From Green to Black

The clandestine eco-terror group Earth Liberation Front resurfaced dramatically this week after arsonists destroyed three new luxury homes under construction outside Maltby, Wash., a suburb 25 miles northeast of Seattle. The $7 million fire, set Monday before dawn, also damaged two other homes in a green-home project that used environmentally friendly materials and building techniques.

Law enforcement officials are investigating links to the ELF because a spray-painted bedsheet claimed responsibility for the shadowy group. Signed with the initials ELF, the crudely lettered sheet draped over a nearby fence read "Built Green? Nope BLACK!" and "McMansions + R.C.D.'s r not GREEN." RCDs are rural cluster developments, a zoning category in Seattle's fast-growing suburbs in which new houses are bunched together in order to preserve open space.

A loosely knit organization of eco-radicals who say they are protecting the environment and limiting sprawl through vandalism and arson, the ELF first surfaced in the United States in 1996. In 1998 the group took credit for a $12 million fire at a new ski resort in Vail, Colo. The memberless organization, which is composed of small and very secretive cells, has burned suburban homes and condos from Long Island to San Diego. Despite the secrecy, federal prosecutions have picked off key activists in the group. More than a dozen alleged members of "the Family," an ELF cell centered near Olympia, Wash., and Eugene, Ore., have been arrested and are in various stages of prosecution. They are charged with setting the Vail fire as well as one at a USDA laboratory in Olympia in 1998 and another at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001.

Two prosecutions of suspected ELF members are currently underway. Tre Arrow, a 34-year-old activist, pleaded innocent to arson and conspiracy charges in federal court in Portland, Ore., this week for alleged participating in firebombings of logging trucks and cement mixers in 2001. In Tacoma, Wash., a federal jury found Briana Waters, an alleged lookout in the University of Washington fire, guilty on two counts of arson and continues in deliberation on one count of conspiracy and two counts stemming from the possession and use of a device to commit a crime, which carries a minimum sentence of 30 years in prison.

Law enforcement officials are investigating whether the Maltby arson is a sign of an ELF resurgence. Gary Perlstein, an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Portland State University, wonders whether this week's attack is a reaction to the prosecutions of Arrow and Waters. Perlstein spoke with NEWSWEEK's Miyoko Ohtake about the current state of the ELF. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: How do the ELF and the recent fires that are being attributed to them fit into the bigger picture of eco-terrorism today?
Gary Perlstein: Eco-terrorism stretches back into when machines were first coming in and we had groups of people in Great Britain who were protesting—and sometimes violently—the use of machines to do, say, knitting or stitchery. People were upset that machines were taking people's jobs. Now it's technology. We need more newspaper paper; we still need to build houses out of wood. The increase of these things has been brought on by better machinery. ELF is just a more modern example of some of the earlier groups [of eco-terrorists].