[Ppnews] Dave Foreman and the First Greenscare Case

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair12112009.html
December 11-13, 2009


Dave Foreman and the First Greenscare Case


Targeting Earth First!

By JOSHUA FRANK and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!, awoke 
at five in the morning on May 30, 1989 to the 
sound of three FBI agents shouting his name in 
his Tucson, Arizona home. Foreman’s wife Nancy 
answered the door frantically and was shoved 
aside by brawny FBI agents as they raced toward 
their master bedroom where her husband was sound 
asleep, naked under the sheets, with plugs jammed 
in his ears to drown out the noise of their 
neighbor’s barking Doberman pincher. By the time 
Foreman came to, the agents were surrounding his 
bed, touting bulletproof vests and .357 Magnums.

He immediately thought of the murder of Fred 
Hampton in Chicago, expecting to be shot in cold 
blood. But as Foreman put it, “Being a nice, 
middle-class honky male, they can’t get away with 
that stuff quite as easily as they could with 
Fred, or with all the native people on the Pine 
Ridge Reservation back in the early 70s.”

So instead of firing off a few rounds, they 
jerked a dazed Foreman from his slumber, let him 
pull on a pair of shorts, and hauled him outside 
where they threw him in the back of an unmarked 
vehicle. It took over six hours before Foreman 
even knew why he had been accosted by Federal agents.

Foreman’s arrest was the culmination of three 
years and two million tax dollars spent in an 
attempt to frame a few Earth First! activists for 
conspiring to damage government and private 
property. The FBI infiltrated Earth First! groups 
in several states with informants and undercover 
agent-provocateurs. Over 500 hours of tape 
recordings of meetings, events and casual 
conversation had been amassed. Phones had been 
tapped and homes broken in to. The FBI was doing 
their best to intimidate radical 
environmentalists across the country, marking 
them as potential threat to national security.

It was the FBI’s first case of Green Scare.

The day before Foreman was yanked from bed and 
lugged in to the warm Arizona morning, two 
so-called co-conspirators, biologist Marc Baker 
and antinuclear activist Mark Davis, were 
arrested by some 50 agents on horseback and on 
foot, with a helicopter hovering above as the 
activists stood at the base of a power line tower 
in the middle of desert country in Wenden, 
Arizona, 200 miles northwest of Foreman’s home. 
The next day Pet Millet, a self-described 
“redneck woman for wilderness,” was arrested at a 
nearby Planned Parenthood where she worked. 
Millet earlier evaded the FBI’s dragnet.

Driven to the site by an undercover FBI agent, 
the entire episode, as Foreman put it, was the 
agent’s conception. Foreman, described by the 
bureau as the guru and financier of the 
operation, was also pegged for having thought up 
the whole elaborate scheme, despite the fact that their evidence was thin.

Back in the 1970s the FBI issued a memo to their 
field offices stating that when attempting to 
break up dissident groups, the most effective 
route was to forget about hard intelligence or 
annoying facts. Simply make a few arrests and 
hold a public press conference. Charges could 
later be dropped. It didn’t matter; by the time 
the news hit the airwaves and was printed up in 
the local newspapers, the damage had already been done.

It was the FBI’s assertion that the action 
stopped by the arrests under that Arizona power 
line in late May, 1989, was to be a test run for 
a much grander plot involving Davis, Baker, 
Millet, and the group’s leader, Dave Foreman. The 
FBI charged the four with the intent to damage 
electrical transmission lines that lead to the 
Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility in Colorado.

“The big lie that the FBI pushed at their press 
conference the day after the arrests was that we 
were a bunch of terrorists conspiring to cut the 
power lines into the Palo Verde and Diablo Canyon 
nuclear facilities in order to cause a nuclear 
meltdown and threaten public health and safety,” explained Foreman.

In the late 1980s the FBI launched operation 
THERMCON in response to an act of sabotage of the 
Arizona Snowbowl ski lift near Flagstaff, Arizona 
that occurred in October 1987, allegedly by 
Davis, Millet and Baker. Acting under the quirky 
name, Evan Mecham Eco-Terrorist International 
Conspiracy (EMETIC) -- the eco-saboteurs wrecked 
several of the company’s ski lifts, claiming that 
structures were cutting in to areas of significant biological importance.

This was not the first act the group claimed 
responsibility for. A year prior EMETIC sent a 
letter declaring they were responsible for the 
damage at the Fairfield Snow Bowl near Flagstaff. 
The group’s letter also included a jovial threat 
to “chain the Fairfield CEO to a tree at the 
10,000-foot level and feed him shrubs and roots 
until he understands the suicidal folly of 
treating the planet primarily as a tool for making money.”

The group used an acetylene torch to cut bolts 
from several of the lift's support towers, making 
them inoperable. Upon receiving the letter, the 
Arizona ski resort was forced to shut down the 
lift in order to repair the damages, which rang up to over $50,000.

