistraro recalls. On the advice of Cannistraro and Bresett, BBI turned down a $1 million job with the Church of Scientology, according to Dodd. (Bresett did not respond to a message asking for comment.) At one point, an employee named Tim Ward [13], who had been a sergeant in the Maryland state police, traveled to Saudi Arabia for the company, according to Dodd.

Phil Giraldi, a former CIA officer, was also on the payroll. According to Giraldi, there was not a lot of work for him and Cannistraro. "We would go to a company like Enron and see if they had any issues if they were looking to acquire a company," he recalled. "See if the [company to be acquired] is connected to the Russia mob. That's what we were selling. We were not very successful." Giraldi left the firm in 1999. By then, he had become aware of the firm's more unconventional activities: "Scooping garbage, trying to get penetrations of companies and environmental groups. I didn't know a lot of the details." But, he says, he knew BBI was "working on Greenpeace."

In 2000, the firm—which had changed its name to S2i after Richard Beckett left the company—was targeting a group of activist organizations opposed to genetically engineered food that had formed a coalition called GE Food Alert. In the fall of 2000, with these groups poised to assail Taco Bell, S2i operatives got on the case.

Their thoughts soon turned to garbage.

On September 26, Jay Bly, a former Secret Service agent working for S2i, sent an email [6] to Tim Ward, the former Maryland state trooper on the payroll:

Received a call from Ketchum yesterday afternoon re three sites in DC. It seems Taco Bell turned out some product made from bioengineered corn. The chemicals used on the corn have not been approved for human consumption. Hence Taco Bell produced potential glow-in-the-dark tacos. Taco Bell is owned by Kraft. The Ketchum Office, New York, has the ball. They suspect the initiative is being generated from one of three places:

1.Center for Food Safety, 7th & Penn SE

2.Friends of the Earth, 1025 Vermont Ave (Between K & L Streets)

3.GE Food Alert, 1200 18th St NW (18th & M)

#1 is located on 3rd floor. Main entrance is key card. Alley is locked by iron gates. 7 dempsters [sic] in alley—take your pick.

#2 is in the same building as Chile Embassy. Armed guard in lobby & cameras everywhere. There is a dumpster in the alley behind the building. Don't know if it is tied to bldg. or a neighborhood property. Cameras everywhere.

#3 is doable but behind locked iron gates at rear of bldg.

In this email, Bly explained the urgency and the goal: "Apparently there is an article or press release due out next week and [Ketchum] would like some pre release information." He then turned practical: "I want to send Sarah [another BBI employee] to site #1 for a job inquiry. She can see how big the offices are and get the lay of the land. Maybe this will narrow the field. If they have a job opening could she work there for two or three days to find out what's going on?" The Friends of the Earth site, he noted, would be tougher to penetrate. As for the garbage of GE Food Alert, Bly had a plan: "if we can get some help from our friends who ride the truck. The alley is tight. I think the truck can drive down the alley but the container probably is rolled out and dumped. Looks like one dumpster for the building. I'm sitting on the building at 4:00 am tomorrow morning (if Ketchum gives us a budget)." And Bly noted that there were other possible opportunities: "we have found some other affiliates with the above groups. We are looking for their locations in [Washington, D.C.] and hopefully a more S2i friendly site."

The following day, Bly emailed Ward about his early morning surveillance:

Re: Dumpster Dive.

I got hold of Jim Daron [a Washington police officer working for BBI] yesterday. He was supposed to do Vermont Ave and Penn Ave SE last night. I have not heard from him today—what's new. I did 18th St. Weard [sic] set up—the dumpster is behind locked gates. The truck drives down the alley and rings for the night guard to open the gate. The guard comes out, unlocks and goes back into the building (probably pissed off because they woke him up), the guys walk the bags out to the truck one at a time. When they finish they locked the gate behind them. There was so much trash they had to compact the truck two times while they were there. I did not find anything from the 5th floor, but the good news is it's doable.

On September 28,Ward responded:

Good news! Think that once Jim [Daron] calls you back we will know where we stand. If he can't get in with the shield, it will be difficult at sight #1. I think #2 we can do regardless. The issue is a hot one in general. I've been following it from here. Don't forget our GP [Greenpeace] boy in Baltimore has been handling the work for GP. It may be worth a check in the city. Maybe one of our BPD [Baltimore Police Department] guys can hit that one. When you talk with the client push the fact that their client (the cheese people)…should put together a trend tracking program for the future. The anti's now have found an exposed corporate target and they will be back for more blood.

This email appears to suggests that the Beckett Brown operatives were considering using a Washington police officer's badge to gain access to the garbage of the Center for Food Safety. And Ward was apparently hoping that Beckett Brown could persuade Ketchum to hire the company to monitor the ongoing activity of the activists opposed to genetically-engineered food.

These emails do not indicate whether Beckett Brown succeeded in scooping valuable intelligence from the garbage at these three sites. But Beckett Brown had already managed to penetrate the anti-GE food network. In a 1999 report to Ketchum—entitled "Intelligence Analysis for Dow Global Trends Tracking Team" —BBI described in detail a strategy session held by 35 representatives of various environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, US PIRG, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The report noted the targets the coalition was considering (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, the Grocery Manufacturers of America) and listed various tactics the group had discussed. Such strategy meetings of this coalition were confidential, according to Dale Wiehoff of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Neither Bly nor Ward would discuss this series of emails or any of the work they did for Beckett Brown or S2i. "Legally, I can't tell you anything about what the company did," Ward says. He accuses Dodd of trying to "besmirch the names of the people involved" in the company. Rakowski, Daron, and Beckett did not reply to requests for comments. Nor did Ketchum. A spokesman for Kraft says, "After a review of our historical procurement files, we have no record of work on or about Sept. 26, 2000, with either Ketchum, Beckett Brown International or S2i. In the late '90s, Ketchum provided some PR services to Kraft for one of our coffee brands. However, Ketchum does not currently provide PR services to Kraft and has not done so for many years."

Time and again, according to Beckett Brown records, the firm looked to trash for intelligence. These trash runs at one point did raise concern within the company. In 1998, David Queen, a senior vice president, sent Rakowski a memo about "dumpster diving." Queen, a former deputy assistant secretary of the treasury and once a U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania, noted that in certain instances searching trash could raise "some troublesome issues," including possible violation of state trespass laws and "possible violation of trade secrets laws." He concluded, "If BBI expects to use this method of information gathering, it would be prudent to get the opinion of outside counsel which could be relied upon by BBI should there be future litigation directed against BBI."

Whether or not BBI sought counsel, the dumpster diving continued. In November 1999, according to company documents, Jay Bly traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, to meet with a private detective. He told the investigator that BBI wanted to obtain garbage from the offices of Whetstone Chocolates, a locally based candy manufacturer. (According to BBI billing records [9], BBI at the time was working for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Nestle Project-Florida." At press time, Nestle had not responded to a request for comment.) This private investigator and another local gumshoe then tracked the garbage men who made pick-ups at Whetstone and tried to persuade one of the drivers to turn over the trash from Whetstone. The trash collectors wouldn't cooperate. A month later, another private investigator apparently attempted to grab the garbage himself. He sent Bly a fax reporting, "We made a pickup run on December 23,1999 as requested. We were unable to enter the area where the dumpster is located as there appeared to [be] a company party taking place in the break area located in front of the dumpster. We remained in the area for a short time, however, the party continued and we departed the area." A December 1, 1999, BBI briefing paper on a "Nichols-Dezenhall/St. Augustine Project" reported on activities within Whetstone and said that "BBI now has operative in place."

Eric Dezenhall says that he cannot identify clients or vendors with which his firm worked. But he notes in an email that he never saw the briefing paper referring to a BBI operative and Whetstone and that "we would not have been involved in any infiltration operation." He adds, "Nichols-Dezenhall Communications never authorized, directed, or was informed of unethical or illegal activities by forensic investigators employed on any project we have worked on. With regard to our work on matters in which we were teamed with investigators, we are aware only of information-gathering through public records checks and other legitimate means." Dezenhall says that "any use of an 'operative' to infiltrate a company…would be counter to our business interests and any information gathered in that manner would be unusable in court." (In 2003, Dezenhall bought out Nichols and renamed the company Dezenhall Resources. "Our client base and employees from the 1990s have turned over almost entirely," Dezenhall says. According to a source familiar with the firm's current operations, the company has moved away from handling corporations involved in environmental controversies.) Another target of BBI's trash men was Fenton Communications, the liberal PR firm headed by David Fenton that for years has assisted environmental causes. On December 8, 1999, a BBI operative, according to an internal report [8], "sat surveillance" at Fenton's Washington home, beginning at 2:50 am. In the report, the operative noted the time of the morning garbage pick-up and that he returned to the office to "sort material" and "analyze." BBI ran background checks on both Fenton and his then-wife. The company's files contained photographs of their house as well as client lists, billing information, and personnel information from Fenton Communications. Between July 1998 and February 2001, Fenton says, his firm experienced several break-ins, during which boxes of files and two laptops were stolen. The culprits were never caught.

Greenpeace was the target of one of BBI's more elaborate???and cinematic??intelligence-gathering efforts, according to company documents [10] and an interview with an eyewitness. Jennifer Trapnell, who was dating Ward in the late 1990s, recalls an evening when she accompanied Ward on a job in Washington D.C. "He said they were trying to get some stuff on Greenpeace," she says. Ward wore black clothes and had told her to dress all in black, too: "It was Mission Impossible-like." In Washington, Ward parked his truck in an alley, she remembers, and told her to stay in the truck and keep a lookout. In the alley, he met a couple of other men, whose faces Trapnell did not see clearly. Ward was talking on a walkie-talkie with others, and they all walked off. About an hour later, the men came back and placed two trash bags in Ward's car. Trapnell says she didn't know what they did with the bags—and Ward never explained. In addition to Ward's work, on several occasions in 2000, Jim Daron, the Washington cop who also worked for BBI, submitted reports to BBI for surveillance of Greenpeace's offices.

BBI gathered numerous internal Greenpeace documents, including financial reports. It also obtained the instructions for using the security system at Greenpeace's offices. And the Greenpeace files at BBI included a handwritten document that appears to record attempts to crack the security codes on entry doors with notations such as "codes do not match" and "open."

BBI prepared reports on Greenpeace—based on "confidential sources"—for Ketchum. In at least one case, according to Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace (who reviewed these reports at Mother Jones' request), a BBI report written for Ketchum contained information tightly held within the group about planned upcoming events. And a December 2, 1999 BBI report (which does not mention Ketchum) noted that Greenpeace had chosen Kellogg's, Kraft, and Quaker as "their main targets in the GE campaign," that it was developing a campaign tactic called "Food-Aid Expose" (which would highlight the export of genetically-modified foods to other countries), and that it was helping a Wall Street Journal reporter track food companies involved in the debate over genetically-engineered foods.

Over the years, Greenpeace has repeatedly been the target of public relations firms working for industry, and the group has experienced burglaries and caught would-be spies posing as students seeking employment. But Greenpeace officials say they did not know that their organization was under surveillance during that period of time.

In the late 1990s, Greenpeace was working with environmental groups in the stretch of Louisiana dubbed "Cancer Alley," organizing against various forms of industry pollution. Its work there and that of its Louisiana partners became another target for BBI. In 1998, according to BBI emails, correspondence, and records, BBI retained Mary Lou Sapone, a self-described "research consultant," who recruited a paid operative in Louisiana to infiltrate an environmental group called CLEAN. Sapone had something of a talent for infiltrating activist groups. In the late 1980s, working for a security firm called Perceptions International, which was, in turn, working for the U.S. Surgical Corporation, she penetrated a Connecticut-based animal-rights group, gathering evidence on an activist who would later serve jail time for planting a pipe bomb near the parking space of the company's CEO. The activist would eventually accused Sapone of coaxing her into the plot.

Sapone's operative in Louisiana relayed to her information on what the local enviros were planning, provided gossip on the internal rivalries, and identified the scientists aiding the groups. She passed the intelligence to BBI. In an August 20, 1998 "client briefing," BBI boasted that "our operative is being nominated to the citizen action panels for local industries" and it asked which local industry Condea Vista, the chemical manufacturing firm, would prefer the operative to focus on. (The previous year, Condea Vista had lost a lawsuit brought by the residents of Lake Charles, Louisiana, against the company for the 1994 ethylene dichloride leak and had been slapped with a $7 million judgment.) Another BBI document noted, "The operative has been trained to be inquiring, but not participatory. Operatives are not allowed to offer suggestions or `help' targets in any way. They are trained to seek documents, ID friends and foe legislators and regulators, follow money trails, ID informants, discover future targets."

BBI produced detailed confidential reports for Ketchum on the environmental activism underway in Louisiana. And BBI records indicate that the firm worked for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Condea Vista Project." Citing "strict confidentiality agreements," Dezenhall will not say whether his firm worked with Condea Vista (or any other company), but he notes in an email, "It would be extremely damaging and wrong…to interpret or portray the term 'operative,' a generic term often used by investigators and former law enforcement types to mean an individual, as implying someone necessarily engaged in illicit actions such as corporate espionage." (Sapone did not respond to a message requesting comment.)

Penetrating a citizens group was not a new endeavor for BBI. In 1996 and 1997 in northern California, where Browning-Ferris Industries was engaged in a battle over the future of a garbage dump, BBI conducted what its records labeled "covert monitoring" and "intelligence gathering" on the North Valley Coalition, a citizens group opposed to the Browning-Ferris project. In September 1997, BBI received a payment of $198,881.05 from BFI.

Browning-Ferris Industries, which owns the dump, denied the charge by Mary Edwards and Wayde Hunter, leaders of the North Valley Coalition

BBI fell apart in 2001 amid arguments over the company's finances. "It was not a happy company," says Phil Giraldi, the ex-CIA man who had worked there, adding, "I have worked for a number of security companies. Some are ethical, some are not. Beckett Brown was not especially so." When the company was collapsing, Dodd says, he heard that document shredding was underway in its offices, and one weekend he went to the offices and carted off scores of cartons stuffed with records.

BBI's demise led to a lawsuit. Dodd sued Rakowski, Ward, Bly and two others, claiming they had engaged in fraud. In a pretrial statement, Dodd accused them of having "dipped into the Company's coffers for generous salaries, commissions, bonuses, loans, benefits and unsupported expense reimbursements, all the while presenting false and misleading financial information" to Dodd. In 2005, after a month-long trial in Maryland's Talbot County Circuit Court, Dodd lost. He now was out the $700,000 he had invested in the company. By his own estimate, he had spent over a million dollars in legal fees. And he was mad. He claims that he only learned of the firm's sleazier actions after the company imploded and that his lawyers encouraged him not to raise that issue as part of his lawsuit. But after the trial was done, Dodd began contacting some of BBI's targets and shared its records with them. "I wanted the facts to come out," he says. "I feel terrible that my money was used to screw these people over."

Today, boxes and boxes of BBI records [11] sit in warehouse space Dodd rents. Dodd has not gone through all of the material. (The records include internal and confidential financial reports of a local bank that had been the subject of a takeover.) Much of what BBI did remains a mystery to Dodd. A law firm representing the Mars candy corporation pored over all the records, according to Dodd and his lawyer, apparently in search of evidence that Mars had been the target of corporate espionage. (The files contain records indicating that BBI obtained information on the phone calls made by a PR man working with Mars.) Then Dodd heard nothing further from this law firm. Dodd says he would be delighted to testify before Congress about BBI—but no one has invited him to do so.

As for BBI's principals, they are still operating. Tim Ward now runs a security firm called Chesapeake Strategies, which bills itself as "a multinational security and investigative firm comprised of professionals with extensive security experience." Jay Bly works there. Its website boasts that it maintains affiliated offices in Paris, Beijng, Tokyo, Qatar, and Kuwait and that "many team members continue to hold Secret and Top Secret government security clearances." The firm has been active in protecting research facilities from animal-rights activists. In 2002, it won a contract from the General Services Administration "for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products." It was listed on a 2005 line-up of Defense Department contractors. "I don't have any comment about what I am currently doing or what I plan to do," Ward says.

Joseph Masonis works for the Annapolis Group, a security firm. Its website notes that the company's managing directors "have over forty-five years of combined experience with the United States Secret Service." Paul Rakowski married Amy DiGeso, who was CEO of Mary Kay when BBI worked for the cosmetics firm. (Currently, she is a top executive at Estee Lauder.) Rakowski's current occupation—if he has one—is not publicly known.

Richard Beckett is now CEO of Maryland-based Global Security Services, which, according to its website, offers clients a "suite of business solutions" that includes "intelligence services," "disaster management," "information systems security," and "paramilitary operations." Last year, his firm provided bodyguards to Senator Barack Obama.

Source URL: http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/exclusive-cops-and-former-secret-service-agents-ran-black-ops-green-groups

Links:

[1] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/082098-Operative-Briefing.pdf

[2] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Daron-GP-Work-Report.pdf

[3] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Dioxin-Ketchum-GP-Report.pdf

[4] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Dow-Global-Trends-Tracking-Team.pdf

[5] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Florida-Trash-Fax.pdf

[6] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Glow-In-Dark-Tacos-Emails.pdf

[7] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Handwritten-GP-Door-Codes.pdf

[8] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Internal%20Report-Sat-Surveillance.pdf

[9] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Nestle%20Project.pdf

[10] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Operative-Inquiring.pdf

[11] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Possible%20Sites-Addresses.pdf

[12] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Rakowski-Queen-Dumpster-Diving-Memo.pdf

[13] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/6/40/a15

The War on Eco-Terror

??By Bradford Plumer| Mon Oct. 3, 2005 11:47 AM PDT

Kelly Hearn, a former UPI reporter, notes???in an article on Alternet that the FBI is cracking down on eco-terrorism, which is fair enough, but that the federal government and various conservative groups are??also pushing to expand the fight to include mainstream environmental groups and regular protestors. I don't really hold any brief for people who torch SUVs or firebomb McDonalds, but some of this seems ludicrous:

As the FBI works to shut down elusive and decentralized eco-terrorist networks, civil rights groups say agents are going so far as illegally spying on activists. In June, a federal disclosure lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union forced the FBI to admit having collected 2,400 pages of files on Greenpeace, the most vocal critic of the Bush administration's environmental record, in addition to other groups….

At a June hearing, [Larry Frankel, legislative director of the ACLU] told a Senate committee that under such a law "people who protest outside of an animal research facility and block the entrance to that facility may be considered eco-terrorists. On the other hand, people who protest outside of a weapons-manufacturing plant and block the entrance to that facility will not be subject to enhanced penalties even though they are engaged in essentially similar activities."

The main problem here seems to be that the Patriot Act's definition of terrorism??any dangerous activity that "appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion"—blurs the line between firebombing and standard protesting. Not to mention the fact that this is all a very transparent attempt to attack environmental groups; one hardly need condone eco-terrorism to point out that this is all extremely slimy.

UPDATE: Dave Roberts of Grist has more on this.

Eco-terrorism’: The scourge of flyer distribution

By David Roberts

Laugh? Or cry? Hard to say. Here’s a??bulletin issued 404 in 2 places? http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/dhs-extremists/?resultpage=1& (see http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/green-scare

yesterday by the Department of Homeland Security. Among other things, it says this:

Attacks against corporations by animal rights extremists and eco-terrorists are costly to the targeted company and, over time, can undermine confidence in the economy. … Although we have no specific, credible information at this time suggesting animal rights extremists and eco-terrorists are planning to target known corporations, we encourage private sector owners and operators to remain vigilant, report suspicious activity, and continue to enhance protective measures.

On the TPM Muckraker site, which is hosting the document, Justin Rood adds:

Such radical extremist groups may use several tactics — each devastating in its own way ?? including:

?? "organizing protests"

?? "flyer distribution"

– "inundating computers with e-mails"

– "tying up phone lines to prevent legitimate calls"

– "sending continuous faxes in order to drain the ink supply from company fax machines"

That’s right. If the ink runs out of your fax machine, that means the terrorists have won.

