An NPR story this morning reported that protesters opposed to natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania were the targets of surveillance by a private organization under contract to the Commonwealth. Governor Rendell has apologized and promised to terminate the contract. The governor is right to do so. However, as pointed out in my 2009 book, "Al Qaeda Goes to College," environmentalist and animal rights activists on the extreme side of the spectrum have repeatedly broken both federal and state laws in their zeal to protect the environment and establish animal rights. It is understandable that law enforcement might take an interest in peaceful protests from the standpoint of trying to gain some insights into the criminal side of the movement, such as ELF and ALF, as well as SHAC, which currently has key players serving hard time in federal prison, following their 2006 convictions in a federal criminal trial in Trenton. Given the "Leaderless Resistance" philosophy of such shadowy extremist organizations, it is difficult if not impossible to ascertain where the line is drawn between peaceful protesters exercising their legitimate First Amendment rights and those espousing, and even engaging in, illegal activities. SOme activists walk that tightrope and even cross that line, as the SHAC7 convictions illustrated amply
Here is my chapter on extremist animal-rights activists:
Chapter Three: Domestic Terrorists (II): The Animal Advocates
On June 12, 2008, the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness issued the following “Intelligence Assessment”:
Escalation of West Coast Animal Rights Extremist Activity
and Implications for New Jersey
Key Findings
• There has been an increase in the intensity and overall number of violent
criminal acts perpetrated by animal rights extremist groups against university
researchers on the West Coast.
• Animal rights extremist groups represent the most active, single-issue domestic
terrorism group in New Jersey.
• Given the apparent connectivity between animal rights groups and the extent of
their travel between coasts, the use of violence and intimidation against
university researchers on the West Coast is likely to spread to New Jersey.
Threat Overview
Over the past ten months, there has been an increase in the number of violent criminal incidents perpetrated by animal rights extremists against university researchers on the West Coast. The majority of the violent incidents have occurred in California, with a limited number also occurring in Oregon. In roughly eighty percent of the incidents the targets were university researchers involved in primate research.
Historically, animal rights extremist groups in the United States have carried out direct actions against university laboratories and not individual researchers. Such actions have included criminal trespassing, vandalism and the release of laboratory animals. However, since approximately June 2007, extremists have begun escalating the violence and using more intimidating tactics against individual university researchers, including: death threats, bomb threats, the mailing of suspicious packages and letters stuffed with razor blades, attempted home invasions, attempted arson, intentional flooding of a home, and the placement of incendiary devices under cars and at residences. These incidents have been carried out by ALF (Animal Liberation Front), Animal Liberation Brigade, UCLA Primate Freedom Project, SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) and their affiliates. This shift in tactics coincides with an overall increase in threats and acts of violence by the animal rights extremist movement against a wide variety of targets, including biotech, life-sciences, pharmaceutical and biomedical research companies.
While animal rights extremist groups have not publicly announced a change in their targeting tactics, there are several reasons for such a shift. Targeting individual researchers at their residences results in greater fear and intimidation, as extremists “personalize” their attacks by directly threatening the individuals and their families. In addition, by targeting individuals at their homes extremists avoid having to deal with security impediments that might exist at the university laboratory or employment facility. This change in modus operandi enables the extremists to carry out their attacks with fewer resources. Animal rights groups are also increasingly using the Internet to access public records and identify university researchers, and then posting their names and addresses online.
This shift in targeting tactics coincides with a growing sentiment among members of the animal rights movement that researchers, businesses, and the general public have been sufficiently warned and violence can now be rationalized in order to permanently end animal abuse. Violent rhetoric is expressed in extremist communiqués, literature and threat letters. For example, in a June 2007 communiqué, the Animal Liberation Brigade alluded to the need for more violent tactics, asserting that “demonstrators need to realize that just demonstrating won’t stop this kind of evil.” Similarly, Jerry Vlasak, co-founder of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office and leader in the US animal rights movement has stated on several occasions that the notion of murdering medical researchers in order to save laboratory animals is a “morally justifiable solution.” While these statements may simply be aimed at motivating followers, it might also portend a shift toward greater violence.
Outlook for New Jersey
Animal rights extremist groups represent the most active, single-issue, domestic terrorism group in New Jersey where they have historically focused their campaigns on biotech, life-sciences and pharmaceutical companies. However, since 2003, these groups have branched out, conducting direct actions against “tertiary targets,” including financial and technology-based companies and attacking the employees of targeted companies at their residences. Looking forward, the increased use of violence and intimidation perpetrated against university researchers on the West Coast is likely to be emulated on the East Coast, especially given the apparent connectivity between animal rights groups throughout the country and the extent of their travel between coasts. This type of connectivity has been exemplified in New Jersey through “Days of Action,”
direct action campaigns organized by animal rights groups which are attended by supporters from across the US. These events reveal a willingness to travel long distances to protest and target businesses, laboratories and individuals in New Jersey. While there is currently no intelligence indicating that animal rights extremists are planning to target university researchers or other New Jersey facilities involved in animal research, the nature of this threat warrants ongoing situational awareness within university, private sector and law enforcement
communities.
For additional information and GIS mapping of New Jersey companies targeted by animal rights groups, please refer to the December 2007 OHSP Assessment: Animal Rights Extremism: Current Trends and Implications for New Jersey, available on the OHSP secure Web site, through http://www.state.nj.us/.
Suspicious activity involving animal rights extremist groups should be treated as having a possible nexus to terrorism, and should be reported immediately to the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (OHSP) at 866-4-SAFE-NJ and to local law enforcement authorities.
