Agents Provocateurs
ELF Fairy Tales
On January 13 the Federal Bureau of Investigation nabbed three members of the Earth Liberation Front in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Auburn, California. The FBI triumphantly claimed to have foiled the would-be bombers of power stations, research facilities, and California's Nimbus Dam. But as the accused go to trial, it looks like the only member of the group who did any serious plotting was the FBI's own informant.
Eco-activists Eric McDavid, Lauren Weiner, and Zachary Jensen lived in California with an FBI agent known as Anna, who had met McDavid at a 2004 anarchist event. Jensen has already pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge. But McDavid's attorney, Mark Reichel, claims his client and his friends were "three idiots" who couldn't have planned any attack. According to the bureau's documents, Anna had rented the house; her "terrorist cell" was too lazy to plan anything larger than a vegan meal.
Audiotapes recorded Anna pressing the activists to study bomb-making chemistry, at one point complaining that "you guys change your mind a lot" and "it seems like you guys don't want to do it at all."
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
ryud