Posted on 12/09/2005 7:48:27 PM PST by crazyhorse691
Agents link suspects in Oregon and elsewhere to a three-year string of crimes
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.
Those arrested include a Portland woman accused of taking part in the nation's only act of sabotage on the eve of the 2000 millennium celebration, the toppling of a high-voltage tower near Bend.
Federal agents took six men and women into custody from Oregon to New York on Wednesday, tying them to nearly $5 million in arson and vandalism damage from 1998 to 2001.
The crimes turned Oregon at that time into the epicenter of an underground assault on timber companies, research scientists and meat processors. Federal agents say the saboteurs, operating in small units called cells, have burned, vandalized and sometimes bombed enterprises that they accuse of profiting from the destruction of the planet and its living creatures.
Members of the Oregon FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force worked the cases for the better part of nine years, though they developed suspects early in the investigation.
Members of the task force told The Oregonian in July 2001 that they had tied five Northwest arsons -- including two connected to Wednesday's arrests -- to "signature" firebombs made of cheap digital timers and large containers of fuel. The task force then reported that it was closing in on at least three suspects and several compatriots. But no arrests were made until Wednesday.
The government declined to comment Thursday about why arrests were so long in coming. However, a federal prosecutor in Portland, Kent Robinson, noted that Wednesday's coast-to-coast roundup was coordinated to avoid suspects fleeing after learning of other arrests.
"These indictments prove that we're going to pursue these arsons until we solve them," said Robinson, who leads the criminal division for Oregon U.S. Attorney Karen J. Immergut. "And we're still investigating."
Authorities arrested Chelsea D. Gerlach, 28, Wednesday in Portland. Also arrested, according to prosecutors, was Kevin M. Tubbs, 36, in Springfield; Stanislas G. Meyerhoff, 28, in Charlottesville, Va., where he attended Piedmont Community College; and Sarah K. Harvey, 28, in Flagstaff, where she was a student at Northern Arizona University. The government also arrested Daniel G. McGowan, 31, of New York, and William C. Rodgers, 40, of Prescott, Ariz.
Robinson acknowledged that 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.
According to the indictments, the accused saboteurs first struck on June 21, 1998, with simultaneous fires at two U.S. Department of Agriculture research facilities in the Olympia area. The Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, groups that the FBI later described as America's greatest domestic terrorist threat, claimed responsibility for the fires:
"The arrogant humans who make money by killing and destroying nature would have the public believe that beaver, deer and other wildlife are responsible for the decimation of our public lands -- not clearcutting!"
Tubbs and Rodgers were charged with setting fire to one of the USDA buildings.
The next arson came two days after Christmas in 1998, when U.S. Forest Industries in Medford was firebombed, causing at least $500,000 in damage. ELF claimed responsibility. The government has charged Harvey with arson in that case.
Saboteurs struck again on Mother's Day 1999 in Eugene, when Childers Meat Co. went up in flames. A criminal complaint filed Thursday accuses Gerlach, who went by the name "Country Girl," of serving as a lookout in that arson.
The indictment quotes a confidential source as saying that Gerlach used a handheld radio to communicate with fellow saboteurs. The source told an FBI agent, John Ferreira, that the informant was a participant in the conspiracy to commit the arson.
"The source said these persons used (four) five-gallon plastic containers and each triggered by a mechanical timing device," according to the complaint. "One incendiary device was set near the front door in a porch area and the other incendiary device was set next to a natural gas main."
The Animal Liberation Front later claimed responsibility for the Childers fire, which caused $1.2 million in damage, according to the government.
On Dec. 30, 1999, an electrical transmission tower owned by the Bonneville Power Administration was toppled about 25 miles southeast of Bend. No group took responsibility.
Gerlach and Meyerhoff, along with another woman, Josephine Sunshine Overaker, were indicted on charges of conspiring to destroy the tower. Overaker has not been arrested. Gerlach pleaded not guilty Thursday to the tower charges, which were filed in December 2004.