Author of Report:
Caroline Vassallo, Intelligence Analyst: Caroline.Vassallo@ohsp.state.nj.us (609-588-0996)
For further information on this document or other OHSP analytical products,
please contact the OHSP Intelligence Bureau at
OHSPINTEL@ohsp.state.nj.us or 609-588-4000, ext. 7
Even a cursory survey of stories published in The Chronicle of Higher Education over the past two years drives home the severity of the threat posed to higher education by animal rights activists, who may be the most serious domestic-terrorism threat posed to campuses in the United States.
• Animal-Rights Groups Fight Colleges Over Access to Research Records
By JEFFREY BRAINARD
The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that Ohio State University is not required to release videotapes of animal research sought under the state's open-records law by an advocacy group opposed to such studies.
• UCLA Professor Halts Monkey Research
By SAMANTHA HENIG
Responding to pressure from animal-rights activists, Dario Ringach, an associate professor of neurobiology at the University of California at Los Angeles, has abandoned his research on monkeys. In an e-mail message with the subject line "You win," Mr. Ringach wrote to a news office for animal-rights groups that he would no longer conduct animal research, and asked that the groups leave him and his family alone.
• UCLA's Acting Chancellor Takes Steps Against Animal-Rights Extremists
By PAUL FAIN
The acting chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles has announced plans to push back at animal-rights groups, which he says have recently stepped up harassment of faculty members.
In a letter to the campus, Norman Abrams, who became acting chancellor on July 1, said "illegal and often violent" acts by activists, who are protesting research conducted by university scientists on nonhuman primates and other animals, had "culminated this summer in an incident involving a powerful incendiary device placed on the doorstep of a neighbor of one of our faculty members."
• The Growing Field of Animal Law is Attracting Activists and Pragmatists Alike
By PETER MONAGHAN
Portland, Ore.
In the Pacific Northwest, many young people say they want to liberate animals from human subjection, so much so that defending activists who break into research laboratories to set loose animals is now a cottage industry.
Here at Lewis & Clark College School of Law, students of "animal law" are learning another way to change social practices that involve animals. They are just as passionate as animal-liberation advocates. And they may become more influential.
Animal law is the study of all laws relating to animals, whether they enable harsh treatment of animals or encourage kind treatment. "It's a lot like where environmental law was in the 1970s," says Laura Ireland Moore, founder and executive director of the National Center for Animal Law, based at Lewis & Clark.
• Animal Researchers' Homes Are Attacked
As protests intensify, colleges take steps to protect scientists
By RICHARD MONASTERSKY
When six masked people pounded on the front door of a scientist's home in Santa Cruz, Calif., and allegedly struck her husband late last month, the echo was heard by biomedical researchers and universities around the country. The intrusion represents an apparent escalation in the level of violence used by animal-rights protesters, who until now have not physically attacked academic scientists.
"We're facing a national movement," says George Blumenthal, chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, where the biologist works. Other universities, he says, are going to have to face "individuals who are prepared to use potentially violent tactics that have a terrorizing effect on researchers."
• New Front in Battle Over Studies of Animals
Activists take aim at non-research colleges
By JEFFREY BRAINARD
Far from the front lines of the nasty fight over laboratory-animal experiments at large research universities, activists are strategically drawing some teaching-oriented institutions into the same battle.
Amherst College, Fairfield University, Francis Marion University, and 10 other institutions, none of which are known for conducting animal experiments, recently signed a pledge not to subject any research animals to "severe" unrelieved pain or distress. The pledge was written by the Humane Society of the United States, which has sent it to a total of 301 presidents at similar institutions.
• New Attacks on Animal Researchers Provoke Anger and Worry
By LILA GUTERMAN
After firebomb attacks this month set the home of a neuroscientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz aflame and destroyed a car parked in the driveway of another university researcher's home, researchers and academic leaders were shaken. The attacks are believed to be the work of animal-rights protesters.
The Roots of the Animal Rights Movement
In his novel of 17th century England, Quicksilver, author Neal Stephenson has members of the Royal Society “starving a toad in a jar to see if new toads would grow out of it,” draining “all the blood out of a large dog and putting it into a smaller dog minutes later,” and removing “the rib cage from a living mongrel.” Since Stephenson’s representations appear to be historically accurate, little wonder that the “first significant animal rights movement began in nineteenth-century England, where the impetus was opposition to the use of unanaesthetized animals in scientific research.” The only wonder is that it took so long for social mores to rise to the level of repugnance for this practice that the “movement inspired protests, legislative reforms in the United Kingdom, and the birth of numerous animal protection organizations….”
The rise of such sentiments paralleled the changing views of England’s leading philosophers (including so-called “natural philosophers”) toward animals. While Rene Descartes considered animals to be “organic machines,” David Hume wrote in the 18th century, “Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth, is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.” Jeremy Bentham, the early-19th century father of Utilitarianism added, “Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things. ... The day has been, I grieve it to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated ... upon the same footing as ... animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?...the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?... The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes... ."
Although the anti-vivisection movement was birthed in the early 19th century alongside the significant scientific activity which characterized that period, and despite its long history of opposition to animal research, the movement cannot be credited with stopping a single scientific experiment until 1977, when the movement’s outcries ended NIH funding of certain grizzly and notorious cat experiments that the federal agency had funded for some 17 years at New York’s Museum of Natural History.