But the big allegations heaved at these 
eco-saboteurs wasn’t for dislodging a few bolts 
at a quaint ski resort in the heart of the 
Arizona mountains, or for inconveniencing a few 
ski bums from their daily excursions. No, the big 
charges were levied at the group for allegedly 
plotting to disrupt the functions of the Rocky 
Flats nuclear facility hundreds of miles away. 
Ironically, at the moment of their arrests, the 
FBI was simultaneously looking into public health 
concerns due to an illegal radioactive waste leak 
at the nuclear power site, which led Earth First! 
activist Mike Roselle to quip, “ [the FBI] would 
have discharged its duty better by assisting in a 
conspiracy to cut power to Rocky Flats, instead of trying to stop one.”

***

Gerry Spence climbed into his private jet in 
Jackson, Wyoming estate almost immediately after 
he heard about the FBI arrest of Dave Foreman in 
Arizona. Spence had made a name for himself among 
environmental activists in the late-1970s for his 
case against energy company Kerr-McGee, when he 
provided legal services to the family of former 
employee Karen Silkwood, who died suspiciously 
after she challenged the company of environmental 
abuses at one of their most productive nuclear 
facilities. Silkwood, who made plutonium pellets 
for nuclear reactors, had been assigned by her 
union to investigate health and safety concerns 
at a Kerr-McGee plant near Crescent, Oklahoma. In 
her monitoring of the facility Silkwood found 
dozens of evident regulatory violations, 
including faulty respiratory equipment as well as 
many cases of workers being exposed to radioactive material.

Silkwood went public after the company seemingly 
ignored her and her union’s concerns, even going 
as far as to testify to the Atomic Energy 
Commission (AEC) about the issues, claiming that 
regulations were sidestepped in an attempt to up 
the speed of production. She also claimed that 
workers had been mishandling nuclear fuel rods, 
but the company has covered up the incidences by 
falsifying inspection reports.

On the night of November 13, 1974, Silkwood left 
a union meeting in Crescent with documents in 
hand to drive to Oklahoma City where she was to 
meet and discuss Kerr-McGee’s alleged violations 
with a union official and two New York Times 
reporters. She never made it. Silkwood’s body was 
found the next day in the driver’s seat of her 
car on the side of the road, stuck in a culvert. 
She was pronounced dead on the scene and no documents were found in her car.

An independent private investigation revealed 
that Silkwood was in full control of her vehicle 
when it was struck from behind and forced off to 
the side of the road. According to the private 
investigators, the steering wheel of her car was 
bent in a manner that showed conclusively that 
Silkwood was prepared for the blow of the 
accident as it occurred. She had not been asleep 
at the wheel as investigators initially thought. 
The coroner concluded she had not died as a 
result of the accident, but possibly from suffocation.

No arrests or charges were ever made. Silkwood’s 
children and father filed a lawsuit against 
Kerr-McGee on behalf of her estate. Gerry Spence 
was their lead attorney. An autopsy of Silkwood’s 
body showed extremely high levels of plutonium 
contamination. Lawyers for Kerr-McGee argued 
first that the levels found were normal, but 
after damning evidence to the contrary, they were 
forced to argue that Silkwood had likely poisoned herself.

Spence had been victorious. Kerr-McGee’s defense 
was caught in a series of unavoidable 
contradictions. Silkwood’s body was laden with 
poison as result of her work at the nuclear 
facility. In her death Spence vindicated her 
well-documented claims. The initial jury verdict 
was for the company to pay $505,000 in damages 
and $10,000,000 in punitive damages. Kerr-McGee 
appealed and drastically reduced the jury’s 
verdict, but the initial ruling was later upheld 
by the Supreme Court. On the way to a retrial the 
company agreed to pay $1.38 million to the Silkwood estate.

Gerry Spence was not cowed by the antics of the 
Kerr-McGee Corporation, and when he agreed to 
take on Dave Foreman’s case pro-bono, justice 
seemed to be on the horizon for the Earth First! activists as well.

“Picture a little guy out there hacking at a dead 
steel pole, an inanimate object, with a 
blowtorch. He’s considered a criminal,” said 
Spence, explaining how he planned to steer the 
narrative of Foreman’s pending trial. “Now see 
the image of a beautiful, living, 
400-year-old-tree, with an inanimate object 
hacking away at it. This non-living thing is 
corporate America, but the corporate executives 
are not considered criminals at all.”

Like so many of the FBI charges brought against 
radical activists throughout the years, the case 
against Dave Foreman was less exciting than the 
investigation that led up to his arrest. The 
bureau had done its best to make Foreman and 
Earth First! out to be the most threatening activists in America.