Joking aside, though, Rood makes the relevant point:

The real outrage in this is that on the very day some DHS yahoo spent time and government money producing this bulletin, a jury was convicting a white supremacist on five counts of trying to obtain a chemical weapon and stolen explosives. The man’s dream: to explode a briefcase "dirty" bomb inside the U.S. Capitol.

Needless to say, I’m told DHS has yet to send out a warning on wackos like him: white supremacists, militias, anti-abortion groups or other violent far-right groups that have actually killed people. It’s the vicious left-wing flyer brigades that pose the greatest danger.

Of course, we can’t say we didn’t see this coming.

That’s the nut. The point is not whether you approve or disapprove of arson or intimidation (or "email inundating"). The point is that the DHS is complicit in a decidedly political attempt to smear and generate hysteria about domestic opponents, on ideological, not security, grounds.

http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/elle_anna/421/

The May issue of Elle??has an article on how the FBI paid a young woman, known as “Anna,” to befriend activists and pressure them into illegal activity. Now, some of those she befriended and entrapped, including environmentalist Eric McDavid, are going to prison as terrorists.

“For two years now, a young woman in camo pants, black sweatshirt, military boots and pink hair, known to both her fellow eco-activists and FBI employers as ‘Anna,’ had been crashing the party.”

Unfortunately Andrea Todd’s article misses the big picture—questioning the relentless push to label non-violent activists as “terrorists,” and the sleazy methods used to do that– for the sake of glamming up an interesting spy story....

In light of that, has Elle issued a retraction? These stickers have mysteriously appeared in copies of the magazine on newsstands around the country.

They read, in part:

Following consultation with federal agencies, we at Elle wish to retract this article. Not because of the stream of factual inaccuracies beginning in the second sentence (there has never been a CrimethInc. convergence in Athens, Georgia), but because in the current political climate it is irresponsible to even pretend to give a fair hearing to radical anti-capitalists. Even if Anna??s story is a cut-and-dried case of entrapment, we have to understand this as a necessary defense of our free market freedoms.

Tagged as: Anna, CrimethInc, Eric McDavid, FBI, Informants & Snitches, Plea Bargain

penn & teller BS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inFtOMx8nDU

interview on def: http://criminaljustice.csusb.edu/facultyStaff/levin.htm stanford, fmrly splc klanwatch

Testimony of David Martosko http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_Martosko

Director of Research

Center for Consumer Freedom

Before the United States Senate,

Committee on the Environment and Public Works

May 18, 2005

Environmental and Animal-Rights Terrorism

and Its Above-Ground Support System http://epw.senate.gov/109th/MARTOSKO_TESTIMONY.pdf

...The Center does not solicit and has never accepted government funding.

Thank you for holding this hearing today. The threat from domestic terrorism motivated by

environmental and animal-rights ideologies is well documented, unambiguous, and growing.

The ALF and ELF don’t really exist in the way we think of advocacy groups or even underground

criminal movements like the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Weather Underground. ALF and

ELF are labels of convenience, applied to crimes after the fact by individuals or small groups in

order to draw public attention to their actions.

Those who engage in “direct action??? crimes, such as starting fires, detonating bombs, threatening

lives, and stalking innocent people, receive demonstrable cooperation and assistance—both

rhetorical and financial—from an above-ground support system. Today I???d like to walk you

through some of our findings in this regard.

albion monitopr on bari:

FBI records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that the FBI infiltrated and spied on Earth First! almost from its beginning in 1980, with the earliest known FBI report on it dated 1981. Heavily censored FBI documents obtained through Bari's suit indicate weekly meetings in spring 1990 between an FBI agent and a secret informant in Northern California. Deposition testimony by Oakland Police Department officers and FBI agents states the FBI had an informant on EF! leaders, and the FBI told OPD that Darryl and Judi were already "the subjects of an investigation in the terrorist field" when they were bombed. Were they under surveillance when the bomb was placed?

Just before the bombing, the FBI was wrapping up Operation Thermcon in Arizona, a 3-year sting operation employing over 50 FBI agents designed to entrap and discredit EF! and its co-founder Dave Foreman as explosive-using terrorists. The FBI infiltrated a tiny Arizona EF! group with an undercover agent provocateur, won their trust over a couple of years, and tried to con them into using thermite, an explosive incendiary, to take down a power line. The activists declined the infiltrator's offer to provide explosives, and he settled for providing them with a cutting torch instead. The FBI provocateur provided the equipment, trained the activists in its use, chose the target, drove them to the site, and joined an FBI strike team in busting them in the act on May 31, 1989. Foreman was not directly involved, but was charged with conspiracy for providing $100 to the group. The resulting "Arizona Five" trial ended in plea bargains in August, 1991, with prison sentences for two of the activists.

Thermcon was the FBI's code name for "thermite conspiracy," but there was no thermite involved except in the FBI plot to tie EF! to explosives despite the fact they have never advocated or used explosives in their 19-year history. The FBI's goal in Thermcon was basically public relations, to trick the public into believing EF! were violent extremists so as to neutralize their effectiveness and isolate them from public support.

Michael Fain, the FBI's undercover agent provocateur in the Arizona case, accidentally recorded his conversation with other agents. It revealed that the FBI's true goal was to discredit Earth First! and radical environmentalism in the public mind. On the tape, Fain is heard to say, "I don't really look for them to be doing a lot of hurting people. (Foreman) isn't really the guy we need to pop -- I mean in terms of an actual perpetrator. This is the guy we need to pop to send a message. And that's all we're really doing. . . . Uh-oh! We don't need that on tape! Hoo boy!"

Some of the same San Francisco FBI terrorist squad agents who worked the Thermcon case were assigned to the Bari bomb case. The FBI tried for years to keep their Thermcon files secret from Bari's lawyers, claiming there was no connection, but they were finally ordered by the court to furnish copies in 1996, three years after the FBI's first release of files in the case.

But the FBI is apparently hiding sixteen crucial documents they claim are "missing" from the Thermcon file. They span a period from just after Redwood Summer was announced, in March, 1990, to a month after the bombing. Bari lawyer Dennis Cunningham wrote in a brief: "Plaintiffs are of the opinion that the missing (documents) showed political surveillance and other illicit operations against Earth First! in California, and Redwood Summer, having nothing to do with THERMCON; as such, given the charges herein, they were too hot to handle, and so were simply iced...."

The FBI - Timber Connection

The Bari - Cherney lawsuit also turned up several connections between the timber industry and the FBI, including a chummy "Dear Bill" letter sent to FBI Director William Sessions by a board member of Maxxam, which owns Pacific Lumber.

Other associations are more disturbing because they involve bombs and bomb-making. Just a month before the bomb exploded in Bari's car, the FBI conducted a bomb investigator school in Humboldt County.

As part of the training, lead instructor and FBI bomb expert Special Agent Frank Doyle blew up cars with pipe bombs on a Louisiana Pacific logging site, then his students practiced investigating the results. Louisiana Pacific, remember, was the company whose timberlands Judi asked Mendocino County to seize, after which she immediately began receiving death threats....http://www.albionmonitor.com/9905a/jbrevisited.html

The FBI further describes terrorism as either domestic or international, depending on the origin, base, and objectives of the terrorist organization. For the purpose of this report, the FBI will use the following definitions:

Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or Puerto Rico without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives.

2002-5: In keeping with a longstanding trend, domestic extremists carried out the majority of terrorist incidents during this period. Twenty three of the 24 recorded terrorist incidents were perpetrated by domestic terrorists. With the exception of a white supremacist’s firebombing of a synagogue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, all of the domestic terrorist incidents were committed by special interest extremists active in the animal rights and environmental movements. The acts committed by these extremists typically targeted materials and facilities rather than persons.

daniel mcgowen describes SHU/CMU: http://www.supportdaniel.org/cmu/exposing_cmu_dm.html

...

CMU as Secret

In addition to the due process and transfer issues, there is the secretive and illegal manner that the CMU was created (Note: for historical perspectives, it needs to be stated that the CMU was established roughly halfway through the second term of George W. Bush and his Attorney General Alberto Gonzales).

In April 2006, the BoP proposed a “Limited Communication for Terrorist Inmates” policy,28 which suggested new restrictions for “terrorists” and “terrorism related inmates” such as:

???? 1) One 6-page letter per week.

???? 2) One 15-minute phone call a month.

???? 3) One 1-hour visit a month.29

A coalition of civil rights organizations signed a letter of protest criticizing the proposed rules and raising numerous constitutional, practical and ethical objectives.30 The outcry appears to have caused the BoP to reconsider it and just 6 months later, open the CMU at FCI Terre Haute quietly.31 Since the BoP never sought public comment on the new CMU, it certainly appears to be a violation of the Administrative Procedural Act (APA),32 an argument a federal judge in Miami raised in response to a prisoner’s legal challenge to transfer to the CMU.33

The unit is functionally an open secret. While the BoP circumvented the standard public comment (and feedback process), it has sought to get around this by describing the CMU as a “self-contained general population unit,”34 implying that the unit is legally and penally no different than a normal unit at an FCI. There is no mention of the CMU on the BoP’s website (ww.bop.gov) or USP Marion???s subpage on the same site.35 You will not find extensive Congressional hearings on the subject— other than a July 2008 subcommittee hearing in which it appears that the BoP director was not fully forthcoming on the CMU36. Letters here are stamped “USP Marion,” not CMU, and the unit is called “I Unit” by staff. (An interesting anecdote: while on transit in Winter 2009, I met men from the FCI here and asked them what they knew about I Unit. Without hesitation, they said, “That??s where the terrorists are.” They informed me this is what BoP Staff routinely told them).

Media queries are met with silence or vague information. Requests by the media to interview me by coming to Marion have been denied— due to it “being detrimental to the safety, security and good order of the institution.”37 There still is no Program Statement on the CMU—??a legal requirement, outlining the specific rules of the CMU and its designation criteria.

Because of this, and the general refusal of the BoP to hand over relevant documents through FOIA, it is impossible to determine the specific reasons why one is sent here— and thus, how to contest this process.38 In effect, the CMU was created on the fly, with no eye toward legality; they are free to operate it in whatever manner they choose.

Communication Management (The promotion of isolation and alienation)

The most painful aspect of this unit, to me, is how the CMU restricts my contact with the world beyond these walls. It is difficult for those who have not known prison to understand what a lifeline contact with our family and friends is to us. It is our link to the world— and our future (for those of us who are fortunate enough to have release dates). Prison authorities and architects are well aware that those with strong family ties and in good communication with their loved ones are well behaved and have significantly lower rates of recidivism. The BoP, in theory, recognizes this by claiming they try to situate us within 500 miles of our homes. Mostly, this is a cruel farce for many prisoners— I have not been within 1000 miles of my family in 2 years.

The most Orwellian aspects of the CMU are in how they manage our communications:

A) Telephones- at my previous prison, I was able to use the phones for 300 minutes a month— days, nights, weekends and holidays— basically at any point I was not in my housing unit (6am-10pm). Here, we receive one 15-minute phone call a week. The call can only take place between 8am and 2:30pm, never on weekends or holidays and must be scheduled one and a half weeks in advance (we can choose a back-up number to call but if neither picks up, we don’t get a call).39 The call is live-monitored and recorded. Not only do we receive one fifth of the minutes granted to other federal prisoners but the call is also very trying for our families— all of whom have day jobs and many of whom have children in school. The CMU requires calls be made in English only— a difficult demand considering over half of the men here speak English as a second language (this restriction is not present at other federal prisons).

B) Visits- At FCI Sandstone, I received up to eight visiting days a month (56 hours)— contact visits in which I could embrace my wife, play cards with my nieces and share vending machine food with my visitors. These visits were my lifeline. I got about twelve of them in eight months and it aided in my adjustment to prison.

The CMU restricts our visits to one four-hour non-contract visit a month. One short visit through two inches of plate glass with cameras hanging overhead and my visitors stuffed in a four-and-a-half by three-and-a-half-foot stuffy booth— a tight squeeze for two.40 The visits can only take place on weekdays from 8am-2pm— no more Christmas or thanksgiving visits— and worse, no physical contact (Consider what it would be like to have no contact with your loved ones. What if you couldn’t hug or kiss your lover, partner, wife, husband? What would that do to you?) I find myself riddled with guilt when I ask friends to spend $500 to fly across the country, drive three hours (and repeat) for a four-hour non-contact visit. I’m lucky though, having people who will do this. Many of the men here can’t afford it or don’t want to subject their children to this reality.

C) Mail- We can only send out mail once a day and we cannot visit the mail room to send out packages. We are one-hundred-percent reliant on the one staff person who deals with our mail to do so and sending a box home is a laborious procedure. We must leave our envelopes unsealed so that staff can read, copy, scan and send to whatever other agency studies our correspondence. A letter to NYC takes roughly seven to nine days (which should take five). Letters sent abroad, especially those not written in English, could take a month or more— a common complaint of some of my fellow prisoners.

Staff here has an interesting reading of the rules governing legal mail leading to the charge that they open our legal mail (this is the subject of an administrative remedy I filed with the BoP Central Office in Washington DC). The rule states that the lawyer’s name must be clearly identified and that the envelope must say “Special Mail- Open only in the presence of inmates”41 and yet staff has opened my legal mail that said “Law Offices of Jane Doe” stating that it should have said, “Jane Doe, Attorney at Law”! The staff looks for any reason to disqualify our legal mail as protected and gather intelligence this way. In doing so, they violate the sanctity of the attorney-client confidentiality principle....

5] Jim Herron Zamora & Henry K. Lee, Earth First Activists Win Case: FBI, Cops Must Pay $4.4 Million for Actions After Car Bombing, S.F. Chron., June 11, 2002, at A1.

[346] See Vannessa Grigoriadis, The Rise & Fall of the Eco-Radical Underground, Rolling Stone, Aug. 10, 2006, at 73, 74-75; Melyn, Freelance Infiltrator Sparks Thought Crime Incident, Earth First! J., Mar.-Apr. 2006, at 10 [hereinafter Freelance Infiltrator]; Ben Rosenfeld, War on the First Amendment: The Great Green Scare and the Fed's "Case" Against Rod Coronado, Counterpunch, Mar. 10, 2006, available at http://counterpunch.org/rosenfeld03102006.html; Jennifer Van Bergen, FBI Confidential Informant Also Said to be Provocateur, Raw Story, June 8, 2006, http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/FBI_confidential_informant_also_said_to_0608.html (last visited Apr. 13, 2008); Information on the Confidential Source in the Auburn Arrests, Portland Indep. Media Center, Jan. 26, 2006, http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/01/

332735.shtml (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

“Ecoterrorism”?: A Critical Analysis of the Vilification of Radical Environmental Activists as Terrorists

By Rebecca K. Smith

Issue 38:2

Lewis & Clark Law School's Environmental Law

http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html

I. Introduction

We want to destroy environmentalists by taking their money and their members. . . . No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along.[1]Facts don't matter, in politics, perception is reality.

Ron Arnold, Father of the Wise Use Movement and Creator of the Term

"Ecoterrorism"[2]

Terrorism is anything that stands in the face of what we want to do . . . people's movements of resistance against deprivation, against unemployment, against the loss of natural resources, all of that is termed 'terrorism.'

Edward Said, Columbia Professor of English & Comparative Literature[3]

In August of 2002, as I sat high in an old ponderosa pine to protest destructive logging on public lands in the Bitterroot Valley, federal agents began to cut the tree down from the top while I sat below their saw. After sawing off most of the branches, they tied one end of a rope to the trunk of the tree, and tied the other end of the rope to the bumper of a truck eighty feet below us. They would saw off a five foot section of the tree trunk, the truck would pull the rope, and the section of the tree trunk would crash to the ground. When they had cut the trunk of the tree down to where I was sitting, they lifted me into a cherry picker bucket and brought me to the ground.

Before they could take me to jail, they had to take me to the hospital. For the previous two weeks the federal agents had set up a twenty-four hour, four-person surveillance team-with four high powered spotlights-to enforce severe dehydration, starvation, and sleep deprivation upon me and my companion tree-sitter in a neighboring tree. When I arrived at the hospital to receive a three hour intravenous injection of fluids, the police officer handcuffed me to the hospital bed.

As I sat in the hospital bed, sediment from aggressive post-fire logging continued filling Rye Creek, the Bitterroot River tributary adjacent to the protest site. The bull trout, a species listed under the Endangered Species Act,[4]used to live in Rye Creek.[5]By the time the logging was completed that summer, the sedimentation it caused had obliterated the bull trout's habitat in Rye Creek. Bull trout can no longer be found in Rye Creek.[6]

My companion tree-sitter and I were convicted by a Western Montana jury whose members were all connected to the logging and wood products industry, the U.S. Forest Service, or law enforcement institutions. My sentence for engaging in a peaceful protest on public lands was thirty days locked in a halfway house in Butte, Montana, three years of supervised federal probation, and restitution for the cherry picker and my emergency room hospital bill. The conditions of my probation dictated that I could not enter any National Forest in the entire country unless it was an official wilderness area, and that I could not engage in any protest nor leave the state without permission from the federal government. My tree-sitting companion received a similar punishment. I believed that these were draconian sentences, but was not shocked by them. What I was shocked by was the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision on our criminal appeal, which implied that we were "ecoterrorists" for peacefully sitting in trees.[7]

Unfortunately, the branding of radical environmentalists as terrorists is not a new phenomenon. This Comment will specifically examine the law, policy, and procedure which have been enacted to paint radical environmentalists as terrorists. More generally, it will examine the origins of this legal phenomenon, and why the policy has been embraced and codified by lawmakers. Section II of this Comment will briefly examine how contemporary environmental problems have catalyzed the birth of the radical environmental movement in the United States. Part III of this Comment will examine the corresponding development and use of the term "ecoterrorism" by extractive industry advocates and government officials sympathetic to those types of special interests. Part IV of this Comment will examine how the acceptance and use of the term "ecoterrorism" by the mainstream media has affected activists, specifically post September 11, 2001. Part V will suggest why the term "ecoterrorism" should not be used to paint radical environmental activists as terrorists.

