Posted on 10/05/2009 11:10:46 AM PDT by markomalley
In 1999, Ian Wallace was elected king of Memorial High School's Winter Carnival and was named co-captain of the varsity hockey team.
In 2003, he was named to the dean's list for his academic achievement as an anthropology student at the University of Minnesota.
In between, he admitted to federal officials last year, Wallace attempted to firebomb two buildings at Michigan Technological University in an act of eco-terrorism.
As a result, the former Memorial honor student and student council member is locked up in federal prison and not scheduled for release until Jan. 12, 2012.
Ian J. Wallace, now 28, pleaded guilty in September 2008 in U.S. District Court in Michigan to attempting to cause damage in excess of $1,000 to property of the United States. After signing off on the plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Wallace, then of East Setauket, N.Y., where he lived while attending graduate school at Stony Brook University, was sentenced in March to three years in prison and ordered to pay a share of $1.7 million in restitution for damages resulting from his criminal activity.
He began serving his sentence June 1 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Elkton, Ohio, a low-security facility about 45 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.
The Mining Journal, the newspaper in Marquette, Mich., reported that Wallace was emotional and remorseful at his sentencing hearing.
"I'm painfully aware of what I did," the newspaper reported Wallace as saying. "The shame that I feel is with me at all times. I'm very, very sorry."
Wallace said at the time of his crimes he was "broken by depression, drugs and alcohol. I hated myself. In this damaged mental state, I was taken advantage of."
He added that he had pulled himself together, pursuing a doctorate degree and getting engaged, in the eight years since the crime.
"I have been consumed by shame for what I have done," Wallace said. "My greatest blessing is that no one got hurt."
Wallace's fall from grace would have been hard to predict. He is the son of John and Ruth Wallace. John is a former Eau Claire public school principal and the district's former executive director of administration, while Ruth helped form the Children's Mental Health Alliance-Chippewa Valley and was the driving force behind the creation of Eau Claire Interfaith Hospitality Network, a nonprofit organization serving the homeless. The couple has opened their home to dozens of foster children with developmental and emotional disabilities.
Wallace declined to comment for this story and his parents didn't respond to several telephone and e-mail messages, but the plea agreement spells out many details of Wallace's involvement with a radical underground environmental group called Earth Liberation Front, or ELF.
According to the plea agreement:
On Nov. 4, 2001, Wallace and an acquaintance traveled by car from Wallace's home near Minneapolis to Houghton, Mich., taking with them two incendiary devices they had constructed to destroy two buildings on the Michigan Tech campus affiliated with the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Wallace and his acquaintance were motivated to target the buildings, which were being used for research into genetic engineering of plants, by their belief that such research was part of the commercialization of the natural environment and thus ultimately harmful to the environment.
"They hoped not only to destroy the research but also, through such an act of violence, to intimidate and deter government agencies, private organizations and the general public from conducting or supporting such research," the agreement states.
The pair placed devices including combustible liquids, ignition sources and timers against the buildings between midnight and 1 a.m. on Nov. 5, 2001, and left the scene. The devices, which failed to ignite because the timers didn't work, were discovered by police a few hours later.
Wallace admitted in the agreement that he carried out the attempted bombing on behalf of ELF, which the FBI had ranked as among the nation's top domestic terrorism threats. A message left at the scene read: "ELF is watching the U.S. Forest Service."
He also admitted participating in these additional acts of property damage on behalf of ELF:
- April 1, 2000 - Vandalism of a Forest Service building and vehicles at the University of Minnesota campus in St. Paul; damage $25,186.
-July 20, 2000 - Destruction of 500 trees, part of a research program to produce faster-growing, more disease-resistant varieties, at a Forest Service research station near Rhinelander; damage $1 million.
-Jan. 26, 2002 - Arson at the construction site for a Cargill Building for Microbial and Plant Genomics at the University of Minnesota; damage $630,000.
Federal prosecutors agreed not to charge Wallace in connection with those incidents in exchange for his agreement to cooperate with the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys offices in their investigations of those acts of eco-terrorism.
Wallace faced a potential maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for the single count of attempted damage to government property to which he pleaded guilty. He admitted his involvement after the FBI, acting on a tip, contacted him in 2007.
At the time of Wallace's guilty plea, U.S. Attorney Charles Gross released the following statement: "A civilized society must tolerate a diversity of thought, but it can never accept the destruction of property or endangering innocent people by adherents to a cause."
Thomas Tessendorf, a former hockey teammate of Wallace's at Memorial and fellow member of the Class of 1999, recalled Wallace as an extremely popular guy in high school.
"We used to call him the senator because he was very outgoing and very political - the kind of guy you could see kissing babies and stuff like that," Tessendorf said. "Everybody liked him."
Tessendorf remembers his old friend as being concerned about environmental issues and even expressing an interest in possibly becoming an environmental lawyer.
"It doesn't surprise me that he's an activist, but I am surprised he took it to that extreme," Tessendorf said.
In a 2005 interview with the Leader-Telegram about participating in an archeological dig in Syria that uncovered the bones of a new species of giant camel, Wallace mentioned that he was mostly interested in environmental issues at the time he graduated from Memorial.
Tim Leibham, who is now executive director of administration for the Eau Claire school district but was Memorial's principal when Wallace attended the school, recalled Wallace as a popular, bright and involved student.
Though nobody would expect such a respected young man to run afoul of the law so soon after high school, Leibham noted that one aspect of the sad saga didn't come as a shock, considering what he knew about Wallace's character. "I'm not surprised he ultimately took responsibility for his behavior," Leibham said.
I'm sure they'll like him in prison, too.
Sounds like another John “American Taliban” Lindh.
Political prisoner!
Just because a person is intelligent doesn’t mean they have any common sense.
pretty predictable, actually.
My father called people like that “educated idiots”.
I dunno, given the extreme eco-liberal bent of our government school system, I'd say having a father working in the public schools would likely have something to do with it. Pair that with having a mother in the mental health field, also frequently a very liberal field, and I find them raising an eco-terrorist not all that hard to believe.
Many of the ELF/ALF nuts that are serving prison sentences now and those that haven’t be apprehended as yet have college degrees and are from well to do families. When finally caught they are all very sorry for their acts or sorry they were caught, I believe the latter.
Ayers heirs...they'll all be professors within a few years of release.
I’m sure some will become professors and there’s a few that are quite wealthy already, they may follow in algore’s footsteps.
Ain’t it amazing how “everybody always likes” these friggin’ nuts!
We can’t get so focused on radical Islamists that we forget about home grown terrorists. There are plenty of them lurking out there, waiting to be tipped over the edge.
DEATH TO THE ELF!
“”In 2003, he was named to the dean’s list for his academic achievement as an anthropology student at the University of Minnesota.””
I’ve never met a normal Ian in my life.
Then again i haven’t met too many Ian’s either.
Still....
Imagine doing three years in federal prison for eco-terrorism.
What a frigging putz.
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