The history of the animal rights and environmental movements has been poorly documented by the mainstream press. The stories of these movements have overwhelmingly been ignored, and when they’ve been reported by newspapers or television networks, it has been through the lens of corporate and government officials. The best, and sometimes only, documentation of these movements has come from activists themselves.

Zines, leaflets and newspapers are fragile by nature, though, and activist turnover (combined with FBI raids) has made them increasingly rare. Josh Harper and the crew of ConflictGypsy.com have set out to create an online archive of these publications, preserving the history of protest movements for animal rights and environmentalism.

I was thrilled to be asked to write a guest blog post about a classic publication, Ecotage. It was published in 1971, when many of the tactics now considered “eco-terrorism” were merely considered pranks or “ecotage.” In this post I discuss how corporations orchestrated a change in government policy by wielding the power of language. However:

Ecotage should serve as a reminder that there is nothing inevitable about this. The FBI labels “eco-terrorism” the “number one domestic terrorism threat,” but public support is not, and has never been, with the corporations destroying the environment; it’s with those trying to stop them.

Head over to ConflictGypsy and read the full post, then check out the rest of the archives. As a warning, though, the massive amount of cool stuff on that site will suck you in before you know it.

From EcoRazzi:

And so it begins: Earthrace, one of the fastest powerboats on the planet, has been given a full Sea Shepherd makeover. From kevlar body armor to undetectable broadband radar, nightvision systems, Iridium openport comms, and a new paint job that actually scatters radar signals and provides additional stealth. If Earthrace was badass before, it’s now firmly somewhere in the ninth circle of hell giving Satan a hard time.

Sea Shepherd’s Operation Waltzing Matilda against the Japanese whaling fleet begins this December.

Um, if the Japanese whalers thought Sea Shepherd was a “terrorist organization” before (and so was Animal Planet, they said), I can’t wait to hear what they have to say after seeing Captain Paul Watson in control of this beast.

No word yet whether the U.S. Attorney’s Office will be investigating Bruce Wayne for violating the “material support” terrorism provisions of the Patriot Act.

Ed Abbey’s classic The Monkey Wrench Gang is being made into a big-budget Hollywood movie starring–wait for it– Matthew McConaughey and John Goodman. And the director of “Twilight” is set to direct. I feel ill.

The Monkey Wrench Gang is Abbey’s classic tale of George Hayduke, an ex-Green Beret, leading a band of outlaws in a campaign of sabotage to defend the environment. Plenty of folks say the novel influenced the formation of Earth First! and later the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. If you haven’t read it, please do.

What’s most bizarre to me about all this is how, in the hands of someone like Matthew “Just Keep Livin’” McConaughey and the “Twilight” teenage-vampire crew, a story about property destruction is great fodder for a mass-appeal Hollywood film.

But in the hands of activists, the same narrative, in the form of a children’s book, is “eco-terrorism.” For instance, the government said Daniel McGowan was “promoting the criminal activity of others” by linking to the website of The Secret World of Terijian, a children’s story of a pint-sized Monkey Wrench Gang. (The government even included the full text of the children’s book in it’s response to McGowan’s motion for summary judgment.)

Monkeywrenching can be sexy and fun when it’s “just a story” produced by Hollywood. When the same narratives are connected to political struggles, it’s “terrorism.”

Continuing the theme of the last few weeks, here’s another one for the Blatant Hypocrisy file. Photos surfaced that show Jessica Alba “defacing Oklahoma City property with posters of a great white shark.” The posters were about the declining numbers of the species, and were glued to a downtown bridge and at least one billboard.

Property destruction in the name of the environment. Sounds like what corporations call “eco-terrorism,” right? American Idol star Carrie Underwood was called a terrorist for much less. But no, for Jessica Alba (pictured here in her Earth Liberation Front starter kit, minus the black mask of course) it’s just “vandalism.” And she doesn’t even get a slap on the wrist.

Geez, I’m getting more and more confused by all of this. I think I’m going to come up with some kind of flow chart to determine who gets labeled a terrorist. For instance: “Are you totally hot and famous?–If so, congratulations, you’re not a terrorist!”

