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[ Helicopter Blades Whirring ]
[ Male Newscaster ] In Vail, Colorado,
the nation's busiest ski resort was hit today by a fire.
Arson is suspected.
[ Male Newscaster #2 ] You may have heard of the Earth Liberation Front.
The attorney general himself says it's a domestic terrorist organization.
The F.B.I. says it is one of the most dangerous groups in the country.
[ Male Newscaster #3 ] The E.L.F. has claimed responsibility...
for more than two dozen major acts of ecoterrorism since 1996.
[ Male Newscaster #4 ] The fire bombings include attacks on lumber mills,
wild horse corrals and two meatpacking plants.
[ Male Newscaster #5 ] So far, not one of the cases has ever been solved,
and authorities acknowledge they know next to nothing...
about the membership or the leadership of the organization.
[ Man Narrating ] On December 7, 2005,
four federal agents entered my wife's office...
and arrested one of her employees-- Daniel McGowan.
It was part of a nationwide roundup...
that eventually netted 14 members...
of the radical environmental group, the Earth Liberation Front.
[ Camera Shutters Clicking ]
In all, their trail of destruction resulted...
in millions of dollars of property damage.
Today's indictment is a significant step...
in bringing these terrorists to justice.
[ Narrator ] Weeks after his arrest,
Daniel's sister put up everything she owned for bail,
and he was placed on house arrest in her apartment...
to wait for trial.
[ Water Running ]
[ Daniel ] In 2001, I was involved with the Earth Liberation Front.
And I was involved in two separate arsons in one year.
I think, like, people look at my case,
and they think, "What if that motherfucker burned down my house?"
I think people think it's just a bunch of young crazies...
walking around with gas cans lighting shit on fire that pisses them off.
And then they think, "What if I burned things that pissed me off?
That's kinda crazy." You know?
Which it is kinda crazy.
But I think people just need to understand that...
this thing is complex and it's not that simple.
It's hideous to be called a terrorist.
There was no one in any of these facilities.
No one got hurt. No one was injured.
And yet I'm facing life plus 335 years.
I split my time between talking to my lawyers.
I do a lot of research on my case.
You know, all my legal documents--
DVDs and CDs and video and photos. Audiotapes.
Hi. This is Daniel McGowan.
I know that my lawyer sent you the brief...
that is being filed with the court today, but it's basically about--
[ Narrator ] As Daniel is preparing for trial,
the government is putting pressure on him and his codefendants to take a deal.
Either they plead guilty and testify against each other...
or go to trial and risk life in prison.
I told my lawyers at our first meeting, "Don't ever bring up cooperation as a tactic.
We're never gonna cooperate. You don't have that card in your back pocket.
Don't bring it up."
All the people in this group had conversations back in the day about this.
Like, you know, "You get arrested, just don't say a word.
Just get a lawyer and, like, we'll, you know, join up and we'll see what happens."
Okay. Thanks, Andrea. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
[ Phone Slams On Cradle ]
My family has done a tremendous amount of stuff for me.
I mean, letting me live here.
But we choose to live our lives very differently.
Like, I compost.
I had never used a dishwasher in my life until I moved in here.
And I try not to impose my way of doing things on anyone here,
but, yeah, we have different ways of doing things.
[ Phone Ringing ]
No, I don't think I need that, because we paint every edge.
All right.
All right. Bye.
[ Lisa ] I'd be a liar if I called myself an environmentalist.
I mean, I care about the environment. I think about the environment.
Um--
I recycle.
But I don't recycle every single piece of paper like Danny does.
When he came home from college, he lived with me in Rockland.
One day I came home, and he took the label...
off every single canned good I had...
because he was, like, so obsessed with recycling.
He was like, "If we recycle, we have to take the labels off the cans."
I said, "But you took the labels off every can. I don't even know what I have in the cans now.
I don't know if they're soup. I don't know what kind of soup.
I don't know if they're peas or they're corn."
And he's like, "I never thought of that."
It was, like, I opened my cupboard, and there was just all tin cans.
I got a call from Jenny,
uh, totally hysterical, upset,
saying that some men came in and took Daniel from his job.
My dad's first reaction was like, "Oh, I don't know my son anymore."
And I think he was just in shock.
It's funny. Growing up, he wasn't the political kid that was fighting for anything.
No, he was just a regular kid.
Played with his friends, rode his bike.
It wasn't like he, you know, had this whole history.
But, you know, you don't know what's inside someone until they get older...
and they start to think about who they are.
[ Daniel ] I was born in 1974 in Brooklyn.
I moved to Rockaway when I was around three-- Rockaway Beach in Queens.
It's like mostly, you know, working class people.
My dad was a cop in the New York Police Department.
I went to high school at a place called Christ the King.
Catholic high school.
And I was a track runner, and, you know,
I got scholarships and stuff like that.
And then when I got to college, I was like,
"Oh, I guess I'll major in Business, because that's practical."
When I graduated, I got a job...
at a massive public relations company called Burson-Marsteller.
During this time period, at some point along the way,
I ran into a woman collecting signatures at Union Square.
She kept telling me about Wetlands--
the Wetlands Environmental Center.
And that kinda was where it changed.
** [ Rock, Indistinct ]
It was basically-- The idea was it was a bar that had live shows,
but the profits would go to running an environmental center.
So I went to this meeting,
and they played these films that blew my mind.
I had never seen with my own eyes...
what kind of world we lived in.
I feel like I'm in perpetual mourning,
and I have been from the moment that, like--
I don't know-- I kind of took the blinders off and was, like,
"Holy crap. What the hell are we doing?"
And I got involved pretty much instantly.
I protested constantly.
I did letter writing a lot.
I did letter writing every week at Wetlands.
I wrote hundreds of protest letters to all sorts of different agencies.
And at the time they announced that there was gonna be...
a national gathering in Crandon, Wisconsin.
So I went.
You know, I mean, I was shy. A city kid. I didn't--
I mean, I liked nature as a concept,
but I was, like, never had slept outside before in my whole life.
I was like 22.
It was, like, different than anything I have ever seen.
We went swimming in, like, a creek.
We were, like, going out on logs and jumping off.
We were skinny-dipping. I mean, all this stuff was new.
You know, traditionally at the end of the rendezvous, they have a big action.
We went to town and had a protest at the mine office.
And I actually ended up being arrested.
And it was really eye opening, you know,
to kinda learn about this different world...
and this, like, environmental resistance movement.
[ Man ] I'm a fourth-generation Oregonian.
Um, grew up in Eugene.
My brother works in a mill. My uncles own mills.
It's something that, if you're from the Northwest,
it's something you do.
I think I met Daniel here in Eugene.
They called him, uh,
"the disgruntled one,"
just because he had sort of this nasty sort of attitude...
and he was always sort of bitter.
And he was always sort of pissed off...
and he'd always challenge people for their "stupid ideas."
And so, uh, you know, they sort of coined this nickname for him, "the disgruntled one."
