Free Republic

SEATTLE — Six people were arrested in a string of ecoterrorism attacks in the Pacific Northwest dating to 1998 -- four fires that caused millions in damage and the toppling of an 80-foot power transmission tower, federal prosecutors said Thursday. The arrests were made Wednesday in Arizona, New York, Oregon and Virginia. The radical groups Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front had claimed responsibility for most of the acts. In the transmission tower attack, bolts were removed from guy wires near Bend, Ore., on the eve of the millennium. The fires were set at a federal agricultural research facility...

Federal authorities announced Thursday the biggest eco-terrorism bust in U.S. history, clearing up a series of arsons that plagued the Pacific Northwest from 1998 to 2001. The U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Karen J. Immergut, announced the arrests of six alleged ecosaboteurs from Portland to New York accused of taking part in four arsons attributed to the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, as well as the vandalizing of power transmission lines. The nine-year investigation cleared up, in order, the June 1998 arson of a U.S. Department of Agriculture building in Olympia; the December 1998 torching of U.S. Forest...