II. The Catalyst for Radical Environmental Activism

A. Ecological Problems

Over the past four decades, U.S. citizens have been forced to realize the detrimental effects of our collective lifestyle on the planet. The amount of environmental devastation faced by present generations of humans is overwhelming. Species are going extinct at a rate 100 to 1000 times the rate found in the fossil record[8]and one-half of all of the planet's species are estimated to be extinct by the year 2100.[9]The polar ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising,[10]the effect of which is already eliminating the homelands of island dwellers.[11]There is a massive hole in the ozone layer.[12]Acid rain is falling out of the sky.[13]Toxic chemicals and substances are poisoning our drinking water, our food, our blood, and our lungs.[14]These are only a few examples for illustration; the complete extent of the current crisis is probably impossible to fully document or even comprehend.[15]

B. Rise of Environmental Legal Tools

In response to awareness of these environmental problems, the U.S. Congress passed a series of environmental laws in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964[16]and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1969.[17]In 1970, an Executive Order established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)[18]and Congress passed regulatory amendments to the Clean Air Act (CAA).[19]In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act (CWA),[20]followed by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973.[21]In 1976, it passed the National Forest Management Act (NFMA)[22]and in 1980 it passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response and Cleanup Liability Act (CERCLA).[23]

Citizens took hold of these legal tools and as they utilized them to preserve our environment, the collateral impacts of enforcement on private industry began to surface. One example is the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill,[24]in which the Court refused to ignore the ESA's legal protections for species on the brink of extinction.[25]The Court recognized that the species in question was a small fish, and that enforcement of the law would permanently stop a dam project in which the Army Corps of Engineers had already invested more than $100 million.[26]Nonetheless, the Court held that the dam could not close (and thereby destroy the river ecosystem) because the value of an endangered species is "incalculable."[27]This decision and its repercussions on industries that exploit natural resources have led organizations like the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation to denounce the ESA as helping to "devastate entire industries."[28]In the same vein, "free market" groups like Ron Arnold's Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise have called NEPA a "procedural, bureaucratic, punitive, dangerous obstruction to the social and economic requirements of present generations of Americans."[29]

Another example is the case of Love Canal, New York where, after historic dumping of billions of tons of hazardous waste, the industrial owners of the dumping ground sold their land to the local school district for $1.00.[30]In 1978, after a school and 100 homes were built on the dumping ground, a carcinogenic sludge began seeping into homes. Eventually, 1000 families were forced to abandon their homes.[31]The publicly led outcry in response to this disaster led to the enactment of CERCLA by the U.S. Congress.[32]CERCLA forces any agency that is involved in the creation, transport, or dumping of hazardous waste to be held strictly, and jointly and severally, liable.[33]This liability can end up costing industries tens of millions of dollars.[34]

C. Rise of Environmental Organizations

As these laws were promulgated and initially utilized to combat environmental degradation, the 1970s and 1980s saw a public environmental movement take shape to organize against environmental destruction.[35]In 1976, the Internal Revenue Service recognized the importance of "efforts to preserve and protect the natural environment for the benefit of the public" by officially sanctioning the granting of federal income tax-exempt status, and charitable contribution deduction status, for environmental organizations.[36]Over time, environmental groups and activists have developed their own distinct identities. Some environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club, are large corporations with headquarters, local offices, legal teams, and lobbying efforts.[37]Other organizations, like the Environmental Protection Information Center in Northern California, are grassroots groups that participate in local issues and use community organizing and strategic lawsuits as tools.[38]And yet other environmental activists, who do not believe that environmental change is occurring fast enough through the mainstream channels,[39]and who may identify with radical movements like Earth First! or the Earth Liberation Front, use civil disobedience as their tool, which includes breaking criminal laws from trespass to laws against property damage.[40]

While tactics may be a constant source of debate, the collective purpose of all of these groups resonates with the American people. National polls indicate that the majority of Americans believe that environmental quality is getting worse (67%),[41]that the United States should be enforcing environmental regulations more strongly (79%),[42]and that businesses will "cut corners and damage the environment without strong government rules and regulations" (75%).[43]Moreover, a 2005 Harris Poll indicated 74% of Americans agree that "protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost."[44]

D. Radical Environmentalism

Despite the increase in legal tools, citizen organizing, and supportive public sentiment in the latter part of the century, some environmentalists were dissatisfied with the type and pace of environmental protection efforts. Critics of the mainstream groups disdained the moderation and compromise exhibited by large environmental organizations whose leaders were ambitious environmental professionals eager to cross over into government offices.[45]The activists disagreed with the tendency of large professional environmental organizations to avoid critiques of the underlying social institutions supporting environmental destruction.[46]They believe that mainstream environmentalist victories have played a minor role in an overwhelming trend of escalating environmental losses, and they do not believe it is possible to achieve necessary change while primarily working within the same institutional system which has created, and is benefiting from, the causes of environmental destruction.[47]Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess described the situation as a distinction between the "shallow" ecological movement-composed of the large, bureaucratic, reform-oriented groups, and the "deep" ecological movement-composed of individuals who advocated a fundamental change in the way humans relate to the natural world.[48]

The philosophy of Deep Ecology, also referred to as biocentrism, which argues that nature has intrinsic worth, and that all life processes should be valued,[49]was a rallying factor for early radical environmentalists.[50]United in their belief that nature was intrinsically valuable, these radical activists devised a different approach to environmental protection than their mainstream counterparts, an approach which included illegal tactics.[51]Examples of these illegal tactics include trespassing, road-blockading, office sit-ins, tree-sitting, equipment damage, and arson of property.[52]Although some radical environmentalists engage in acts of property damage or destruction, all specifically eschew violence, and provide guidelines to ensure that activists do not injure or harm human life in the process of their illegal actions. The Earth First! Journal, a publication which publishes news of radical environmental campaigns, states on its website that "[a]t no time should anyone physically or verbally assault anyone????.??. . at an Earth First! action."[53]Similarly, the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental movement that advocates economic sabotage, published guidelines which state that actors shall "take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and nonhuman."[54]

III. Development and Use of the Phrase "Ecoterrorism"

A. Property Rights Group Creates the Term "Ecoterrorism"

The rise of a loud and diverse environmental movement in the United States has not gone unnoticed by private industry. In 1988, at a conference organized by the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), the Center's leader Ron Arnold introduced the phrase "wise use."[55]The conference attracted groups affiliated with the mining and timber industries, off-road vehicle clubs, private property rights advocates, and conservative think tanks, among others.[56]Following the conference, Arnold's group released the "Wise Use Agenda" which advocated opening seventy million acres of federal wilderness to commercial development and motor traffic, allowing mining in national parks, increasing logging and oil production in Alaska, and logging old growth forests.[57]Three years later, the representatives for the oil, cattle, logging, and motorized vehicle industries "who view big environmental groups as a threat to their livelihood and way of life" joined under the banner "Alliance for America."[58]

Arnold has stated that the wise use movement "created a sector of public opinion that didn't use to exist" and that "[n]o one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along."[59]Arnold's goal is "to destroy environmentalists by taking their money and their members."[60]

Arnold is attributed with first coining the phrase "ecoterrorism" in a 1983 article in Reason magazine.[61]He later wrote a book entitled Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature-The World of the Unabomber.[62]Arnold defines ecoterrorism as "a crime committed to save nature."[63]The CDFE's website maintains a page on "ecoterrorism"[64]and provides a link to an "Ecoterror Response Network," which "gathers evidence, information and tips concerning crimes committed in the name of saving nature and relays them to the appropriate law enforcement agency."[65]Links are provided on the website to records of environmentalists who have been arrested or convicted.[66]Arnold now presents himself as an expert on "ecoterrorism:" he has testified on the subject for a Senate Committee hearing[67]and received a $340,000 grant for a University of Arkansas Terrorism Research Center study.[68]

B. 1988 Congressional Testimony Calls Earth First! Activists "Ecoterrorists"

In 1988, five years after Arnold published the phrase "ecoterrorism," it appeared in congressional testimony in relation to radical environmental activists. During testimony on the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, Senator James McClure addressed a provision of the Act which had nothing to do with drug-related offenses.[69]Part of the bill addressed drug cultivation on public lands, and criminalized dangerous booby traps set to protect crops by harming humans. McClure asserted these traps included everything from "trip wires connected to shotguns and hand grenades to the use of Claymore antipersonnel mines . . . traps . . .??set with every intention to kill somebody."[70]

McClure then assured the Senate that "ecoterrorists" with a different agenda were using methods on the public lands "just as dangerous and deadly as the drug producers."[71]He asserted that Earth First! groups "get their kicks by hurting people and destroying property."[72]He then claimed Earth First! activists hide steel bars with sharpened nails attached underneath trails, which puts hikers, trail bikes, horse hoofs, men, women, children, and wildlife at risk.[73]He referred to one incident where a tree spike injured a logger and implied the spike was placed in the tree by a "radical environmentalist."[74]Although he pointed to no other example of injury or economic loss, McClure asserted "terrorist thugs" were "driving citizens off the public lands."[75]He then entered into the record an editorial from a Spokane, Washington newspaper which stated "[p]eople in the logging industry see [Earth First! activists], accurately, as terrorists."[76]

McClure also entered into the record an article written by a Spokesman-Review reporter which reported Earth First! activists, at what McClure called a "terrorist encampment," were training each other to monkeywrench (i.e., place spikes in trees, disable machinery, and commit other acts of vandalism against property) as well as how to engage in tree-sitting (a type of protest where a person and his or her gear sits on a platform in a tree to prevent the tree from being cut down).[77]Ironically, the article made clear that Earth First! activists did not believe that the tree spike which injured a logger had been placed in the tree by a radical activist because no notice had been given to the timber industry and the activists do not intend to hurt people.[78]The article quoted a timber industry representative stating, "I don't think they're environmentalists, I think they're terrorists."[79]

Following the congressional hearing, the Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. ?? 1864(a)(2), which criminalized the use of a hazardous or injurious device on federal land with the intent to obstruct or harass the harvesting of timber.[80]A hazardous or injurious device is defined as

[A] device, which when assembled or placed, is capable of causing bodily injury, or damage to property, by the action of any person making contact with such device subsequent to the assembly or placement. Such term includes guns attached to trip wires or other triggering mechanisms, ammunition attached to trip wires or other triggering mechanisms, or explosive devices attached to trip wires or other triggering mechanisms, sharpened stakes, lines or wires, lines or wires with hooks attached, nails places so that the sharpened ends are positioned in an upright manner, or tree spiking devices including spikes, nails, or other objects hammered, driven, fastened, or otherwise placed into or on any timber, whether or not severed from the stump.[81]

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has also held that unmodified, highly visible, plastic ropes tied between trees as part of a tree-sit protest qualify as hazardous or injurious devices.[82]

Although McClure's testimony in front of the Senate focused on human injury, the statute penalizes conduct even if there is no damage to any property or any individual, with fines and up to one year in prison.[83]Moreover, if a defendant has already been convicted once-even if there was no property damage or human injury in either incident-the second conviction may carry a twenty year prison term.[84]Additionally, if there is damage "to the property of any individual," regardless of the level or type of damage,[85]or if any individual incurs a cut, bruise, or "any other injury to the body, no matter how temporary,"[86]the defendant may receive twenty years in prison.[87]

C. Law Review Article Analogizes Radical Environmentalist Actions with Anti-Abortion Murders

In 1995, seven years after the Congress learned about "ecoterrorism" from Senator McClure, the Houston Law Review published an article advocating the use of organized crime laws against "environmental terrorists."[88]In the article, the author claims that acts of vandalism committed by environmental "terrorists" are analogous to acts of murder committed by abortion "protestors": "these organizations [Greenpeace, the Sea Shepard Society, and Earth First!] ha[ve] a history of terroristic and extortionate acts-acts with striking parallels to the recent abortion protest cases."[89]

D. June 1998 Congressional Hearing Convened on "Ecoterrorism by Radical Environmental Organizations"

Three years after that article was published, the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime held a hearing on "Acts of Ecoterrorism by Radical Environmental Organizations."[90]In his opening remarks for the hearing, Chairman Representative Bill McCollum stated that "[i]n the name of protecting Mother Nature, radical environmentalists generate nothing but terror"[91]and that "there have already been many victims of radical environmental attacks."[92]The witnesses called to testify at the hearing were Ron Arnold (the creator of the term "ecoterrorism"), Barry Clausen (a private investigator hired by timber, mining, and ranching interests to investigate acts of sabotage),[93]a former Forest Service employee, Representative Frank Riggs, one of Representative Riggs' staff members, and Bruce Vincent, President of the wise use umbrella group Alliance for America.[94]

Testimony of Congressman Frank Riggs

Riggs, who is an ex-police officer,[95]began his testimony by stating that "[m]any of our communities have been under outright siege" by radical environmentalists.[96]He relayed one incident where protestors entered his office with a large stump, dumped sawdust in the office, and staged a sit-in with their arms locked to each other around the stump to protest logging of old growth forest in his congressional district.[97]Although he admitted that "no one was actually physically injured, and the damage or destruction of property wasn't too extensive,"[98]Riggs referred to the Earth First! protest by saying "my office was quite literally assaulted by a group of environmental terrorists . . . in what was really an attack or a raid on my office."[99]He further testified that his employees "thought a bomb had gone off," that the protestors were dressed in "commando or paramilitary style," and that they "proceeded to trash my office and traumatize my employees."[100]

Riggs stated that Earth First! activists are "members of a highly organized, nationwide movement bent on the destruction of the entire natural resource industry and the families and communities bound to that livelihood . . . . Their goal is to sap local resources by tying up law enforcement and clogging the judicial system."[101]He further asserted that the rise in "environmental zealots" has drained the treasury to the point where there are not enough resources for education and infrastructure maintenance, which "hurt[s] our children" and forces "sidewalks to crumble."[102]He stated that the "systematic, organized ecoterrorism of Earth First! and other militant organizations must stop. Lives have been lost."[103]Echoing the 1995 Houston Law Review article, Riggs recommended expanding RICO, an organized crime statute, to apply to the actions of radical environmental activists.[104]

Background Information and Context of Congressman Riggs' Testimony

a. Police Reaction to Earth First! Protest

Notably, Riggs did not mention in his testimony that the local police response to the nonviolent Earth First! sit-in in his office was to hold the protestors' eyelids open and swab pepper spray directly on their eyeballs, and/or to spray pepper spray directly into their open eyes.[105]This specific police conduct was found by a unanimous jury in 2005 to be an unconstitutional use of excessive force.[106]

b. Details About the Cloverdale Tree-Spiking Incident

In the middle of his testimony about the Earth First! protest, Riggs stated that a group with ties to Earth First! spiked a tree, and that a logger was killed by the spike at a mill in Cloverdale, California.[107]Referring to Earth First! again, Riggs asserted: "[t]hey are terrorists . . . [l]ives have been lost."[108]Later in his testimony, in response to a question about whether or not anyone had been injured by "ecoterrorism," Riggs again asserted that a mill worker in Cloverdale, California was killed by a spiked log.[109]In response to the same question later in the hearing, Riggs' employee did not testify that the mill worker died, but instead she believed that "he lost an eye."[110]

The mill worker to whom Riggs and his employee referred is George Alexander, a man who worked in the Louisiana-Pacific Cloverdale mill.[111]Earth First! activist Judi Bari interviewed Alexander and published the interview in a local newspaper in 1993. Her interview revealed that prior to the accident in 1987, Alexander had been complaining about dangerous working conditions in the mill. He had noticed that the band saw blade had cracks, and that the blade was wobbling.[112]He and other employees complained to Louisiana-Pacific management but they were ignored.[113]Alexander stated that "'[w]e're not even people to [Louisiana-Pacific management] .??????. . . All they care about is production.'"[114]Alexander's wife echoed that statement: "I hate L-P."[115]On the day of the incident, Alexander had almost refused to come to work because of the dangerous working conditions.[116]The day of his injury, Alexander had begun milling a twelve inch diameter tree, when it struck metal and the saw blade broke and hit him in the throat and face.[117]

Alexander was not killed, but was seriously injured.[118]And while Alexander had to file a lawsuit against the timber company to get any money for his medical expenses, Louisiana Pacific offered a $20,000 reward for information on who spiked the tree and exploited his accident for public relations purposes across the country.[119]Alexander stated, "They used my name all over the country . . . . Then they laid me off when the mill closed down??. . . . L-P is just sorry I didn't die."[120]

Earth First! activists were immediately blamed by the company and denounced as terrorists in the media for the incident.[121]But the logging company traced the spiked log to a logging project in an area where neighbors had been complaining about the logging and the threats the logging posed to their water supply.[122]When Judi Bari received her FBI files, they included the Sheriff's reports about the tree-spiking incident, and she learned that the actual suspect for the spiking was a man named Bill Ervin.[123]Ervin was a local who openly admitted to spiking trees on his own property in an attempt to dissuade Louisiana-Pacific from "accidentally" logging trees which were not on their property.[124]

c. Death of David Chain

While no mill worker has ever been killed by radical environmentalists, unfortunately a radical environmentalist was killed by a logger only months after the 1998 Senate hearing on ecoterrorism. On September 17, 1998 Earth First! activist David Chain was protesting the logging of thousand year old trees near Eureka, California.[125]A video of the event revealed that at one point during the protest, the logger had shouted: "Get outta here! Otherwise I'll (expletive) make sure I got a tree coming this way."[126]Chain was then crushed to death when the logger felled a tree onto him.[127]The local district attorney refused to press any criminal charges against the logger,[128]although he considered pressing manslaughter charges against the other protestors at the scene.[129]Chain's parents then filed a civil lawsuit against the logging company and the case settled days before trial.[130]

Testimony of Other Witnesses

After Congressman Riggs' testimony, the Committee heard testimony from Bruce Vincent, President of Alliance for America,[131]the wise use umbrella group mentioned above that represents the oil, cattle, logging, and motorized vehicle industries.[132]Vincent claimed that people had threatened "sexual and physical torture of [his] children before they were killed if [he] did not shut up."[133]Vincent stated that although no one was ever hurt,[134]the FBI and Montana Senator Conrad Burns worked with him and told him and his wife to carry concealed weapons and teach their children-as young as six years old-how to shoot guns.[135]He states that his phone was tapped to capture the threatening calls, but he was not ever able to "trap" any of the calls.[136]

Although Vincent admitted he did not know who made the calls, he stated that Earth First! should be held accountable for the threats because it "print[ed] the material that causes the atmosphere for this to happen."[137]Vincent ended his testimony by asking the Committee to amend the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1993 (AEPA) to include natural resource workers in logging, fishing, mining, energy, and ranching.[138]

At that time, AEPA prohibited the intentional physical disruption of an animal enterprise "by intentionally stealing, damaging, or causing the loss of any property (including animals or records) used by the animal enterprise, [which] thereby causes economic damage exceeding $10,000 to that enterprise, or conspires to do so."[139]A conviction at that time would be a maximum one year prison sentence and fines.[140]In 2002, the penalty was increased to a maximum three year prison sentence for damage over $10,000, and a maximum six month sentence for damage less than $10,000.[141]

Vincent's testimony was followed by testimony from a former Forest Service employee who called Earth First! an "ecoterrorist group."[142]This testimony was followed by testimony from one of Congressman Riggs' employees. She asserted that mills close, families are "torn apart," high incidents of "domestic violence and child abuse" are occurring in her district, and that those problems are "exacerbated in large part" from protests of the radical environmental groups.[143]The next witness was private investigator and self-proclaimed Earth First! "infiltrator" Barry Clausen. He asserted that from his monitoring of Earth First! publications, supporters, ideologies, and connections to other groups[144]he knew of an "unknown number of death threats" and "actual incidents of attempted murder and murder itself."[145]He did not provide any examples. He asserted that Earth First! "advocates . . . terrorism to the youth of our country"[146]and that the excessive use of force lawsuits filed by Earth First! activists against police were intended "to intimidate law enforcement officers into reluctance to make arrests for fear of reprisals."[147]

The final witness at the June 1998 hearing was Ron Arnold. Arnold defined ecoterrorism for the Committee as "a crime committed to save nature" which includes every crime from trespass to murder.[148]Like Vincent, Arnold recommended amending the Animal Enterprise Protection Act to include natural resource workers and enterprises.[149]

E. February 2002 Congressional Hearing on "Eco-terrorism and Lawlessness on National Forests"

In 2002, James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief of the FBI Counterterrorism Division, testified before the House Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health.[150]While recognizing that the Animal Liberation Front (a radical animal rights movement he linked to the Earth Liberation Front) "discourages acts that harm any animal, human and nonhuman," he asserted that the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) had emerged as a "serious terrorist threat" because of criminal action in the United States since 1996 that had resulted in excess of $43 million in property damage.[151]Jarboe further pronounced that ELF/ALF was the top priority in domestic terrorism.[152]He defined "ecoterrorism" as "the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target often of a symbolic nature."[153]Thus, Jarboe made clear that the FBI considers a threat to use violence against an inanimate object to be a terrorist act if it is environmentally motivated, regardless if property damage ever materializes. He did not define for the Committee exactly what the FBI considers to be "violence."

Jarboe informed the Committee that between 1993 and 2003, the number of FBI agents assigned to counterterrorism programs increased by 224% to 1669 agents-nearly 16% of all FBI agents.[154]Jarboe further indicated that counterterrorism programs have "strengthened" in recent years. He stated that by the end of 2003, the FBI planned to have Joint Terrorism Task Forces established in each of the FBI's fifty-six field offices.[155]He also stated that the FBI currently had twenty-six field offices with pending investigations associated with ALF/ELF activities.[156]In his testimony he did not cite to any incident where a human was injured or killed by "ecoterrorism."

Jarboe's testimony at the hearing largely mirrored the sentiments of most of the other twenty individuals who participated with testimony or prepared statements. Throughout the hearing-held only five months after the September 11, 2001 attacks-the participants repeatedly affirmed the concept that acts of property damage committed by the ELF or ALF were acts of terrorism.[157]Several witnesses did however emphasize that the physical assaults on government employees by adherents to the "wise use" philosophy,[158]as well as the tens of millions of dollars of timber stolen annually from public lands,[159]were both crimes surpassing the acts of "ecoterrorism" emphasized by the hearing.