I think Daniel arrived out here about '99-- 1999.
But to really understand, you know, why these arsons were set,
I think you gotta go all the way back...
to a time when Daniel was still living back east.
You gotta go to about 1995, which was, uh, the Warner Creek timber sale.
Warner Creek's about 50 miles east of Eugene,
and it's probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.
And in 1995, the Forest Service decided to open it up for logging.
People went up there and created a blockade...
on a federal logging road to try to prevent,
you know, the logging of this place.
So we created a documentary called Pickaxe,
which is the story of Warner Creek.
[ Man Over Walkie-talkie ] There's more vehicles on the way. Over.
[ Man #2 ] One grader followed by one Dudley.
We don't think you guys have the right...
to take a protected forest teeming with life, you know, bid it and log it.
[ Lewis ] For a long time, people were fighting the Forest Service...
through, like, holding signs, letter writing--
sort of a sort of a hippie-type approach to protest.
But there was this new kind of protest that was becoming popular.
People would call it sabotage, or monkey-wrenching.
They would glue locks. They'd pull up survey stakes.
They would maybe put sugar in gas tanks of bulldozers.
At Warner Creek, you know, just a simple little blockade...
turned into an all-out assault...
on the only way into that forest.
Protesters dug a series of trenches...
to keep logging trucks from getting to the forest.
And then they built the wall.
It looked like an old fort from the wild, wild West...
and it had a drawbridge,
and it was really a cool blockade.
We're drawing a line in the sand, and you can't come in here and destroy this place.
And they stayed up there for about a year.
[ Protestors Chattering ]
As a federal law enforcement officer, it is my duty to inform you that you're in violation.
You have five minutes to get out of here, and you have actually less than five minutes.
[ Lewis ] Early one morning, the Forest Service came up--
[ Female Officer Chattering ] and arrested the protesters--
- Okay. - and knocked down the wall.
That created a lot of bitterness toward the Forest Service.
And soon after, things began to escalate.
The first time I met Jacob Ferguson was at Warner Creek.
He was sort of a cool dude. He didn't say much. He just did a lot of work.
But I think it's really hard to know Jacob Ferguson...
unless you're on the in-- inside of Jacob's life.
This is the house I moved into right over here.
And right at that time, Jacob Ferguson was living right over there.
But Jacob, uh, was a pirate.
He was, uh-- He was definitely, um, an outlaw.
** [ Punk ]
** [ Continues ]
Yeah!
[ Lewis ] He tried to play a bad boy image, and he did it well,
because I think he really was one.
After Warner Creek,
I think he really felt...
that the Forest Service was getting away with stuff.
I think most of America feels the U.S. Forest Service's job is to protect the forest.
But the Forest Service is a part of the Department of Agriculture.
And the Department of Agriculture...
looks upon these forests as crops.
The U.S. Forest Service's real job is to provide trees for these timber companies...
so they can cut these trees from our national forests.
They were cutting down these massive old-growth trees,
up to 750, even a thousand years old that were just massive.
But I think Jake was tired of the talk.
He was tired of just, you know, philosophizing.
"You guys," you know-- "You through talking shit now, or what?
Let's do it."
[ People Chattering ]
[ Clicks ]
[ Man ] This investigation was...
the largest domestic terrorism case...
in the history of the United States.
And the very first E.L.F. action that occurred in the United States...
occurred at two ranger stations in the district of Oregon.
Mainstream, legitimate environmental activists...
were absolutely shocked...
and disgusted with the fire,
and they saw the burning of the Oakridge Ranger Station...
as a public relations disaster.
[ Narrator ] In the months after the ranger station fires,
there was a split within the environmental movement.
In Eugene, which was quickly becoming a hotbed of activism,
a growing community of younger environmentalists cheered on the arsons.
But most environmentalists argued that, in a democracy,
public protest was still a better way of making change.
[ Chattering, Indistinct ]
In the summer of '97,
just a few months after the ranger station fires,
an event took place in downtown Eugene...
that for many shook up the debate.
[ Lewis ] There was this place downtown...
that had 40 old heritage trees-- just beautiful.
And they were gonna put in a parking lot for Symantec,
this big corporation next door.
And they were gonna cut down the trees to do it.
[ Narrator ] Activists began mobilizing to save the trees,
but as they prepared to take the issue to the next city council meeting,
the city suddenly announced that it would cut the trees...
one day before that public hearing.
[ Lewis ] On Sunday morning, about 2:30 in the morning,
about 11 people went up into the trees...
to prevent them from being cut.
We just went and did it,
hoping that we could stave off the cutting...
for one day until that public hearing.
Just for one day so the citizens could talk to the city council...
the next day about saving them.
[ Flynn ] They came in right away wearing riot gear...
and gas masks and stuff like that.
So, uh, bang, bang, bang on the door at 8:00 in the morning.
Some kid says, "Get out there! Get out there!
They're pepper-spraying them in the trees! Get your camera. You gotta get there!
I mean, they're pepper-spraying them right now!"
[ Man ] Hang in there, Jim!
[ Flynn ] They came up in the fire truck bucket,
and they cut my pants leg up to my groin...
so they could spray my leg with pepper spray.
Cutting, you know, their pants and pepper-spraying them in the ass...
and pepper-spraying them in the balls...
while they were hanging from the limbs 40 feet up.
People were on the street looking at this and going,
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
And so people were radicalized.
They started jumping on the fence and going,
"Quit that shit!" [ Shouting ]
[ Flynn ] They're tear-gassing the crowd and pepper-spraying the crowd.
It was just a crazy, frantic scene that day.
[ Shouting Continues ]
[ Lewis ] And they used about 12 to 15 cans on Flynn,
and he stayed up for, I think, about six or seven hours, man.
[ Man ] No!
[ Flynn ] And then they flushed me with a bunch of water,
took me to the hospital and then took me to jail.
So for the next, you know, 35 hours,
I was soaking in pepper spray.
My hands were orange for a week.
And so the argument that you need to work within the system...
was pretty well dashed by what the cops did on that day in Eugene.
[ Protestors Shouting ]
And June 1 was really the day...
that pissed off a lot of people in this town.
[ Horns Honking ]
[ Daniel ] I remember reading about it.
People were like, "Oh, we have this footage."
And, you know, it was really intense.
And that kind of stuff, like-- that's part of the story.
That was, like, part of the backdrop. [ Shouting ]
It's crazy. It's crazy. I think a lot of moments like that...
really erode people's belief that anything can actually change.
Next week it's four months that I'm on house arrest.
[ Man On Radio ] There is no construction on-- [ Continues, Indistinct ]
My days here are really tedious.
[ Spraying ] It's just really hard to focus and do anything.
Just thinking about my future and how uncertain it is.
I get really sad at night, you know.
I prefer to sleep straight through so I don't have those moments,
but I have them almost every night, so--
I've been doing okay though, you know, all things considered.