In fact, not until the 1960s did a robust animal-rights movement emerge in the United States, part and parcel of the socio-cultural revolution which swept through American society in such varied forms as the Hippy Movement, the anti-war protests, the sexual revolution and the drug culture. An early victory was the 1966 Laboratory Animal Welfare Act. In 1971 NIH issued its policy on the “Care and Treatment of Laboratory Animals.” This was replaced by Public Health Service Regulations in1973.
In 1981 Johns Hopkins University established its Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, which describes itself as follows:
The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) has worked with scientists since 1981 to find new methods to replace the use of laboratory animals in experiments, reduce the number of animals tested, and refine necessary tests to eliminate pain and distress.
We are an academic, science-based center affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. We believe the best science is humane science. Our programs seek to provide a better, safer, more humane future for people and animals.
We provide a variety of resources, including grants for scientists developing non-animal methods workshops on alternative methods, books, newsletters, and other publications.
We also manage Altweb, an international online clearinghouse of alternatives news and resources.
Despite these pioneering efforts and all the subsequent advances in the regulation and humane treatment of laboratory animals, animal rights activists’ targeting of scientific, including university, laboratories has increased in recent years. To understand why, it’s worth noting the several levels of animal activists in terms of philosophical orientation.
Animal Activist Philosophy and Tactics
DeGrazia identifies three gradations of standards subscribed by activists:
• Sliding-scale model: “Animals may be used in research only where their use is consistent with giving their interests appropriate moral weight in view of the animals’ cognitive, emotional, and social complexity.”
• Utilitarianism: “Animals may be used in research only where their use is likely to maximize the overall balance of benefits --- factoring in likelihood of success --- over harms, where all parties’ (including animals’) interests are impartially considered.”
• Strong animal-rights view: “Animals may be used in research only where (1) their involvement does not harm them or (2) their involvement is in their overall best interests (therapeutic research). This view might also permit animals to be used in research where (3) their involvement poses only minimal risk to them.”
Clearly, the third level is the most demanding. Indeed, the definition proffered by DeGrazia masks the extreme nature of this last position. The devil, as they say, is in the details. For example, whether what a scientist does to his animals harms them or not depends entirely on the definition of the word “harm.” If one includes under harm the mere caging of an animal, then it is virtually impossible for a research scientist to work with animals in his lab. Similarly, if one deems the anxiety caused to an animal by the mere handling of that animal to be “harm,” then, once again, the definition would make it well-nigh impossible for a researcher to work with any such animals.
If these interpretations seem far-fetched, then consider the following:
PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Animal Exploitation
Every year, more than 3 million dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and other animals are euthanized because they were born into a world that does not have enough homes for them. For every one companion animal who lives indoors with a human family and receives the attention, health care, and emotional support that he or she needs, there are thousands just barely surviving. Millions of domestic animals never know a kind human touch and live hard lives on the street before dying equally hard deaths.
Others suffer at the hands of an unfit guardian who deprives them of veterinary care and other basic necessities: Social birds are left alone in tiny, barren cages for years as decorations; rabbits, guinea pigs, and hamsters are kept in filthy cages and only paraded out as a source of entertainment now and then; cats are left outside and often become victims of cruel people; dogs are left chained outside or kept in waste-strewn pens with only a metal barrel to protect them from the elements.
Every animal deserves a chance to thrive in a responsible and permanent home. Sadly, breeders, pet stores, and people who fail to sterilize their companion animals have created a tremendous overpopulation problem that forces animal shelters to put millions of dogs and cats to death every year.
Those who subscribe to such anthropomorphic sentiments, as those reflected in this statement, also tend to deny that --- to borrow from George Orwell’s Animal Farm --- some animals are more equal than others. Thus, for example, a recent essay by two biologists rejects all of the following arguments for distinguishing among phyla and species in according animals rights:
• The evolutionary argument
• Variations in awareness of self
• Variations in memory and planning skills
• Animal intentionality
These writers conclude that, “given our present state of knowledge of the needs and capabilities of classes of animals, let alone individual species, we feel, as biologists, that we first and foremost ought to guard against, or at least be very cautious about, the temptations of creating a scale of lesser or greater value of one species over another.”
From such philosophical/ethical tenets the distance to radical tactics is short. Consider the cartoon below, taken from the Animal Liberation Front website.
In close proximity with this cartoon on the site is the “ALF Credo”:
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) carries out direct action against animal abuse in the form of rescuing animals and causing financial loss to animal exploiters, usually through the damage and destruction of property.
The ALF's short-term aim is to save as many animals as possible and directly disrupt the practice of animal abuse. Their long-term aim is to end all animal suffering by forcing animal abuse companies out of business.
It is a nonviolent campaign, activists taking all precautions not to harm any animal (human or otherwise).
Because ALF actions may be against the law, activists work anonymously, either in small groups or individually, and do not have any centralized organization or coordination.
The Animal Liberation Front consists of small autonomous groups of people all over the world who carry out direct action according to the ALF guidelines. Any group of people who are vegetarians or vegans and who carry out actions according to ALF guidelines have the right to regard themselves as part of the ALF.
The last paragraph of this credo springs from the broader radical tradition of “leaderless resistance.” “Leaderless resistance (or phantom cell structure) is a political resistance strategy in which small, independent groups (covert cells) challenge an established adversary such as a government. Leaderless resistance can encompass anything from non-violent disruption and civil disobedience to bombings, assassinations and other violent agitation. Leaderless cells lack bidirectional, vertical command links and operate without hierarchal command.”
The term "Leaderless Resistance" was popularized by the white supremacist Louis Beam, who published an essay on Leaderless Resistance in 1983 and again in 1992. Beam advocated Leaderless Resistance as a technique for fighting an incumbent government using self-organizing clandestine cells; he attributed the strategy to Col. Ulius Loius Amoss, allegedly a U.S. intelligence officer who was fearful that Communists were about to seize control of the U.S. in the early 1960s.
