/ENVIRONMENT BULLETIN 1/ UNITED STATES: Unabomber Case Spotlights Radical Environmental Group

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

SAN FRANCISCO, Apr 13 1996 (IPS) - The arrest by U.S. federal investigators of a suspect in the case of the mail-bomb anarchist known as the ‘Unabomber’ has thrown a radical, environment group into the spotlight.

A hunt by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), conducted by 150 officers headquartered here, culminated in the arrest last week of Theodore Kaczynski.

Described by the FBI as a white male in his 40s, Kaczynski was a 1962 graduate of Harvard University who taught mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley 1967-68. He later exchanged his university life for one of a recluse in a remote mountain town in the northern Rocky mountain state of Montana.

In the past 18 years, the Unabomber has killed three people and wounded 23 others. According to a manifesto the Unabomber mailed last year to two newspapers, the mail bombs were meant to bring attention to the disastrous impact of the industrialisation of society.

Television news reports here have sought to link Kaczynski to Earth First, an anarchist group with thousands of followers across the country. ABC network news noted that, for one thing, Kaczynski attended an Earth First presentation called ‘Focus on the Multinationals’ in 1994. The presentation was at a conference held by the Native Forest Network at the University of Montana.

A key concern of Earth First in this country is the rapid destruction of ancient forests. Members advocate non-violent resistance to logging by timber companies. Activists have disabled equipment and sat in trees to stop logging. Similar groups operate in Australia, England, Germany, and other countries.

Earth Firsters also drive metal spikes into trees to scare away loggers who would not want to damage their saws and mill equipment. The activists insist they always notify loggers of “spiking” to ensure that nobody gets hurt

Earth First activists argue that the ABC story was built on old accusations made by Barry Clausen, a timber industry worker who wrote ‘Walking on the Edge: How I infilfiltrated Earth First’, a book published by the Contract Loggers Association in Washington state.

Clausen claims that the last two people killed by the Unabomber worked for organisations that were targets for protests in a list drawn up by ‘Live Wild or Die,’ a magazine published sporadically by Earth First sympathisers.

Among those targetted was the U.S. petroleum multinational company Exxon.

Thomas Mosser, who was killed by a Unabomber mail bomb in Dec. 1994, worked for Burson-Marstellar, an advertising agency that did business with Exxon. It is, however, unclear whether Mosier himself actually worked on Exxon contracts.

Five months after Mosier died, another bomb blew up Gilbert Murray, president of the California Forestry Association, another of the organisations on the ‘Live Wild or Die’ list.

Earth First activists point out that senior FBI staffer Horace Newborn has since testified that the FBI now dismisses Clausen’s evidence as unreliable.

But investigators have also kept tabs on Earth First because of a resemblance between the Unabomber’s ideology and that of the radical environmental group.

Earth First followers contend that human beings should not destroy or control other species.

The Unabomber states in the 35,000-word manifesto, published by the Washington Post and the New York Times, that “The positive ideal that we propose is Nature. That is, WILD nature: those aspects of the functioning of the Earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference and control.”

The Unabomber apologises to environmentalists for the link that might be made between the manifesto and radical environmental ideology.

The FBI has nevertheless conducted a major search in the San Francisco Bay area, home of a large number of Earth First sympathisers. The probe was also guided by the fact that five of the 16 bomb attacks by the Unabomber have occurred in this area, two of them in the university town of Berkeley, east of the San Francisco Bay.

“The FBI wanted to know if I had ever been to Idaho and all sorts of other matters,” said Dennis Fritzinger of the Warrior Poet Society, one of those interviewed by the FBI. “I really do feel that there was an attempt to target outspoken Earth Firsters.”

“Earth Firsters are not violent,” said another of the group’s activists who preferred not to be named. “But government agencies like the FBI like to portray us that way because it makes people condemn us.”

Kaczynski’s links to the Bay area have been noted. But staffers at the University of California-Berkeley say the man was just as reclusive when he lived here.

“Kaczynski seemed almost pathologically shy, and as far as I know, he made no close friends in the department,” John Addison, then vice-chairman of the mathematics department, wrote in a June 30, 1969 letter to Kaczynski’s thesis advisor at the University of Michigan. “Efforts to bring him more into the swing of things had failed.”

Earth First chroniclers say that the connections are simply a coincidence.

“I really don’t think that the Unabomber was connected to Earth First,” says Susan Zakin, author of ‘Coyotes and Town Dogs’, a book about Earth First.

Zakin says that Earth First has passed its peak as a national movement. In fact, she credits part of this downfall to the FBI, which she says has sown fear and paranoia among members.

Six years ago, a bomb exploded in a car carrying two prominent Earth First activists — Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari — from a house in Oakland, near Berkeley. The incident is often cited as evidence of the violent nature of Earth First. But Bari and Cherney insist that the bomb was planted in the car, and they point to the FBI. Bari is currently suing the federal agency over the incident, which caused her injury.

“If anything, the whole Unabomber incident shows how incompetent the FBI is,” says Chris Clarke, editor of ‘Terrain’, the magazine of the Berkeley Ecology Centre. “Despite the millions of dollars that they spent on the investigation, the capture of Kaczynski was a result of the fact that his family turned him in.”