I mean, I feel like, on one level,
I just have to be really thankful for what I have,
which is, like, a good family and really good friends,
and so I try to, like, keep things in perspective.
Hold on one second.
Hi. Hey. How are you?
Great. How you doing? Good.
[ Narrator ] Daniel was living with his girlfriend...
when he was arrested,
and she's moved into his sister's apartment to be with him.
You know, people are all different,
and some other people, if they were in my position,
they might have been totally, like,
questioning everything.
But it just-- It's not me.
I think that he feels the dread every single day.
It definitely removes...
some of the life from his personality.
[ Phone Rings ]
Hello?
Hey, what's up? How are you?
Wait, wait, wait.
So wait, wait. I'm sorry.
He's cooperating to the full extent?
[ Narrator ] Six of Daniel's codefendants...
have appeared in court to accept plea deals. [ Barking ]
In exchange for reduced sentences,
they've agreed to testify in the government's case against the remaining defendants.
[ Daniel ] It hurts that people that I trusted and cared about,
you know, turned their back on me.
To be a cooperating witness, it's something other people can do.
I'm just not gonna do it, because I just have to live with myself,
and I'm not gonna be that person and start spewing out crap...
just to, like, get myself out of a situation that's not very pleasant.
So--
[ Sighs ]
[ Synan ] I'd want him to do whatever he needed to do to not go to prison.
But I would never want him to compromise...
his values or beliefs.
So if he has to choose, he'll be facing life in prison.
I made the choice to be with him,
and after he was arrested I made the choice to stay with him.
I mean, that's what you do when you're--
when you're in a relationship with someone.
Just because something really difficult comes up...
doesn't mean you just run away, you know?
So--
I think we should get married. [ Chuckles ]
[ Chattering, Indistinct ]
Daniel, I've seen you with Jenny,
and you're wonderful with her.
You're good for each other,
you have great chemistry, and-- [ Voice Cracking ] and I love you both.
Congratulations. [ Applause ]
This kid faces 335 years plus life in prison,
and he's getting married.
I want to kinda grab the positive...
and think that this is gonna work out in the end,
everything's gonna be okay,
and, you know, there's nothing to stress about,
but... there is.
Hey.
Oh, if it isn't my sister. How are you?
Perfect timing. Ah, I'm friggin' hot.
- That's why I'm out here. - Let me see your ring.
Oh.
[ Laughs ]
And by "nicer," she means more money.
It's diamonds!
His ring is made out of, like, some recycled type metal...
that doesn't hurt anything or anybody, and mine's made of good old diamonds.
[ Laughing ]
Come on, let's go have a good time.
** [ Pop ]
[ Barton ] It's easy to discount the environmental movement...
as a bunch of wackos and hippies and arsonists.
But it's not like that.
There are businessmen and, you know,
moms and dads and scientists and loggers themselves.
There are people from every walk of life that get involved in this.
I've spent several years of my life...
doing logging in the woods.
I come with a little different perspective than a lot of the,
you know, the environmental crowd or the, you know,
the logging crowd.
I've got a little of both in me.
I'm okay with cutting down trees.
I just don't have an issue with it.
But I'm not okay with cutting them all down.
The industry tends to call environmentalists radical.
[ Chuckles ] The reality is that 95%...
of the standing native forests in the United States have been cut down.
It's not radical to try and save the last five percent.
What's radical is logging 95%.
This is radical.
This is a piece of a big old tree.
This tree probably sprouted just about the time...
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
It looks about 500 years old, somewhere in there.
You know, the suckers, if they could talk,
would probably say it'd been pretty boring up until about 75 years ago...
when all hell broke loose out here on the ridge,
and they started cutting them down.
Most of them are gone now, so we won't be seeing any of these...
for at least another 500 years, and that's if we leave them alone.
These are amazing old trees.
[ Daniel ] I moved out west in October of '98.
I got out to Northern California.
I had never seen trees like that before.
It had a really profound impact on me.
I was already quite radicalized,
but I couldn't believe the fact that people accepted what was going on.
I have memories of, like-- like, for the first time seeing log trucks, you know,
and being like, "Whoa."
You saw the mills.
Or you go on into the forest and stumble upon a clear-cut.
Like, it just blew me away.
Just the arrogance of it.
I was like, "Man, this is butchered."
You know? It made me think, like, "Why are we being so gentle?
Why are we so gentle in our activism when this is what's happening, you know?"
[ Narrator ] After the ranger station fires,
Jake Ferguson and members of the fledgling E.L.F....
set their sights on new targets.
They came across an Associated Press article...
about the rounding up of wild horses from government land.
The horses were being sent to slaughterhouses,
including the Cavel West plant...
in nearby Redmond, Oregon.
There were so many horses being processed at the plant...
that horse blood would sometimes overwhelm...
the town's water treatment facility...
and shut it down.
And for 10 years,
people from the area had tried,
and failed, to stop the plant.
But on July 21, 1997,
Jake Ferguson and three others slipped into the facility in the middle of the night...
and burned it to the ground.
The company was never able to rebuild,
and the arson became a model for the group.
In one night, they had accomplished...
what years of letter writing and picketing had never been able to do.
They expanded and took on new targets.
They burned timber company headquarters,
a Bureau of Land Management office...
and a $12 million ski lodge at Vail, Colorado...
to protest the resort's expansion into national forest.
An E.L.F. press office was opened...
by activists who did not know the identities of the E.L.F. members.
- That's that. - How do they contact you?
- Anonymously. - But-- I mean, what is that?
Like a package dropped on your doorstep? Well, it can be--
They publicized the fires and explained the group's actions.
When a building burns down, they have to do a news story about it.
That's why the Earth Liberation Front burned down the building in the first place:
to get exposure.
We were there to help explain why that building burned down,
what it was doing in the first place that was angering people so much.
A lot of what the Earth Liberation Front did...
was considered economic sabotage.
These corporations exist to make money.
All of a sudden they're losing money,
so they have to reassess their activities.
Another thing that happens is that the building...
that was dumping toxic waste, for example, into the river one day...
is unable dump that waste tomorrow.
[ Narrator ] The press office encouraged people to start their own E.L.F. cells,
but mandated that their fires not harm any life.
Take initiative, form your own cell...
and do what needs to be done to protect all life on this planet.
[ Narrator ] The idea spread,
and new, anonymous cells popped up in other parts of the country.
[ Female Newscaster ] The Earth Liberation Front is turning up the heat again,
igniting devastating blazes all across the country.
[ Female Reporter ] A biology lab at the University of Minnesota.
[ Male Reporter ] Bloomington, Indiana. New York's Long Island.
[ Female Reporter ] Now some say E.L.F. is in New England.
[ Horns Honking ] [ Whooping, Cheering ]
[ Lewis ] Back in Eugene, people were celebrating.
[ Honking Continues ]
We had no idea that it was people from our neighborhood...
and they were friends of ours, but we were hearing about what was happening.
