Operation Backfire: Guilty Justice - FBI vs ELF

Warrior Wind 3
It is useful to view 'Operation Backfire' in terms of
a broader long-term trans-atlantic effort by
international law enforcement agencies to stop
'eco-terrorism' and 'animal rights extremism'.

This document is reproduced from the newsletter
'Warrior Wind' No.3 produced in the U.S.A.

Introduction and Overview

Almost a year and a half has passed since December 7,
2005, when the first arrests of FBI’s “Operation
Backfire” took place. Then as now, we recognized these
arrests as not just an effort to stop “eco-sabotage,”
but as an attack on broader circles. We have kept too
long a silence over the past year, having last
addressed the Backfire prosecutions in April, 2006.
Last year saw arrests, informing and finally plea
deals—some more principled than others—in these cases.
We have also seen resistance and solidarity to varying
degrees. It is time to take a look back, but also to
think of the future. We do not believe that the
so-called “Green Scare” is over, any more than we
expect our rulers to cease hostilities against the
planet and its people any time soon, at least on their
own accord. The statements and predictions we’ve made
in previous issues have not all been equally sage, but
we continue to know whose side we’re on. This article
not only intends to be a factual update, but also to
place instances of repression and fight-back within a
broader context. We start from the simplest points,
the basic unfolding of events from late April of last
year until now.

Briana Waters continues to face charges in Washington
federal court. Her charges relate to a single arson,
carried out against the University of Washington
Center for Urban Horticulture. A new indictment issued
on May 10, 2006 includes a “destructive device”
charge, carrying with it a 30-year mandatory minimum
prison sentence. Briana Waters is the mother of a
young child, and is currently released on
court-ordered supervision. She is proceeding to trial
on her charges—this trial is currently set for
September 17 in federal court for the Western District
of Washington—and asserts her innocence.

Informants in this case include Kevin Tubbs, Jennifer
Kolar and Lacey Phillabaum. On October 15, Phillabaum
and Kolar entered guilty pleas in the federal court of
Tacoma, Washington, regarding the Urban Horticulture
action. Kolar also pled guilty to two other incidents
during this hearing, one in Colorado and one in
Oregon. Kolar faces a suggested sentence of 5 – 7
years, while Phillabaum faces a suggested sentence of
3 – 5 years. Both Kolar and Phillabaum are fully
cooperating with the authorities. Sentencing for these
two is expected to be pushed back until the end of
Waters’ trial.

When we last wrote, Nathan Block and Joyanna Zacher
had joined eight others facing charges in the Oregon
federal eco-sabotage cases, these two having been
accused of involvement with arsons at the Jefferson
Poplar tree farm in Clatskanie, and the Romania
Chevrolet Truck Center in Eugene. Nathan and Joyanna
both remain in Lane County Jail at the time of
writing. The Oregon federal cases against those who
have been captured—Bill Rodgers died two weeks after
his ’05 arrest in an apparent suicide, several people
have still not been apprehended, and prime informant
Jake Ferguson has not yet been charged with a single
crime—have now all ended in plea deals. These deals
can broadly be categorized into two types—the plea
deals of those who agree to fully assist the state,
and the plea deals of those who refuse to testify
against or incriminate others. Sadly, there are six
defendants of the former, and only four of the latter
kind.

On July 20 and 21, Darren Thurston, Kevin Tubbs,
Kendall Tankersley (Sarah Kendall Harvey), Stanislas
Meyerhoff, Chelsea Gerlach and Suzanne Savoie entered
pleas in Oregon federal court. Some of these
defendants had been known as informants for some time,
while the cooperation of others was a more recent
revelation. Lawyers for these six, in cooperation with
the court, have suppressed the details of their
clients’ cooperation agreements. However, their
collaboration with the authorities is assumed to be
substantial, and certainly includes providing
information and testimony for any future prosecutions.
Indeed, lawyers for these defendants argued in open
court that, if the terms of cooperation were made
public, their clients would be immediately labeled as
“snitches.” Pleading guilty to a range of conspiracy,
arson and attempted arson charges, these cooperating
defendants received the following suggested sentences:

Darren Thurston, 37 months; Kevin Tubbs, 168 months;
Kendall Tankersley, 51 months; Stanislas Meyerhoff,
188 months; Chelsea Gerlach, 120 months; and Suzanne
Savoie, 63 months.