F. Industry Group Publishes Model Act: Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act

In 2003, a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council published model legislation entitled the "Animal & Ecological Terrorism Act" (Model Act).[160]

The American Legislative Exchange Council

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization[161]and was originally started in 1973 by conservative activist Paul Weyrich along with a small number of state legislators.[162]In the 1980s, ALEC shifted its emphasis and is now a mix of state and federal legislators who are funded by corporate donors to draft and introduce industry-friendly legislation.[163]In 2002, ALEC included over 2400 state lawmakers and members, as well as alumni of at least nine state governors and 80 members of Congress, including Dennis Hastert and Tom Delay.[164]The group is funded primarily by large corporations, industry groups, and conservative foundations who pay up to $50,000 a year (in a tax-deductible donation) in membership dues; members have included corporations like Philip Morris, Amoco, Chevron, and Enron.[165]In 2000 alone, ALEC members introduced and convinced legislatures to pass 450 ALEC-drafted laws.[166]

The Model Act

In 2003, ALEC published the Model Act to criminalize any act that "obstructs" or "impedes" use of an animal facility or natural resource.[167]Also criminalized by the Model Act is any lodging, publicity, and financial or other support given to an activist deemed to be "obstructing" or "impeding" the use of an animal or natural resource.[168]ALEC stated that the Model Act was necessary in part because the AEPA was "overly narrow" and because the USA PATRIOT ACT "can rarely be used [within the realm of ecoterrorism] because the federal definition of terrorism requires the death of or harm to people, an element not characteristic of eco-terrorists."[169]

The penalty for a violation of the act which causes between $0 and $500.00 damage would be a high degree misdemeanor with fines or imprisonment.[170]The penalty for a violation of the act which causes more than $500.00 of damage would be a felony with fines or imprisonment.[171]A conviction under this Model Act would be deemed a conviction of a terrorist act, and the offender would be required to register with the Attorney General in a terrorist registry.[172]The registry would keep a website with the convict's photograph, name, address, and signature for at least three years, after which the convict could petition to be removed from the registry.[173]

In 2003, ALEC reported that current or former members had introduced versions of the Model Act in Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas.[174]

G. Senate Environment Committee Hearings on "Ecoterrorism"

May 2005 Hearing

On May 18, 2005, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing entitled "Eco-terrorism Specifically Examining the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front."[175]The Committee accepted statements from Senator James Inhofe; Senator David Vitter; Senator James Jeffords; Senator Frank Lautenberg; Senator Barack Obama; FBI Deputy Assistant Director John Lewis; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Deputy Assistant Director Carson Carroll; New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell; University of Iowa President David Skorton; and Center for Consumer Freedom Director of Research David Martosko.[176]

a. Testimony of Senator James Inhofe

The first testimony at the hearing came from Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma. Although Inhofe is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works,[177]he has repeatedly expressed disdain for environmentalists and environmental protection efforts. Inhofe called the federal Environmental Protection Agency a "Gestapo bureaucracy."[178]He was the only Senator to oppose the restoration of the Florida Everglades.[179]He has called the threat of catastrophic global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people."[180]Inhofe refers to mainstream environmentalists as "environmental extremists," "elitist organizations," "alarmists," and "fear-monger[ers]."[181]He has stated that nonprofit environmental organizations "demonstrate more interest in hyping apocalyptic environmental scenarios to raise money for raw political purposes" than in conserving the environment.[182]The highest private sector contributor to Senator Inhofe has been the oil and gas industry, which has donated at least $999,023 to him since 1989.[183]

At the hearing, Senator Inhofe asserted that ELF and ALF are the number one domestic terror threat in the United States "over the likes of white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion groups."[184]Although he compares ELF and ALF to Al Qaeda, Senator Inhofe admits that not a single person has died as a result of direct action taken by ELF and ALF activists.[185]

b. Testimony from Other Senators

After Senator Inhofe's statement, Senator James M. Jeffords stated that he believed the police were already successfully countering the threats from radical groups and was puzzled by the fact that the Senate Environment Committee was addressing the issue of domestic terrorism since it has no jurisdiction over criminal matters.[186]He noted, however, that the Committee did have jurisdiction to make sure that industrial facilities, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste storage facilities, and wastewater treatment facilities are much safer because those types of facilities have the potential to threaten the lives of millions of people.[187]Senator Jeffords further noted that Congressman Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee-who was denied the right to testify at the hearing-had prepared a report which highlighted the failure of the Department of Homeland Security to assess the threat posed by right-wing domestic terrorist groups, and urged that the Department not focus on ecoterrorism at the expense of domestic terrorist groups such as the KKK, right wing militias, abortion clinic bombers, and skinheads.[188]

Senator Frank Lautenberg then testified and asked that the Committee "keep things in perspective" by recognizing that the Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people, and the September 11 attacks killed 3000 people.[189]Additionally, he noted that since 1993 there have been at least five fatal attacks on doctors performing legal abortions.[190]Senator Lautenberg stated that "[a]ll of these cases involved the loss of human life. To date, not a single incident of so-called environmental terrorism has killed anyone."[191]He told the Committee that it is wrong to destroy property and the perpetrators should be brought to justice, but he also warned that the Committee should be careful about who it calls terrorists.[192]

Senator Barack Obama submitted a statement echoing the sentiments of Senator Lautenberg, stating that he did not want "people to think that the threat from these organizations is equivalent to other crimes faced by Americans every day."[193]He further noted that in 2003 there were 7400 hate crimes committed in the United States and that the FBI has 450 pending investigations of environmental crimes involving threats to public health or worker safety.[194]Senator Obama urged the Committee to instead focus its attention on larger environmental threats, such as the high levels of lead found in thousands of children's blood.[195]...http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html

Green is the New Red:An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege by Will Potter. Animal rights activists are prosecuted as terrorists under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOgZ4k4vswQ&feature=related

Muzzling a Movement: The Effects of Anti-Terrorism Law, Money, and Politics on Animal Activism Dara Lovitz see also video overview by author. Since the passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) in 2006 the ability to document abuses, draw attention to the horrors, and raise public awareness about the suffering of animals in factory farms or scientific laboratories has been substantially curtailed. pt 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Teb5A08o5-Q pt 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mel4tKazkmk&feature=relmfu

Veggie Libel laws, are laws passed in 13 U.S. states that make it easier for food producers to sue their critics for libel. These 13 states include Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas.[1] Many of the food-disparagement laws establish a lower standard for civil liability and allow for punitive damages and attorney's fees for plaintiffs alone,[2] regardless of the case's outcome legal analysis.

if a tree falls doc on e1st democ now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyRan_knAls&feature=related

daniel mcgowen left elf after 1st fire, jailed later after refused to roll held in CMU 1 visit/wk

DemocracyNow.org - A new documentary, "If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front," tells the story of environmental activist Daniel McGowan. Four years ago this month, McGowan was sentenced to a seven-year term for his role in two acts of politically motivated arson in 2001 to protest extensive logging in the Pacific Northwest—starting fires at a lumber company and an experimental tree farm in Oregon. The judge ruled he had committed an act of terrorism, even though no one was hurt in any of the actions. McGowan participated in the arsons as a member of the Earth Liberation Front but left the group after the second fire led him to become disillusioned. He was arrested years later after a key member of the Earth Liberation Front—himself facing the threat of lengthy jail time—turned government informant. McGowan ultimately reached a plea deal but refused to cooperate with the government's case. As a result, the government sought a "terrorism enhancement" to add extra time to his sentence. McGowan is currently jailed in a secretive prison unit known as Communication Management Units, or CMUs, in Marion, Illinois. at sentencing prosec //him to KKK.

FBI and Food Not Bombs http://blog.foodnotbombs.net/history-of-fbi-infiltrating-food-not-bombs-to-entrap-volunteers-as-terrorists/

Groups accused of eco-terrorism

Organizations accused of eco-terrorism are generally grassroots organizations, do not have a hierarchal structure, and typically favor direct action approaches to their goals.[16]

Dr. Stefan Leader characterizes these groups, namely ELF, with having "leaderless resistance" which he describes as ??a technique by which terrorist groups can carry out violent acts while reducing the risk of infiltration by law enforcement elements. The basic principal [sic] of leaderless resistance is that there is no centralized authority or chain-of-command.?????[17] Essentially this consists of independent cells which operate autonomously, sharing goals, but having no central leaders or formal organizational structure. Those who wish to join are typically encouraged to start their own cell, rather than seek out other members and jeopardize their secrecy.[18]

Organizations that have been accused of eco-terrorism in the United States include the Animal Liberation Front (ALF),[7] the Earth Liberation Front (ELF),[7] Greenpeace, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Earth First!.[13] The Coalition to Save the Preserves.[19] and the Hardesty Avengers.[20] In 2010 The FBI were criticized in US Justice Department reports for unjustified surveillance (and placement on the Terrorism Watchlist) between 2001 and 2006 of members of Animal Rights groups such as Greenpeace and PETA.[21]

????

In a 2002 testimony to the US Congress, an FBI official mentioned the actions of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in the context of eco-terrorism.[7] The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society intervenes against whaling, seal hunting, and fishing operations with direct action tactics. In 1986, the group caused nearly 1.8 million dollars worth of damage to equipment used by whalers in Iceland.[13] In 1992, they attacked two Japanese ships that were drift-net fishing for squid by cutting their nets and throwing stink bombs on board the boats.[16]

Inspired by Edward Abbey, Earth First! began in 1980. Although the group has been credited with becoming more mainstream, its use of tree spiking during campaigns has been associated with the origins of eco-terrorism.[13][22] In 2002, a jury found that FBI agents and Oakland police officers violated constitutional rights to free speech and protection from unlawful searches of two Earth First! organizers accused of a 1990 car bombing. Authorities alleged that the bomb was in the car of one of the accused when it accidentally detonated. The pair sued investigators, alleging false arrest, illegal search, slanderous statements and conspiracy.[23]

The Earth Liberation Front, founded in 1992, joined with the Animal Liberation Front, which had its beginnings in England in 1979.[13] They have been connected primarily with arson but claim that they work to harm neither human nor animal.[13] A recent example of arson that was attributed to the ELF was in March 2008 concerning the "torching of luxury homes in the swank Seattle suburb of Woodinville".[24] A banner was left at the scene that claimed the housing development was not green as advertised, and was signed ELF.[25] In September 2009 the destruction of two radio towers in Seattle was also attributed to the ELF.[25] The FBI in 2001 named the ELF as "one of the most active extremist elements in the United States", and a "terrorist threat",.[7] The Coalition to Save the Preserves was mentioned in FBI testimony as a group that was responsible for a series of arsons in Arizona. Using similar tactics to the ELF, they have caused more than $5 million in damages.[19]

Media reports have tied Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, to environmental activists, and say that the 23 injuries and three deaths through letter-bombs were the acts of an independent eco-terrorist. Among those making such accusations were ABC, The New York Times, Time magazine, and USA Today.[26]

A number of "local" organizations have also been indicted under US Federal laws related to eco-terrorism. These include, among others, the group "Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty."[27]

Another example is the Hardesty Avengers who spiked trees in the Hardesty Mountains in Willamette National Forest in 1984.[20]

In January 2010, Al Jazeera aired an audiotape from al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, in which he criticizes the United States for not signing the Kyoto Protocol and accuses it of causing global warming.[29][30][31]

Philosophy of eco-terrorism

The thought behind eco-terrorism rises from the radical environmentalism movement, which gained popularity during the 1960s.[13] Ideas that arose from radical environmentalism are “based on the belief that capitalism, patriarchal society, and the Judeo-Christian tradition were responsible for the despoliation of nature”.[13] Radical environmentalism is also characterized by the belief that human society is responsible for the depletion of the environment and, if current society is let unchecked, will lead to the ultimate complete degradation of the environment.[32]

Like deep ecologists, eco-terrorists subscribe to the idea of biocentrism, which is described as ??a belief that human beings are just an ordinary member of the biological community” and that all living things should have rights and deserve protection under the law.[16] Some eco-terrorists are motivated by other aspects of deep ecology, like the goal to return the environment to its "natural", i.e., pre-industrial, state.[17]

Despite these generalizations, it should be noted that eco-terrorism encompasses a broad array of organizations, goals, and philosophies.

Government response in the USA

Spiking trees became a federal offense in the United States when it was added to the Drug Act in 1988.[33]

Under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 it became a federal crime to ?????cause more than $10,000 in damage while engaged in ???physical disruption to the functioning of an animal enterprise by intentionally stealing, damaging, or causing the loss of any property???used by the animal enterprise.”[13] In 2006, this was updated and renamed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act by the 109th congress.[34] The updated act included causing personal harm and the losses incurred on “secondary targets” as well as adding to the penalties for these crimes.[35]

In 2003, a conservative Texas legislative reform group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), proposed the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act" which defined an "animal rights or ecological terrorist organization" as "two or more persons organized for the purpose of supporting any politically motivated activity intended to obstruct or deter any person from participating in an activity involving animals or an activity involving natural resources."[36] The legislation was not enacted.

The FBI has stated that “since 2005…investigations have resulted in indictments against 30 individuals.” In 2006, an FBI case labeled ???Operation Backfire??? brought charges of domestic terrorism to eleven people associated with the ELF and ALF. “The indictment includes charges related to arson, conspiracy, use of destructive devices, and destruction of an energy facility.”[37]

However, the Bush Justice Department, including the FBI, was recently criticized for improper investigations and prosecutions of left-leaning U.S. protest groups such as Greenpeace. The Washington Post reports that the "FBI improperly opened and extended investigations of some U.S. activist groups and put members of an environmental advocacy organization on a terrorist watch list, even though they were planning nonviolent civil disobedience, the Justice Department said Monday."[38]

A report, filed by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, found the FBI to be not guilty of the most serious charge??according to the Post, that "agents targeted domestic groups based on their exercise of First Amendment rights." The investigation was conducted in response to allegations that the FBI had targeted groups on such grounds during the Bush Administration. The Post has more:

"But the report cited what it called other "troubling" FBI practices in its monitoring of domestic groups in the years between the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and 2006. In some cases, Fine said, agents began investigations of people affiliated with activist groups for "factually weak" reasons and "without adequate basis" and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files. Among the groups monitored were the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh peace group; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; and Greenpeace USA. Activists affiliated with Greenpeace were improperly put on a terrorist watch list, the report said.[38]

In 2008, Eric McDavid was convicted of plotting to attack several targets including a fish hatchery, a dam, power stations, and cell phone towers. An undercover FBI agent exposed the plan. In addition to McDavid, two others were also convicted for aiding with the plot.[39] On March 6, 2008 Eric McDavid was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “conspiracy to damage or destroy property by fire and explosive.”[40] United States Attorney McGregor Scott stated: “Today’s severe punishment of nearly 20 years in federal prison should serve as a cautionary tale to those who would conspire to commit life-threatening acts in the name of their extremist views.”[40]

Individuals accused of eco-terrorism

Eric McDavid ?? Convicted of conspiracy to commit what the FBI labeled an eco-terrorist plot.[41]

Daniel McGowan – Convicted of participation in an arson at a lumber company.[42]

James Lee[43]

See also

Agro-terrorism

Environmental Terrorism

Ecotage

Ecoterrorism in fiction

Green Scare

THERMCON – FBI operation against the "Evan Mecham Eco-Terrorist International Conspiracy" (EMETIC)

Operation Backfire ??? FBI operation

Tree spiking

Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network

“Ecoterrorism”?: A Critical Analysis of the Vilification of Radical Environmental Activists as Terrorists

By Rebecca K. Smith

Issue 38:2

Lewis & Clark Law School's Environmental Law

http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html

I. Introduction

We want to destroy environmentalists by taking their money and their members.??. . . No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along.[1]Facts don't matter, in politics, perception is reality.

Ron Arnold, Father of the Wise Use Movement and Creator of the Term

"Ecoterrorism"[2]

Terrorism is anything that stands in the face of what we want to do . .??. people's movements of resistance against deprivation, against unemployment, against the loss of natural resources, all of that is termed 'terrorism.'

Edward Said, Columbia Professor of English & Comparative Literature[3]

II. The Catalyst for Radical Environmental Activism

A. Ecological Problems

B. Rise of Environmental Legal Tools

C. Rise of Environmental Organizations

D. Radical Environmentalism

The philosophy of Deep Ecology, also referred to as biocentrism, which argues that nature has intrinsic worth, and that all life processes should be valued,[49]was a rallying factor for early radical environmentalists.[50]United in their belief that nature was intrinsically valuable, these radical activists devised a different approach to environmental protection than their mainstream counterparts, an approach which included illegal tactics.[51]Examples of these illegal tactics include trespassing, road-blockading, office sit-ins, tree-sitting, equipment damage, and arson of property.[52]Although some radical environmentalists engage in acts of property damage or destruction, all specifically eschew violence, and provide guidelines to ensure that activists do not injure or harm human life in the process of their illegal actions. The Earth First! Journal, a publication which publishes news of radical environmental campaigns, states on its website that "[a]t no time should anyone physically or verbally assault anyone . . . at an Earth First! action."[53]Similarly, the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental movement that advocates economic sabotage, published guidelines which state that actors shall "take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and nonhuman."[54]

III. Development and Use of the Phrase "Ecoterrorism"

A. Property Rights Group Creates the Term "Ecoterrorism"

B. 1988 Congressional Testimony Calls Earth First! Activists "Ecoterrorists"

In 1988, five years after Arnold published the phrase "ecoterrorism," it appeared in congressional testimony in relation to radical environmental activists. During testimony on the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, Senator James McClure addressed a provision of the Act which had nothing to do with drug-related offenses.[69]Part of the bill addressed drug cultivation on public lands, and criminalized dangerous booby traps set to protect crops by harming humans. McClure asserted these traps included everything from "trip wires connected to shotguns and hand grenades to the use of Claymore antipersonnel mines . . .??traps . . .??set with every intention to kill somebody."[70]

Following the congressional hearing, the Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. § 1864(a)(2), which criminalized the use of a hazardous or injurious device on federal land with the intent to obstruct or harass the harvesting of timber.[80]A hazardous or injurious device is defined as

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has also held that unmodified, highly visible, plastic ropes tied between trees as part of a tree-sit protest qualify as hazardous or injurious devices.[82]

C. Law Review Article Analogizes Radical Environmentalist Actions with Anti-Abortion Murders

D. June 1998 Congressional Hearing Convened on "Ecoterrorism by Radical Environmental Organizations"

Testimony of Congressman Frank Riggs

Background Information and Context of Congressman Riggs' Testimony

a. Police Reaction to Earth First! Protest

b. Details About the Cloverdale Tree-Spiking Incident

The mill worker to whom Riggs and his employee referred is George Alexander, a man who worked in the Louisiana-Pacific Cloverdale mill.[111]Earth First! activist Judi Bari interviewed Alexander and published the interview in a local newspaper in 1993. Her interview revealed that prior to the accident in 1987, Alexander had been complaining about dangerous working conditions in the mill. He had noticed that the band saw blade had cracks, and that the blade was wobbling.[112]He and other employees complained to Louisiana-Pacific management but they were ignored.[113]Alexander stated that "'[w]e're not even people to [Louisiana-Pacific management] .??. . . All they care about is production.'"[114]Alexander's wife echoed that statement: "I hate L-P."[115]On the day of the incident, Alexander had almost refused to come to work because of the dangerous working conditions.[116]The day of his injury, Alexander had begun milling a twelve inch diameter tree, when it struck metal and the saw blade broke and hit him in the throat and face.[117]

Alexander was not killed, but was seriously injured.[118]And while Alexander had to file a lawsuit against the timber company to get any money for his medical expenses, Louisiana Pacific offered a $20,000 reward for information on who spiked the tree and exploited his accident for public relations purposes across the country.[119]Alexander stated, "They used my name all over the country . .??. . Then they laid me off when the mill closed down . . . . L-P is just sorry I didn't die."[120]

c. Death of David Chain

Testimony of Other Witnesses

E. February 2002 Congressional Hearing on "Eco-terrorism and Lawlessness on National Forests"

F. Industry Group Publishes Model Act: Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act

In 2003, a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council published model legislation entitled the "Animal & Ecological Terrorism Act" (Model Act).[160]