UPDATE: To be absolutely clear, I am NOT saying that she should be labeled an “eco-terrorist,” or that anyone should. My reason for making this post is that, to me, this example shows how opportunist the “eco-terrorist” rhetoric is. When it’s useful and convenient, the term is applied (to increase prison sentences, to smear activists, to chill dissent). When it could backfire (labeling a prominent figure that way, and exposing to a wider audience how absurd all of this is) there’s nothing but silence.

I wrote this for the latest issue of Bite Back Magazine, which just came out. I know it’s a bit long for online reading, so click on the image to download the pdf if you like, then come back and leave a comment.

“Making an Animal Rights ‘Terrorist,’” Bite Back Magazine, Issue 14.

Shortly after midnight on November 11th, 1988, Fran Trutt exited the passenger side of a rented Chevy pickup and approached the headquarters of U.S. Surgical with a package. She still had doubts about the evening. The day before, as she prepared for the trip to Norwalk, Connecticut, from her home in Queens, New York, she called a friend three times. She had cold feet. Could she go through with this? Was it taking things too far? What if someone got hurt? No, no, the voice on the phone reassured her. Remember the dogs.

U.S. Surgical had become the nation’s largest supplier of surgical staplers, a speedier alternative to stitches. The company used about 1,000 dogs each year in training doctors to use the product, stapling dogs and then killing them. Behind the invention of the surgical stapler, the rise of U.S. Surgical to a $1 billion company, and the deaths of tens of thousands of dogs was the CEO, Leon Hirsch.

To Trutt, Hirsch murdered the only creatures who seemed to understand her. She was a loner and uncomfortable around
people, neighbors said. But dogs were different, especially the four she called her “babies.” She felt a special kinship with them. To Trutt, the dogs were unconditionally loving and affectionate. To Trutt, Hirsch was unconditionally evil.

She placed the package in some bushes about ten feet from where Hirsch would park his car the next morning. Inside the package, a foot-long radio controlled pipe bomb had been wrapped in roofing nails. Maybe Trutt still had doubts as she hid the package and then turned back to her waiting driver. By the time she reached the truck, though, it was too late for second thoughts.

Fran Trutt had been set up. U.S. Surgical, the press and most animal rights groups, would soon condemn her as a violent extremist. But over the coming months it would be revealed that the plot—the only act of attempted murder in the history of the U.S. animal rights movement—had not been an organic occurrence.

The money for the bomb, the truck, the logistics, the encouragement—U.S. Surgical and a “counter-terrorism” firm had been orchestrating it all.

Hired Guns

When Trutt returned to the truck, police moved in. They arrested her and found a radio-controlled detonator. They also arrested her driver, 30-year-old Marc Mead.

That afternoon, New York City police and bomb squad searched Trutt’s basement apartment in Queens and found a sawed-off shotgun, another weapon they described as a hybrid of a bazooka and a shotgun, and two more homemade bombs. The bombs were made of M-80s—large firecrackers—wrapped with nails and BB pellets, and stuffed into 3-by-6 inch pieces of standard plumbing pipes. One had a fuse, and one had a radio. Trutt had few other possessions, not even a telephone, but police also found pictures of tortured animals.

Trutt faced two sets of charges. In New York: federal charges of possessing two bombs. In Connecticut: attempted murder, possession of explosives and manufacturing a bomb. The press called the case a thwarted “terrorist” plot. The FBI announced a “terrorism” investigation. News stories said Trutt “may have been supplied with the explosive device by a terrorist group.”

All this talk of terrorism and murder didn’t sit well with Mead, Trutt’s driver. He had been released without charge, but worried that news reports implicated him. Mead, the owner of a window washing company, felt he had to do something to distance himself from this animal rights terrorist. He walked into the newsroom of the The Westport News with a press release he wrote—headlined “WINDOW WIZARD THWARTS ASSASINATION [sic] ATTEMPT”— hoping to clear his name.