- We were celebrating. - ** [ Drumming ]
I don't think it was just the E.L.F. that started ratcheting things up.
I think activists all over the Northwest were also kicking it up a notch.
[ Shouting, Chanting ] They thought there was a possibility...
of really making things change.
Just have to work at it a little harder and get a little more radical.
[ Chanting ]
[ Cheering ]
He's not turning it off. He knows someone's locked under.
There's an old woman. She's 80 years old!
[ Horn Honking ] [ Shouting ]
[ Lewis ] There was a sort of a progression of radicalism...
that happened in Eugene.
And so the police were also amping up their presence...
because we were amping up our presence.
Literally, we were having two protests a week.
You know, major protests.
And so you can imagine what law enforcement went like.
I was doing undercover work around the Eugene area.
We were looking for some of these individuals...
that were causing mayhem around Eugene.
I think it was well known in the movement...
that they could probe and push and get us to react...
in a way that oftentimes didn't look very good.
Get back! Get back!
[ Crowd Shouting ] [ Air Horn Blows ]
Hey! Hey!
[ All Shouting ]
Hey, get back!
[ Shouting Continues ] Get back! Get back!
But we were getting rocks and bottles...
and that kind of thing-- fire-- thrown at us, you know.
It just hadn't happened before.
Out of the street! [ Woman ] You fucker!
To say that emotions don't play into that would be folly.
I mean, that's not true. It is personal to take a rock.
[ All Shouting ]
No! [ Shouting Continues ]
[ Lewis ] And people's views got hardened and more radicalized...
from what the police were doing to them within Eugene,
or other campaigns that were going on around the Northwest.
Are you gonna release?
[ Man ] Why are you doing this to us?
Okay. Are you going to release?
[ Woman Shouting ] Who's gonna release?
[ Woman ] Oh, I love you! I love you.
[ Officer ] I only did one eye. I'm gonna do the other eye if you don't release.
Please don't hurt me!
[ Woman #2 ] Leave her alone!
Stop it! Stop it! Stop! [ Screaming ]
When those people were getting attacked...
and stepped on and pepper-sprayed in their face while they were locked down,
I thought, "Protest and civil disobedience-- What's the point?
Why bother?" You know? It's not getting us anywhere.
We're getting victimized by their police, you know.
I don't know. I think I, like a lot of people I knew at the time,
experienced a massive loss of faith...
in that systemic change could happen through, you know,
the system regulating itself or reforming itself.
** [ News Theme ] Good evening.
When the World Trade Summit was planned for Seattle,
the administration obviously hoped it would be a triumph for Bill Clinton...
in the closing months of his presidency.
Instead, it's been a nightmare of protests and demonstrations in the streets.
** [ Drumming ] [ Narrator ] In 1999,
tens of thousands of people converged on Seattle...
to protest the W.T.O. and its effect on the environment and labor.
They blockaded the streets using nonviolent civil disobedience.
Peaceful protest! Peaceful protest!
The police responded with force to clear the streets.
[ Man Shouting, Indistinct ] You're shooting poison!
But while the authorities were focused on the demonstrators,
another group appeared that included current and future members of the E.L.F.
I had met these people in Seattle,
and I was introduced to kind of a larger group of individuals.
[ Man On Bullhorn ] Back to the sidewalk!
[ Daniel ] Here we are in our black clothes.
You know, downtown Seattle is just full of corporations...
that are wrecking devastation and destruction on the planet,
and people were just like, "Okay, let's do it."
** [ Hard Rock ]
These businesses, they're not gonna bow to people dancing in the street.
They're not gonna bow to people dressed as, you know, giant sea turtles or so on.
They care about one thing. They care about capital.
Unless we put a dent in their pocket, what good-- How are you gonna do that?
How are you gonna put a dent in their pocket?
Hopefully by causing property damage.
* Yeah
[ Cheering ]
[ Daniel ] I'd never breathed tear gas, pepper spray...
or saw rubber bullets or concussion grenades until that point.
It was, like, insane. I really felt like, "This is like a war zone."
Like, wow. Holy crap.
* Yeah
[ All Shouting ]
** [ Ends ]
It felt good to take out my rage on these corporate windows...
because they had caused so much destruction, in my mind.
Stop it! Stop it!
It created, obviously, a huge conversation and a dialogue and fight.
This is not what the protest was about!
[ Alarm Ringing ] People work hard for their property!
Vandalism is vandalism. Destruction is destruction,
whether it's of lives or property.
It's not acceptable.
[ Male Interviewer ] What do you think of the Boston Tea Party?
I thought it was wonderful! Wow. Thank you.
Thank you.
Fifty cents! Read all about it!
I think people have a very Pollyanna viewpoint of social change.
[ Crowd Shouting ]
No real social change has happened without pressure,
without force, without--
some would say-- intimidating governments and corporations into changing their behavior.
[ Shouting Continues ]
[ Laughs ]
Oh, it's so weird to talk about this stuff. Um--
I took part in the black bloc at W.T.O.
And the goal of the black bloc...
was to just send a message, an anticapitalist message...
that consumer America is destroying the world and destroying the planet.
And that was the first time we met a lot of the other people...
that ended up being involved in the arsons.
[ Daniel ] After the W.T.O., I decided to move to Eugene...
to keep in touch with some of these people that I met in Seattle.
And I started becoming a really different person.
[ Savoie ] Daniel was very involved in the issues...
and ideas surrounding Eugene.
He was very social. He seemed to know everybody,
and everybody seemed to know him, including the cops.
Daniel was kind of known as a leader around the area.
Um, you know,
he would show up at protests or gatherings,
and you can always see that he was somebody that people looked up to.
You know, you see who's serious and who's not...
based on how they're acting, what they're saying.
And so somewhere along the line it became obvious...
that, like, I was someone that was interested in doing other stuff.
I met Jake in the neighborhood.
There was some allure about him just being quiet and kind of to himself.
And being there really set some things in motion.
The more radical environmental community have, in my opinion,
a misconception about this industry and what we do.
[ Swanson ] It's more than just a job.
You know, I'm a third-generation lumberman.
My son works in the industry.
I want him to carry on, and when he has kids, I want them to carry on.
You can't be in the lumber industry without having trees to cut.
So it's ridiculous for people to think we're gonna go out there and cut the last tree.
[ Man ] I think the biggest misconception is that...
we're out there just knocking the forest down,
we're just-- we're termites.
We just rampage through the forest and we leave it a mess and we move on.
[ Swanson ] Does it have an impact? Certainly.
Nobody likes the looks of a fresh harvest.
But we really do regrow these trees.
You know, we plant six trees for every tree we harvest.
That's the law. I mean, it's just flat-out the law.
And people don't break the law. You just can't get away with it in Oregon or anyplace else.
Being an environmentalist is simply respecting the land...
and the atmosphere around you.
In that regard, I'm an environmentalist.
[ Daniel ] Eugene has a commercial railroad that goes through town.