The American Legislative Exchange Council

The Model Act

In 2003, ALEC reported that current or former members had introduced versions of the Model Act in Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas.[174]

G. Senate Environment Committee Hearings on "Ecoterrorism"

May 2005 Hearing

a. Testimony of Senator James Inhofe

b. Testimony from Other Senators

c. Testimony from the FBI

Following the Senators' testimony, John Lewis, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI, testified before the Committee. Mr. Lewis stated that the ELF posed "[o]ne of today's most serious domestic terrorism threats."[196]He did not mention any example of a human injured or killed by an ELF action. Mr. Lewis then asserted that the FBI lacked federal criminal statutes to address "multi-state campaigns of intimidation, threats, and damage designed to shut down legitimate businesses,"[197]and proposed that the Congress expand the actions criminalized by the Animal Enterprise Protection Act and expand the Act's scope to "address criminal activity related to eco-terrorism."[198]

October 2005 Hearing

On October 26, 2005 the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works again held a hearing on "Eco-terrorism."[199]The issues addressed were similar to the May 2005 hearing, but the focus was primarily on the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign. The SHAC campaign is international in scope and has brought Huntingdon Life Sciences-a contract animal testing lab which kills 500 animals a day and routinely abuses animals-to the brink of financial ruin through public ridicule, investigative reporting, property damage, and harassment.[200]At the hearing, Barry M. Sabin, Chief of the Counterterrorism Section of the Department of Justice, asked that Congress amend the Animal Enterprise Protection Act to include "economic disruption to animal enterprises and threats of death and serious bodily injury to associated persons."[201]He told the Committee that he supported Senator Inhofe's proposal to amend the Animal Enterprise Protection Act to replace "economic damage" (physical property damage) with "economic disruption" (business losses), and to allow electronic surveillance authority for investigation of violations of the Act.[202]Again, other Senators expressed doubt as to spending time on "ecoterrorism" when there are higher priorities.[203]For example, Senator Jeffords noted that "[i]n our current state of fear, it is easy to get headlines by using the term 'terrorism.' But sometimes, a criminal is just a criminal."[204]

H. Statement of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

In January of 2006 multiple individuals were indicted by a federal grand jury, and pleaded guilty, to various incidents of arson and one incident of cutting down an electric tower, claimed by the ELF and/or ALF.[205]Although no human was injured or killed by these acts of economic sabotage, and although most of the defendants were either held at the local county jail (instead of somewhere like Guantanamo Bay) or released on bail until sentencing, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held a press conference in Washington D.C. and he and the director of the FBI pronounced that these individuals were among the highest domestic terrorism priorities in the nation.[206]

I. Congress Passes the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act

On November 27, 2006, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act was amended and renamed and passed as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA).[207]AETA criminalizes damaging or interfering with an animal enterprise if any property is lost or damaged, any person is placed in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury, or if an actor conspires or attempts to do either thing.[208]The definition of "economic damage" includes "loss of profits" and "increased costs resulting from . . . trespass . . . or [resulting from] intimidation taken against a person or entity . . . ."[209]If there is no property loss or damage, and no fear instilled in any person, the statutory penalty is a fine and/or a maximum of one year in prison.[210]If there is no injury or fear by any person but there is over $10,000 damage, the statutory penalty is a fine and a maximum of five years in prison.[211]If there is no injury or fear by any person but there is over $100,000 damage, the statutory penalty is a fine and a maximum of ten years in prison.[212]If there is no injury or fear by any person but there is over $1 million in damage, the statutory penalty is a fine and a maximum of twenty years in prison.[213]In addition, the FBI has authority to conduct wiretapping of any individual if the wiretapping "may provide" evidence of a violation of AETA.[214]

The AETA does not yet prohibit interference with the natural resource industry, but such an amendment would not be a surprise considering that it has already been proposed by the wise use group Alliance for America,[215]the FBI,[216]and ALEC.[217]

IV. Effects on Activism from the Use of the Term "Ecoterrorism"

A. Mass Media's Frame of Reference

In a concurring opinion in New York Times v. United States, Justice Stewart noted that "without an informed and free press there cannot be an enlightened people."[218]The mass media is an important factor to consider when evaluating current political phenomena because it provides a filter through which the ordinary American receives news of what is happening in the world. As one newspaper columnist reported: "[I]n today's world, individuals cannot personally observe events and reach decisions in a forum. . . . They necessarily depend on the press to be informed."[219]The mass media thus has a powerful role in determining what people think by creating their frame of reference.

As Dr. Edward Feulner of the Heritage Foundation-a conservative think tank "whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense"[220]-has stated: by intentionally disseminating ideas through thousands of newspapers, debate is kept "within its proper perspective."[221]Advertising plays a fundamental role in dictating this "proper perspective." As Grant Tinker, former head of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) stated: "[television] is an advertising-supported medium, and to the extent that support falls out, programming will change."[222]

One illustration of the role advertising plays in dictating news coverage is the case of a public television station which lost its funding from Gulf and Western in 1987 because it showed a documentary which was critical of corporate development activities.[223]The chief executive of Gulf and Western complained that the documentary was "virulently anti-business if not anti-American."[224]For further illustration of the role of advertising on media coverage, the manager of corporate communications for General Electric (which now owns NBC) has stated: "We insist on a program environment that reinforces our corporate messages."[225]Moreover, Proctor & Gamble instructs its advertising agency that "[t]here will be no material on any of our programs which could in any way further the concept of business as cold, ruthless, and lacking in all sentiment or spiritual motivation."[226]

Government also plays a role in influencing the "proper perspective" provided by the mass media. During World War I, the federal government's Committee on Public Information discovered that one of the best ways of controlling the news was to flood the news channels with official information on the "facts."[227]Accordingly, the federal government has joined private industry in developing extensive public relations networks which prepare official news that is easy to process and reproduce-including advance copies of reports and speeches, scheduled photo opportunity sessions, well-timed press conferences, etc.[228]While exact statistics on the number of government personnel creating and disseminating official information is not easily available, in a moment of transparency decades ago following the Watergate scandal, the Pentagon revealed that at that time its public information services involved thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars each year.[229]In 1979 and 1980, it revealed specifically that the Air Force alone published 690,000 copies per week of 140 newspapers, published a magazine with a monthly circulation of 125,000, operated thirty-four radio and seventeen TV stations, disseminated 615,000 hometown news releases, conducted 6600 interviews with news media, conducted 3200 news conferences, presented 11,000 speeches, and more.[230]

B. Ownership of the Mass Media

In addition to the issues of advertising and "official information," there is the issue of who owns and manages the major mass media outlets in the United States. In the United States, there are ten major corporations which control most of our media sources: the New York Times Company, the Washington Post Company, AOL Time Warner (which owns CNN), Gannett, Viacom (which owns CBS), General Electric (which owns NBC), News Corp (which owns Fox), Tribune (which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times), Knight-Ridder, and Disney (which owns ABC).[231]The boards of directors of these media corporations comprise only 118 individuals, who in turn sit on the boards of 288 national and international corporations.[232]

Members on the board of the New York Times Company also sit on the boards of the Aluminum Company of America, Ford Motor Company, Johnson & Johnson, W.R. Grace & Co., Staples, Inc., and others.[233]Members on the board of the Washington Post Company also sit on the boards of the RAND Corporation, General Electric Investments, Coca-Cola, J.P. Morgan, and others.[234]Members on the board of Knight-Ridder also sit on the board of H&R Block, Inc., Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and others.[235]Members on the board of Tribune (which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times) also sit on the boards of 3M Company, Kraft, Conoco-Phillips, McDonalds, and others.[236]Members on the boards of News Corp. (which owns Fox) also sit on the boards of British Airways, Rothschild Investment Trust, C.P., and others.[237]

Members on the board of General Electric (which owns NBC) also sit on the boards of Bechtel Group, Inc., Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc., ChevronTexaco Corporation, Proctor & Gamble, General Motors Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Home Depot, Inc., and others.[238]Members on the board of Walt Disney (which owns ABC) also sit on the boards of Halliburton Co., Boeing Company, Clorox, Staples, Inc., and others.[239]Members on the board of Viacom (which owns CBS) also sit on the boards of American Express Co., Consolidated Edison, Inc., and others.[240]Members on the board at Gannett are also on the boards of Lockheed Martin Corporation, Continental Airlines, Inc., PepsiCo, Inc., Prudential Mutual Funds, Target Corporation, and others.[241]Members on the board of AOL Time Warner (CNN) are also on the boards of Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive Company, Hilton Hotels Corporation, and others.[242]

C. Media Acceptance of the Term "Ecoterrorism"

Internal corporate interests have likely influenced the mass media to vilify radical environmentalists because the activists often cause those interests to lose profits through obstruction of extractive activities, bad publicity, and physical property damage. Moreover, the impact of government rhetoric on the necessity of fighting a "war on terror" since September 11, 2001 has likely influenced the mass media to not only vilify radical environmentalists, but to further accept their designation as "domestic terrorists." The mass media's acceptance of government designations of "who the terrorists are" follows Orwellian admonitions by the Bush Administration like "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,"[243]and "to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists . . . ."[244]As Hermann Goring, second in command to Adolf Hitler, stated: "[T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."[245]

The examples of mass media portrayals of radical environmentalists as terrorists are too numerous to mention in full, but following are some examples. In 1999, the Portland, Oregon-based newspaper The Oregonian published a four-part series, beginning with an article entitled "Eco-terrorism Sweeps the West."[246]The first article stated that crimes of property damage were "acts of domestic terrorism."[247]Although the article listed only property damage and stated "no one has been killed" it nonetheless concluded that the threat to humans and property was "on the rise."[248]

In 2002, The New York Times published an article entitled "From Tree-Hugger to Terrorist."[249]While admitting that "protection of all life remains one of the E.L.F.'s major tenets," the article nonetheless called the ELF "one of the nation's most active and destructive domestic terrorist organizations" and drew analogies to the Irish Republican Army and Basque separatists.[250]It also quoted a Portland State University criminologist who stated that he has tracked ELF "assassins."[251]Interestingly, the article also made a reference to the Weather Underground, a group responsible for over a dozen politically-motivated bombings of government and financial targets in the 1960s and 1970s, including bombings of the U.S. Capitol and State Department.[252]Like the ELF, the Weather Underground targeted inanimate objects and never killed or seriously injured a human,[253]but the article nonetheless described the Weather Underground members as "radical activists" while ELF members were described as "terrorists."[254]Moreover, the article then mentioned the assassinations of abortion doctors, but called the perpetrators of those murders anti-abortion "advocates" not "terrorists."[255]

A final example is a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article entitled "Eco-, animal-rights terrorism called threat."[256]The article essentially reported the testimony of Senator Inhofe, the FBI, and the BATF from the May 18, 2005 Senate Hearing on "ecoterrorism" which was discussed above. The article repeated the FBI's statement that "[t]here is nothing else going on in this country over the last several years that is racking up the high number of violent crimes and terrorist actions."[257]Nowhere in the article is there mention of the skepticism which was expressed by all of the other Senators, besides Senator Inhofe, who made statements at the hearing. Instead the article quoted Inhofe comparing ELF and ALF to Al Qaeda and quoted Inhofe stating that he wanted to "examine more closely" how ELF, ALF, and SHAC "might be getting assistance in fund raising and communications from tax-exempt organizations' 'mainstream activists'??. .????. ."[258]

D. Impacts from the Acceptance of the Term "Ecoterrorism"

Because of repeated official pronouncements from the government, the complicity of the mass media, and the campaigning of industry groups like the Alliance for America, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, the term ecoterrorism has been widely accepted. The acceptance of the term has also created acceptance more generally of the idea that radical environmentalists are terrorists. The impacts of this acceptance include more investigation, infiltration, and disruption of radical environmental groups regardless of whether any law is actually violated, longer terms of incarceration for convicted activists, and the harassment of mainstream environmental groups.

Increased Government Surveillance of Radical Groups

By categorizing an activist as someone who might commit an act of terrorism, the federal government is given broader power over that activist or activist group. One way in which its power is expanded is through authority to listen to personal phone conversations, read private emails, and record private conversations. On March 9, 2006, as part of the Reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act,[259]the federal wiretapping statute was amended to authorize the "interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications" when the interception "may provide" evidence of "animal enterprise terrorism" as set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 43.[260]Thus, an activist who has never been arrested for any crime or any type of protest may have her phones tapped, her emails read, and her private conversations recorded if a federal government agent believes that it might find some evidence of a plan to interfere with an animal enterprise. If AETA is amended to include natural resource industries, the FBI will have legal authority to spy on all radical environmental activists. A "terrorism" tag also gives federal magistrate judges the authority to issue warrants outside of the judges' districts.[261]

Another surveillance implication of branding radical environmental activists as terrorists is found in the National Crime Information Center's (NCIC) Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File (VGTOF).[262]The NCIC is a national electronic database of criminal records and other identifying information for U.S. citizens,[263]which is available to prosecutors, law enforcement agents, and law enforcement institutions twenty-four hours a day.[264]Until 2002, the NCIC only recorded actual convictions. But in 2002, the federal government decided to use the NCIC as an "investigative" tool with the goal of creating a "centralized terrorist watch list."[265]

There is no judicial process for the entry of an individual into the potential terrorist database[266]and no notice is provided to the "potential terrorist."[267]Thus, when an individual is pulled over in a routine traffic stop, the officer can instantly determine whether the individual has been designated-unbeknownst to him or her-as a potential terrorist through an online database. If there is a match, the officer is advised that the individual in the car may be a terrorist, and the officer is instructed to call the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) for further direction.[268]

In 2002, an FBI memo indicated that potential terrorist groups included "anarchists," "animal rights extremist[s]," and "environmental extremist[s]."[269]The FBI indicated in 2003 that the terrorist listings on the terrorist watch list included over 7000 names.[270]In this context, it is reasonable to presume that radical environmental activists could be entered as potential terrorists in the NCIC database, which will in turn alter the way the activists are treated in their communities by local law enforcement.

Increased Penalties/Convictions for Acts of Protest

Another consequence of the widespread branding of radical environmental activists as terrorists is the more severe convictions and sentences they will receive for engaging in protest activities. For example, in my own criminal case I was charged with, and convicted of, a federal tree-spiking statute even though my "crime" was sitting in a tree with three visible plastic ropes tied to other trees.[271]In its opinion, the court refers to Senator McClure's 1988 testimony, discussed above, about "dangerous and deadly" ecoterrorists, implying that somehow McClure's testimony provided evidence that I should be convicted under the tree-spiking statute.[272]And in fact, upon review of McClure's testimony-which calls Earth First! activists "terrorists" and specifically mentions tree-sitting as an Earth First! tactic[273]-the court's conclusion that I was guilty by association is not so far-fetched.

In addition to convictions that do not match conduct, the "ecoterrorist" branding also leads to sentences that do not match conduct. In December of 2005, as mentioned above, numerous indictments were issued for over a dozen acts of sabotage committed between 1996 and 2001.[274]All of the crimes listed were either thought crimes or property damage crimes: "arson, conspiracy, use of a destructive device, and destruction of an energy facility."[275]No human was injured or killed by any of the crimes.[276]Nonetheless, prosecuting attorneys requested terrorism "sentencing enhancements" under the federal sentencing guidelines.[277]

More specifically, the federal government's sentencing memorandum asserted that "all ten defendants engaged in terroristic conduct"[278]and its opening remarks in the first actual sentencing called the acts of property damage a "classic case of terrorism."[279]Although the district court judge stated that the defendants were not terrorists in the traditional sense of the word, the court nonetheless held that their actions included elements of terrorism[280]and that the terrorism enhancement could be applied to their sentences.[281]

The terrorism sentence enhancement can substantially add time to a defendant's term of incarceration. For example, the federal sentencing guidelines provide that a first offense act of arson alone should have a sentence of 33 to 41 months (2 to 4 years).[282]But with a terrorism sentence enhancement that sentence (for the same crime) becomes 168 to 210 months (14 to 15 years).[283]In addition, receiving the terrorist label at sentencing directly affects the type of incarceration a defendant will face; the federal Bureau of Prisons considers the terrorist designation seriously and assigns such defendants to maximum security prisons or super-maximum security prisons.[284]These facilities are designed to house the most violent criminal offenders in the nation and may require twenty-three hours of lockdown in a cell each day, as well as limit conversation with family to one hour per month.[285]

The current federal sentencing guidelines allow for a terrorism enhancement if the crime is a "federal crime of terrorism" as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B), and is intended to influence or affect government conduct by intimidation or coercion, or is intended to retaliate against government conduct.[286]The sentencing guidelines also note that an upward departure from the guidelines range is permissible even if the defendant's conduct is not listed as a "federal crime of terrorism" so long as it was calculated to influence or affect government conduct by intimidation or coercion, or is intended to retaliate against government conduct.[287]Similarly, an upward departure is allowed if the defendant's conduct was a "federal crime of terrorism" that was intended "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population."[288]"Federal Crime of Terrorism" is defined as following:

(i) section 32 (relating to destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities), 37 (relating to violence at international airports), 81 (relating to arson within special maritime and territorial jurisdiction), 175 or 175b (relating to biological weapons), 175c (relating to variola virus), 229 (relating to chemical weapons), subsection (a), (b), (c), or (d) of section 351 (relating to congressional, cabinet, and Supreme Court assassination and kidnaping), 831 (relating to nuclear materials), 832 (relating to participation in nuclear and weapons of mass destruction threats to the United States) 842(m) or (n) (relating to plastic explosives), 844(f)(2) or (3) (relating to arson and bombing of Government property risking or causing death), 844(i) (relating to arson and bombing of property used in interstate commerce), 930(c) (relating to killing or attempted killing during an attack on a Federal facility with a dangerous weapon), 956(a)(1) (relating to conspiracy to murder, kidnap, or maim persons abroad), 1030(a)(1) (relating to protection of computers), 1030(a)(5)(A)(i) resulting in damage as defined in 1030(a)(5)(B)(ii) through (v) (relating to protection of computers), 1114 (relating to killing or attempted killing of officers and employees of the United States), 1116 (relating to murder or manslaughter of foreign officials, official guests, or internationally protected persons), 1203 (relating to hostage taking), 1361 (relating to government property or contracts), 1362 (relating to destruction of communication lines, stations, or systems), 1363 (relating to injury to buildings or property within special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States), 1366(a) (relating to destruction of an energy facility), 1751(a), (b), (c), or (d) (relating to Presidential and Presidential staff assassination and kidnaping), 1992 (relating to terrorist attacks and other acts of violence against railroad carriers and against mass transportation systems on land, on water, or through the air), 2155 (relating to destruction of national defense materials, premises, or utilities), 2156 (relating to national defense material, premises, or utilities), 2280 (relating to violence against maritime navigation), 2281 (relating to violence against maritime fixed platforms), 2332 (relating to certain homicides and other violence against United States nationals occurring outside of the United States), 2332a (relating to use of weapons of mass destruction), 2332b (relating to acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries), 2332f (relating to bombing of public places and facilities), 2332g (relating to missile systems designed to destroy aircraft), 2332h (relating to radiological dispersal devices), 2339 (relating to harboring terrorists), 2339A (relating to providing material support to terrorists), 2339B (relating to providing material support to terrorist organizations), 2339C (relating to financing of terrorism), 2339D (relating to military-type training from a foreign terrorist organization), or 2340A (relating to torture) of this title;

(ii) sections 92 (relating to prohibitions governing atomic weapons) or 236 (relating to sabotage of nuclear facilities or fuel) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. § 2122 or 2284);

(iii) section 46502 (relating to aircraft piracy), the second sentence of section 46504 (relating to assault on a flight crew with a dangerous weapon), section 46505(b)(3) or (c) (relating to explosive or incendiary devices, or endangerment of human life by means of weapons, on aircraft), section 46506 if homicide or attempted homicide is involved (relating to application of certain criminal laws to acts on aircraft), or section 60123(b) (relating to destruction of interstate gas or hazardous liquid pipeline facility) of title 49; or

(iv) section 1010A of the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act (relating to narco-terrorism).[289]

Although the statute where this definition is found requires, in a preceding subsection, that terrorist acts include the element of a substantial risk of serious bodily injury,[290]the guidelines did not import that contextual element. These guidelines are not promulgated by Congress, but instead by an independent agency composed of seven voting members appointed by the President and known as the Sentencing Commission.[291]

Investigation of Mainstream Environmental Groups

Finally, and perhaps most interesting to the majority of those reading this Comment, are the effects of the ecoterrorist branding on mainstream environmental organizations. Senator Inhofe has testified before Congress, and has been quoted in the mass media, stating that "ecoterrorists" have links to mainstream environmental groups who fund and support them.[292]Along these same lines an article in a journal for prosecuting attorneys argued that "[a]n effective way to begin tracking potential ELF members is to track active members of other environmental organizations with similar ideologies .??. . ."[293]It recommends that Earth First! is one group which might be tracked, in part because it "support[s] an environmental preservation philosophy."[294]A hint as to what other ideologies-besides "environmental preservation"-might provide grounds for terrorist investigations surfaced in a report published by the Heritage Foundation.[295]The report suggests that it is likely that people will be killed by environmentalists if the philosophy of Deep Ecology "is not challenged at the philosophical level."[296]

V. Why Radical Environmentalists Should Not Be Branded As Terrorists

The propagandist naturally cannot reveal the true intentions of the principal for whom he acts. . . . That would be to submit the projects to public discussion, to the scrutiny of public opinion, and thus to prevent their success. . . . Propaganda must serve instead as a veil for such projects, masking true intention.[297]

For several reasons, the term terrorism should not be used to describe acts of trespass, vandalism, or other interferences with profits which result in no human injury or death. Most importantly, use of the term terrorism to describe these acts diminishes the true meaning of the word. Additionally, branding such acts as terrorism is likely stifling political dissent. Finally, the branding was created by industry groups and is now being used as a pretext to ensure the protection of their economic gains at the expense of efforts to protect the environment.