The local newspaper’s expose, and the national headlines that followed, revealed a long-term plan by U.S. Surgical to infiltrate and disrupt the animal rights movement. To do his dirty work, Hirsch had
hired a counter-terrorism firm called Perceptions International. The firm was the brainchild of Jan Reber, a self-styled “terrorism” expert who had experience demonizing animal rights groups: he also published
a newsletter called the Animal Rights Reporter, a dossier on the activities of animal activists crafted for the vivisection industry.

Perceptions International had hired a woman named Mary Lou Sapone to infiltrate the movement. Sapone met Trutt at a U.S. Surgical demonstration in 1988, and reported back to Perceptions International and U.S. Surgical that Trutt had made threatening comments against Hirsch. Keep tabs on Trutt, they said. Talk to her. Befriend her. She did, and Trutt opened up about her anger at Hirsch, her sex life, and, of course, her dogs.

Sapone urged Trutt to take action. The spy had already approached other animal activists, saying someone should bomb U.S. Surgical, but they had written her off as a drunk or a lunatic. With Trutt, she found a more receptive audience.

Two months before the night of the bombing, Perceptions International brought Mead into the operation. The firm paid Mead $500 a week to befriend Trutt. Following Sapone’s lead, he used dogs to do so. He approached her in a pizza parlor, and asked for advice on finding homes for puppies.

They became friends, talking about animal rights and U.S. Surgical. Mead soon gave Trutt about $300, which she said was explicitly to be used for hiring two non-activists in New York to make the bomb. Although Mead denies this, and says the money was to help her pay her rent, he admitted that the president of Perceptions International went so far as to tell him when to bring Trutt and the bomb to the U.S. Surgical office.

When Trutt began to lose her nerve en route, she called her friend Mary Lou Sapone.

No Way Out

With evidence of his covert plans mounting, Hirsch finally acknowledged using paid informants. He told the Associated
Press that animal rights “terrorists” had left him no choice. “Many of them are very dangerous organizations,” he said. “They don’t believe in right and wrong as most people in society do. They believe that human beings are on the same par as rats and dogs and they are prepared to take violent actions to enforce their beliefs.”

Trutt maintained the she never intended to kill Hirsch; she intended to explode the bomb as he walked into the building. “It would have been purposeless to kill him,” she told The Advocate of Stamford. “But to scare him at this time might have affected some change.”

Yet the media circus and aggressive prosecution wore her down. On the New York bomb possession charges, she pled guilty and received time served in prison. On the Connecticut murder charges, she agreed to a plea agreement, and then rescinded upon learning she would not be allowed to visit her dogs. Abruptly, in April 1990, she agreed to plead no contest in exchange for one year in prison followed by three years of probation.

“The sex tapes—I think that’s what did it. It was just disgusting,” said John Williams, her attorney. “I have been fearing this from the first day: How long will Fran be able to stand up to this?”

Prosecutors had threatened to introduce tape recordings between Trutt and Sapone, he said. On the tapes, Trutt rails against Hirsch, and also discusses a sexual relationship with a woman.

Even the federal prosecutor in the New York case opposed using the tapes in court. Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Caldwell had written a letter to a U.S. District Judge questioning the handling of the case by Connecticut police.

“Like a sports ‘highlight film’ made for the benefit of home team fans, the tape contains many of Trutt’s most menacing and outrageous remarks,” she wrote. “However, it omits the operatives’ goading, encouragement and offers of money.”

Lessons Unlearned

By giving national exposure to so-called “animal rights terrorism,” the foiled plot marked a turning point in the history of the animal rights movement and in the sustained corporate campaign to surveil, disrupt and demonize activists. Trutt’s case should be a reminder of the dangers of jumping to conclusions. It should also be a reminder of the importance of focusing on true enemies, not placing blame. But for some of the activists involved in this
scandal, these lessons of terrorist scare mongering have gone unlearned.

Wayne Pacelle, for example, was executive director of the Fund for Animals, which filed a government complaint against U.S. Surgical’s experiments. He is now the head of the Humane Society of the United States, the largest animal protection organization in the country.