In his essay, Beam argued that traditional liberation armies employing pyramid-style organization are "extremely dangerous for the participants when it is utilized in a resistance movement against state tyranny":
"Especially is this so in technologically advanced societies where electronic surveillance can often penetrate the structure revealing its chain of command. Experience has revealed over and over again that anti-state, political organizations utilizing this method of command and control are easy prey for government infiltration, entrapment, and destruction of the personnel involved. This has been seen repeatedly in the United States where pro-government infiltrators or agent provocateurs weasel their way into patriotic groups and destroy them from within."
A more workable approach, argued Beam, is to convince like-minded individuals to form independent cells that will commit acts of sabotage or terrorism without coordination from above, and while minimizing communication with other cells:
"The so-called "phantom cell" mode of organization, developed by Col. Amoss, or Leaderless Resistance, is based upon the cell organization but does not have any central control or direction. In the Leaderless Resistance concept, cells operate independently of each other, but they do not report to a central headquarters or top chief, as do the communist cells ...
[P]articipants in a program of Leaderless Resistance through phantom cell organization must know exactly what they are doing and how to do it. This is by no means as impractical as it appears, because it is certainly true that in any movement, all persons involved have the same general outlook, are acquainted with the same philosophy, and generally react to given situations in similar ways. As the entire purpose of Leaderless Resistance is to defeat the enemy by whatever means possible, all members of phantom cells will tend to react to objective events in the same way, usually through tactics of resistance and sabotage."
Despite exhorting the adoption of a resistance without a leader, it is likely that Beam was advocating Leaderless Resistance in an attempt to cement his position as a leader and thinker in the white separatist movement. Indeed, Leaderless Resistance is taken by some to be a technique of splitting an organization into an above-ground wing that primarily deals in propaganda, and an underground wing that actually carries out terrorist attacks.
Substantial evidence of Al Qaeda’s reliance on leaderless resistance is extant. Incidents in the United States over the past 16 years or so, which are likely examples of leaderless-resistance actions, include:
• January 25, 1992: Two CIA employees are shot and three others wounded outside the agency’s Langley headquarters by Mir Aimal Kasi.
• March 1, 1994: Rashid Baz boards a bus in Brooklyn and opens fire on Jewish Yeshiva students.
• February 25, 1997: Ali Hassan Abu Ali Kamal fires on tourists on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.
• July 31, 1997: Lafi Khalil and Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer are arrested in their New York restaurant after police find five pipe bombs, which the pair planned to set off in the NYC subways.
• July 4, 2002: Hesham Mohamed Hadayet attacks the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport, killing two and wounding four.
• September 6, 2002: German police arrest an American woman and her Turkish fiancée in Heidelberg, alleging they planned to detonate pipe bombs in the nearby U.S. military base.
• May 9, 2007: Six radical Islamists are arrested in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and are charged with plotting to bomb the Fort Dix Army Base.
Examples of the Leaderless Resistance credo among animal-rights and eco-terrorist organizations include:
• Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), a Worcestershire, England, organization targeted in particular Huntingdon Life Sciences, among the world’s largest animal-testing laboratories. Founded in 1999, SHAC’s main website states under “Who we are”:
SHAC is a worldwide campaign, and the first of its kind, with SHAC groups in the UK, USA, Holland, Germany, Italy and many other countries all uniting to target HLS and the companies that support them globally.
SHAC is an innovative campaign, and has received worldwide media coverage for the success of its methods, the intelligence of its tactics and the determination of its supporters.
Please note that SHAC does not encourage or incite illegal activity.
• Earth Liberation Front (ELF) modeled itself after the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) (see above). Its adherents claim credit for numerous acts of vandalism against such targets as logging companies, luxury real estate developments and SUV dealerships, as well as the freeing of animals. With regard to the latter, ELF affiliates joined with Alf affiliates in November 1997 in Burns, Oregon, to cause a half-million dollars in damage to the office, barns and other facilities of a horse and burro breeding company.
• Also available on the web are such “leaderless resistance” tools as “ARSON-AROUND with Auntie ALF: ALF’s Arson Guide,” which two Long Island teens, who pleaded guilty in February 2001 of burning down housing currently under construction, had accessed.
Harassing scientists at home: a case study in animal-rights leaderless resistance
On Sunday, February 24, 2008, a U.C.-Santa Cruz breast-cancer scientist and her family were enjoying a birthday party, when a loud knock came from their home’s front door. The researcher’s husband responded and was greeted by six masked visitors, one of whom smacked him on the hand before they got back into their car and drove off. This was not the first such incident at Santa Cruz, where the cancer researchers use mice in their labs. Earlier intrusions included graffiti, such as “murderer” and “torturer,” and strewn garbage in front of other scientists’ homes. Similar assaults were reported in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.
UCLA’s Dr. Edythe D. London, who uses primates to study addiction, has been a particular target of ALF adherents. Her house has been both firebombed and flooded.
UCLA’s Center for Neurovisceral Sciences and Women’s Health describes Dr. London’s work as follows:
Dr. London's research has advanced the study of substance abuse and the development of new approaches and probes for studies of brain function. She has edited several books and authored over 200 original research articles and over 60 reviews. Her most recognized accomplishments involve PET scanning of human subjects who suffer from addictions. Dr. London's group was the first to show a relationship between drug craving and activity of brain regions that link memory with emotion. She also showed that drug abusers have structural abnormalities in prefrontal cortex and deficits in decision-making tasks that depend on prefrontal cortex function. Her work influenced other researchers to look toward the frontal lobe for an understanding of the compulsive self-administration of drugs despite detrimental effects, which characterizes drug addiction. Most recently, she and her colleagues have developed new probes for external imaging of those receptors in the brain where nicotine binds to produce its behavioral actions.
