Two environmentalists from state plead guilty to arson

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, November 9, 2006

EUGENE, Ore. – Four more people pleaded guilty Thursday to federal conspiracy and arson charges stemming from a five-year string of firebombings by radical environmentalists that caused $30 million in damage across the West.

The proceedings in U.S. District Court brought to 12 – 10 in Oregon and two in Washington – the number of people who have pleaded guilty to arson and conspiracy charges in the government’s Operation Backfire investigation into more than 20 firebombings in Oregon, Washington, California, Wyoming and Colorado.

The attacks, claimed by the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, targeted lumber mills, wild horse roundups, a horse slaughterhouse, genetic engineering of plants, sport utility vehicles, a high-voltage electric tower and the expansion of a Vail, Colo., ski resort into endangered lynx habitat.

Three other suspects remain fugitives. Prescott, Ariz., bookstore owner William C. Rodgers, described as the leader of the Eugene-based cell known as The Family, committed suicide in jail.

“The pleas of these individuals today together with (earlier guilty pleas) have effectively dismantled the Northwest cells of the organizations operating loosely under the mantles of ALF and ELF,” U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut said in Portland.

“Today we can declare victory in that fight,” added Robert Jordan, FBI special agent in charge for Oregon.

The firebombings attributed to The Family stopped after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Peifer said in Portland that the cell was tough to crack, because members assembled their bombs in clean rooms, leaving behind no fingerprints or DNA evidence, seldom talked to each other, and used code words and even hand signals.

After years of finding little more than melted five-gallon buckets used to make diesel fuel and soap firebombs, investigators got a break in 2002 when one of the people involved in firebombing a logging company and a gravel pit in 2001 told his girlfriend, and she told her father, a state fire marshal.

Three people were convicted, and the alleged leader, Michael “Tre Arrow” Scarpitti, is being held in Victoria, B.C., on a shoplifting charge, fighting extradition.

In 2005, investigators in the Operation Backfire task force landed an informant, unindicted co-conspirator Jacob Fergusen of Eugene, who wore a hidden recording device as he traveled the country talking with his old friends from The Family.

The four in court Thursday were Joyanna L. Zarcher, 28, and Nathan F. Block, 25, both of Olympia, Wash.; Jonathan Christopher Mark Paul, 40, of Ashland, and Daniel G. McGowan, 32, of New York City.

They were headed for trial on charges carrying life sentences when the plea agreement was announced, two months after they demanded to know whether warrantless wiretaps by the National Security Agency were used against them. Their guilty pleas came with recommended sentences of five to eight years in prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Engdall denied NSA surveillance was a factor in the investigation or the plea agreement, but defense attorney Amanda Lee of Seattle said the timing of the plea agreement led her to believe it was.

She said the defendants were happy they would not have to testify against others.

Only one of the defendants spoke out in court Thursday.

Breaking down in tears, McGowan told Judge Ann Aiken that he regretted his actions but remained committed to protecting the environment.

“I hope you will see that my actions were not those of a terrorist, but of a concerned young person who was deeply troubled by the destruction of Oregon’s beautiful old-growth forests and the dangers of genetically modified trees,” McGowan said. “After taking part in these two actions, I realized that burning things down did not fit with my visions or belief about how to create a better world. So I stopped committing these crimes.”

Sentencing is not expected until spring, but prosecutors recommended eight years in prison for McGowan.

McGowan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson and topple a high-voltage electric tower in Central Oregon in December 1999, serving as lookout for the 2001 firebombing of the Superior Lumber Co. office in Glendale, and attempted arson and arson at the Jefferson Poplar Farm in Clatskanie in 2001.

Block and Zacher both pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge, setting fire to SUVs at the Romania Chevrolet Truck Center in Eugene in 2001 and attempted arson and arson at the tree farm. Prosecutors recommended a sentence of eight years for each.