“[Sapone] was at every meeting of at least three people, always milking people for information,’’ he told the New York Times in 1989. “She served not only as an informant, but as a provocateur, often suggesting illegal activities.’’

Despite Pacelle’s firsthand experience with provocateurs, and firsthand knowledge of the dangers of jumping to conclusions, he has done exactly that in recent months. When a bomb exploded in California at the home of UC researchers, animal activists issued no communiqué or claim of responsibility. Nevertheless, Pacelle and HSUS not only issued media statements condemning underground activists, but also donated $2,500 to law enforcement for their “ecoterrorism” witch hunt.

Similarly, Friends of Animals led the demonstrations against U.S. Surgical beginning in 1981. Members recalled that Trutt attended at least one of their protests.

“It’s a classic frame case,’’ Priscilla Feral, president of the group, told the New York Times. “This is a concerted effort to discredit a movement that is having an effect.’’

Despite Feral’s firsthand experience with corporate smear campaigns, Friends of Animals has repeatedly focused its efforts on discrediting other animal activists. Instead of placing blame for this “Green Scare” on corporations and government agents, Friends of Animals says underground activists have brought these tactics upon themselves.

As Lee Hall of Friends of Animals has written, “government seizes opportunities provided to them by apparently dangerous activists to begin treating all kinds of dissenters as terrorists.”

History Repeats Itself

Time and again, these “dangerous activists” are in fact government and corporate creations, the product of cloak and dagger maneuvers to frame individual activists and discredit entire movements. In a contemporary case eerily reminiscent of Trutt’s entrapment, an environmental activist named Eric McDavid was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison for “conspiring” to blow up the Nimbus Dam in California.

His Mary Lou Sapone was a young FBI operative named “Anna.” McDavid fell in love with Anna. Anna provided McDavid and friends with bomb-making recipes; at times financed their transportation, food and housing; strung along McDavid, who had hopes of a romantic relationship; and poked and prodded the group into action.

While Trutt was sentenced to about one year in prison for attempted murder and possessing bombs, McDavid, who wasn’t accused of either—only “conspiracy”—was sentenced to 20. Post-9/11, the tactics of government and corporations haven’t changed, but the stakes for activists have clearly risen.

From Bombs to Boards of Directors

The media coverage of Trutt’s case, and the role of Perceptions International, seemingly should have ruined Sapone’s career as a mole. Instead, she just switched social movements. A 2008 investigation by Mother Jones magazine revealed that Sapone—going by Mary Lou McFate, her maiden name—had been spying for years on gun control groups. She wasn’t orchestrating bomb schemes or murder plots. This time, on the payroll of the National Rifle Association, she was hired to spy on the upper echelons of the mainstream movement.

She posed as a gun-control activist for more than a decade, even landing positions on two boards of directors. As both a local and national activist, she gained access to the internal deliberations, lobbying strategies, media plans, and internal gossip of the entire movement.

Bryan Miller, the executive director of Ceasefire New Jersey, told Mother Jones that Sapone’s story “would confirm for me the way that the gun lobby works, which is no rules no question of fairness or honesty. Anything that they can do they would do to protect the profits of the gun industry.”

If one substitutes “animal research” for “gun,” the story remains the same.

What is the True Threat

The FBI has labeled the animal rights and environmental movements the “number one domestic terrorism threat.” But
the true threat posed by these movements is not violence. As we saw in the Trutt case, and recently in the McDavid case, the most serious acts of “violence” in the movement have been the work of provocateurs.

These corporations and politicians are not after the Fran Trutts of the movement. They’re not after the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front, Revolutionary Cells, or any other underground group. The true target of these terrorist witch hunts is not “violent extremists,” but the movements themselves.

