Americans are under siege by terrorists right now, but the primary source of the problem is not al Qaeda or any other foreign terrorist organization. The threat stems from home-grown activist groups with names like: the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front, and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. And it’s not just left-wing radicals who are causing the problems. Domestic terror threats include bombings by right-wing terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh and abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph.
While we still need to continue to address the threat of international terrorism, we also have to start working to minimize the harm done by domestic terrorists as well. This need to shift priorities was confirmed when an FBI official told lawmakers at a recent Senate hearing that the nation’s top terrorist threat comes not from abroad but from these radical activist groups raised right here at home. The FBI’s deputy assistant director for counter-terrorism warned that, in terms of the number of crimes they commit and the overall rate of property damage they cause, the danger posed by those groups far outweighs any threat from international terrorism.
Take the group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty as just one example. Known as SHAC, it was founded in Great Britain in 1999. Its aim is to rescue animals used in medical and scientific research and shut down businesses that rely on their use.
Its original target was Huntingdon Life Sciences, or HLS, a company that uses animals in its research to develop treatments for diseases such as cancer and AIDS. In February 2001, members of SHAC attacked the company’s chief executive outside his home in England and beat him with baseball bats and axe handles. Several months later, HLS’s marketing director was temporarily blinded by an attack of chemical spray.
It was amid this air of escalating violence in both rhetoric and tactics that the U.S. Senate held its Environment and Public Works Committee hearings in May. FBI testimony indicated that it had 150 open investigations into such activities, and that some 1,200 crimes between 1990 and 2004 had been publicly claimed by activist groups. These crimes include arson, bombings, theft, animal releases, vandalism, harassing phone calls, letters rigged with razor blades, and office takeovers.
In May, animal rights activists stole a credit card from the wife of a pharmaceutical company executive and bought $20,000 worth of travelers’ checks with it. They donated the money to four charities, then boasted of the crime on their Web site, according to an article in The Commercial Appeal.
In one case, an employee of a company doing business with HLS was sent a bomb in a package. The bomb squad that deactivated it said it would most certainly have been lethal if the employee had opened it.
The SHAC attacks spilled over into the United States when people doing business with HLS were targeted in Massachusetts, prompting Attorney General Tom Reilly to denounce them as acts of terrorism.
Such tactics have also been used to disrupt research labs at colleges and universities, restaurants that serve meat, farms where fur is raised, and logging operations. In one case, a logging camp building was burned to the ground while people were still in it. More recently, housing developments in new suburbs have been torched by arsonists, and SUV dealerships have been vandalized, allegedly to protect the environment.
So far, officials can count some $110 million in property damage from so-called “direct action.” According to sworn testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on May 18, 2005, a five-story condominium building in San Diego was set afire in August 2003, causing $22 million in damage to the uncompleted project. On the ground next to the burned building was a white bedsheet with spray painted letters that said, “You make us mad. You build it. We burn it.” It was signed ELF, for Environmental Liberation Front.
The list of crimes goes on: On November 14, 2004, the Animal Liberation Front, or ALF, attacked labs at the University of Iowa. The intruders smashed and overturned equipment, poured acid on equipment and papers, and stole more than 300 laboratory mice and rats. The cost of the property damage was in excess of three-quarters of a million dollars. The cost to research progress was incalculable.
More and more, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has gotten into the act as these groups consolidate and turn to even more sinister tactics, such as the use of explosives and sophisticated incendiary devices.
The well-known Southern Poverty Law Center, working with the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, has monitored such groups as neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan for years. But, it now includes animal activists such as SHAC on its list of hate groups, calling them “frankly terroristic” in their tactics. SHAC is also officially listed as a terrorist group by the FBI.
Although SHAC started as a campaign against British scientific labs, it spilled over into the U.S. when it began targeting American investors in HLS. SHAC moved to Philadelphia, where it joined forces with ALF, which the FBI considers the most serious terrorist threat in America. Soon, the Earth Liberation Front joined the two to form a trio of domestic terrorism.
Since then, American executives of HLS have had their tires slashed, windows broken, houses spray-painted, and lives threatened. SHAC has committed at least 140 acts of vandalism, threatened 85 people, harassed more than 30 employees, and engaged in identity theft against 120 others. Together, ALF and ELF have claimed responsibility for $40 million in property damage during 500 crimes over a 15-year period in the U.S.
As these activist groups widen their agenda and coalesce into a more and more organized and coordinated force, their methods become increasingly sinister. In 2000, 11 cars belonging to research lab employees were fire-bombed with incendiary devices. In two cases, the fires spread to homes where children were asleep.
