Posted on 01/20/2006 7:04:05 PM PST by crazyhorse691
Federal authorities in Oregon announced this morning they have charged 11 suspected eco-saboteurs with a series of arsons that began with firebombings at two ranger stations in the Willamette National Forest in 1996 and included the $12 million conflagration at a Vail, Colo., ski resort two years later.
A consipracy charge filed in U.S. District Court in Portland says that certain of the 11 suspects called themselves “The Family” as they planned and carried out arsons across the West.
The Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, groups the FBI classifies as the nation’s leading domestic terrorist threat, claimed responsibility for many of the dozen fires that plagued Oregon.
Indicted were two luminaries of the radical environmental movement, including Jonathan Paul, an Applegate Valley resident who gave interviews to The Oregonian in 1999, and Darren Thurston, a convicted eco-saboteur from Canada.
Eight of the 11 suspects are already in custody after an unprecedented coast to coast roundup last month, the largest bust of accused eco-saboteurs in history. Three others remain at large and are believed to be abroad, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told a news conference in Washington, D.C.
Gonzales was joined at the news conference by FBI Director Robert Mueller and Carl Truscott, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
“The message to any group contemplating such actions should be this — we will be relentless in finding you and bringing you to justice,” said Truscott.
The arsons began in October 1996, when the Earth Liberation Front torched a pickup at the Detroit ranger station in the Willamette National Forest and left a plastic jug rigged as an incendiary on the rooftop.
Spray-painted graffiti read, “Leave the forests alone, and no one gets hurt.”
A few days later, saboteurs left no such calling card when they torched the Oakridge ranger station on the other end of the national forest, southeast of Eugene, a loss calculated at up to $9 million.
The Colorado arson was the coup de main of the Earth Liberation Front. The conflagration stood for nearly five years as the most destructive act of eco-sabotage in U.S. history.
Multiple fires broke out early in Vail on the morning of Oct. 19, 1998, destroying ski lifts and an immense lodge under construction on the slopes of the resort. The Earth Liberation Front soon claimed responsibility for the blaze.
“For your safety and convenience,” the ELF wrote in a claim of responsibility, “we strongly advise skiers to choose other destinations until Vail cancels its inexcusable plans for expansion.”
Photos of the Vail arson, including the Two Elks lodge fully aflame, became an icon of the underground Earth Liberation Front, which used the image on its Web site.
The ELF and ALF have claimed responsiblity or otherwise been implicated in more than $100 million in damages in the past decade. The groups have sought to punish the enterprises they accused of harming the planet and its creatures for a profit.
Some of their most frequent targets have been logging operations, luxury homes under construction, SUV dealerships, biomedical labs and mink farms.
The Vail arson was dwarfed in the summer of 2003, when the ELF struck a massive apartment complex under construction in San Diego. The fire was one of many in California that season, which came to be known as the Summer of Fire.
A series of attacks followed in the months and years after the Vail arson, including massive fires at U.S. Forest Industries in Medford, Superior Lumber Co. in Glendale, Jefferson Poplar Farm near Clatskanie, and three in Eugene: Joe Romania Chevrolet, Childers Meat Co. and a Eugene police substation.
The recent arrests have not stopped eco-saboteurs.
Federal investigators said Thursday night that a fire that destroyed a mansion under construction at the north end of Camano Island, Wash. apparently was an act of ecoterrorism. A pink bedsheet draped over the gate leading to the 9,600-square-foot house overlooking Skagit Bay was spray-painted with a threatening message and bore the signature of someone claiming to be associated with the Earth Liberation Front, FBI agents said Thursday night.
Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimated the loss at about $2 million. There were no injuries.
“A message left at the scene claiming responsibility appears to have been written by an environmental extremist group, but at this time we are not ruling out any motive for the arson,” said Laura Laughlin, FBI special agent in charge.
The FBI, which investigates potential cases of ecoterrorism, has found banner bedsheets at other fires started by people claiming to be associated with the ELF, agent Roberta A. Burroughs said.
Thanks for the link.
About time !!!!
We are probably just scratching the surface of the damage done by these eco thugs on the West Coast and later damage by the Wanna Bees they left here.
Was it Santa Cruz University that had the bad fire in a Genetic Building section of the university a few years ago or the UC extension at old Fort Ord?
The powers to be refused to even consider that the fire might have been set by ALF/ELF.
The Nimbus Fish Hatchery on the American River, below Nimbus dam, was apparently one of the targets. Actions like the one you cited and the planned one at Nimbus are another part of their behavior against using genetics to produce better food and at a lower cost.
Right you are. Good memory, Grampa Dave.
January 12, 2002, Fire guts UC labs, By JASON SCHULTZ, Sentinel staff writer
gotta run...FYI
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/21/BAGKHGR1D91.DTL
The next-to-last para. is priceless.
Thanks for the post, the pings, and the link.
Doncha love the way they are being called "domestic terrorists"?
LOL
LOL!
Speciesists... ;o)
Well, I certainly do hope the NSA wasn't involved with wire taps on these American citizens, the democrat party is going to be angry enough about their indictments.
I just wish they'd start arresting the snotty little pukes that work for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality another giant pack of stalinists.
Hang 'em High ~ Bump!
Hang 'em High ~ Bump!
More details.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/113781571020420.xml&coll=7&thispage=1
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