Eco-terrorist group prolific

The Earth Liberation Front's attacks rack up extensive damages

Thursday, January 11, 2001

By Bryan Denson of The Oregonian staff

A familiar cast of state and federal arson investigators tromped through the smoldering ruins of a lumber company building in Glendale last week. They quickly declared that at least two fires swept through Superior Lumber Co.'s administrative offices Jan. 2 -- a telltale clue this was no accident.

They tagged and bagged their evidence and waited for an underground band of environmental extremists to make its next move. As predictable as a full moon, the Earth Liberation Front came through. On Monday, the group passed a message to its aboveground publicist in Portland to claim responsibility for setting the $400,000 blaze.

"This year, 2001," the group wrote in its communique to Craig Rosebraugh, "we hope to see an escalation in tactics against capitalism and industry."

But the group's escalation, including the Christmastime torchings of two other Oregon wood-products companies in 1998 and 1999, already had begun.

The Earth Liberation Front committed at least nine major acts of sabotage last year, including seven arsons, with damages totaling more than $2.2 million, The Oregonian found in a review of the cases. It was the most prolific year yet for the group, which strikes at enterprises it accuses of plundering the natural world for profit, the newspaper found in interviews with police, victims and industry groups.

The Glendale arson was at least the 21st major crime claimed by the Earth Liberation Front since October 1996, when it spray-painted its name on a U.S. Forest Service ranger station in Detroit, Ore., and torched a pickup truck. The newspaper considered major crimes to be violent offenses, such as arson, or property damage reaching $50,000.

Damages from the 21 strikes total more than $19.2 million. Seventeen of those crimes were arson, including fires that caused $12 million damage to the Vail, Colo., ski resort in 1998. The arson, a protest against development on lynx habitat, was the most destructive act of eco-terrorism in U.S. history.

The FBI recognizes the Earth Liberation Front as one of the nation's leading single-issue domestic terrorist organizations. The bureau hosts more than 20 joint terrorism task forces nationwide and has focused more closely on eco-terrorism since the Vail arson. But to date, agents have made no arrests in any of the 21 serious crimes.

"It's going to take a nationwide, coordinated investigative effort," said David W. Szady, special agent in charge of Portland's FBI office.

A Western phenomenon
Crimes by environmental extremists have long been a phenomenon of the American West. In late 1999, The Oregonian documented 100 major acts of suspected eco-terrorism -- including arsons, bombings and other vandalism -- in 11 Western states dating to 1980. Damages from those crimes totaled nearly $43 million.

Since then, saboteurs have popped up in clusters in the Midwest and Northeast. The Earth Liberation Front and its allies in the Animal Liberation Front and other underground groups claimed responsibility for at least 16 arsons in the United States last year alone. They struck familiar targets -- logging, farming, slaughterhouses, the biomedical industry and road construction -- but also branched out into new areas. They repeatedly targeted the genetic engineering of crops and trees, along with those who build luxury homes.

Last January, the Earth Liberation Front took responsibility for burning down a Bloomington, Ind., house under construction to dissuade development near a watershed. It was the first of five strikes against townhomes, condos and other dwellings going up in three states. In a claim of responsibility for one such arson last month on Long Island, N.Y., the front declared an "unbounded war" on urban sprawl.

"Window breaking and disabling vehicles can only do so much," the front wrote.

Enemies of golf
In June, a group calling itself the Anarchist Golfing Association broke into two Canby greenhouses, destroying up to 10 years of research on experimental grasses owned by Pure-Seed Testing. The company's experimentation with genetically modified putting-green grass presented a double whammy for the Anarchist Golfing Association. The group views golf as an elitist sport and the development of golf courses as "a destroyer of all things wild," according to its communique.

The crime was the first anti-biotech sabotage in Oregon, but 28 others were claimed by underground environmentalists from Maine to Hawaii in the 12 months preceding the crime, The Oregonian found. Many of those were small-time mischief. But on Dec. 31, 1999, the Earth Liberation Front torched the office of a Michigan State University researcher it accused of promoting genetically modified crops.

For years, eco-terrorists popped up in one place, gaining the momentary interest of local law enforcement, then popped up in another, thereby staying under the radar of federal law enforcement, said Teresa Platt, executive director of Fur Commission USA, which tracks suspected eco-saboteurs.

Solving the crimes is about as easy as photographing an airline crash, said Ron Arnold, executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a group representing the interests of natural resource industries. But the Earth Liberation Front has committed enough crimes to warrant more serious investigation, Arnold said.

"I think the lack of arrests is indicative of a lack of determination," he said.

A possible tactic
Szady, who heads the Portland FBI, acknowledges that the Earth Liberation Front probably operates in cells of just a few individuals. But he suspects they might be coordinated nationally. One key to catching them is infiltrating the group with undercover agents, he said. The FBI employed that tactic to cripple the Mafia and, nearly 20 years ago, a band of radical environmentalists who sabotaged powerlines and ski lifts in Arizona.

Rosebraugh, the Earth Liberation Front's 28-year-old publicist, is skeptical that undercover agents will be able to talk their way into the group's inner circles. The Southeast Portland resident, who operates a vegan baking company, maintains he does not know the identity of those committing the crimes but merely publicizes the claims of responsibility they send him in anonymous notes.

Steve Swanson, president of Superior Lumber, deplores the group for burning his offices. But he lays much of the blame for their success on less-radical environmental groups that fail to take a public stand against the crimes.

"They give it a wink and a nod," he said.

The group adheres to a well-publicized code of nonviolence, Rosebraugh said. To date, no one has been killed or seriously hurt as a result of their many strikes.

But this week's threat to escalate things in 2001 concerned Szady: "We believe the escalation of this will continue until someone is seriously injured or killed."

Federal authorities continue to lean on Rosebraugh, who has been summoned regularly to appear before a grand jury looking into a string of eco-terrorist arsons. FBI agents raided his home in February, seizing computers and other equipment they hope will help them solve the crimes.

Rosebraugh just keeps waiting for the next communique.