The groups have also transitioned to using “combat tactics.” In February 2001, 100 members in black jumpsuits and ski masks attacked pharmaceutical company locations en masse, breaking windows and destroying office equipment. Executives were sprayed with acid. It is now routine to harass executives with round-the-clock phone calls and threatening messages, including threats of kidnapping their children. In one two-day period, they placed almost 35,000 calls to one company to disrupt its phone lines. They have also begun using viruses to attack company computers.
This type of terrorism is not limited to any particular political or ideological niche, either. Right-wing special interest groups burned 35 homes under construction in the Maryland subdivision of Hunters Brooke in December 2004 ? an entire subdivision ? because they thought African-Americans were moving in.7
It was the worst single instance of arson in Maryland’s history, causing $10 million in damage. That’s equal to 10 percent of all the damage caused by ALF and ELF in the last 15 years. Right-wing terror groups, while keeping a lower profile than their left-wing counterparts, have destroyed abortion clinics, minority churches, and government buildings.
In light of these distressing trends, we offer the following five forecasts for your consideration:
First, as their clout in the legitimate world diminishes, eco-terrorist groups and animal rights activists will increasingly turn to anti-social solutions. In the process, they will consolidate into larger, better-organized entities, such as the alliance between SHAC, ELF, and ALF. In turn, this will enable these groups to employ ever more destructive and sophisticated methods, culminating in a large-scale loss of property and life that will garner national attention and focus the problem clearly for the average citizen. For example, in 2002, a suspect in Texas was arrested with enough sodium cyanide gas to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building.
Second, the federal government will enact new criminal statutes to address multi-state campaigns of intimidation, threats, and damage designed to shut down legitimate businesses. The federal criminal statutes now in existence, specifically the “Animal Enterprise Terrorism” law, 18 USC 43, gives prosecutors some power to pursue and convict animal rights extremists. But, in practice, that law doesn’t cover enough of the criminal acts that extremists have committed or are likely to commit. New laws will expand those powers so that the burden will not fall so heavily on local law enforcement.
Third, as the government moves to crack down on these domestic terror groups ? and as those groups’ deeds become more destructive ?the media, which has largely ignored them, will begin to take note, especially in the wake of expected large-scale attacks. As the public at large begins to understand the scope of the problem, they will recognize the need to pay as much attention ? possibly more ? to those terrorists inside our borders as to those outside. The FBI and other law-enforcement organizations will shift their resources so they can devote more time and money to eliminate these home-grown threats.
Fourth, laws like the Patriot Act will be made both permanent and more effective. One of the first defendants sentenced under the laws enacted after the World Trade Center attacks was a domestic terrorist. A part of the Patriot Act that took effect in November 2003 makes it a crime to cause public-safety problems, even when there are no monetary damages or loss of life. This effectively widens prosecutorial powers to control rogue groups. Expect such laws to proliferate and get stronger as domestic terrorism comes into the wider public consciousness.
Fifth, new partnerships for intelligence exchange among experts, educational institutions, and high-tech companies, as well as federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, will make counter-terrorism efforts more effective. There are already 103 Joint Terrorism Task Forces in existence in the United States. Increased training, cooperation, and file sharing will enhance these efforts to suppress domestic terrorism. By 2015, the Trends editors believe this widespread initiative will greatly improve the nation’s efforts to prevent and respond to any type of terrorist threat, whether from at home or abroad.
References List : 1. The Associated Press, May 18, 2005, “Terrorism by Activist Extremists Rising, FBI Reports,” by John Heilprin. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.2. The Commercial Appeal, May 19, 2005, “Card Theft, Fraud Used as Terror Technique,” by Frank Eltman. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by The Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved.3. To access the entire testimony given by Monty McIntyre, visit the U.S. Senate website at:Epw.senate.gov/109th/McIntyre_Testimony.pdf4. To access the entire testimony given by David Skorton, visit the U.S Senate website at:Epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=2378305. Intelligence Report, Fall 2002, Iss. 107, “From Push to Shove.” ⓒ Copyright 2002 by the Southern Poverty Law Center. All rights reserved.6. For information about the terrorist tactics of SHAC, visit the Activist Cash website at:www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm?oid=4087. PR Newswire, May 20, 2005, Rep. Bennie Thompson Urges Hearing into Domestic Terror Threats to the Nations Critical Infrastructure. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by PR Newswire Association LLC. All rights reserved.