[ Crossing Bell Dinging ]
It wasn't uncommon to see just, like, plywood after plywood...
and company names, you know, stamped onto it.
That's definitely how I heard about Superior Lumber.
Just by seeing their half-mile-long train full of forest go by.
They were logging old growth, logging just massive trees,
and out of areas that had previously been pretty inaccessible.
Sometimes when you see things you love being destroyed,
you just want to destroy those things.
So I felt like the action was justified.
We were quite surprised that we had been targeted.
I believe I was invited to participate in Superior Lumber...
by Meyerhoff to be a lookout, along with Suzanne.
But I met Jacob and Kevin right before the action-- Kevin Tubbs.
They got together some weeks before, did a surveillance of it.
It was in an isolated area.
There was no viable security there.
They figured out where...
they should place the devices.
They came back and prepared the devices.
Put them in plastic Tupperware containers.
Made sure that the containers were fingerprint-free, D.N.A. clean.
They always wore gloves.
I felt nervous from the get-go. For one, we were--
I was staying in this house where everything was stored.
And it was someone else's house that didn't know about the action.
On the night of the arson,
they drove to the staging area.
They put on their masks.
They did radio checks. They had a police scanner.
It's positively nerve-racking.
I used to get really sick before actions and, like, throw up...
and just get, like, nervous and, like, just in a zone, you know.
I mean, I think that you have to get--
When you're doing something that intense, even as a lookout, you're just, like, freaked out,
'cause you just don't know how anything's gonna go.
[ Savoie ] I was in the back of the van,
and I was actually kind of by myself in the back of the van,
so I was just kind of thinking to myself,
and I think Kevin and Jake were in the front of the van.
They were just listening to music, and so it was fairly relaxed.
People weren't really talking a whole lot, but, you know, your adrenaline's going.
Miss Savoie and Mr. McGowan were the lookouts,
and they staged north and south of the building.
[ Savoie ] I was stationed at a pay phone.
You know, everybody else was dressed in all black...
because everyone wanted to blend into the night.
However, I dressed in somewhat darker clothing, but I looked fairly normal.
I just had a scarf that I could wrap around my face in case somebody passed by.
And then I got dropped off kind of on the side of the road,
and I just kinda crawled into this, like, space,
this, like, shoulder, you know, with a bunch of ivy.
Mr. Meyerhoff and Mr. Ferguson then placed...
the five-gallon fuel containers...
and activated the timing devices.
It was done within, you know, 15 minutes,
and I got picked up, and away we went.
It was somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m...
when I was home, sound asleep, and I got a phone call.
And, of course, anytime you get a phone call...
at 2:00 a.m. in the morning, it's not good news.
It turned the office into just a fiery oven.
I mean, I don't know how hot it got in here,
but we had keyboards that were--
I mean, you couldn't tell one key from the other. They were just melted together.
[ Daniel ] I went up to Portland and wrote the communiqué and sent it in.
Even then, it wasn't real. It was just still kind of this cartoonish thing.
And it wasn't real until I really saw the newspapers--
seeing the man from the company-- I think Steve Swanson--
just walking through these, like, charred remains, and I was just like, "Holy crap."
That was a major blow to our mental psyche,
at least in the short run.
Just felt like, you know, a big hole in my heart.
[ Lewis ] In Eugene, people were jazzed.
When the big, bad bully gets, you know, hit in the stomach...
and feels a little something...
and maybe a little fear or whatever, that felt good.
It was exciting. The next day, I felt, you know, like,
"Wow. I've actually done something where it stopped."
I didn't have a problem with what I was doing. I thought it was effective.
It was a million dollars or something like that.
You know,
it's like, when you're involved with it and you're in the thick of it,
it's hard to look at, like, all the consequences...
and, like, the real repercussions of that.
Like, you know, did this action push them in a better direction?
Did it scare them?
Did it help the movement in any capacity on old-growth logging?
There's lots of questions, but I don't think at the time...
I was asking those questions too much.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.
All right. Well, um, that's great.
I guess I'll see you in a little bit. Okay. Bye.
Yes! [ Whooshes, Imitates Fanfare ]
Awesome!
All right, that's great. I'm off the system.
I am off house arrest technically right now.
Hey. I'm off.
Sweet!
Seven months and two days.
[ Narrator ] With seven months of good behavior,
Daniel's lawyers have convinced the government that he's not a flight risk.
What do you think about that?
I think I'm gonna stay in tonight.
[ Laughing ] No, I'm joking. Are you kidding me?
I don't care how tired I am. We're doing something.
[ Daniel ] Of course I'm gonna get off house arrest on this day.
Like, of all days, like, it'll be today, you know.
It's really sad for me to, like,
have all these feelings about my home being attacked,
my city being attacked.
I mean, when I tell people that, like, I'm accused of being a terrorist, like,
whether it's "eco" or "domestic" in front of it,
or if it's just straight "terrorist," it's ludicrous to me.
It's, like, surreal. And most people that know me are like, "What?"
No one's accused in my case of flying planes,
bombing things, trying to hurt people.
None of these things. No one's accused of that.
It's property destruction. Like, that's what it is. Call it what it is, you know.
It's gone! Yay!
I look naked, right? You did it!
How you doing? Okay. How you doing?
Look at my freak-ass ankle.
I actually ran a little bit 'cause I wanted to feel what it was like to run.
I'm so tired. [ Laughing ]
My feet hurt, my legs hurt.
I just had a knee pain. It was horrible.
As time went on, the cell members...
had to become better and better and better at their craft.
And their craft was destruction.
And so they started what was called the "book club."
They would train one another on how to build incendiary devices.
And they would go out and test all these things.
So they knew how long it would take--
You know, at this time of night and this kind of weather,
how long will it take for this thing to ignite?
What type of fuel would work the best?
They wouldn't buy all the ingredients from the same store.
Even if the same store had the two or three items that they'd need,
they would go to a completely different store, you know,
30, 40 miles away so it wouldn't ever be tracked.
It was called the book club because they also utilized certain codes.
At the meeting they were told, "This is the book we'll be using."
And then you'd have to use your book...
that would associate what page number,
what line number, what word number,
and that's how you would decode the message to tell you where to go.
And some of the members of the book club then...
were well versed in computer sciences,
and they brought in P.G.P. encryption and showed the other members how to do that.
There was a lot of, like, having good covers for why you're leaving town.
Why you're not-- You know, where you're going.
Having really good stories that made sense, that were consistent,
that you told everyone-- your job, your family, everything.
Not dressing like activists per se.
We didn't really look like what you'd think we would look like.
I mean, if you saw people walking down the street,
you would never think, "That's the E.L.F."
It made a lot of sense of why there wasn't any evidence,
why they weren't caught sooner.
They were really good at what they did.
[ Narrator ] In May of 2001,
members of the E.L.F. launched an attack against two sites at once,
a first for the organization.
