If A Tree Falls

I watched this documentary on Netflix last night titled, "If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front". Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who engage in economic sabotage and the destruction of private property to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment, also known as a form of direct action. The documentary follows one cell in Oregon from their actions all the way to their initial arrest and later prosecution. It demonstrates how the police were able to bluff, lie, and be able to coerce one member into revealing and incriminating the rest of his cell. This gave police an upper hand into being able to coerce many more cell members into exposing and incriminating each other. To put this into an example, police would go to one member and say, "So and so told us this about you. You are going to go to jail for a long long time unless you give me information about so and so."

Three things stood out to me in this movie which I'm going to write about: the power of direct action, the lack of courage, intuition, and intelligence amongst the cell members, and the government using their prosecution to claim a victory on domestic terrorism.

The power of direct action when compared to picket line protest, civil disobedience, and working with public officials is astounding. Wild horses were being gathered up on government owned lands and shipped to this company's slaughterhouse to be killed and sold off. Citizens protested, wrote public officials, and did nonviolent civil disobedience to try and make it stop for ten years, to no avail. Late one night, four members of ELF set off fire bombs and burned the slaughterhouse to the ground. The company never recovered from this and the slaughtering of wild horses stopped. What masses of people had been trying to achieve for ten years was accomplished by four members of ELF in just a few hours.

The actions of this cell spread and inspired others. By 2010 there were ~1,200 ELF direct actions and not a single person was injured or killed. The cell eventually disbanded after an action based on incorrect information burned down the property of an innocent company. Three years went by and the police caught whim of one of the cell's members, Jake Ferguson, stealing a truck on the night of one action. They thought this was strange and called him in for questioning using a petty crime he had committed as the cause.

During the questioning the police appealed to Ferguson's emotions as well as made subtle threats about where his life would end up because they could send him to prison for the rest of his life for his involvement with ELF unless he cooperated. The tactics the police used on him worked, and Ferguson agreed to fully cooperate with the police's wishes. This meant Ferguson would tell them everything he knew, testify in court, and wear a wire while running around the country "accidentally" running into old cell members and getting them to talk about past events and actions. He turned out to be a gold mine because he was the one who really started off as the driving force and mastermind of the cell.

If the police ever tell a person they are going to send them away to prison unless they cooperate, they don't have enough evidence to incriminate at all. The whole point of the deal is to get more information. Reality is not a T.V. show, if police have enough evidence to send someone away to prison they will act on it, not try to gather more. Ferguson should have asked to see the evidence they have, and when they failed to show it, leave the questioning and find a way to covertly inform all his cell members that the police have no evidence and are trying to threaten, bluff, and lie their way to getting one of them to snitch on the others. Ferguson did not do this, instead he chose full cooperation.

Ferguson willing to testify in court against his cell members turned out to not be enough to incriminate them though, so he wore a wire and went all around the country invoking incriminating conversations with old cell members. The film shows Ferguson stating that this was the hardest thing to do and that the police had to mentally pump him up to get him to do this. Ferguson remarks that he had no other choice, he either cooperated with the police or go to jail for life because he had already admitted to doing all these actions.

There is always a choice. Ferguson had to cooperate with the police, but at the same time did not want to go from cell member to cell member gathering incriminating conversations with them. So what does one do? Ferguson should have found a way to alert his fellow cell members that the police had made a deal with him to get them to talk and warned them not to say anything incriminating. The film reenacts Ferguson sitting with David McGowan at a park bench and "reminiscing" about past actions. Ferguson could have had a piece of paper resting on his thigh that read, "Police listening, don't incriminate yourself." This is just one example, each situation would call for something different. The point is Ferguson made no effort to warn his fellow cell members.

At the same time, the cell members were also rather idiotic. After an action, the only time one talks about the details of it are in the immediate debriefing. They should have seen a huge red flag that a cell member, who many haven't spoken to for years, is suddenly around and wanting to talk about past actions. They should have sensed this and warned all their other cell members not to discuss anything with Ferguson.

Even with all the tape recordings provided by Ferguson, the police still didn't have enough evidence. They began offering the same deals to other cell members for lesser sentences and many of them agreed. (See http://earth-liberation-front.org/those_who_cooperated.htm)

The US Government felt this case important because it would allow the destruction of private property to be considered terrorism even though no one got hurt or killed. Those who refused to cooperate with the police ended up serving anywhere from three to thirteen years and being legally labeled as a terrorist and held in a special terrorist prison in Idaho. The US Government then claimed victory on terrorism and masqueraded Ferguson around as several people were put into prisons.

One question needs to be asked and this is it:

If the ELF is the “number one domestic terrorism threat,” if it is “violent” and “dangerous,” and if Ferguson was the lead arsonist of the most destructive ELF cell in U.S. history... how is he walking free? If these activists are truly national security threats, Ferguson, of all people, should be behind bars.