It’s telling that Mary Lou Sapone’s career took a drastic turn, from coercing activists into bombings to infiltrating boards of directors. Sapone and the “terrorism” firms she worked for evolved in their understanding of how to squash and repress social movements. Activists must evolve, too. These corporations and government agents might single out an individual like Fran Trutt in order to make headlines and demonize the movement. But that’s merely a single step, a stop along the way to their bigger goal. Infiltrating and sabotaging the activities of grassroots activists and direct action supporters is simply the low hanging fruit. When grasped, these corporations and government agents become bolder and start trying to hack down the entire tree.

Sapone realized this. U.S. Surgical, Perceptions International and the NRA realized this. And until mainstream animal protection and environmental groups realize this, there will be many more Fran Trutts.

Thousands of students converging in Washington, D.C. this weekend have already “gone green.” Now they are going “eco-terrorist.”

That’s absurd, right? No one in their right mind would call the 10,000 young people participating in the Power Shift conference and mass non-violent civil disobedience against a coal-powered plant“eco-terrorists.”

But corporations and the politicians who represent them have been trying to label tactics like this as “terrorism” for years as part of the “Green Scare.” That includes a wide range of activity from tree sits and road blockades to vandalism and, at the most extreme, arson. No human being has ever been injured by environmental activists, but the FBI has gone so far as to label them the “number one domestic terrorist threat.”

The conference and civil disobedience planned this weekend are a great example of how this scare-mongering is completely out of touch with the beliefs of everyday people, and how tactics once labeled “terrorism” are gaining widespread popular support.

The “eco-terrorists” are in good company:

• Al Gore told Nicholas Kristof at The New York Times: “I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers, and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.”
• NASA’s chief climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, has endorsed the “eco-terrorism,” saying: “We need to send a message to Congress and the president that we want them to take the actions that are needed to preserve climate for young people and future generations and all life on the planet.”
• Public figures including Wendell Barry and Daryl Hannah, and many mainstream environmental groups, have endorsed the direct action.

Via Twitter and Facebook, I asked what you all wanted to hear more about on this site in the next few weeks. I heard back, loud and clear, that you want stories like the recent arrests of activists under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, but it’s draining to see so much bad news all the time. I think this conference and direct action are a perfect example of how the Green Scare isn’t hopeless, and it’s not inevitable. It’s clear that if everyday people knew what’s going on, they’d be outraged.

There is plenty of work to be done, raising awareness and organizing, but it is work that can have substantial results.

So, I’ll turn this over to you: What are you doing? And what needs to be done? Write a comment about what you’re doing in your community, whether it is organizing public forums, posting fliers, creating websites, holding potlucks, organizing protests, or something else entirely. I’ll compile it for a future post on fighting back against the Green Scare.

Do you know where your grandparents are? Sure, you might think Nana is at home watching Touched by an Angel, and gramps is puttering around the garage, but they might be out waging guerilla warfare in the name of the environment.

Check out this video of a 72-year-old man keying a Hummer in the student parking lot of Carroll High School in Southlake, TX. [I should note that yours truly graduated from this very same high school. Although when I was there, there were more dualies than blinged-out Hummers.] The video was caught by the Hummer’s motion-activated surveillance cameras. I’m not sure why a high school kid in suburban Texas has surveillance cameras on a Hummer. I’d wager that, outside of this incident, they had only filmed kids getting stoned in the parking lot before school, or captured looks of disgust and contempt as this brontosaurus lumbers through town. But I digress.

The culprit is James Andrew Jeppe, 72, who turned himself in after this video made the rounds on the internetz. He admitted carrying out a string of terrorist keyings.

This is serious, folks. The FBI has warned that “eco-terrorists” are the “number one domestic terrorism threat.” But this threat is clearly much greater than we had ever imagined. This video paints a new picture of the enemy, and it ain’t dreadlocks and camo shorts. It’s white hair, khakis, and orthopedic shoes. This might be the tip of the iceberg, revealing a little-known retirement cell of the Earth Liberation Front.

Some news stations have called this mere “vandalism.” And it looks like he might not even receive prison time! Come on, folks, we need to hit these people with outlandish prison sentences! Gramps might not last 23 years in prison like Jeff Luers, or even a half dozen like most of the Operation Backfire defendants. But that doesn’t matter. These Hummers don’t run!