Prior to the plea deal hearings of July, Chelsea
Gerlach, Stanislas Meyerhoff, Josephine Overaker and
Rebecca Rubin were indicted on May 18 by a Colorado
federal grand jury for their alleged involvement in
the 1998 arson at the Vail ski resort. (Josephine
Overaker and Rebecca Rubin are two of those still
being sought by the authorities in relation to the
sabotage cases.) For Gerlach and Meyerhoff, their
Oregon federal pleas incorporate the Colorado charges.
On September 29, they were arraigned for these
charges, and on December 14 they entered guilty pleas.
Gerlach and Meyerhoff are not expected to serve more
time in prison due to these charges.

In the period following these plea deals, lawyers for
the four remaining non-cooperating District of Oregon
defendants argued in court for production of material
from possible National Security Agency warrantless
wiretap surveillance against their clients.
Prosecutors had long dodged these motions, and defense
lawyers began to force the point. While defense
attorneys laid out some interesting and logical
arguments as to why such surveillance was likely to
have been used against their clients, nobody now has
any more proof (or disproof) of this surveillance than
when the discovery motions were first entered. It
should be noted, however, that prosecutors seem to
have become more willing to discuss alternate plea
deals during this period of intensive motions and
counter-motions to the court.

With the dropping of the motions for NSA discovery
just days before, on November 9 the remaining Oregon
defendants entered into a “global resolution” plea
deals. Unlike previous plea deals, these defendants
admitted solely their individual participation in
certain actions, but explicitly refused to identify,
testify against or otherwise implicate others in
crimes. Furthermore, the complete plea deals of these
defendants have been made public in their entirety.
During the November 9 plea hearing, Joyanna Zacher and
Nathan Block pled guilty to their own involvement in
the Romania Chevrolet and Jefferson Poplar fires, both
receiving 96-month suggested sentences. Daniel McGowan
likewise received a 96-month suggested sentence for
his involvement in the Superior Lumber and Jefferson
Poplar fires, while Jonathan Paul received a 60-month
suggested sentence for his part in the burning of the
Cavel West horsemeat plant.

Formal sentencing for all defendants—cooperating and
non- cooperating—is scheduled to begin in the middle
of this month, continuing until early June (see
sidebar.) Federal prosecutors will argue during these
hearings for “terrorism” enhancements to the suggested
sentences under Section 3A1.4 of the Federal
Sentencing Guidelines. This sentence enhancement could
lead to defendants spending their prison terms in
maximum security settings, have lifelong consequences
for them such as being unable to travel overseas, and
possibly even add to the length of their sentences, at
the judge’s discretion. Even in the District of
Oregon, conflict surrounding these cases is far from
over—this takes the form of both limited fights within
the courts, as well as what we hope will be more
widespread interpersonal, political and social
challenges.

A Look at Some Previous Statements, and Subsequent
Debate

We do not wish to exaggerate the importance of our
writing, but the many developments since our last
newsletter suggest that revisiting some themes and
specific statements in previous issues would be
helpful. When we first wrote on the Backfire arrests
in February of 2006, we commented that “Beyond the
sniveling behavior of others, and media scare stories
about a fictional ‘eco-terror network,’ the state has
nothing...” Clearly, this has changed. With the
exception of Briana Waters— whose Washington federal
trial is still pending—the state now has a mass of
“guilty” pleas from those who have been captured. This
fact does not alter in any way our conviction that the
so-called “Family” of “eco-terrorists” is a deliberate
invention of the state, designed to portray horizontal
relations and self-organized revolt as something that
is instead cultish, militaristic and hierarchically-
structured. The state projects its own logic onto its
opponents—a point that we feel cannot be stressed
enough as prosecutors try to fit the “terrorist”
jacket onto defendants at sentencing.