The first target was an office at the University of Washington,
where a scientist was doing genetic research on trees...
with a grant from the timber industry.
The second target was the Jefferson Poplar Tree Farm,
where the group believed that genetically engineered trees...
were being developed for paper production.
In the previous arson,
Daniel had been a lookout.
But this time he took a much more active role.
They rented a motel room.
They set up a tent inside the motel room.
They put on painter suits, triple-thick gloves.
They made the devices.
One team went to University of Washington,
and the other team traveled down to Clatskanie in Oregon,
to Jefferson Poplar Farms.
[ Daniel ] Clatskanie is a really small town.
We were desperately trying to avoid a traffic stop,
because it's just, like, we're pretty much screwed if we got stopped.
There's way too many people in the car dressed in all black.
The driver of the vehicle was Miss Savoie.
Miss Zacher served as a lookout.
And then the three men,
which was Mr. Meyerhoff, Mr. McGowan and Mr. Block,
took the fuel loads and the timers to the targets.
We checked that no one's there. Like, climb around, look around. No one's in there.
We'd been there previous. No one's there.
The cleaning ladies were there, like, much earlier.
We set up all the devices and all the buckets.
They put little tubs full of fuel...
underneath the vehicles, and they put soaked rags,
and they'd run the rags from vehicle to vehicle to vehicle.
And the towel just goes and goes and it goes and it goes.
And it's tied together-- sheets-- and it's just an absolute mess.
They were careful to take the trucks with the fuel tanks,
fill the beds of the vehicles with fuel.
[ Daniel ] I'm standing there. I'm drenched in gasoline.
We're about to burn 13 huge S.U.V.'s,
and I was just, like, "What am I doing?"
But we take spray paint.
Myself and another person go out to the shed,
and I write "E.L.F." on one side in pretty huge letters,
and the other person writes "You cannot control what is wild."
There's the "E," "L," and "F."
Everything was basically fully engulfed when I got here.
With all the vehicles and the fuel tanks...
and so forth, there was lots of propellant in the area...
to make things burn, and things went up fast and hot.
[ Siren Wailing ]
[ Female Operator ] 911. What is your emergency?
[ Man ] Ma'am, we've got a big fire over here-- [ Continues, Indistinct ]
[ Operator ] Okay.
Investigators in the Pacific Northwest...
strongly suspect that two nearly simultaneous fires...
were acts of ecological terror.
Monday morning, May 24,
I got back to Eugene, and I was just, like,
"Wow, I really need to think about what I just did."
Just seeing, you know, absolute ruins...
and realizing that, like, all people were gonna focus on...
was the fact that things were destroyed,
and that the issues are being lost...
and all they care about is catching the people that did it.
They were talking about Jefferson Poplar,
and then they were talking about University of Washington.
So finding out what eventually happened at University of Washington--
the massive destruction to a library.
Not just the professor's office that was involved in this sort of research,
but the Center for Urban Horticulture.
I was like, "This is too much, too fast, too big. What am I doing?"
[ Narrator ] Not only had the fire...
at the University of Washington gotten out of control,
they also discovered that the Jefferson Poplar arson...
was based on faulty information.
It turned out that while the previous owners of the property...
had been involved with genetic engineering,
the new owners only had hybrid trees,
developed using farming methods that have been around for hundreds of years.
It's hard to really justify it in hindsight.
Nobody would have targeted that facility had we known...
that there was no genetic engineering going on there at the time.
So it left me with a really bad taste in my mouth.
Kind of like, "Wow. Look at this huge, intense action.
And look what happened in Washington."
And like, "Am I really ready for this?"
Like, this is super serious and super big.
We went to the meeting a few weeks afterwards,
and I was like, "This is too much."
[ Narrator ] Some members of the group were questioning the actions,
but there were others who felt they hadn't gone far enough.
Some of them decided that they wanted to target basically captains of industry.
Target people now, not just property.
The last circle meeting...
basically cleaved between people that seemingly...
wanted to talk about it-- not even, like, plan it--
But they were like, "We should talk about it."
And the people that were repulsed by it.
And really that, like, ideological divide is what ended it.
That was-- That was it.
What people were discussing, with my experiences of the arson--
it made my mind kind of like... spin.
It's things like this that led me to think this is futile.
There's gotta be better ways of addressing what's going on in the world...
than just burning things down.
[ Narrator ] As the E.L.F. cell was dissolving,
the larger activist community in Eugene was splintering as well.
I think people were self-righteous.
I think people thought they knew they had the answer.
Weren't willing to listen to other points of view...
because their view is more radical than that point of view.
All those things came into play, I think,
to help narrow the amount of people...
that were connected within the movement...
to the point where it just went-- poof!
Doesn't exist anymore.
That's one really sad thing about--
you know, about a lot of social movements,
but, you know, I think ours especially,
because we all are so critical...
of the world and of the way people live in the world...
and how they interact with the natural world,
that we sometimes are extremely critical on each other.
And that is definitely part of our downfall as-- as a movement.
[ Daniel ] The scene was really imploding there at the time.
And I, um-- I took a small trip to New York for my sister's 35th birthday.
And, um, I hung out with my family, and I was like, "Wow, I really love my family."
I forgot that I-- Like, I just grew so disconnected from them.
And I met Jenny.
And I was like, "All right, I think I'm gonna move back to New York."
[ Narrator ] After moving home,
Daniel began working at the Rainforest Foundation.
He organized protests against the Republican Convention,
and finally he took a job at a domestic violence organization,
where he was working when he was arrested.
[ Train Bells Ringing ]
The E.L.F. fires in the Northwest had stopped,
but the government continued to work on the case.
We had a war room basically. It was a situation room.
We worked it and worked it and worked it.
We had diagrams all over the walls,
we had our flowcharts, and we had pictures of all our target suspects up there.
What's different on TV that's not realistic...
is that everything is solved in 50 minutes, you know?
And that's not what happens here.
[ Narrator ] Three years after Daniel moved back to New York,
the government had still turned up no viable suspects.
We came together and decided that we would take a cold-case approach...
on one arson to see if we can turn any suspects in that particular arson.
And the arson we chose was one that occurred in the city of Eugene,
and it was the Joe Romania Truck Center arson,
wherein which 35 S.U.V.'s were burned to the ground.
[ Narrator ] The new investigation yielded a number of clues,
which pointed the government toward one local activist.
The night of Romania, Jake Ferguson was accused of stealing a truck,
which was kind of interesting, you know--
the truck would be needed for something like what occurred.
We also knew that Josephine Overaker...
was arrested in the Olympia area...
just prior to an arson that occurred up there.
And we knew that her boyfriend was Jacob Ferguson.
And that's when we really turned the heat up.
[ Narrator ] With Jake now on their radar,
they began following him everywhere,
asking people about him...
and bringing his friends in for questioning before grand juries.
You know, you'd start seeing cars following you, and...
cars with guys sitting outside...
where you're staying, you know, and--
It was really scary, you know, to think that they were kind of on the right track, you know,
and that they're just kind of right there behind you.