As this Hummer dealership spokesman said, don’t let your guard down: “This guy, he’s an eco-terrorist.”

Law enforcement needs to crack down on these environmentalists and animal rights activists before things get out of hand. For instance, if the FBI doesn’t crack down on those Peta members wearing animal costumes at protests, they may go off the deep end like this woman who wore a cow costume, chased children and urinated in public. Something must be done!

On a related and more less serious note, it needs to be said that if this SUV had been spray painted “Earth Liberation Front,” or if someone keyed it and then sent out a communiqué about Hummers destroying the environment, I don’t think anyone would be calling it mere “vandalism.” And that, I think, exposes so much hypocrisy of this “War on Terrorism.” The word “terrorism” is only applied to cases when there’s a political motivation to do so.

Hauling this man into court as an “eco-terrorist” just wouldn’t be politically savvy. Hauling this crazy-ass woman into court as a terrorist, though, would be politically hilarious.

About two years ago there was a string of news stories about a fight in California between developers and environmental activists; at one point, someone planted endangered plants in the area, and developers responded by calling it an act of “eco-terrorism.” (Here’s one old news clip I was able to find.) So I got a kick out of this video about “guerilla gardening.” I can only imagine how those same developers would respond to guerilla gardeners armed with “seed bombs” (a mixture of clay, soil and seeds good for drive-by plantings–”the guerilla gardener’s weapon of mass creation”).

This got me thinking, though, about the Operation Backfire cases out West. As part of the government’s case, as detailed in court documents and court statements, prosecutors mentioned similar “guerilla gardening” as examples of the defendants long history of criminal behavior and “terrorism.” Is sneaking around in the middle of the night, pulling up genetically-engineered plants, much different than digging up public property and planting vegetables? Both are property destruction, both are illegal, and both are actions either against private corporations or the state.

But, in the case of Daniel McGowan and others, its “eco-terrorism.” And in this case… it’s sponsored by Adidas.

Deb over at Invisible Voices sent a link to a wonderful photography project by Christopher LaMarca called “Forest Defenders.”

LaMarca says:.

I have been photographing these activists and loggers since the summer of 2003. My connection to this project revolves around the passion and endless work that consumes these people who live in the back-country for months at a time; and who are willing to sacrifice their comforts’ to stand up for their beliefs.

Although these activists are often seen as radicals or eco-terrorists, little has been documented about their activities outside of these stereotypes. These stunning landscapes will continue to be decimated due to political pressure and lack of education, these are some of last truly wild places left in America.

The photographs are stunning. Please take a look at some of the people that are being labeled “eco-terrorists.”

UC Santa Cruz has been cracking down on tree sitters and their supporters, who are trying to protect Redwoods from UC development plans. There have been arrests and police pepper-spraying students, but what caught my attention in this article is the wording that the university is using in court. From the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

The Regents filed a civil complaint Dec. 14 against six defendants, two of
whom are students, and up to 50 unidentified supporters in connection with
the tree-sit, which is designed to oppose UCSC’s future expansion plans.
Demonstrators climbed more than 70 feet into the trees, which would be cut
down to make room for a proposed biomedical facility.

This week, the Regents added UCSC physics professor Zach Schlesinger and
Oliver Schmid of Berkeley to the list of defendants, saying they “aided
and abetted” the demonstrators by bringing them food at separate times
over the campus’ holiday break. The ninth defendant, a one-time student,
was arrested Dec. 20 trying to climb a tree, and was later added to the
complaint.

“Aided and abetted”? A physics professor gave the students some food. What’s next? Charging folks with “material support for terrorism” by sending tofu to the “eco-terrorists”?

I shouldn’t make light of this, though. As I noted recently, the CIA has identified ninjas as a priority in the War on Terrorism. Then, we found out the ninjas are planning on converging in Minneapolis for the RNC. Now, things are clearly much worse than I had ever expected. As you can see clearly in this photo from Santa Cruz Sentinel, ninjas are threatening UCSC’s development plans.