A. Terrorism Means Murder, Not Property Damage

Historians have noted that the term terrorism has been used by governments "to keep the population afraid and insecure"[298]and create a kind of lynch mob hysteria[299]in order to achieve political goals.[300]Threats to the governments' interests are often labeled as terrorism, while the enormous military, environmental, and economic damage-including human deaths-caused by the same governments are obscured.[301]Although the mass media has largely accepted the notion that radical activists who cause profit loss to industry are terrorists, other definitions of terrorism indicate the word should apply only to crimes intended to inflict mass civilian casualties directly through murder, or more indirectly through actions like the destruction of a drinking water purification infrastructure.

For example, the USA PATRIOT Act defines "domestic terrorism" as involving "acts dangerous to human life."[302]Likewise, the Homeland Security Act defines "terrorism" as acts that are " dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources."[303]Additionally, the State Department mandate for an annual report on terrorist activity defines "terrorism" as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents."[304]Even President George W. Bush stated that terrorism relates to murder. In his speech to the nation introducing the "War on Terror," President Bush stated that terrorists "sacrific[e] human life," "kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life," have a directive "to kill all Americans," and "[aid and abet murder by] heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century."[305]

B. Government's Conduct Echoes a History of Stifling Political Dissent

But while the U.S. Congress and the President of the United States may agree that the term terrorism implies acts involving civilian casualties, the FBI has defined terrorism to include "the unlawful use, or threatened use, of violence . . . against .???. . property."[306]This definition has allowed the FBI to call ELF activists one of the top domestic terrorist threats. This designation cuts the FBI political slack, because while the federal government has failed to catch terrorists like Osama bin Laden, it can now claim it is catching and prosecuting terrorists when it prosecutes vandals. Additionally, this definition gives the FBI greater surveillance and data gathering power, as discussed above. While some may argue that the FBI has only categorized radical environmental activists as terrorists in order to protect the American people from possible harm, the history of the FBI's attempts to silence political dissenters suggests an ulterior motive for this new branding.

COINTELPRO

In 1971, a group of radical activists called the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into a small FBI field office and stole the files inside.[307]Their lootings uncovered over 1000 documents revealing a systematic FBI effort-known as COINTELPRO-to suppress political dissent through wiretapping, infiltration, and media manipulation intended to discredit, destabilize, and demoralize dissenters.[308]As the COINTELPRO papers indicated, the FBI intended to "enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles" and "get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."[309]Targets of the COINTELPRO program included Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-violent Organizing Committee, the Black Panther Party, Women's Strike for Peace, the Communist Party of the U.S.A.,[310]the Nation of Islam,[311]the Socialist Workers Party, Puerto Rican Independence activists, leftist student activists, and radical professors.[312]Subsequent civil rights litigation and Freedom of Information Act requests revealed even more documentation of the suppression campaign, though many of the subsequently received documents were censored.[313]

Some of the activities conducted by the FBI as part of the COINTELPRO program included having FBI agents infiltrate organizations by posing as members,[314]catalyzing the termination of a socialist professor,[315]leafleting with misinformation "to cause disruption in the peace movement,"[316]publishing and disseminating a fraudulent underground newspaper,[317]sending an anonymous letter to the spouse of a political preacher stating that he was having an affair,[318]sending anonymous letters soliciting funds for assassination of political leaders,[319]convincing property owners not to sell land to radical groups,[320]framing an activist as a CIA agent to get him kicked out of his organization,[321]and using cooperative press contacts to make political dissenters appear "stupid," "coward[ly]," "violent," and generally unfavorable.[322]Thus, the FBI's stated goal for the black movement-to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize [their] activities"[323]-carried over to all of its targeted groups and political ideologies.

In addition to its campaigns of provocation and deliberate misinformation, the FBI's COINTELPRO was involved in the assassination of Black Panther revolutionary Fred Hampton. In December of 1969, the FBI paid an informant a monetary amount of "considerable value" after he had posed as Hampton's bodyguard and drawn and transmitted a floor plan of Hampton's apartment to the police.[324]Following the transmission, Hampton was assassinated in his bed during a police raid on his apartment.[325]After fourteen years of civil litigation, Hampton's family agreed to a $1.85 million settlement against local and federal officials for their roles in his assassination.[326]Martin Luther King, Jr. was also a target of COINTELPRO; FBI memos stated a plan to "remove King from the national picture,"[327]and listed him as a "primary target."[328]

Because many of the COINTELPRO actions taken by the FBI were illegal, in 1978 several high ranking FBI officials were indicted for conspiring to "injure and oppress citizens of the United States" in regards to their surveillance of Weather Underground radicals.[329]In 1980, two of the FBI's top officials-former acting Associate Director of the FBI W. Mark Felt and former Assistant Director for the Domestic Intelligence Division Edward S. Miller-were found guilty after a lengthy jury trial.[330]The criminals were pardoned by Ronald Reagan in 1981 so they were not imprisoned.[331]After this pardon was granted, former Weather Underground members filed a civil lawsuit against the FBI and the FBI eventually reached "a monetary settlement favorable to the plaintiffs."[332]

Infiltration/Discrediting of Radical Environmental Groups

In the context of the FBI's history of infiltrating and provoking other radical political groups, it is not surprising that the FBI has also infiltrated and provoked radical environmental groups. One example was the 1989 FBI operation to infiltrate and provoke Earth First! activists in Arizona, specifically an out-spoken and prominent "co-founder" of the Earth First! movement-Dave Foreman.[333]As one agent put it, Foreman was the target because he was "the guy we need to pop to send a message."[334]At least three FBI agents-Michael A. Fain, Ron Frazier, and Katherine Clark-infiltrated the group in a three-year, $2 million surveillance operation involving 1300 hours of recordings, the involvement of fifty agents, and weekly reports to the U.S. Attorney.[335]

Although Agent Fain had repeatedly attempted to recruit Earth First! activists into committing ecotage, they repeatedly refused until he eventually convinced and led two activists to damage a power line.[336]At the site, the FBI swat team of fifty agents wearing bulletproof vests and night vision goggles closed in on the activists on foot, in helicopters, and on horseback.[337]Foreman was not there, but he was nonetheless arrested and charged with conspiracy to damage electrical lines leading to a nuclear weapons facility and two nuclear power plants.[338]The $2 million FBI sting operation led to a deferred five year sentence for Foreman[339]and the arrest of saboteurs who caused $16,000 damage to an electrical tower.[340]

Around the same time, another prominent Earth First! activist-Judi Bari-was also targeted by the FBI. On May 24, 1990, Bari was traveling through California organizing a summer of peaceful protest against old-growth redwood logging when a bomb exploded underneath her car seat, permanently crippling her.[341]Bari had previously received a number of death threats, but the FBI immediately concluded that Bari herself had been carrying the bomb with the intent to commit an act of terrorism.[342]Following the bombing, Bari's house was raided twice, and the FBI continued to imply that Bari had bombed herself.[343]The FBI's statements to the media succeeded in damaging Bari's reputation, and discrediting the nonviolent protest movement she was organizing.[344]No one was ever convicted for the attempted assassination of Judi Bari, but in 2002 Bari's estate won a $4.4 million jury verdict against the FBI for framing her for the bombing.[345]

Another well-publicized example of FBI infiltration of radical environmentalists was the recent case of the FBI recruiting an eighteen year old girl as an informant to dress up as an activist, independent film-maker, and street medic, and attend large, nonviolent demonstrations.[346]The infiltrator, who called herself "Anna Davies" among other names, was paid $75,000 over two years to spy on radical activists.[347]The FBI paid for a California cabin for Davies, outfitted it with surveillance technology, and bought her a computer.[348]Davies befriended three young activists for six months[349]and-according to one of the activists' attorneys-taught them to make bombs, supervised their activities, and threatened to leave them if they did not start doing "something."[350]The three activists were arrested on January 13, 2006 for allegedly planning an ELF action and were charged with "felony conspiracy to damage or destroy public and private infrastructure by explosives or fire."[351]The infiltrator reportedly shared a bed with at least one of the activists,[352]and attempted to convince young radicals to fall in love with her as part of her infiltration strategy.[353]

One last example of the FBI's intimidation of radical environmental activists was uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.[354]An FBI memo shows that the FBI opened an inquiry into a meeting of environmental activists because the activists were planning on training participants in "nonviolent methods of forest defense, security culture, street theater, and banner making."[355]During a subsequent protest where activists trespassed and hung a banner, the local police copied the license plate numbers of all the protest attendees and faxed the list to the FBI.[356]

C. Industry Groups' Motivation is Protection of Corporate Profit, Not Protection of Citizens

In addition to serving the government's interest in silencing political dissent and finding "terrorists," the branding of radical environmental activists as terrorists also serves the interests of private industry. In its statements regarding its "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act," discussed above, ALEC clarified that it is the protection of profit, not human life, that it is concerned about. The Model Act pamphlet reported that the ELF had caused $50 million in property damages[357]and that the USA PATRIOT Act is not powerful enough to punish ELF activists because it "requires the death of or harm to people, an element not characteristic of eco-terrorists."[358]Indeed this principal focus on profit protection alone is actually required of corporations by the doctrines of corporate business law, which hold that shareholder profit is the primary purpose of business corporations.[359]Similarly, groups like the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and the Alliance for America were created to represent industries that profit from natural resource extraction and exploitation, as discussed above. Their concern is also the protection of profit, not protection of human life.

One final example of how profit making is involved in the rush to brand radical activists as terrorists is exemplified by the $305 million contract[360]recently awarded to Lockheed Martin to complete the updating of FBI technology necessary to keep up with the doubling population of FBI "intelligence analysts."[361]As one historian has noted, a perpetual war on terrorism translates into perpetual profits for those industries that provide materials and support for the war.[362]

VI. Conclusion

Throughout the past four decades, a powerful environmental protection movement has developed that has introduced new and influential ideas into mainstream USA, and cost extractive industries millions of dollars as they are sometimes forced to consider and address the destructive environmental effects of their actions. Radical environmental activists have played a role in this movement by slowing the pace of extraction, empowering others to resist environmental destruction, and publicly exposing and ridiculing environmentally irresponsible industries and the government that supports them-all of which has cost the industries millions of dollars. The backlash by those who want to fortify their profit margins and silence the criticisms is now at full force with the branding of radical environmental activists as "terrorists." But as one U.S. Senator stated at an "ecoterrorism" hearing: "[i]n our current state of fear, it is easy to get headlines by using the term 'terrorism.' But sometimes, a criminal is just a criminal."[363]Indeed, if a pejorative label is necessary for law-breaking activists, let it be law-breakers, criminals, trespassers, vandals, saboteurs, or arsonists, but not "terrorists."

[1] Timothy Egan, Fund-Raisers Tap Anti-Environmentalism, N.Y. Times, Dec. 19, 1991, at A18.

[2] Bill Berkowitz, Terrorist Tree Huggers: Ron Arnold, Father of the 'Wise Use' Movement, Sets His Sights on 'Eco-Terrorists,' Working Assets, July 7, 2004, http://www.commondreams.org/

views04/0707-12.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008) (citation omitted).

[3] David Barsamian, They Call All Resistance "Terrorism," Int'l Socialist Rev., Aug.-Sept. 2001, available at http://www.isreview.org/issues/19/Said_part2.shtml.

[4] Determination of Threatened Status for the Klamath River and Columbia River Distinct Population Segments of Bull Trout, 63 Fed. Reg. 31,647 (June 10, 1998).

[5] Native Forest Network, Where is the Accountability? Fire Risk Increased, Restoration Work Not Getting Done, in A Hard Look at the "Recovery" Plan Primer 3, 3 (2004), available at http://nativeforest.org/pdf/Bitterroot_Primer.pdf.

[6] Id.

[7] United States v. Wyatt, 408 F.3d 1257, 1261 (9th Cir. 2005).

[8] Jonathan Amos, Earth Species Feel the Squeeze, BBC News, May 21, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4563499.stm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[9] Mitch Tobin, Top Biologist: Half of All Species May be Gone by 2100, Ariz. Daily Star, Aug. 9, 2002, available at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0809_wireowilson.html.

[10] Antarctic's Ice Melting Faster, BBC News, Feb. 2, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/

uk_news/4228411.stm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[11] All Things Considered: Climate Connections: Tiny Island Makes Climate a Priority (National Public Radio broadcast June 4, 2007), available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/

story.php?storyId=10712509.

[12] Ozone Hole Largest Yet, BBC News, Sept. 8, 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/

nature/916037.stm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[13] Colleen Diskin, Dirtier Skies Ahead: Rush to Build Coal Plants Creates Fight over Air We Breathe, N.J. Recorder, Mar. 29, 2007, at A1.

[14] Bridget Hunter, Report Outlines Hazards to Children Posed By Toxic Exposures, Wash. File, May 25, 2006, http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006

&m=May&x=20060525134224liameruoy0.3171961 (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[15] For an annual report on the state of the global environment, as well as access to an online library of reports of current events, newly released studies, and global trends, visit the website of the Worldwatch Institute: http://www.worldwatch.org.

[16] Wilderness Act, 16 U.S.C. §§ 1131-1136 (2000).

[17] National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321-4370e (2000).

[18] Robert Percival et al., Environmental Regulation: Law, Science, and Policy 93 (5th ed. 2006).

[19] Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 7401-7671q (2000).

[20] Federal Water Pollution Control Act, 33 U.S.C. §?? 1251-1387 (2000).

[21] Endangered Species Act of 1973, 16 U.S.C. §§????1531-1544 (2000).

[22] National Forest Management Act of 1976, 16 U.S.C. §§ 472a, 521b, 1600, 1611-1614 (2000) (amending Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, Pub. L. No. 93-328, 88 Stat. 476).

[23] Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, 42 U.S.C. ??§ 9601-9675 (2000).

[24] 437 U.S. 153 (1978).

[25] Id. at 173-74.

[26] Id. at 172.

[27] Id. at 187-88.

[28] Pac. Legal Found., PLF Making Headway in Exposing Endangered Species Act for What It Really Is: A Bad Law 1 (2004), available at http://www.idbsu.edu/biology/BIOL191/

BIOL%20191%20Debates%20Spring%202007/Topic%204/Pacific%20Legal%20Foundation%20-%20PLF%20Making%20Headway%20In%20Exposing%20End.pdf.

[29] Ron Arnold, Ctr. for the Def. of Free Enterprise, Subverting Development: America's Industrial Strength at Risk 2 (2006), available at http://www.cdfe.org/Subverting

%20Development.pdf.

[30] Percival et al., supra note 18, at 366.

[31] Id.

[32] Id.

[33] See, e.g., id. at 401-02.

[34] For example, in one case an industry which contributed to hazardous pollution was fined almost $90 million for a clean-up. United States v. Vertac Chem. Corp., 79 F. Supp. 2d 1034, 1038 (E.D. Ark. 1999).

[35] See, e.g., Christopher Manes, Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization 45-65 (1990).

[36] Rev. Rul. 76-204, 1976-1 C.B. 152.

[37] See generally Sierra Club, Inside the Sierra Club, http://www.sierraclub.org/inside/ (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[38] See Matthew Walton & Jessica Widay, Shades of Green: Examining Cooperation Between Radical and Mainstream Environmentalists, in Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth 95-96 (Steven Best & Anthony J. Nocella II eds., 2006).

[39] See, e.g., Manes, supra note 35, at 55-65.

[40] See, e.g., Direct Action Gets the Goods, Earth First! J., available at http://www.earthfirst

journal.org/subsection.php?id=1 [hereinafter Direct Action Gets the Goods]; Monkeywrenching, Earth First! J., available at http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/subsection.php?id=2.

[41] Gallup Poll, Mar. 13-16, 2006, http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro2.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[42] Id.

[43] L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll, Aug. 3, 2006, http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/timespoll/

labloom-533environment-pdf,1,7911944.acrobat?coll=la-news-times_poll (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[44] Harris Poll, Aug. 9-16, 2005, http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro2.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[45] See, e.g., Manes, supra note 35, at 58-59.

[46] See id. at 50; see also Judi Bari, The Sierra Club Surrender, Anderson Valley Advertiser (Boonville, Cal.), Mar. 20, 1991, reprinted in Judi Bari, Timber Wars 92-94 (1994).

[47] See, e.g., Eco-terrorism and Lawlessness on the National Forests: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Forests and Forest Health of the H. Resources Comm., 107th Cong. 107-83 (2002) (statement of Craig Rosebraugh, former Earth Liberation Front Press Officer), available at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_house_hearings&docid=f:77615.wais [hereinafter 2002 House Hearing].

[48] Manes, supra note 35, at 60-61.

[49] See id. at 139-50.

[50] Id. at 61.

[51] Id.

[52] See generally No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth, Earth First! J., available at http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/section.php?id=1 (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[53] Direct Action Gets the Goods, supra note 40.

[54] Earth Liberation Front Guidelines, in Igniting a Revolution, supra note 38, app. at 407.

[55] Adam Pertman, Wise Use Foot Soldiers on the March, Boston Globe, Oct. 3, 1994.

[56] Id.

[57] Id.

[58] Egan, supra note 1.

[59] Id.

[60] Id.

[61] Ron Arnold, Eco-terrorism, Reason, Feb. 1983, at 31; Ctr. for the Def. of Free Enter., Ron Arnold Biography, http://www.cdfe.org/staff.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[62] Ron Arnold, Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature-The World of the Unabomber (1997).

[63] Acts of Ecoterrorism by Radical Environmental Organizations, Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Crime of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 105th Cong. 62 (June 9, 1998) [hereinafter June 1998 Congressional Hearing] (statement of Ron Arnold, Ctr. for the Def. of Free Enter.).

[64] Ctr. for the Def. of Free Enter., EcoTerrorism, http://www.cdfe.org/ecoterror.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[65] Ctr. for the Def. of Free Enter., EcoTerror Response Network, http://www.cdfe.org/

ern.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[66] Id.