Spence was not impressed and in fact argued as 
much, stating the scope of the FBI’s operation 
THERMCON was “very similar to the procedures the 
FBI used during the 1960s against dissident 
groups.” No doubt Spence was right. Similar to 
the movement disruption exemplified by COINTELPRO 
against Martin Luther King Jr., the Black 
Panthers and the American Indian Movement, the 
FBI’s crackdown of Earth First! in the late 1980s 
had many alarming parallels to the agency of old.

“Essentially what we need to understand is that 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was 
formed during the Palmer Raids in 1921, was set 
up from the very beginning to inhibit internal 
political dissent. They rarely go after 
criminals. They’re a thought police,” said 
Foreman of the FBI’s motives for targeting 
environmentalists. “Let’s face it, that’s what 
the whole government is. Foreman’s first law of 
government reads that the purpose of the state, 
and all its constituent elements, is the defense 
of an entrenched economic elite and philosophical 
orthodoxy. Thankfully, there’s a corollary to 
that law­they aren’t always very smart and 
competent in carrying out their plans.”

The man who was paid to infiltrate Earth First! 
under the guise of THERMCON was anything but 
competent. Special agent Michael A. Fain, 
stationed in the FBI’s Phoenix office, befriended 
Pet Millet and begun attending Earth First! 
meetings in the area. Fain, who went by alias, 
Mike Tait, posed as a Vietnam vet who dabbled in 
construction and gave up booze after his military 
service. On more than one occasion, while wearing 
a wire, Fain had tried to entice members of Earth 
First! in different acts of vandalism. They repeatedly refused.

During pre-trial evidence discovery the defense 
was allowed to listen to hours of Fain’s 
wire-tapings, when they found that the 
not-so-careful agent inadvertently forgot to turn 
off his recorder. Fain, while having a 
conversation with two other agents at a Burger 
King after a brief meeting with Foreman, spoke 
about the status of his investigation, 
exclaiming, “I don't really look for them to be 
doing a lot of hurting people... [Dave Foreman] 
isn't really the guy we need to pop -- I mean in 
terms of an actual perpetrator. This is the guy 
we need to pop to send a message. And that's all 
we're really doing... Uh-oh! We don't need that on tape! Hoo boy!”

Here the FBI was, acting as if these Earth 
First!ers were, publicly vilifying them, while 
privately admitting that they posed no real 
threat. “[The agency is acting] as if [its] 
dealing with the most dangerous, violent 
terrorists that the country’s ever known,” 
explained Spence at the time. “And what we are 
really dealing with is ordinary, decent human 
beings who are trying to call the attention of 
America to the fact that the Earth is dying.”

The FBI’s rationale for targeting Foreman was 
purely political as he was one of the most 
prominent and well-spoken radical 
environmentalists of the time. Despite their 
claims that they were not directly targeting 
Earth First! or Foreman, and were instead 
investigating threats of sabotage of power lines 
that led to a nuclear power plant -- their public 
indictment painted quite a different story.

“Mr. Foreman is the worst of the group,” 
Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Dokken announced to 
the court. “He sneaks around in the background 
... I don’t like to use the analogy of a Mafia 
boss, but they never do anything either. They 
just sent their munchkins out to do it.”

But agent Michael Fain’s on-tape gaffes were 
simply too much for the prosecution to manage, 
and the case against Foreman, having been 
deferred almost seven years, was finally reduced 
in 1996 to a single misdemeanor and a meager $250 
in fines. The $2 million the FBI wasted tracking 
Earth First! over the latter part of the 1980s 
had only been nominally successful. Yet the 
alleged ring-leader was still free. 
Unfortunately, the FBI may have gotten exactly 
what they wanted all along. Dave Foreman later 
stepped down as spokesman to Earth First! and 
inherited quite a different role in the 
environmental movement -- one of invisibility and near silence.

Pet Millet, Mark Davis and Marc Baker were all 
sentenced separately in 1991 for their 
involvement in their group EMETIC’s acts of 
ecotage against the expansion of Arizona 
Snowbowl. Davis got 6 years and $19,821 in 
restitution. Millet only 3 years, with the same 
fine, while Baker only received 6 months and a $5,000 fine.

Little did these activists know that there 
capture and subsequent arraignments were only the 
beginning. THERMCON’s crackdown of Earth First! 
would prove to be a dry-run for the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and 
author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567513107/counterpunchmaga>Left 
Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush 
(Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with 
Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the brand new 
book 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904859844/counterpunchmaga>Red 
State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in 
the Heartland, published by AK Press in July 2008.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of 
<http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html>Been 
Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the 
Politics of Nature and 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567513360/counterpunchmaga>Grand 
Theft Pentagon. His newest book, 
<http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html>Born 
Under a Bad Sky, is just out from AK Press / 
CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: 
<mailto:sitka at comcast.net>sitka at comcast.net.

This is excerpted from GreenScare: the New War on 
Environmentalism by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua 
Frank, forthcoming from Haymarket Books.




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