The Earth Liberation Front would later claim responsibility for setting fire to Superior Lumber Co. of Glendale on Jan. 2, 2001. A note passed to news media from the anonymous saboteurs declared, "This year, 2001, we hope to see an escalation in tactics against capitalism and industry."
Meyerhoff and McGowan were both charged with the Superior Lumber arson and one other blaze, also believed to be the work of the ELF, near Clatskanie. The two face life imprisonment if convicted of using destructive devices to perform both arsons.
"These are not misguided college students who are performing a protest in front of the student union," said Steve Swanson, president of the Swanson Group, formerly Superior Lumber Co. "These are serious crimes. Frankly, they're just criminals and they need to be treated as such."
Meyerhoff and McGowan also were charged with taking part in at least one of two simultaneous arsons on May 21, 2001, the torchings of Clatskanie's Jefferson Poplar Farm and Seattle's University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture. The blazes marked the first time that eco-saboteurs had committed simultaneous fires in two states.
At a hearing in federal court in Portland on Thursday, Pat Ehlers, the public defender representing Gerlach, fought for his client's release. But Robinson successfully argued that Gerlach should remain in custody.
"We believe she is involved in other arsons and is a member of a loosely affiliated group responsible for a string of arsons," he said.
Oh my God....another ISM.
I'm glad they got busted! People like that don't deserve to be free.
If you want to imagine the potential of these scumbags if they ever get serious financing (and honestly, how many rich enemies does the US have?), read Michael Crichton's book State of Fear. I wouldn't be surprised if they're already being enlisted Al Queda...I understand Bin Laden is a big greenie...
HAYDUKE LIVES!
Additional details on some of the arrests in Arizona;
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1537568/posts
hey- what's your word on this- wwfb?
Teenagers. Literally teens and 20-somethings from the 1990s who never left that decade.
They're still laying in bed, alternately crying to Pearl Jam albums and "rocking out" to Nirvana.
I say charge them with conspiracy as well. And it might be a good thing to toss in some good ol' fashioned Patriot Act on their idiot butts.
If Ma and Pa had have applied some belt to their behinds, they wouldn't be acting this way now.
"If we can't save the trees, we'll BURN 'em down!"
Cool! Did the cops find any blue-ringed octopi on the suspects?
I get a real laugh out of the idea that they are all grouped in dispersed cells that don't communicate with each other and don't mutually plan. It looks like these folks did a lot of planning. If they are convicted and given some really hard time a few might even be willing to talk to the authorities and tell them what's really happening and rat out the rest of the consiprators.
Sarah Harvey
William Rodgers
Kevin Tubbs
Credit for the mug shots here: Answers sought in UW arson (Seattle Times)
"These are serious crimes. Frankly, they're just criminals and they need to be treated as such."
Since these attacks were coordinated around the country it was right for them to be hunted down by the FBI.
Whether or not they should be considered terrorists is another question.
They are not doing things to create terror, they are doing things to stop what they consider to be environment-harming activities.
Terrorists blow up random targets killing some and terrorizing countless others who ask "But for the grace of God..."
These were targeted criminal attacks.
I am concerned when a law is created to fight crime X and then is later used to fight crime Y.
For example, the RICO act which is used against abortion protestors.
Organized criminal enterprise is prosecuted under RICO- no matter who is doing the perpetrating. Regardless, you care more for animals & Gaia, than humans- correct? Or is your stance, that humans are no better than animals and Gaia is the higher being?
But I am also opposed to the creeping police state.
RICO is bad law.
If the police and FBI can't find each person who commits a crime guilty of that crime, then they need to get new jobs.
Finding people guilty of working together with others to commit crimes is anti-constitutional. The fact that people get together is perfectly legit. What they do after they make plans or what they specifically plan to do is what should be prosecuted.
If five people get together and decide to torch a lumber yard, then each of them should be found guilty of either torching a lumber yard or planning to torch a lumber yard. They should not also be found guilty of associating with others to torch a lumber yard.
Your sensitive understanding is truly wonderful. All the best to ya...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.