In our two previous issues, we made statements as to
which defendants were operating as informants, and
which were not. Upon releasing each newsletter, more
informants were confirmed each time. This has been a
disheartening process, and the decision by Darren
Thurston— who was esteemed by many—to begin
cooperation proved especially difficult. The state has
benefited from informant-defendants in two ways: first
through the immediate violence against co-defendants
and the uncaptured from such testimony, and also by
secondary damage to radical circles on the outside.
For as long as alleged enemies of our system base most
of their support for prisoners not on clear ideas of
affinity and solidarity, but rather on attraction to
personalities—perhaps based on someone’s past
reputation—it will be difficult to avoid a repeat of
the farcical, yet draining, disputes of late-2006. We
do not wish to reopen the pseudo-debates and stupid
controversy of last year, but we do wish to make two
basic points. Firstly, it is an absolutely topsy-turvy
position to accuse non-informants and their supporters
as “spreading division,” for their act of remaining
dignified while others crumpled. Secondly, the
argument that those who held out longest on their “not
guilty” pleas should be condemned for deception and
manipulation of supporters, is a contemptible pro-
establishment perspective. There is nothing virtuous
about “honestly” rushing to sacrifice oneself and
others at the altar of the state. Our writings have
never centralized the issue of “guilt” or
“innocence”—neither our horribly deformed society nor
its justice deserves respect. This is not to suggest
that the real-world effects of legalisms should be
ignored—growing surveillance, mass imprisonment and
more subtle threats, are all part of the world order
we oppose. As we cannot merely wish them away, legal
outposts deserve our reconnaissance.

The Question of Legality when Responding to Repression

December 7, 2006 marked the one-year anniversary of
the first Backfire arrests. On or around that day, 43
cities on four continents held solidarity and
educational events relating to the Backfire cases as
well as the broader “Green Scare.” This sort of
international coordination, the creation and
distribution of counter- information, and the raising
of funds for defense campaigns, are all significant
and worthwhile activities. We hope that they can be
built upon. Accompanying the call for action on
December 7, was the disclaimer:

“Remember, everything you do to support people who are
targets of prosecution should be LEGAL and in their
best interest. Many are in pre- trial or in an appeal
process; please do not organize something that could
jeopardize their cases.”

We respect the comrades who issued this call for
action, and especially admire their insistence on the
best interests of targets of repression. However, we
also believe that the issue of legality needs to be
examined more closely. We are not trying to impugn to
the authors of the Dec. 7 call any beliefs that they
may not actually hold; we merely use their statement
as a point of departure. During an open court hearing
regarding Jeff Hogg (see below) and the Oregon
Operation Backfire- related grand jury, one lawyer
working on defense efforts, and another correspondent
for Portland Indymedia, were both indirectly
threatened by federal prosecutors for having publicly
presented their views surrounding the cases. The
government threat, as always, went like this: if you
keep on with your present course, you will be
criminalized, and those you support will suffer too.
Even what could normally be conceived of as the most
legal and by-the-books support for defendants,
therefore, gets lumped into the category of the
potentially, and at some stage actually, criminal.
Especially as formal sentencing approaches, there is a
clear desire in many quarters not to create any
pretext for further repression. This impulse is
partially understandable, but its logic may also be
dangerous.

When faced with a potential social threat, it is naïve
to think that the authorities remain on the level of
legality. Rather, they bend or break the rules, in
order to neutralize whatever they perceive as
troublesome. In Italy, at a time of high social
struggle, a 1969 bombing at the Piazza Fontana in
Milan was used to justify the arrest of four thousand
anarchists, radicals and workers. One of those
arrested, Giuseppe Pinelli, “accidentally” fell to his
death during a police interrogation. The Piazza
Fontana bombing was later discovered to be the work of
neo-fascists working with extensive NATO and US
government cooperation. While it is clear that poorly
thought-through actions, no matter how strongly we
associate with any underlying motivation of revolt,
can do real damage, it is also clear that the state’s
violence operates at a high degree of autonomy from
any resistance by the oppressed. If there is not a
pretext for repression, our rulers will create one
soon enough, or they will change the laws in order to
suppress every perceived defiance. This makes a
mockery out of any call for strictly “legal” activity.