And he's also a drug user, and so that adds to paranoia.
"They know," you know. "They're coming for me."
And, of course, in Jake's case,
some of it was true, where when he did turn around,
there were law enforcement following him.
So lightning was striking all around him.
And with that in mind, we gave him an out.
We called him in to the United States Attorney's Office.
We were in a conference room there.
And then we explained to him quite simply...
that we knew what his situation was.
[ Narrator ] They told him they knew he was a heroin addict...
and that he'd lied to an investigator, which was a felony.
And then, they bluffed.
Despite a lack of hard evidence,
they led him to believe that they could tie him to the E.L.F. arsons.
We never told Jake Ferguson or his lawyer what we knew or didn't know.
That's-- You never do that.
Could we have really put him away for a long time?
At this-- that point, probably not.
[ Narrator ] They told him that the arsons carried a life sentence,
but if he became an informant, they'd let him walk away from his crimes.
I described to him, tried to paint an image of him...
walking through the forest on a road...
some sunny summer afternoon hand-in-hand with his son,
instead of looking at his son through bulletproof glass.
And he thought about it.
And at that particular point in time, then...
he and his lawyer excused themselves and left and said,
"Well, we'll get back to you in a day or so."
You know, he grew up with his dad in prison...
and he saw how bad that life was.
He didn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison,
uh, and have his son, you know, never see his dad.
Twenty minutes later, I get a call from downstairs,
and Mr. Ferguson and his lawyer want to come up and talk to us.
And so they came up and they said,
"We would like to consider cooperation. What do we need to do?"
So, that was-- when we found out that he was willing to cooperate,
that was one of the best days I've ever had.
So he started listing off...
all the things that he had information about,
and that basically was every arson in the district of Oregon,
arsons in Washington state,
arsons in Wyoming, arsons in Colorado, California.
We did not know the scope, um, of what he had knowledge of.
So that's when the investigation really kind of broke open.
The team immediately grew from 12 or 13, to 40, to 300 agents.
[ Narrator ] After debriefing Jake about the 14 fires he'd been involved in,
the government had a problem.
They knew that a heroin addict with a pentagram tattoo on his head...
would not make a persuasive witness in court.
And so they needed corroborating evidence.
We talked to him and his lawyer, and we said,
"Okay. This is what we want you to do. We want you to wear a wire."
[ Narrator ] They hid a recording device in the liner of his baseball cap.
And over the course of a year, they flew him all over the country...
where they arranged for him to accidentally bump into his old friends...
and get them to reminisce about the old days.
He walked into an animal rights conference I was at...
in Washington Heights at Holyrood Church.
It was bizarre to see him.
I mean, he was bloated and kind of fat,
and just looked really different.
Uh, he was talkative, which was weird,
'cause I always remembered him as a really quiet guy, but he was talkative.
I went to go get a coffee with him. And we just talked a bunch.
Yeah, it was unfortunate.
I mean, thinking about it, I-- I can't help but be annoyed at myself...
for being like, "How did you not know something was really wrong here?"
It feels rather foolish, you know, to have done that,
but I'm trying to get over the shame...
associated with making dumb mistakes.
Jake was extremely conflicted. We'd have to pump him up.
It was like before a big fight...
where we sat there with him for probably half an hour to an hour...
just to get him kind of tuned up...
and ready to, uh, do it.
It wasn't something I felt good about, you know,
getting people to confess by wearing a wire, you know.
But what can you do when you've already taken the deal,
and then you've admitted to doing all these felonies?
They've got you, you know. If you do anything to disagree with the deal,
the deal's off, and you've just confessed...
to, like, you know, life in prison.
So once we had those recordings in place,
we decided on a particular takedown date.
[ Narrator ] The takedown presented an enormous logistical challenge.
The government believed that the suspects had to be arrested...
at exactly the same moment, or word would get out and they would go into hiding.
So teams of federal agents fanned out across the country.
[ Harvey ] I went to New York,
and we stayed out on Daniel McGowan's house until--
God, I think it was 10:00 or 11:00--
making sure that he was gonna be there first thing in the morning.
And then we got-- Yeah, it was not very good sleep.
[ Narrator ] The next morning,
Detective Harvey and three federal agents followed Daniel to work.
[ Daniel ] I look up, and around the corner comes these kind of big dudes.
I just kept feeling wave after wave of dread and fear, just kept, you know--
And I was like-- I could barely talk. I completely lost my voice.
Like, I was just-- I could barely move, you know. It was really horrible.
And they were like, "You're being extradited to Oregon for, you know, E.L.F. charges.
You should consider pleading. Don't ruin your family."
Like all this stuff.
We would have them have an attorney.
We would present the evidence that we have against them and say,
"Here's your opportunity to become a cooperator, or remain a defendant. Your choice."
You know, when you-- when you sit down with them...
and you show them and let them listen to themselves on tape,
uh, you can see them really sink.
"Uh, okay, I'm done."
It was a very successful approach because,
you know, the dominoes began to fall.
I was in bed. My, uh, husband was up for work.
It was, uh, 5:00 in the morning. He gets up early for work.
And he came into the bedroom and told me that the F.B.I....
and the Oregon State Police were there to talk to me.
And right away I pretty much knew what they were there to talk to me about.
From there it was just, um, you know,
the hardest decision I ever made in my life--
whether or not I should take a plea bargain and cooperate,
or risk going to prison for the rest of my life.
And I think that probably will be the hardest decision I've ever made in my life.
And, um, I chose to--
to cooperate and take the plea bargain...
so that I could someday, once again, you know, be with my loved ones.
I would have been fully prepared to have gone away for five to 10 years, you know.
I was really looking at dying alone in prison...
and knowing that every single loved one would have moved on...
and done something else in their life.
It felt like a death sentence, you know, more than a life sentence.
People can judge me for the decisions I've made.
But until you've been in that position it's, you know--
it's really hard to know what you would do.
I never in my life thought I would be cooperating with the F.B.I.
I always thought that I would be able to stay strong...
and stay true to my values and my beliefs.
And, you know, I guess sometimes you aren't as strong as you think.
So, um, I don't know if you're on,
but can we talk off camera for a sec?
[ Narrator ] Daniel's lawyers have negotiated a plea bargain.
While most of his codefendants have agreed to testify against each other,
Daniel and three others have held out for different terms.
They'll have to take responsibility for the arsons,
but will not be forced to give information about others, if they accept the deal.
[ Chattering ]
Wow. You are a big girl. Happy birthday. Right.
[ Lisa ] Everything has this overshadowing, "This is the last of holidays."
"This is the last birthday party." "This is the last everything."
It's funny. He's not really a big materialistic person,
but he bought her a lot of gifts this year.
I said to him, "You didn't have to go through all this trouble."
And he said, "This might be the last time I can really ever give her gifts and be here."