By contrast, on March 13, 2008, the ALF website posted the following anonymous notice :
At the start of last week, in Irvine, CA, a van owned by UCLA went up in flames. For all of those affected you have the UCLA primate vivisection program to blame.
It is unacceptable for us to see, hear, and know what is going on in our animal labs without taking action. Every time we pass someone like Arthur in the hallways and have to witness his stomach churning grin or watch Joaquin double checking the door locks on his little red Mercedes we have to choke back a crippling amount of disgust and hatred. It is becoming almost impossible to hold back. Then we hear the monkeys wailing and screaming and we find the strength to stay put.
We are driven to show the world the compassionless support that UCLA gives to these monkey killers and to do anything we can to end the needless suffering that the primates are forced to face.
The end of UCLA vivisection is coming. We urge you to start switching over to non-animal protocol without haste.
-LA ALF
Inevitably, these illegal actions and the attendant property losses, increased security costs, and human anxiety, have led the above-ground parties to clash in court. A leading advocate for ALF is Christine L. Garcia of the Animal Law Office in San Francisco. She describes her specialty as follows:
Animal Law includes any type of legal action, whether it be transactional or litigation, that affects the rights, standing and/or welfare of an animal. It is a new area of the law where sparse pro-animal case and statutory law exists in terms of defining, establishing and protecting the welfare of animals.
Animal Law varies from litigation issues involving incidents of wrongful death, veterinarian medical malpractice, animal activist Constitutional Rights protections, defense at vicious dog hearings, products liability litigation against companies that kill animals through the "proper" use of the product, and transactional issues such as drafting estates & trusts and facilitating the non-profit organizational governance.
In 2006 Garcia represented SHAC USA in a classic case of leaderless resistance. The action was initiated by Valent USA Corporation, maker of insect and weed control products. Valent sought injunctive relief against SHAC USA, which defended itself under California’s SLAPP statute. A special motion to strike Valent’s complaint as a meritless SLAPP suit was filed by SHAC USA under section 425.16 of the California Code on October 29, 2004, and was originally set down for hearing on December 16, 2004. SHAC USA's core position was that the claims asserted in Valent’s complaint centered around SHAC USA's “primar[y]” existence as a website and “informational newsletter” supporting the activities of animal activists in their 18-country effort to shut down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a laboratory and product development company that, as noted above, performs product testing for clients on live animals. SHAC USA conceded that this campaign also involved pressuring HLS's clients to end their business relationships with HLS, and that the activities of SHAC USA included the “occasional[ ]” organization of “legal public demonstrations regarding HLS and its clients and affiliates.” These actions include activities against Valent, an HLS customer.
However, in making these concessions, SHAC USA distinguished itself from the animal rights movement known as Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) and SHAC UK, claiming also that SHAC USA had no members and that it could not be held liable for the acts of individuals who attended demonstrations “that were organized by other persons or groups.” It also contended that the activities attributed to SHAC USA, as complained of by Valent, were all protected by freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment of the federal constitution.
The California court closely considered the state’s SLAPP statute:
As explained in Tutor-Saliba Corp. v. Herrera (2006) 136 Cal.App.4th 604 ( Tutor-Saliba ), “Section 425.16, commonly referred to as the anti-SLAPP law, provides in relevant part: ‘(a) The Legislature finds and declares that there has been a disturbing increase in lawsuits brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances. The Legislature finds and declares that it is in the public interest to encourage continued participation in matters of public significance, and that this participation should not be chilled through abuse of the judicial process. To this end, this section shall be construed broadly. [¶] (b)(1) A cause of action against a person arising from any act of that person in furtherance of the person's right of petition or free speech under the United States or California Constitution in connection with a public issue shall be subject to a special motion to strike, unless the court determines that the plaintiff has established that there is a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim. [¶] (2) In making its determination, the court shall consider the pleadings, and supporting and opposing affidavits stating the facts upon which the liability or defense is based. [¶] (3) If the court determines that the plaintiff has established a probability that he or she will prevail on the claim, neither that determination nor the fact of that determination shall be admissible in evidence at any later stage of the case, and no burden of proof or degree of proof otherwise applicable shall be affected by that determination.... [¶] (e) As used in this section, ‘act in furtherance of a person's right of petition or free speech under the United States or California Constitution in connection with a public issue’ includes: (1) any written or oral statement or writing made before a legislative, executive, or judicial proceeding, or any other official proceeding authorized by law; (2) any written or oral statement or writing made in connection with an issue under consideration or review by a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other official proceeding authorized by law; (3) any written or oral statement or writing made in a place open to the public or a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest; (4) or any other conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of petition or the constitutional right of free speech in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest.” [¶] ‘Under the statute, the court makes a two-step determination: “First, the court decides whether the defendant has made a threshold showing that the challenged cause of action is one arising from protected activity. (425.16, subd. (b)(1).) ‘A defendant meets this burden by demonstrating that the act underlying the plaintiff's cause fits one of the categories spelled out in section 425.16, subdivision (e)’ [citation]. If the court finds that such a showing has been made, it must then determine whether the plaintiff has demonstrated a probability of prevailing on the claim. (§ 425.16, subd. (b)(1)....)” ( Navellier v. Sletten (2002) 29 Cal.4th 82, 88....) “Only a cause of action that satisfies both prongs of the anti-SLAPP statute-i.e., that arises from protected speech or petitioning and lacks even minimal merit-is a SLAPP, subject to being stricken under the statute.” ( [ Id.] at p. 89.)'' ( Tutor-Saliba, supra, 136 Cal.App.4th at pp. 608-609, citing Thomas v. Quintero (2005) 126 Cal.App.4th 635, 644-645, italics omitted.)”