[67] June 1998 Congressional Hearing, supra note 63.

[68] Berkowitz, supra note 2.

[69] Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-690 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 8, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29, 31, 41, and 42 U.S.C.); 134 Cong. Rec. 30,810-12 (1988).

[70] 134 Cong. Rec. 30,811 (1988) (emphasis added).

[71] Id.

[72] Id.

[73] Id.

[74] Id.

[75] Id.

[76] Id. at 30,811-12 (quoting Editorial, They're Terrorists-Not Environmentalists, Spokesman-Rev. (Spokane, Wash.), July 7, 1988).

[77] Id. (quoting Ann Japenga, Earth First! Comes out of the Shadows-Environmental Commandos Teach Monkey-Wrenching, Spokesman-Rev. (Spokane, Wash.), July 4, 1988).

[78] Id. at 30,812 (quoting Japenga, supra note 77); see also infra Part (D)(2) (referencing an interview with the injured logger).

[79] Id. (quoting Japenga, supra note 77).

[80] 18 U.S.C. §??1864(a)(2) (2000).

[81] Id. § 1864(d)(3).

[82] United States v. Wyatt, 408 F.3d 1257, 1260-62 (9th Cir. 2005).

[83] 18 U.S.C. ??? 1864(b)(5) (2000).

[84] Id. § 1864(c).

[85] Id. § 1864(b)(4).

[86] Id. § 1864(d)(2).

[87] Id. § 1864(b)(3).

[88] William W. Cason, Spiking the Spikers: The Use of Civil RICO Against Environmental Terrorists, 32 Hous. L. Rev. 745 (1995).

[89] Id. at 752.

[90] June 1998 Congressional Hearing, supra note 63.

[91] Id. at 7 (statement of Rep. Bill McCollum, Chairman).

[92] Id. at 8.

[93] Id. at 56 (statement of Barry Clausen).

[94] Id. at 5.

[95] Id. at 83 (testimony of Honorable Frank Riggs).

[96] Id. at 10 (statement of Honorable Frank Riggs).

[97] Id. at 10-12.

[98] Id. at 13.

[99] Id. at 10.

[100] Id. at 11.

[101] Id. at 18.

[102] Id.

[103] Id. at 20.

[104] Id. at 14, 20, 26-27.

[105] See Terri Compost, Victory in Pepper Spray Torture Trial, 25 Earth First! J. 3 (2005).

[106] Id.

[107] June 1998 Congressional Hearing, supra note 63, at 12, 17 (statement of Honorable Frank Riggs).

[108] Id. at 14-15.

[109] Id. at 27.

[110] Id. at 75.

[111] Judi Bari, The Secret History of Tree-Spiking-Part I, Anderson Valley Advertiser (Boonville, Cal.), Feb. 17, 1993, reprinted in Judi Bari, Timber Wars 264 (1994), available at http://www.iww.org/unions/iu120/local-1/EF/JBari11.shtml#notes.

[112] Id. at 266.

[113] Id.

[114] Id. at 265.

[115] Id. at 267.

[116] Id. at 266.

[117] Id. at 266-67.

[118] Id. at 267.

[119] Id. at 270.

[120] Id.

[121] Id. at 267.

[122] Id. at 268-69.

[123] Bari, supra note 111.

[124] Id.

[125] Yvonne Daley, In California, Cause of Saving Redwoods Gaining, Boston Globe, Nov. 8, 1998, at A10.

[126] Id.

[127] Id.

[128] Bill Dawson, No Charges in Forest Protest Fatality, Hous. Chron., Dec. 18, 1998, at A13.

[129] Bill Dawson, Mother Says Activists May be Charged in Son's Death at Logging Site, Hous. Chron., Oct. 23, 1998, at A37.

[130] David Chain v. Goliath Maxxam: Wrongful Death Settlement Reached, 22 Earth First! J., 19, 19 (Dec.-Jan. 2001).

[131] June 1998 Congressional Hearing, supra note 63, at 29-35.

[132] Egan, supra note 1.

[133] June 1998 Congressional Hearing, supra note 63, at 33.

[134] Id. at 31.

[135] Id. at 33-34.

[136] Id. at 33.

[137] Id. at 72.

[138] Id. at 35.

[139] 18 U.S.C. §??43(a)(2) (2000) (amended June 12, 2002, and amended and renamed Nov. 16, 2006 as Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act).

[140] Id. § 43(a).

[141] 18 U.S.C. §????43 (b)(1)-(2) (Supp. II 2002).

[142] June 1998 Congressional Hearing, supra note 63, at 41.

[143] Id. at 50.

[144] Id. at 56.

[145] Id. at 57.

[146] Id. at 56.

[147] Id. at 57.

[148] Id. at 62.

[149] Id. at 67-68.

[150] 2002 House Hearing, supra note 47 (statement and testimony of James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, Counterterrorism Division, FBI).

[151] Id.

[152] Id.

[153] Id.

[154] Id.

[155] Id.

[156] Id.

[157] Id.

[158] Id. (statement and testimony of Gloria Flora, former National Forest Supervisor).

[159] Id. (statement of Dr. Michael Pendleton, Government Accountability Project).

[160] Am. Legislative Exch. Council, Model Animal & Ecological Terrorism Act, in Animal & Ecological Terrorism in America 21, 21-23 (2003), available at http://www.alec.org/meSWFiles/

pdf/AnimalandEcologicalTerrorisminAmerica.pdf [hereinafter Model Act].

[161] See Am. Legislative Exch. Council, Contributions, http://www.alec.org/contributions (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[162] Karen Olsson, Ghostwriting the Law: A Little-Known Corporate Lobby is Drafting Business-Friendly Bills for State Legislators Across the Country, 27 Mother Jones 17 (Sept. 2002).

[163] Id.

[164] Id.

[165] Id.

[166] Id.

[167] Model Act, supra note 160, § 3(A)(1), (2).

[168] Id. § 3 (A)(3).

[169] Am. Legislative Exch. Council, Response in the Federal Jurisdiction, in Animal & Ecological Terrorism in America, supra note 160, at 15.

[170] Model Act, supra note 160, § 4(A).

[171] Id. § 4(B).

[172] See id. §??5.

[173] See id. §????5.

[174] See Am. Legislative Exch. Council, A Comparison of State Introductions of AETA, in Animal & Ecological Terrorism in America, supra note 160, at 13-14.

[175] Eco-terrorism Specifically Examining the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Environment and Public Works, 109th Cong. (2005), available at http://epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=237836 [hereinafter May 2005 Senate Hearing].

[176] See id. at III.

[177] United States Senator James Inhofe: About Senator Inhofe-Biography, http://inhofe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=AboutSenatorInhofe.Biography (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[178] Bob Dart, Oklahoma Senator Stands Firm against Tougher Air Standards, Atlanta J. & Const., July 25, 1997, at A.

[179] Larry Lipman, Everglades Project Foe To Get Key Post, Palm Beach Post, Dec. 7, 2002, at 10A.

[180] 151 Cong. Rec. S18 (daily ed. Jan. 4, 2005) (statement of Sen. James M. Inhofe).

[181] Id. at S18-19.

[182] 150 Cong. Rec. S10,347 (daily ed. Oct. 4, 2004) (statement of Sen. James M. Inhofe).

[183] The Center for Responsive Politics, James M. Inhofe: Campaign Finance/Money, http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/allindus.asp?CID=N00005582 (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[184] May 2005 Senate Hearing, supra note 175, at 2.

[185] Id. at 2-3.

[186] Id. at 4 (statement of Sen. James M. Jeffords).

[187] Id. at 4-5.

[188] Id. at 4.

[189] Id. at 6-7 (statement of Sen. Frank Lautenberg).

[190] Id.

[191] Id. at 7.

[192] Id. at 5-6.

[193] Id. at 37 (statement of Sen. Barack Obama).

[194] Id.

[195] Id.

[196] Id. at 38 (statement of FBI Deputy Assistant Director John Lewis).

[197] Id. at 13.

[198] Id. at 40.

[199] Eco-terrorism: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Environment and Public Works, 109th Cong. (2005), available at http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&

Hearing_ID=093930CB-F66E-420D-8C37-1780ED2C7F3C [hereinafter October 2005 Senate Hearing].

[200] Id. (testimony of Dr. Jerry Vlasak).

[201] Id. (testimony of Barry M. Sabin, Chief of the Counterterrorism Section of the Department of Justice).

[202] Id.

[203] Id. (testimony of Sen. James M. Jeffords).

[204] Id.

[205] Press Release, United States Department of Justice, Eleven Defendants Indicted on Domestic Terrorism Charges (Jan. 20, 2006), available at http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/

January/06_crm_030.html.

[206] Id.

[207] 18 U.S.C. § 43 (2000) (effective Nov. 27, 2006).

[208] Id. § 43(a).

[209] Id. §??43(d)(3).

[210] Id. § 43(b)(1)(A).

[211] Id. § 43(b)(2)(A).

[212] Id. § 43(b)(3)(A).

[213] Id. § 43(b)(4)(B).

[214] 18 U.S.C.A. ???? 2516(1)(c) (West 2006).

[215] June 1998 Congressional Hearing, supra note 63, at 35.

[216] May 2005 Senate Hearing, supra note 175, at 38 (testimony of FBI Deputy Assistant Director John Lewis).

[217] Model Act, supra note 160, §??3(A)(1)-(2).

[218] New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 728 (1971) (Stewart, J. concurring).

[219] Herbert J. Gans, Democracy and the News 1 (2003) (quoting Brandeis, J.).

[220] The Heritage Foundation, Mission Statement, http://www.heritage.org/about (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[221] Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media 24 (1988) (citation omitted).

[222] Id. at 16 (citation omitted).

[223] Id. at 17.

[224] Id. (citation omitted).

[225] Id. at 340 n.55 (citation omitted).

[226] Id.

[227] Id. at 23 (citation omitted).

[228] Id. at 21-22.

[229] Id. at 19-20.

[230] Id. at 20 (citation omitted).

[231] Bridget Thornton, Brit Walters & Lori Rouse, Corporate Media is Corporate America: Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America and Broadcast News Media Ownership Empires, in Project Censored 253, 253-56 (Peter Phillips ed., 2005).

[232] Id. at 253.

[233] Id. at 256-57.

[234] Id. at 257-58.

[235] Id. at 258.

[236] Id. at 258-59.

[237] Id. at 259.

[238] Id. at 259-60.

[239] Id. at 260.

[240] Id. at 261.

[241] Id. at 256.

[242] Id. at 259.

[243] Press Release, White House, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People (Sept. 20, 2001), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html.

[244] Department of Justice Oversight: Hearing Before the S. Judiciary Comm., 107th Cong. (2001) (testimony of John Ashcroft, Att'y Gen. of the United States), available at http://www.usdoj.gov/archive/ag/testimony/2001/1206transcriptsenatejudiciarycommittee.htm.

[245] G.M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary 278-79 (Da Capo Press 1995) (1947).

[246] Bryan Denson & James Long, Eco-terrorism Sweeps the West Part I, Oregonian, Sept. 26, 1999, at A1.

[247] Id.

[248] Id.

[249] Bruce Barcott, From Tree-Hugger to Terrorist, N.Y. Times, Apr. 7, 2002, at E56.

[250] Id.

[251] Id.

[252] Id. at E59; The Weather Underground: The Explosive Story of America's Most Notorious Revolutionaries (The Free History Project 2003) 55:43 to 57:29, 1:11:38 to 1:13:56 (a documentary film about the Weather Underground).

[253] Id. at 49:59 to 50:23.

[254] Barcott, supra note 249, at E56, E59.

[255] Id. at E59.

[256] Eco-, Animal-Rights Terrorism Called Threat, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 19, 2005, available at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national /224826_ecoterrorist19.html.

[257] Id.

[258] Id.

[259] USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-177, § 113(b)(1), 120 Stat. 192, 209 (2006).

[260] 18 U.S.C.A. ?? 2516(1)(c) (West 2006).

[261] Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(b)(3).

[262] Fed. Bureau of Investigation, National Crime Information Center, http://www.fbi.gov/

hq/cjisd/ncic_brochure.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[263] Fed. Bureau of Investigation, CJIS Division Homepage, http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cjisd/

ncic.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[264] Fed. Bureau of Investigation, Congressional Testimony, http://www.fbi.gov/congress/

congress03/ncic111303.htm (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[265] Id.

[266] See id.

[267] Press Release, Fed. Bureau of Investigation, Terrorist Screening Center Statement Regarding October 8, 2006 60 Minutes Segment (Oct. 8, 2006), available at http://www.fbi.gov/

pressrel/pressrel06/terrorisscreeningcenter100806.htm.

[268] Press Release, White House, President Bush Discusses Progress in the Global War on Terror (Sept. 7, 2006), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060907-2.html.

[269] Ann Davis, Data Collection Is Up Sharply Following 9/11, Wall St. J., May 22, 2003, at B1.

[270] Id.

[271] United States v. Wyatt, 408 F.3d 1257, 1257 (9th Cir. 2005).

[272] Id. at 1261.

[273] 134 Cong. Rec., 30,811 (1988) (statement of Sen. McClure).

[274] Angela Valdez, Terror-fying the Greens: Did Investigators Use Post-9/11 Warrantless Wiretaps to Bust Accused Eco-Saboteurs?, Willamette Wk. (Aug. 30, 2006), available at http://wweek.com/story.php?story=7938.

[275] Id.

[276] See United States v. Thurston, Nos. CR 06-60069-01-AA, CR 06-60070-01-AA, CR 06-60071-01-AA, CR 06-60078-01-AA, CR 06-60079-01-AA, CR 06-60080-01-AA, CR 06-60120-01-AA, CR 06-60122-01-AA, CR 06-60122-02-AA, CR 06-60123-01-AA, CR 06-60124-01-AA, CR 06-60125-01-AA, CR 06-60126-01-AA, 2007 WL 1500176, at *11 (D. Or. May 21, 2007) (offering that defendants argued against terrorism enhancement because none of the offenses caused injury or death).

[277] Valdez, supra note 274.

[278] Government's Sentencing Memorandum at 73, United States v. Dibee, Nos. CR 06-60069-01-AA; CR 06-60070-01-AA; CR 06-60071-01-AA; CR 06-60078-01-AA; CR 06-60079-01-AA; CR 06-60080-01-AA; CR 06-60120-01-AA; CR 06-60122-01-AA; CR 06-60122-02-AA; CR 06-60123-01-AA; CR 06-60124-01-AA; CR 06-60125-01-AA; CR 06-60126-01-AA (D. Or. May 4, 2007), available at http://www.cldc.org/pdf/government_sentencing_memo.pdf.

[279] Sentencing Hearing, United States v. Meyerhoff, Nos. CR-06-60078-01-AA; CR-06-60122-02AA (D. Or. May 22, 2007).

[280] Sentencing Hearing, United States v. Meyerhoff, Nos. CR-06-60078-01-AA, CR-06-60122-02AA (D. Or. May 23, 2007).

[281] Thurston, 2007 WL 1500176, at *20.

[282] U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual §????2K1.4(a)(2), ch. 5, pt. A (2006). This is offered only for the illustrative purpose of comparing the length of a prison sentence before and after the terrorism sentencing enhancement. Many other factors can affect the sentence a defendant receives under the guidelines and Congress has imposed a mandatory minimum sentence for arson of 60 months. See, e.g., Anti-Arson Act of 1982, 18 U.S.C. ?? 844(i) (2000).

[283] U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 3A1.4 (2006); U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual ch. 5, pt. A (2006).

[284] Sentencing Hearing, United States v. Meyerhoff, Nos. CR-06-60078-01-AA; CR-06-60122-02AA (D. Or. May 23, 2007) (testimony of Harvey Cox, former Bureau of Prisons warden).

[285] Id.

[286] U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 3A1.4 cmt. nn.1 & 4.

[287] Id. ?? 3A1.4 cmt. n.4.

[288] Id.

[289] 18 U.S.C.A. ????2332b(g)(5)(B) (West 2006).

[290] 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(a)(1)(A) (2000).

[291] U.S. Sentencing Comm'n, An Overview of the U.S. Sentencing Commission 3 (2007), available at http://www.ussc.gov/general/USSC_Overview_Dec07.pdf. Although Congress did require that the Sentencing Commission use the definition of "federal crime of terrorism" found at 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B) (2000) for the terrorism sentence enhancement, Congress did not require that the Sentencing Commission use that definition out of context. Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, § 730, 110 Stat. 1214, 1303 (1996).

[292] May 2005 Senate Hearing, supra note 175 (statement of Sen. James M. Inhofe); Eco-, Animal-Rights Terrorism Called Threat, supra note 256.

[293] Joshua K Marquis & Danielle M. Weiss, Eco-Terror: Special Interest Terrorism, Prosecutor, Jan.-Feb. 2005, at 30.

[294] Id. at 44 n.13.

[295] Doug Bandow, Heritage Found. Reports, Ecoterrorism: The Dangerous Fringe of the Environmental Movement 3-4 (1990), available at http://www.heritage.org/Research/

EnergyandEnvironment/upload/87972_1.pdf.

[296] Id. at 10.

[297] Herman & Chomsky, supra note 221, at xiii (quoting Jacques Ellul, Propaganda 58-59 (1965)).

[298] Barsamian, supra note 3.

[299] Howard Zinn, Terrorism and War 57 (2002).

[300] Andrew Hartman, The Politicization of Terror: September 11 and American Historical Selectivity, Z Mag., Dec. 2001, at 25.

[301] Barsamian, supra note 3.

[302] 18 U.S.C. § 2331(5) (2000 & Supp. V 2006).

[303] 6 U.S.C. § 101(15) (2000 & Supp. V 2006).

[304] 22 U.S.C. § 2656f(d)(2) (2000 & Supp. V 2006).

[305] Press Release, supra note 243.

[306] 2002 House Hearing, supra note 47 (statement and testimony of James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, Counterterrorism Division, FBI).

[307] Allan M. Jalon, A Break-In To End All Break-Ins, L.A. Times, Mar. 8, 2006, available at http://uniset.ca/terr/news/lat_fbibreakin.html.

[308] Id.

[309] Id.

[310] Id.

[311] See Memorandum from Airtel to SAC, Albany, Counterintelligence Program, Black Nationalist-Hate Groups, reprinted in Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissidents in the United States 111 (2d ed. 2002).

[312] Noam Chomsky, Introduction to Nelson Blackstock, COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom 6-7 (1975).

[313] Id. at ix-xi.

[314] See U.S. Gov't Office Memorandum from L.V. Boardaan to A.H. Belmont, CP, USA - Counterintelligence Program; Internal Security (Aug. 28, 1956), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 40; Memorandum from FBI Dir. to SAC, Newark, Counterintelligence Program; Internal Security; Disruption of the New Left (May 27, 1968), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 181.

[315] See U.S. Gov't Memorandum from FBI Dir. to SAC, Phoenix, Counterintelligence Program; Internal Security; Disruption of the New Left (Oct. 1, 1963), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 55.

[316] See U.S. Gov't Memorandum from FBI Dir. to SAC, New York, Socialist Workers Party; Distribution Program (Feb. 13, 1970), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 58; Memorandum between SAC, Albany and FBI Dir., Counterintelligence Program; Internal Security; Disruption of the New Left (July 8, 1968) in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 183.

[317] Memorandum from Fed. Bureau of Investigation on Blackboard Underground Newspaper, in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 116.

[318] See Memorandum from SAC, St. Louis to FBI Dir. on Counter-Intelligence Program, Black Nationalist - Hate Groups, Black Liberators (Feb. 14, 1969), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 113; see also Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 112.

[319] See Memorandum from FBI Dir. on Proposed Anonymous Letters Relating to Assassination (Sept. 16, 1970), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 150.

[320] See FBI Report on Potential Land Sale to RNA (Dec. 2, 1970), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 122.

[321] See Memorandum from FBI on Conveying Impression that Activist is a CIA Informant (July 10, 1968), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 128; see also Memorandum from SAC, Newark to FBI Dir. on Counterintelligence Program, Internal Security, Disruption of the New Left (May 27, 1968), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 181-82.