To functionally respond to repression, including that
of the Backfire prosecutions, therefore means a
continual widening, rather than narrowing, of our
options. This is no excuse for reckless activity. We
do not make a fetish out of “illegality,” or even
suggest it as a primary course. Rather, we see any
attempt to situate acceptable intervention strictly
within ever-dwindling “legality,” as ultimately
self-defeating and suicidal. As long as the government
sees its repressive strategies as effective at keeping
the rabble in line, it will continue them and enlarge
them. Our conception of solidarity, therefore, is not
one of “legality” or “illegality,” both of which are
categories that need to be transcended. Beyond any
immediate support for a specific defendant, we should
ask ourselves questions such as: Does our way of doing
things lead to self-repression, or to an increased
confidence in our own strengths and capabilities? Is
our approach creative rather than stereotypical? To
what degree does it open up opportunities for more
widespread struggle?

The “Green Scare” and Democratic Terror

Operation Backfire is widely perceived as being the
cornerstone of a broader “Green Scare.” While we
ourselves have used “Green Scare” as short-hand, the
term needs to be looked at critically. The phrase
“Green Scare” is useful in that it at least places the
present campaign within a historical continuum, a
chain that certainly includes the First Red Scare of
the late Teens (including the Palmer Raids and mass
deportations) as well as the “McCarthyism” of the
Second Red Scare (late ‘40s – ‘50s.) The drawback of
this term is that it can mystify the nature of
repression, which is ongoing and everyday, by
describing it as an occasional event or aberration
from the democratic norm. In reality, repression and
imprisonment are fundamental aspects of our democracy.
Prison populations have skyrocketed over the last
three decades, with over two million people behind
bars in the U.S. alone, wholly comparable to a new
plantation system. The U.S. Constitution spelled out
this development over a century beforehand, in the
13th Amendment ratified in the aftermath of the Civil
War:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as
a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

No matter what its lofty origins, the ideal of
democracy is mainly a deception. Our democratic system
talks of basic liberties, and then denies them; it
speaks of participation, but it means the choice
between Coke and Pepsi. A proper explanation as to why
this is so would require a lengthy historical
discussion. There are only a few points we can make in
a much shorter space. To begin, violence is perversely
maintained by any system that claims it has no place
for violence, as this proclamation simply makes sure
that citizens avert their gaze or make excuses when
institutions are responsible. Secondly, democracy is
the system that exists while each of us scramble for
property or some “better” social position day-to-day;
the cruel games we’re caught up in create the dominant
version of politics. Finally, our right to “have an
opinion” within democracy is tied to our powerlessness
to create real change. We may not want pollution, but
we’re going to get it no matter what we think. Within
a “tolerant” and “participatory” system, our opinions
are the same as our acceptance. To vote becomes a
proclamation that one will put up with both pollution
and police.

We therefore view Operation Backfire as but one tile
in a mosaic of force and servility. Repression of
radicals is not something new, nor has it ever gone
away. The striking difference between Operation
Backfire and the Palmer Raids or the FBI’s COINTELPRO
program, is that these earlier campaigns of repression
happened in periods of intense social struggle. At
those points in history the State felt that the
society it defended was imminent danger from mass
defection and upheaval. Ironically, such past
disruptions often proceeded under the banner of
“inclusion”—for the poor, immigrants, women or the
Black population. This was at once the tactical
brilliance of these movements—allowing them to harness
the energy of those who had suffered exclusion long
enough—and also the seeds of their defeat, as they
were caught off guard by the real workings of a system
they idealized and wanted to improve.

By the early 1990s, urban theorist Mike Davis
described the growth of the Blood, Crip and other
street gangs in Los Angeles in relation to the decline
of any sustainable vision of a better society. Davis’
book, City of Quartz, highlights the development from
earlier street “sets” of the ‘50s and ‘60s, some of
which eventually took an active role against immediate
racism and poverty, to the later Blood and Crip gangs,
whose rebellion was textured by drive-by shootings
plus the economics of Crack cocaine supply and demand.
In response to such gangs, Los Angeles authorities
mounted their “Operation Hammer,” a racist dragnet
operation that, in perfect keeping with the overall
“War on Drugs,” filled the prisons with potential
troublemakers as a part of a counter-revolutionary
rollback strategy. Not long after Davis’ book
described the seemingly hopeless situation on the LA
streets, that same city exploded in rebellion
following the Rodney King-beating verdict. That
rebellion—majority Chicano but with significant Black
and other racial involvement, and in any case
fundamentally a class fight-back— was the high water
mark of resistance within the US over the last 20
years. It was also ruthlessly suppressed.

