[Ppnews] Feds indict four on '98 Vail fire

[Political Prisoner News]

From: "Dan Yurman" <djysrv at usa.net>
Subject: Feds indict four on '98 Vail fire
Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 10:38:42 -0600


Note to Readers

This is a good review of how the FBI has categorized arson and vandalism by
members of the Earth Liberation Front as "domestic terrorism."  See quote
from Mark Potek at the end.  The FBI has used the arson attacks as a
justification for spying on other environmental groups, peace groups, and a
wide variety of activist organizations according to this news report.

The hard news peg in this article is buried paragraphs deep.  Four people
have been indicted on the 1998 firebombing of a resort center at the Vail,
Colorado.  Wire service reports on the indictments handed down on Friday
5/19 can be found on Google News with the keywords:  Vail fire

Full text of the Seattle Times article follows below.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/nation/14623047.htm

Posted on Sun, May. 21, 2006

Government struggling to classify eco-sabotage
Do perpetrators of property-only crimes merit the 'terrorist' label?

BY HAL BERNTON
Seattle Times

SEATTLE - Who is a terrorist?

After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, it was
clean-cut Timothy McVeigh, a brooding loner - infused with hatred of the
government - who was convicted and put to death for that crime.

After Sept. 11, which claimed the lives of more than 2,900 people, it was
the bearded visage of Osama bin Laden.

This year, the Bush administration has touted the arrests of terrorists of a
different kind - homegrown militants who have embarked on arson attacks to
protest treatment of animals and the environment.

During the past three years alone, FBI counterterrorism agents have
conducted at least 190 investigations into property crimes claimed by the
Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, and the Animal Liberation Front, or ALF.
None of the crimes injured or killed people.

"Terrorism is terrorism - no matter what the motive," declared FBI director
Robert Mueller on Jan. 20, when he announced the indictment of 11 people in
an alleged conspiracy that involved 17 attacks. Those include arsons at a
ski resort in Vail, Colo., a horse slaughterhouse in Oregon, a federal
wildlife research center in Olympia and the University of Washington Center
for Urban Horticulture.

On Friday, a federal grand jury indicted four people in the Vail firebombing
and more indictments are expected in the months ahead as federal grand
juries meet in Seattle, Eugene, Ore., San Francisco and other cities. Most
of those indicted earlier this year could face decades in federal prison. A
few may face life sentences, if tried and convicted.

Some balk at putting the terrorism label on activists who have targeted
property - not people.

In the post-Sept. 11 era, they say that the word tilts the criminal-justice
system against defendants and helps the Bush administration justify a
broader infiltration - and surveillance - of groups that protest government
policies.

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union indicate that the
FBI has monitored the activities of some environmental, animal-rights and
peace groups.

"You couple spying on political dissenters with grand jury subpoenas and a
series of arrests, it's had a huge effect," said Alejandro Queral, executive
director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. "There is a serious
danger of chilling dissenting points of view."

The FBI decision to run these investigations through a counterterrorism
branch also has been questioned by its own Office of Inspector General,
which in a 2003 report recommended that the cases should be handled by its
criminal division.

In Oregon, the power of the terrorism label also generated concern from a
federal judge. In a 2002 hearing in Portland, U.S. District Court Judge
James Redden told a federal prosecutor not to use the word terrorist in the
trial of Jacob Sherman, an Oregon man inspired by ELF to set fire to three
logging trucks.

"Basically, he (Redden) thought it was a fairness issue, and that it could
prejudice the jury," said Andrew Bates, a defense attorney for Sherman, who
avoided trial through a plea agreement.

Redden's concern underscores the lack of a universal definition for
terrorism. Even within the U.S. government, there still is no unanimity,
according to the Government Accountability Office.

For example, the State Department, when assessing violence abroad, defines
terrorism as "premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated
against non-combatants" - in other words, attacks designed to injure or kill
people.

Other federal laws and codes use a broader definition of terrorism that can
include attacks on property as well as people. The statutes define domestic
terrorism as acts of violence intended to influence the conduct of
government or "intimidate or coerce a civilian population."

Even those definitions are open to interpretation. For example, the vast
majority of attacks on abortion clinics, including those that have killed at
least six people since 1993, are not classified by the FBI as terrorism.

Among federal prosecutors in Oregon, there is no debate that the ELF and ALF
arsons add up to terrorism.

They say the attacks have posed a danger to humans, including firefighters
who respond to put out the blazes, and were intended to further a political
agenda.

A slaughterhouse was burned in Oregon, for example, to protest the killing
of wild horses brought in from the range.

The overall goal of the ELF - defined in a 2001 pamphlet distributed by its
North American press office - is to use "direct action in the form of
economic sabotage to stop the exploitation and destruction of the natural
environment."

Handling a case as terrorism can influence the number of arson and other
charges that a prosecutor may seek from a grand jury. And, if terrorism is
proved as a motive for arson, federal sentencing guidelines recommend
substantially longer prison terms.

"There was never any question about how these (crimes) would be treated,"
said Stephen Peifer, a Portland-based assistant U.S. attorney involved in
the prosecution.

Since 1976, animal-rights and environmental militants have been involved in
more than 1,100 actions that have caused more than $110 million worth of
damage, according to FBI statistics.

The FBI is worried that some groups want to ratchet up the violence.

The ALF advocates "direct action" attacks against property, such as
laboratories and slaughterhouses, but rejects harming humans.

Meanwhile, splinter groups believe that it may be morally justified to
injure or even kill a human being - if the action could save many animal
lives, according to Jerry Vlasak, a Los Angeles trauma surgeon who has acted
as a spokesman for the ALF since 2004.

FBI officials say such beliefs justify investigating these cases
aggressively as terrorist acts.

Some outside the agency question the FBI's ranking of those groups as a top
domestic-terrorism threat, since they haven't killed or injured people.

But among the domestic-terrorism incidents included in the FBI database,
individuals with ties to white-supremacist and other anti-government groups
killed six people and injured more than 135 people since 1996.

During the past decade, the Justice Department has uncovered numerous
right-wing plots to assassinate police officers, judges, politicians and
civil-rights figures, as well as to amass missiles, explosives and chemical
weapons, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report.

"In my opinion, they (the FBI) are mistaking the frequency of incidents with
the overall threat," said Mark Potok, editor of a report that monitors
extremist crimes for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The vast majority of attacks on abortion clinics, including those that have
killed at least six people since 1993, are not classified by the FBI as
terrorism






Dan Yurman  djysrv at usa.net   Cell 208-521-5726

The Freedom Archives
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San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
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