The evidence taken into account by the court was described in the opinion as follows:
“This limited record reveals that the SHAC USA website postings contain no home addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, or any other personal information regarding Demouth or Zisook, other than identifying their employer. The only mention of these two appellants describes the following demonstration in front of their homes: ‘Received from CA activists: [¶] On the night of July 2 we decided to give some animal torture profiteers a visit. We were haunted by the clashing images of those who profit from animal torture sleeping soundly in their beds and the image of four month old beagle puppies being punched in the face and sleeping in their own excrement. [¶] First on our list was Robin Denmouth [ sic ] who is General Counsel and Secretary for HLS customer Valent Corporation. Robin appeared to be in for the night. With our trusty bullhorn and a personal alarm we let them know that their [ sic ] is no time for puppy killers to relax. [¶] We then hopped on over to Leslie Kvasnicka's house. Leslie is Valent's Manager of Quality Assurance and Corporate Safety. Leslie apparently has a soft spot for manatees judging by her manatee shaped mailbox. Too bad she has no soft spot for the animals that linger inside the walls of HLS. Give her a call and let her know what scum she is. (work) 925-[----]-[-----]. Last, but not least on our list was Elsa Zisook. Let them know there is no rest for the wicked! [¶] We're just getting started Valent. Cut your ties with HLS!’
“In James K. Schmidt's declaration, he described the investigation he conducted to determine to whom the Internet domain name “www.hlscustomers.com” was registered. Schmidt determined it was registered to SHAC USA. The attorneys' declarations primarily authenticated documents, most of which were not admitted except as discussed above.”
Dismissing Valent’s case, the court concluded, “This record is plainly inadequate to show a likelihood that appellants' would prevail on any of their causes of action against SHAC USA.”
When UCLA sought injunctive relief in 2008 on behalf of Dr. London and her colleagues, Attorney Garcia represented the defendants. Garcia’s immediate response was to contend that the university’s action was retaliation against a suit she had earlier brought against the Santa Monica Police Department and two UCLA employees earlier.
Whether that accusation was true or not, on February 21, 2008, Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg signed a temporary restraining order in UCLA’s favor against the Animal Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Brigade, the UCLA Primate Freedom Project and five protesters believed to be affiliated with those groups. The judge’s order “forbids the activists to engage in acts of harassment and threats of violence, and requires that they stay away from anyone known to be a university employee involved in animal research, UCLA's attorney John C. Hueston said. It also ordered the activists and their groups to remove the researchers' personal information from Web sites that name them as targets of their protest.”
Spokesman Jerry Vlasak of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office responded to this suit and subsequent efforts to enact protective legislation, commenting, “If someone’s willing to risk 20 years of prison by … burning a building used for animal torture, I don’t think they’re going to worry about a silly restraining order that UCLA cooks up. The same goes for AB 2296 [the proposed statute].” Sadly, Vlasak may be dead right. A federal statute, upon which California’s legislature seeks to model its new law, has been on the books since 1992:
Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992.
Public Law 102-346--Aug. 26, 1992
102nd Congress
An Act To Protect Animal Enterprises.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the "Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992".
SEC. 2. ANIMAL ENTERPRISE TERRORISM.
(a) IN GENERAL.--Title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after section 42 the following:
"§ 43. Animal enterprise terrorism
"(a) OFFENSE.--Whoever--
"(1) travels in interstate or foreign commerce, or uses or causes to be used the mail or any facility in interstate or foreign commerce, for the purpose of causing physical disruption to the functioning of an animal enterprise; and
"(2) intentionally causes physical disruption to the functioning of an animal enterprise by intentionally stealing, damaging, or causing the loss of, any property (including animals or records) used by the animal enterprise, and thereby causes economic damage exceeding $10,000 to that enterprise, or conspires to do so; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
"(b) AGGRAVATED OFFENSE.--
"(1) SERIOUS BODILY INJURY.-- Whoever in the course of a violation of subsection (a) causes serious bodily injury to another individual shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
"(2) DEATH.--Whoever in the course of a violation of subsection (a) causes the death of an individual shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for life or for any term of years.
"(c) RESTITUTION.-- An order of restitution under section 3663 of this title with respect to a violation of this section may also include restitution--
"(1) for the reasonable cost of repeating any experimentation that was interrupted or invalidated as a result of the offense; and
"(2)) the loss of food production or farm income reasonably attributable to the offense.
"d) DEFINITIONS.-- As used in this section--
"(1) the term 'animal enterprise' means--
"(A) a commercial or academic enterprise that uses animals for food or fiber production, agriculture, research, or testing;
"(B) a zoo, aquarium, circus, rodeo, or lawful competitive animal event; or
"(C) any fair or similar event intended to advance agricultural arts and sciences;
"(2) the term 'physical disruption' does not include any lawful disruption that results from lawful public, governmental, or animal enterprise employee reaction to the disclosure of information about an animal enterprise;
"(3) the term 'economic damage' means the replacement costs of lost or damaged property or records, the costs of repeating an interrupted or invalidated experiment, or the loss of profits; and
"(4) the term 'serious bodily injury' has the meaning given that term in section 1365 of this title.
