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Radical Green Group: We Set Fires

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 4, 2006 / 10:53 PM EDT / CBS

A radical environmental group Friday claimed responsibility for setting two fires last month that destroyed a university lab and a commercial tree farm.

The fire at the University of Washington's urban horticulture center in Seattle last week destroyed the offices of scientists who did research into the genetic modification of trees to make them larger and more useful to the timber industry.

Not far away and at about the same time, two buildings on the Oregon tree farm were also destroyed by a firebomb. There, scrawled on a wall, police found the signature of the ELF, as well as the message: "You Cannot Control What is Wild."

The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) on Friday claimed responsibility for those fires.

A fax from the ELF relayed to The Associated Press stated: "At 3:15 a.m. on Monday, May 21, the research of Toby Bradshaw was reduced to smoke and ashes. We attacked his office at the University of Washington while at the same time another group set fire to a related target in Clatskanie, Oregon, 150 miles away." Bradshaw is a researcher at the university lab.

The fax was relayed by Craig Rosebraugh, a Portland vegan bakery owner who receives communiques from ELF but says he is not affiliated with the group.

The fire at the UW caused as much as $3 million in structural damage, and botanists said they also lost years of research on topics ranging from wetland restoration to endangered species protection. The Oregon fire caused at least $500,000 in damage. No one was injured in either blaze.

Police and fire officials said both fires were the result of arson, noting the presence of sophisticated timing devices.

Another ELF spokesman said last week that the bombings were likely the work of the group and defended the act.

Another Suspicious Fire

Three logging trucks were torched Friday near a federal forest where environmental protesters have camped out to try to keep loggers from cutting down trees.

No one was injured in the blaze.

A logging company had tentatively planned to begin harvesting trees in the Mount Hood National Forest on Friday, and activists had vowed to try to stop them. But the group fighting the logging said it was not behind the fires.

Six simple incendiary devices were planted on each of six trucks parked in a rural area near the site southeast of Portland. Only one ignited, authorities said. One of the trucks, valued at about $50,000 apice, was destroyed; two others were damaged.

Federal agents were investigating but no other details were immediately released, and no one claimed responsibility.

Protesters have been living among the trees for two years, trying to prevent logging at the site, including a handful of protesters who have been living in tree "pods" — aerial platforms strung between trees.
(AP)

"The risk of genetic pollution getting released into the environment is potentially devastating," said Leslie Pickering, who identified himself as a spokesman for the group. He added that any wildlife conservation data lost in the Seattle fire would be a minor concern.

"Whatever was lost in that particular building is microscopic compared to what could happen if genetic pollution gets released into the natural environment," Pickering said.

ELF members have taken responsibility for an increasing number of blazes set across the country.

CBS News has learned more FBI agents have recently been assigned to investigate and attempt to infiltrate the ELF and similar ecoterrorist organizations.

Recently, the ELF has been linked to an arson campaign in Phoenix, tree spiking in Indiana, an attack on facilities at Michigan State University, several bombings on New York's Long Island, and an attempt last month to burn down a Nike Inc. outlet store in Minnesota to protest use of "sweatshop" labor.

In testimony to Congress this year, FBI director Louis Freeh said that eight terrorist incidents in 1999 were conducted either by ELF or a related group, the Animal Liberation Network, with several other incidents under investigation.

ELF opposes everything from genetic engineering to urban sprawl. Its costliest terrorist act to date was the $12 million fire set at the Vail ski resort in Colorado in 1998, reports CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes.

According to the FBI, the ELF set the fire to block the resort from expanding and destroying the last lynx habitat in Colorado.

"Eventually people may be injured in these fires or be killed," said Stephen Peifer, the assistant U.S. attorney in Oregon. "It's similar to groups that are dedicated to shutting down abortion clinics by violence. It's the same type of technique and the same type of objective"

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