Both the LA Rebellion and internal attempts to resist
the first Gulf War, informed another generation of
radicals that followed, many of whom were just
entering their teens when these events occurred. The
generation of Seattle ’99 as well as the generation of
the early Earth Liberation Front, connected earlier
historical lessons to their own concerns. In the
context of an increasingly fragmented society, a toxic
environment, absurd rulers, and meaningless work as
the best prospect offered, people gradually began once
again to ask root questions. There was an effort,
however fumbling, to examine how humans treat other
humans, as well as to how a ruling social order treats
human and non- human animals alike. Sabotage was one
response given to our miserable society. Such sabotage
predates, and has always gone far beyond, that
attributable to the Earth and Animal Liberation
Fronts. For every spectacular action such as the Vail
arson, there have been innumerable examples of modest,
small-scale sabotage, carried out invisibly by diverse
numbers of people. While sabotage alone cannot bring
forth the new ways of life we desire, it nevertheless
is encouraging for the strong response it gives to our
society, at least in purely negative terms. Many
people tracking Operation Backfire have been shocked
by revelations of the government expenditure involved
in investigating and prosecuting these property crime
cases. According to the Eugene Weekly, thirty federal
agents were assigned from 2002 onwards to a Eugene
task force investigating the sabotage. This figure
ignores the additional expense of bribes given to
informants on the outside, such as the $50,000 reward
that may have been paid to a central informant, Jake
Ferguson. Even if we accept that the accused caused
millions of dollars in property damage, it seems clear
that the government’s Operation Backfire is not
exclusively aimed towards individuals—nobody accuses
the defendants of a single arson over the past five
years, so it would have cost the state exactly zero
dollars to get them to stop. Instead, the government
targets an overall social tendency. The state will
spare no expense to eliminate subversive tendencies,
not so much for what individuals are reported to have
done, but for what a greater future constituency could
do. Our rulers are afraid that we will revolt,
because—even by the admission of our government’s
smartest policy advisors—we have every reason to do
just this. In the sixties, radical movements, when
they were not straight up repressed, were all too
often seduced by visions of a better life made in
capitalism’s own image. In today’s society, the
quality of illusions is shabbier than ever, even if
our system still keeps itself together through an
apparatus of illusion. The most convincing spectacles
today are those of horror—terrorism, ethnic or
religious massacre, ecological collapse. Each of these
spectacles do have a certain real basis—human society
is genuinely at a crisis point, and it’s increasingly
hard to imagine any way for this society to avoid
catastrophe on a far greater scale than the mass
slaughters of the Twentieth Century. Yet our society’s
presentation of its own deep crisis, perversely
recruits the population to stay in line, even to
desperately clamor for fewer freedoms and less
dignity.

We find ourselves in a situation not only of worsening
conditions, but also of ubiquitous doublethink and the
degradation of language. Matters have gone so far that
it is earth-liberationist damage to property that
becomes labeled as “terrorism,” while few take our
society to task for its cultivation of widespread
terror for profit or for politics, including the
diffuse environmental terror performed by
industrialists each day. However, human
imperatives—biological, intellectual and
emotional—have not yet been utterly reduced. Just as
such imperatives organized themselves into the anvil
that eventually broke the Los Angeles “Hammer,” we may
still choose to live today, shattering the alleged
continuity of interests between the rulers and the
ruled. While we do not cheerlead for any particular
tactic—let alone group—it is clear that only through
multiform insubordination can people continue to find
the best in both themselves and each other. We
unreservedly support, and hope to play a part in, such
a process. We do not support the “green scare”
defendants merely out of a sense of charity, and we
certainly don’t claim to speak for any of them. Just
as we oppose this latest repression, we say to hell
with the whole mess of work, prison, and war.