"9e) NON-PREEMPTION.--Nothing in this section preempts any State law.".
(b) CLERICAL AMENDMENT.--The item relating to section 43 in table of sections at the beginning of chapter 3 of title, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:
"43. Animal enterprise terrorism.".
SEC. 3. STUDY OF EFFECT OF TERRORISM ON CERTAIN ANIMAL ENTERPRISES.
(a) STUDY.-- The Attorney General and the Secretary of Agriculture shall jointly conduct a study on the extent and effects of domestic and international terrorism on enterprises using animals for food or fiber production, agriculture, research, or testing.
(b) SUBMISSION OF STUDY.-- Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Agriculture shall submit a report that describes the results of the study conducted under subsection (a) together with any appropriate recommendations and legislation to the Congress.
Approved August 26, 1992.
What has been the effect of this federal statute? In the words of a scientist who says that he himself has been victimized by animal-rights activists,
After accepting the responsibility to write this article, I immediately plowed into the subject expecting to find myself awash in information about the Act on the internet. Having been detoured there on many occasions, I was nervous about the task of ferreting the relevant from the extraneous, so I fired up my favorite search engine and browsed the web for information on two items, the "Animal Enterprise Protection Act" and the "Animal Welfare Act," fully anticipating both searches to yield the standard mega-response that typically goes with such unsophisticated search strategies. To my amazement, the phrase "Animal Enterprise Protection Act" yielded less than 40 hits. This simple test set the stage for a remarkable discovery. Unlike the Animal Welfare Act, a topic that yielded more than 1,600 hits on my global search of the internet, no one seemed to care very much about the Act that offered such hope for so many just seven years ago.
I immediately picked up the phone and began calling colleagues who I knew could help me understand how this potentially important piece of legislation, written to protect honest users of animals from animal rights terrorists, had suffered such undignified rejection at the hands of the federal prosecutors it was designed to energize. I was then stunned to learn that no one has been prosecuted under the provisions of the Act. No one. Not a single soul since the Animal Enterprise Protection Act became the law of the land.
While there may be many explanations for the dormancy of prosecutors in the use of this legal tool, we can all be certain that the failure to exercise the Act in the courts is unrelated to the level of animal rights activity during the period since its enactment. On the contrary, a strong case can be made that the overall level of animal enterprise terrorism in the US has dramatically increased since 1992. Numerous laboratory break-ins have occurred during this time frame, violence and vandalism at fur farms are on the rise, as are animal releases from research and animal husbandry facilities around the world. During this period, death and bomb threats have continued to flow from activists as freely as small talk at the local tavern, and animal rights leaders continue to egg on their foot soldiers with inflammatory talk of revolution.
The author criticizes the act for carrying penalties that are too light to deter, as well as for failing to forbid or punish the many minor acts of humiliation, such as “pies in the face,” that fall short of anything a federal prosecutor would care to handle. He notes that two attempts to pursue private actions fell flat, dismissed because the courts held that the act was a purely criminal statute that accorded no such right to a civil suit. The writer concludes, “The question that I pose as central to this discussion and the one that I had to grapple with as I wondered about my decision to write this essay is, ‘Can the handful of philosophers, lawyers, and political activists among us who are promoting the idea that ethical distinctions cannot be made among members of the animal kingdom ever truly hope to win this extreme argument that they wage?’ I seriously doubt it. But if they were successful, those other human tragedies to which I refer would be compounded by the Alice in Wonderland atmosphere that would have consumed us.”
Dr. Walsh’s article was published in 2000. With the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it was not only Uncle Sam’s attitude toward Islamic terrorists that changed. In the words of an Alf adherent:
Like the amorphous category of domestic terrorism, a keystone in the USA PATRIOT Act attack on civil liberties, the frightening thing about the AEPA is its strategic vagueness that subsumes any and every form of protest and demonstration against exploitative industries to a criminal act “ specifically, a terrorist act. Thus, the actions of two or more people can be labeled terrorists if they leaflet a circus, protest an experimental lab, block a road to protect a forest, do a tree-sit, or block the doors of a fur store. On the sweeping interpretations of terrorism in such legislation, Martin Luther King, Mahatmas Gandhi, and Cesar Chavez would today be vilified and imprisoned as terrorists, since the intent of their principled boycott campaigns was precisely to cause economic damage to unethical businesses. And since the AEPA, like the legal system in general, classifies animals as property, their theft. (
The catalyst for this diatribe against the federal statute was the 2006 trial of seven SHAC supporters under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. Bringing this chapter full-circle, the trial took place in Trenton, New Jersey.
On March 3, 2006, a federal jury in Trenton, New Jersey convicted six members of SHAC of "terrorism and Internet stalking," according to the New York Times, finding them guilty of using their website to "incite attacks" on those who did business with HLS. In September 2006, the so-called "SHAC 7" received jail sentences of 3 to 6 years. Originally, seven individuals were charged, along with Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA. The individuals were Kevin Kjonaas (former president of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA), Lauren Gazzola, Jacob Conroy, Joshua Harper, Andrew Stepanian, Darius Fullmer, and John McGee. McGee was later dropped from the case. The defendants were charged with conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, in the first application of the 1992 statute. Kjonaas, Gazzola, Conroy, and Harper were also charged with conspiracy to harass using a telecommunications device (sending black faxes). Kjonaas, Gazzola, Conroy, and SHAC USA were charged with conspiracy to commit interstate stalking and three counts of interstate stalking via the Internet. The case first went to trial in June 2005, but ended in a mistrial when one of the key defense attorneys fell ill during the opening statement. It resumed on February 6, 2006. The defense of the SHAC 7 rested largely on the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that political speech is legal unless it can be shown that a defendant has told specific individuals to commit specific, imminent acts of violence. On March 3, 2006, the defendants were convicted and sentenced to an aggregate of 24 years in prison, and ordered to pay a joint restitution of $1,000,001.00.