[322] Memorandum from FBI Dir. to SAC, Albany on Counterintelligence Program, Black Nationalist - Hate Groups, Racial Intelligence (Aug. 5, 1968), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 118-19.

[323] Memorandum from FBI Dir. to SAC, Albany on Counterintelligence Program, Black Nationalist - Hate Groups, Internal Security (Aug. 25, 1967), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 92.

[324] Memorandum from SAC, Chicago to FBI Dir. on Results of Raid on Apartment of BPP Members (Dec. 11, 1969), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 141; see also Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 139-41 (including a copy of the floor plan).

[325] Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 140.

[326] John Kifner, Ex-Panther in Prison Says Evidence Was Concealed, N.Y. Times, Apr. 3, 1989, at B1; Jeffrey Haas, Editorial, Why There Should Be a Fred Hampton Way, Chi. Defender, Apr. 24, 2006, at 9.

[327] Memorandum from W.C. Sullivan to J.A. Sizou and Martin Luther King, Jr., (Dec. 1, 1964), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 98.

[328] Memorandum from FBI Dir. to SAC, Albany, Counterintelligence Program; Black Nationalist-Hate Groups, (Mar. 4, 1968), in Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 111.

[329] Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 314-15.

[330] Id.; see also The Weather Underground, supra note 252.

[331] Churchill & Vander Wall, supra note 311, at 314-15.

[332] Id.

[333] Manes, supra note 35, at 193-99.

[334] Id. at 197.

[335] Id. at 195-96.

[336] Id. at 196; see also Bari, supra note 111, at 126.

[337] Manes, supra note 35, at 193-94; David J. Williams, Eco-Warrior David Foreman Moves on To Another Battleground Image of an Outsider, Baltimore Sun, Apr. 19, 1994, at 1D.

[338] Manes, supra note 35, at 194.

[339] Williams, supra note 337.

[340] Manes, supra note 35, at 194, 196.

[341] See Bari, supra note 111, at 52.

[342] Id.

[343] Id. at 52-53.

[344] Id. at 53.

[345] Jim Herron Zamora & Henry K. Lee, Earth First Activists Win Case: FBI, Cops Must Pay $4.4 Million for Actions After Car Bombing, S.F. Chron., June 11, 2002, at A1.

332735.shtml (last visited Apr. 13, 2008).

[347] Freelance Infiltrator, supra note 346.

[348] Id. at 344.

[349] Id.

[350] Van Bergen, supra note 346.

[351] Freelance Infiltrator, supra note 346.

[352] Grigoriadis, supra note 346, at 74.

[353] Van Bergen, supra note 346.

[354] Nicholas Riccardi, FBI Keeps Watch on Activists, L.A. Times, Mar. 27, 2006, at A2.

[355] Id.

[356] Id.

[357] Am. Legislative Exch. Council, Earth Liberation Front, in Animal & Ecological Terrorism in America, supra note 160, at 10.

[358] Id. at 15 (emphasis added).

[359] See, e.g., Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 170 N.W. 668, 684 (Mich. 1919).

[360] Making America Safer: An Update on FBI Progress: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. (2006) (statement of Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, FBI), available at http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress06/mueller050206.htm.

[361] Id.; Robert S. Mueller, III, Dir., Fed. Bureau of Investigation, Remarks at The Denver Forum: The Art of Information (Apr. 13, 2006), available at http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/

speeches/mueller041306.htm.

[362] Zinn, supra note 299, at 28.

[363] October 2005 Senate Hearing, supra note 199 (testimony of Sen. James M. Jeffords).

;==

Brent L. Smith

University of Arkansas

Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice; Director, Terrorism Research Center (TRC) in Fulbright College

(479) 575-3401

bls@uark.edu

Education

Ph.D. in Sociology from Purdue University, 1979

Professional Experience

Brent L. Smith received the Ph.D. in Sociology from Purdue University in 1979, began his affiliation with UAB in 1981, and retired in 2003. During his 22 years in the Department of Justice Sciences, he served as Director of the MSCJ Program and Chair of the Department. Dr. Smith is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of Arkansas where he continues his ground-breaking research on social movements -- primarily terrorism. He is the author of Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams (1994) and is one of only a few scholars who has studied domestic terrorism for over a decade. He has testified regarding terrorism on several occasions before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, as well as the National Research Council. His publications on terrorism have appeared in numerous publications including Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Terrorism: An International Journal, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.

START Projects

Measuring Intervention Success in Terrorist Activities

Creation and Analysis of an Integrated U.S. Security Database (IUSSD)

Geographic Concentrations of Violent Extremism and Terrorism in the United States

Border Crossings and Terrorist Attacks in the United States: Lessons for Protecting Against Dangerous Entrants

Terrorism and Extremist Violence in U.S. Counties (TEVUS-C)

Outside Magazine, October 2000

Friday, October 14, 2011

Snoop: The Secret Life and Prying Times of Barry Clausen

Who is Barry Clausen and why has his two-bit cloak-and-dagger act made so many radical environmentalists, FBI agents, animal rights activists, and conservative ideologues furious?

By: Bruce Barcott

"I STILL DON'T WANT to do this," Clausen tells me over cheeseburgers at a Redding brewpub. "People tell me I'm crazy for talking to you."

This media shyness is something new. In the past, Clausen has courted anyone with a byline. But last year, The Wall Street Journal ran an article that questioned his anti-ecoterrorism crusade; he calls it "the hit piece." It takes a full day of negotiations before he'll submit to an on-the-record interview. When we finally talk, he brings his own tape recorder and reveals the reason for his earlier dietary queries.

"Basically [the Journal reporter] was a vegan," he says. "That's why I asked if you drank beer and ate meat. I stood there while he checked into this $150-a-night bed-and-breakfast and the lady asked him if he wanted bacon or sausage with breakfast. He said, 'No, I don't eat meat.'" Clausen gives me a look that says, Tell me there ain't something fishy about that. (For the record, the Journal reporter, Bob Ortega, is not a vegan. He confesses to being "what you might call a fishetarian"???doesn't eat pork, but loves fish and eggs. He also says his eating habits don't affect his reportage.)

Clausen still doesn't trust me, an admitted liberal, but warms to the chance to present The World According to Barry. "Look, I'm not antienvironmentalist," he insists. "I'm antiextremist. I have never given a speech where I haven't told people we need environmentalism. We're all environmentalists. We all want to help the environment. I don't support clear-cuts, I'm no fan of Weyerhauser, and I think Plum Creek Timber is the worst company of them all. But when you start breaking the law, when you go after these small- and medium-size companies, you're only helping the big multinationals."

Clausen sees himself as a decent fellow out to catch the bad guys who is thwarted and misunderstood at every turn by coke smugglers, rural sheriffs, FBI agents, enviros, and picky-eater journalists. When he talks about the radical activists he's after, his tone is surprisingly benevolent, as if he's a cop doing his damnedest to keep the neighborhood ex-cons on the straight path. It hasn't gone unnoticed out on his beat. "I've been involved in Earth First! for 15 years and I've seen people who really hate us," says Andy Caffrey. "Barry's not like that. He's generally polite, quiet, even mousy. That vitriol isn't in him. He's just a little scam guy."

And yet, for a man on a mission, he is curiously ambivalent about his motivation. Every time I ask him why he does what he does, he gives a different answer. One time he says it's about the importance of standing up to bullies, another time it's about the sanctity of freedom and liberty, then it's about saving kids from Earth First!'s siren song of green anarchism. In the end, Clausen seems to simply enjoy the game. "I like to be able to be right," he tells me. But there's a catch—he can't prove he's right until law enforcement officials listen to him and his data, and catch the bad guys. So he keeps playing. "If I can do all this from a little dinky office with no funding," he exclaims, "imagine what the FBI could do!"

So what's your role in "all this"? I ask him. "My role? I don't have a role," he protests. But there I think he's wrong. In the environmental drama, Clausen's part is small but memorable. He's the informational agitator. If he was a little more on the ball, he'd put up a Web site and turn himself into the Wise Use version of Matt Drudge. (It couldn't hurt. Clausen supports himself by doing construction work and cashing the occasional check from donors who hear him on cranky talk-radio shows.) In the Wise Use demimonde, small pond-drops like Clausen can cause huge ripples.

"What I find most disturbing about him," says Tarso Ramos of the Western States Center in Portland, "is the way he's pushed, along with Ron Arnold, to bring this word 'ecoterror' into the language." It's an old truism: Whosoever defines the language controls the issue. This is what's at stake in the war between "monkeywrenching" and "ecoterrorism." Ecoterrorism didn't appear until 1983, when Ron Arnold used the term in the Libertarian magazine Reason. Arnold, Clausen, and other Wise Use leaders have championed it ever since. Its power to shape the debate is considerable. Even a lukewarm environmentalist will smile on monkeywrenching, which carries the sound of a morally righteous prank. But only a zealot supports terrorism.

Of course, the terror visited upon environmental activists is disturbing enough on its own. Entire books have been written about the backlash, most notably David Helvarg's The War Against the Greens, which documents harassment ranging from verbal abuse to the bombing of Judi Bari. The attacks haven't abated. Two years ago, Earth First! activist David Chain was killed while protesting in northern California when a tree cut by a Pacific Lumber Company logger landed on him. In late 1998, a member of Julia "Butterfly" Hill's ground crew watched in horror as a gang of local vigilantes demolished her car and rolled it over a cliff. In March 1999, police in Santa Fe, New Mexico, disarmed a ten-inch pipe bomb left in the Forest Guardians' mailbox.

Compared to such violent acts, is ecoterrorism really terrorism? ELF/ALF activists often defend their practices by scrambling to the high ground of "property, not people." So far, no one has ever died as a result of their actions. "If [ELF/ALF] claims a crime, you know we're going to abide by certain rules of engagement," says ALF activist Rod Coronado. "You're dealing with someone who's targeting property and isn't going to try to shoot you." But according to the FBI's definition of terrorism—"the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social goals"—Arnold and Clausen aren't far off the mark. When the ELF and ALF warn, "Leave the forests alone, and no one gets hurt" and follow up with firebombs, it's hard to dismiss it as monkeywrenching. Radical environmentalists sidestep the question by declaring the despoilers of wilderness the "real terrorists." To liberal activists, this should be a chillingly familiar argument—it's the same one used by those who shoot abortion doctors.

Sometime in the last two years ecoterrorism graduated from contested term to established noun, and it wasn't all Barry Clausen's doing. The crimes simply caught up with the word. Less than a year after declaring ecoterrorism "off the radar screen," FBI director Louis Freeh reversed himself before a Senate committee in early 1999 and declared it one of the nation's primary domestic threats. "The most recognizable single-issue terrorists at the present time," Freeh said, "are those involved in the violent animal rights, anti-abortion, and environmental protection movements." A few months later the Portland Oregonian published a landmark series by reporters Bryan Denson and James Long, who spent ten months evaluating hundreds of so-called ecoterrorism incidents. "The crimes," they concluded, "are acts of domestic terrorism." In 11 Western states alone, Denson and Long substantiated 33 incidents that caused more than $28 million in damage from 1995 through 1999. And as if all that wasn't enough proof, even the Oxford English Dictionary recently added the word "eco-terrorist."

What caused the shift? In a word, Vail.

In terms of media exposure, it was brilliant: The October 19, 1998, predawn arson attack on Vail's luxurious new Two Elk Lodge and adjacent buildings and ski lifts led the news from coast to coast. When ELF claimed responsibility five days later—it was "an act of love," said the fax relayed by Craig Rosebraugh???millions of people were confronted with the plight of the Canadian lynx and the violent potential of ELF. But the $12 million blaze was also a wake-up call to law enforcement and may, in the long run, turn a somewhat sympathetic public against the radical activists. "I've seen a massive shift in [law enforcement] resources" in the past year, says Teresa Platt, executive director of the pro-industry Fur Commission USA. "They've prioritized it. We didn't do it. The criminal actions just kept escalating. The Vail fire was shocking."

David Schwendiman, an assistant U.S. attorney in Salt Lake City who successfully prosecuted two ALF activists last year for bombing a mink food co-op in Sandy, Utah, believes both his case and the Vail fire galvanized law enforcement agencies across the country. "Before these cases," Schwendiman says, "it had been hard to get any law enforcement to take this seriously. But you put five pipe bombs out there and people start to realize this isn't just cow tipping."

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/politics/Snoop-The-Secret-Life-and-Prying-Times-of-Barry-Clausen-5.html

Jailed for Facebook Friending: Animal Rights Activist Rod Coronado Ordered Back to Prison After Accepting Friend Request from Fellow Activist

DN http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/8/jailed_for_facebook_friending_animal_rights

The longtime radical animal liberation activist Rod Coronado has been sent back to prison for four months after a US district judge in Michigan ruled he had violated the terms of his parole. Coronado’s offense was associating with fellow radical activist Mike Roselle by accepting a friend request from Roselle on the social networking website Facebook. We speak with Dean Kuipers, author of Operation Bite Back: Rod Coronado’s War to Save American Wilderness. [includes rush transcript]...

wiki

Rodney Adam Coronado (born July 3, 1966) is a Native American(Pascua Yaqui) eco-anarchist and animal rights activist. He is an advocate and former activist for the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and a spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front. He was a crew member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and a member of the editorial collective of the Earth First! Journal.[1]

A former proponent of the use of direct action to end what he sees as cruelty to animals and destruction of the environment, Coronado was jailed in 1995 in connection with an arson attack on research facilities at Michigan State University. The incident, which caused $125,000 worth of damage and destroyed 32 years of research data, was part of the ALF's "Operation Bite Back," a series of attacks on animal-testing and fur facilities in the U.S. during the 1990s.[citation needed]

In 2006, while imprisoned for felony conspiracy and awaiting trial on further charges, Coronado expressed a change in his personal philosophy inspired by fatherhood. In an open letter, he wrote, "Don't ask me how to burn down a building. Ask me how to grow watermelons or how to explain nature to a child," explaining that he wants to be remembered, not as a "man of destruction but [as] a human believer in peace and love for all."[2] He was released on probation in December 2008, but was imprisoned again for four months in August 2010 for accepting a "friend request" on Facebook from an environmental activist, Mike Roselle, which was deemed a violation of his probation.[3][4]

Contents [hide]

1 Background

2 Indictments and convictions

2.1 Earth First! Lion hunt

2.2 Demonstrating an incendiary device

2.3 Hillcrest trial

2.4 Parole violation

3 Strong Hearts

4 See also

5 References

6 Further reading

7 External links

Background[edit]

Coronado is of Yaqui heritage and lives in Tucson, Arizona. He has a long history of activism, particularly through incendiary tactics. In 1985, at the age of 19, he joined the crew of the conservation ship, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,[5] and on November 9, 1986, he and another activist, David Howitt, sank two ships, theHvalur 6 and Hvalur 7, accounting for half of Iceland's whaling fleet. Before scuttling the ships, Coronado and Howitt caused $2 million worth of damage to the Icelandic whaling station. Coronado wrote about this action in the animal rights magazine No Compromise.[6]

In 1995, Coronado was convicted and sentenced to 57 months in prison in connection with the February 28, 1992 arson attack on research facilities at Michigan State University (MSU), which caused $125,000 worth of damage. He was also involved in an Animal Liberation Front (ALF) action, releasing mink from a nearby MSU mink research farm, wrecking equipment and opening animals' cages.[7] As a condition of his sentence, Coronado was ordered to pay MSU $2 million in restitution.[8] In 1992 the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (revised in 2006 toAnimal Enterprise Terrorism Act), enacted largely in response to the MSU attacks, was the first legislation adding sabotage as a defined activity of eco-terrorism.[9]

Indictments and convictions[edit]

Earth First! Lion hunt[edit]

On December 2, 2004, Coronado was indicted on three charges related to Earth First! hunt saboteur actions to disrupt a hunt of mountain lions in Sabino Canyon, near Tucson by dismantling a lion trap and spreading mountain lion urine. On December 13, 2005, he and co-defendant Matthew Crozier, 33, were found guilty of felony conspiracy to interfere with or injure a government official, misdemeanor interference with or injury to aforest officer, and misdemeanor depredation (theft, destruction, or the attempt to do so) of government property.[citation needed] Coronado was sentenced on August 6, 2006 to eight months in prison, three years supervised probation, and fined $100. Crozier was sentenced to 100 hours community service, three years probation, and a $1,000 fine.[citation needed]

Demonstrating an incendiary device[edit]

Further information: Green Scare

In February 2006, Coronado was arrested on a felony charge of demonstrating the use of an incendiary device at a public gathering in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego.[10] The indictment indirectly relates to an August 1, 2003 fire in San Diego that destroyed an apartment complex causing an estimated $50 million worth of damage.[11] A banner was found at the scene inscribed with the initials of the ELF. Coronado, a self-described "unofficial ELF spokesman,"[12] gave a talk on militant environmental activism in San Diego 15 hours later, where he explained how to make incendiary devices. He denies any role in the incident, and investigators do not consider him a suspect in starting the fire.[13]

His arrest was associated with the FBI's Operation Backfire,[14] a sweep of grand jury indictments against alleged ALF and ELF members,[15] termed the "Green Scare" by activists.[16] Some alternative media sources say Coronado was simply exercising his constitutional right to freedom of speech when "in response to a question from an audience member" he "demonstrated how he had constructed a non-explosive, incendiary device out of a plastic jug filled with gasoline to commit the old arson for which he did his time."[12][17]

In September 2006, Coronado sent an open letter to supporters from his prison cell in Florence, Arizona, before his release on March 23, 2007.[18] In the letter, he announced his commitment to social change through non-destructive means. Citing his desire to raise his young son without teaching him that "violence is a necessary evil", Coronado expressed hope that others in the earth and animal liberation movements would consider more peaceful methods:

“ In my years past I have argued that economic sabotage was an appropriate tactic for our time. Like all strategists I have also been forced to recognize that times have changed and it is now my belief that the movements to protect earth and animals have achieved enough with this strategy to now consider an approach that does not compromise objectives, but increases the likelihood of real social change. Let our opposition who believe in violence carry the burden for its justification, but let those who believe in peace and love practice a way of life that our society sorely needs now more than ever.[19] ”

Hillcrest trial[edit]

In 2007, Coronado stood trial in San Diego on charges related to his speech in 2003 in Hillcrest. After two days of deliberations, the jury remained deadlocked, and on September 19, 2007, Judge Jeffrey Miller declared a mistrial.[20] Coronado subsequently entered a guilty plea, accepting a deal for a one year prison term, as a result of which he was sentenced on March 27, 2008 to one year and one day. He was released from El Reno FCI on December 25, 2008.[21] Regarding his guilty plea, he said in an open e-mail on his website:

“ It has long been my desire to put my past behind me and instead build a sustainable existence for myself, my wife, Chrysta, and two children, Anheles and Maya. This decision to take a plea bargain comes only after much careful consideration and a sincere desire to do what is best for my family. Such unconstitutional assaults on my free speech beg for a continued legal battle and defense, but I am instead choosing to reach a settlement that will allow me to move on with my life rather than face years of litigation that might lead to many years in prison.[22] ”

Parole violation[edit]

In August 2010, Coronado was sentenced to four months in federal prison in Michigan for violating the terms of his probation. Coronado, who had been on parole since his release from prison, joined the social networking site Facebook. He was sentenced for the use of an unauthorized computer, and for "friending" former Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle.[23] Coronado entered the Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Michigan on September 16.[24]

Strong Hearts[edit]

Strong Hearts was a zine written and published by Coronado during his prison sentence for crimes committed on behalf of the Animal Liberation Front.[25] The zine had a typewriter cut and paste collage format. It was printed on 8½" by 11" paper that was folded in half. There were a total of four issues published.

Some of the topics covered included Coronado's experiences with Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, theEZLN, animal rights, and indigenous issues.[26] Excerpts from the zine are included in Flaming Arrows: A Compilation Of Works By Rod Coronado, a collection of Coronado's writings currently published by Warcry Communications.