So that was kind of sad.
I don't know. He's got some serious decisions to make.
And they suck. No matter what you choose, they suck.
[ Chattering ]
[ Shouts, Laughs ]
Wow!
I just feel bad that, uh,
this came up in this part of his life.
I'm hoping for him to make an agreement,
because going to trial, I think--
I think with the charges against him,
that's two life sentences.
I don't believe in his philosophies,
but, uh, he's my son and I-- and I love him.
Come here, Lily. Mmm.
So, cool. I-- Thanks for everyone for coming.
Or you want to pace behind? He wants to pace behind us.
Um, I just wanted everyone to come so I can tell you guys...
I made my final decision on, uh,
the plea bargain the government offered a few weeks ago.
And so, um, I'm gonna be...
agreeing to this plea bargain in court on the 9th.
So--
The recommended sentence on the part of the government is eight years.
I won't be taken into custody at sentencing.
I'm gonna-- I qualify for a self-report.
But it's a major, major important thing to them...
to say that-- that our crime fit the federal crime of terrorism.
[ Narrator ] Even though Daniel has now accepted a plea bargain,
a hurdle still remains.
A federal judge must determine whether the fires...
qualify for something called the terrorism enhancement.
If the judge rules that Daniel's fires were terrorism,
Daniel could be sent to a new, ultra-restrictive prison.
It was set up after 9/11 to house terrorists.
In the media and in the courtroom, the question is debated.
Ecoterrorism: Terrorist acts by radical groups--
- Ecoterrorist. - Ecoterrorism.
Environmental terrorists.
People need to question, like,
this buzz word and how it's being used,
and how it's, like, just become the new "Communist."
It's become the new, you know--
It's like the bogeyman. It's a bogeyman word.
It's like whoever I really disagree with is a terrorist.
Some people have a problem with, you know, calling this terrorism,
but when you're basically making the threat where people go home at night...
wondering if they're gonna be a target,
um, that's what terrorism is.
After the fire, for-- for a long time,
you really looked over your shoulder.
We put a new alarm system in our home and things like that...
that, uh, before we hadn't thought about.
You know, being a New Yorker, with experiencing such serious terrorism firsthand...
is like, "How are you gonna call someone who sets fire to an empty building...
a terrorist?"
It's just inappropriate in every way, and it's an insult.
The word "terrorism" to me is about killing humans.
It's about ending innocent life.
And that is the antitheses of what these people did.
Concern for life was a very big part of the plan...
and implementation of these actions,
and is why no one was ever harmed or injured in them.
1,200 incidents are being accredited to the E.L.F. and A.L.F. in this country,
and not a single injury or death.
Those statistics don't happen by accident.
Terrorist acts, under the definition of the law, can vary all over the board.
There is no requirement for purposes of terrorism...
that you physically endanger another person's life.
I mean, you don't have to be Bonnie and Clyde to be a bank robber,
and you don't have to be Al-Qaeda to be a terrorist.
I don't think these people are terrorists.
I think, uh, the people and the agencies...
and the industry that they're fighting are the true terrorists.
When you got big timber companies...
coming into the Northwest, clear-cutting old-growth forests,
big oil companies with their big oil spills...
that, uh, cost billions and billions and billions of dollars.
You don't see the F.B.I. raiding these executives' homes or anything like that.
They aren't being threatened with life in prison.
All they really do is just pay a fine and, uh, move on to the next quarter.
Th-The old adage that, you know, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter is true.
You know, if you agree with their motives--
Wow, they're a hero. They're not a terrorist at all.
If you disagree with their motives, then they're a terrorist.
That's tough. Okay.
That's why it's a whole lot cleaner to deal with crimes.
Crimes, noncrime.
Okay, I'm good with that. I can do that. [ Man ] Arson?
Arson is a crime. Good. I can do that.
You know, is it terrorism? We'll find out.
I ordered a book about doing time in federal prison written by a lawyer who did time.
I'm very, you know-- Getting very prepared for the whole idea.
But that doesn't necessarily make it any easier, you know? [ Lisa ] I know.
You know you're not alone even though you're in there by yourself.
I know.
Just, I don't know. It sucks.
Sometimes it's hard not to just look at the whole situation and go like,
"What the fuck? How did this all happen?" You know?
I don't know.
The situation with the environment is not getting better. It's getting worse.
And I'm not suggesting that the path of destruction...
and destroying everything is the right path.
But I didn't know what to do.
It's like screaming at the top of your lungs and no one hears you.
Like, what the hell are you supposed to say, you know?
What are you supposed to do?
Yes!
Going to the courthouse?
Yeah.
[ Cawing ]
[ Chattering ]
The judge has sentenced Mr. McGowan to 84 months in prison.
That's seven years.
The court also imposed a terrorism enhancement.
He has been branded as a terrorist in the media.
He will be listed as a successful government terror prosecution...
for the rest of his life, and we are very disappointed.
We believe it's legally wrong, and factually wrong.
[ Daniel ] Oh, look at the trailhead right there.
Oh, my God. It fell from there.
The older I get,
um, the more circumspect I become.
And, uh, I know now that a world is not black and white.
Um, it's not that simple.
When you f-- When I first read about these arsons...
and became, uh, involved in the investigation of the arsons,
you see all the damage and the harm that they've done.
And the threats they made-- They're not very likable people at all.
Once you get to know them as a human being,
you-- you start looking at their motivations 'cause you're curious about it.
Why did they do such a horrible thing?
And you look at their background, and you look at their childhood,
and you look at how they've evolved from the days...
when they committed all these crimes.
And then, instead of just being...
a cold mug shot on a piece of paper,
they become human beings.
And so you begin to understand them.
And that's not that you're saying you approve of their conduct or their behavior.
But you gain an understanding, an insight, as to how it came to pass...
that they started doing these things.
And then you're curious about how their lives will end up,
but only time will tell.
My stomach is flipping out!
Want me to open it? No, I got it.
You sure? Okay. I gotta be independent.
You're not gonna be there to advise me on stuff.
I'm in your corner. I know. Thanks, Pop.
I'll see you.
Thanks for everything. [ Sniffles ]
I'll see you later.
I love you. [ Crying ] I love you too.
** [ Alternative Intro ]
* Take us down and all apart
* Cherry tree
* Lay us out on the table
* You're sharp, all right
* But no one is asking, so leave it alone *
* Leave it alone
* Can we
* Loose lips sink ships Loose lips sink ships *
* Loose lips sink ships
* Don't look at me I'm only breathing *
* Don't look at me I'm indiscreet *
* Don't look at me I'm only breathing *
* Don't look at me I'm indiscreet *
* Can we show
* A little discipline
* Can we show
* A little discipline
* Can we
* Loose lips sink ships Loose lips sink ships *
* Loose lips sink ships
* Can we show
* A little discipline
* Can we
* Loose lips sink ships Loose lips sink ships *
* Loose lips sink ships *
** [ Ends ]