The New York Times reported the trial as follows :
Six Animal Rights Advocates Are Convicted of Terrorism
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
An animal rights group and six of its members were convicted of terrorism and Internet stalking yesterday by a federal jury that found them guilty of using their Web site to incite attacks on those who did business with or worked for a British company that runs an animal testing laboratory in New Jersey.
The case was the first test of the Animal Enterprise Terror Act, enacted in 1992 to curb the most aggressive tactics used by activists. The verdict, which came after 14 hours of deliberation, was called an insidious threat to free speech by some activists, but was cheered by research scientists, some of whom are lobbying Congress to tighten restrictions on protesters.
During the three-week trial, defense lawyers acknowledged that a Web site run by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty posted home addresses and other personal information about animal researchers and others. But the activists said they were simply trying to shame their targets into dissociating themselves from the company, Huntingdon Life Sciences, and they disavowed any involvement with the vandalism, death threats, computer hacking and pipe bombs against those on the Web site.
Although federal prosecutors presented no evidence that the defendants directly participated in the vandalism and violence, they showed jurors that members of the group made speeches and Web postings from 2000 to 2004 that celebrated the violence and repeatedly used the word "we" to claim credit for it.
Prosecutors also produced telephone records indicating that the president of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, Kevin Kjonaas, called a man charged with bombing a California biotech lab shortly after the explosion.
Jurors were also shown a videotape of the group's director, Lauren Gazzola, at a protest in Boston, making reference to the previous acts of violence and warning a target, "The police can't protect you!"
The defendants showed little emotion as the jury foreman announced that they had been found guilty on all counts, but after jurors left the room, Ms. Gazzola wept and Mr. Kjonaas turned to the 20 supporters in the courtroom and offered a wan smile and a shrug.
They face prison terms of up to 23 years, but are likely to serve no more than 7 under federal sentencing guidelines, according to Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the United States attorney's office.
Pam Ferdin, who became president of the group after Mr. Kjonaas was indicted, called the verdict an insidious curb on free speech and said she was "ashamed of the jury."
"Anyone who writes anything on an e-mail or on a Web site is being treated like we're in a fascist state," said Ms. Ferdin, a former child star who played Felix Unger's daughter on "The Odd Couple" and was the voice of Lucy in the "Peanuts" cartoons. "Our forefathers fought for the right to fee speech."
But the prosecutor, Charles B. McKenna, praised the decision, saying that jurors had correctly found that the First Amendment does not protect speech that is likely to incite violence.
Although Ms. Ferdin said that the verdict would most likely lead the group to disband, the group's campaign has succeeded in causing substantial economic damage to Huntingdon, where, the group claims, 500 animals a day are killed and dissected as part of drug and cosmetic research. By concentrating on a wide range of people who invest in, and do business with, Huntingdon, the campaign led many companies to sever their ties with the lab, including insurance companies like Aetna and Marsh and major financial institutions including Goldman Sachs and the Bank of America.
One group of researchers, Americans for Medical Progress, warned that the verdict would lead to more violence and called on federal lawmakers to strengthen the laws against animal rights extremists.
"We've seen a dramatic rise in the number of criminal actions against research over the past five years," said Dr. John Young, a veterinarian who is chairman of the research organization. "There's no doubt today's guilty verdicts will provoke still more acts of harassment, intimidation and violence. That is terrorism, and it must be stopped."
Ms. Ferdin vowed that the campaign against animal testing would continue, despite the verdict against her group.
Nate Schweber contributed reporting from Trenton for this article.
Little wonder, then, that in 2008 the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness issues its “Intelligence Assessment.”
That Which Does Not Kill Us…
How, then, does this terrorist threat benefit higher education? First, enhanced security measures aimed at protecting research facilities from animal-rights terrorists inevitably spill over into added protection for institutions’ intellectual property and enhanced alertness, beyond what might occur in a context of anti-Al Qaeda measures, this latter appearing to be far more remote than threats posed by the “crazies” discussed in Chapter Two and the animal-rights crowd, as outlined here.
Second, by forcing us to consider how we run the animal-related aspects of our research programs, the ALFs and SHACs push the advance of research and testing techniques which may be more efficient, more accurate and/or more safe and sanitary than animal experimentation. Stated in its broadest terms, the War on Terror in all its forms --- like any major war in American history --- pushes technological advances. Higher education, as much or more than any other sector of the American economy, reaps the benefits of this technological imperative.
The FBI has contended that ALF and ELF “have become the most active criminal extremist elements in the United States.” While the threat, thus, has greatly increased, so too has official interest in these groups. One might credibly claim that the escalation of violent confrontation --- such as a willingness to harass researchers in their homes --- is in direct correlation to society’s unwillingness to tolerate these organizations’ positions and activities and the increased pressure placed upon them by legislators and law enforcement agencies in the wake of Nine-Eleven. Bundled in with Islamic extremists after the World Trade Center attack, they find themselves social pariahs. They are likely to discover that their more strident speech and terrorist tactics will backfire, as our industry and the criminal justice system combine to confront the enhanced threat with improved tactics and technologies.
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