Testimony of Representative Frank D. Riggs before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on
Crime
Chairman McCollum, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear
before you today to testify on the serious matter of ecoterrorism and its effect on the people,
local economies and communities of this nation.
I am the Representative of the First Congressional District of California. The First District
stretches from the Napa Valley in the south, along 350 miles of California’s North Coast to the
Oregon border. To put that in perspective, the district is twenty percent larger than the State of
Massachusetts. The North Coast is known for its abundance of Redwood and Douglas Fir
forests. Today, as in generations past, men and women come to this place to make a living as
foresters and loggers and mill workers. These environmental stewards manage the forests with
love for the environment and rational science to provide wood for our nation and a future for
their children. Unfortunately, times have changed and the work has become dangerous due to
the radical philosophies of so-called environmentalists. These extremists do not only target
loggers; they target any one who expresses a different opinion or philosophy than they do.
On October 16, 1997, my Eureka, California District Office was rocked by what sounded like a
thunderous explosion. In fact, the sound was that of a 500-pound tree stump being dumped off a
truck onto the office foyer floor. Upon responding to the horrific sound, my two female staff
members were greeted by the visage of several Earth First! terrorists, one wearing a black ski
mask, and another wearing dark goggles and a hood. The masked marauders – wearing combat
boots and dressed in black from head to toe — and their cohorts, after the initial “stump drop,”
then dumped four large garbage bags of sawdust, pine needles and leaves all over the
congressional office, over computers, desks and the floor. All the while, one of them videotaped
the attack with a handheld video camera, making a point to get right into the faces of each of the
two staff members for “close-up” shots.
After the invasion, the maurders, via walkie-talkie, called in the “peaceful” protesters: four
harmless looking women who would – once the masked men left – be the “public face” of the
“protest,” left behind for the media to cover. For the next two hours, these women would then sit
around the tree stump with their arms locked in a metal device designed for the sole purpose of
resisting arrest.
And why was my office targeted? The trespassers were protesting the acquisition of the
Headwaters Forest, a 3500-acre tract of old growth Redwood forest. A private company, Pacific
Lumber, which has logged in Humboldt County, California for over 100 years, currently owns
the parcel. In exchange for their land, the Federal government and the State of California, in a
bipartisan pact, agreed to compensate Pacific Lumber $380 million in taxpayer funds to forever
preserve 7,500 acres of the precious forest and some surrounding land. I had a hand in crafting
the deal, as did Senator Diane Feinstein, and that made me a target. The environmentalists,
specifically Earth First!, wanted 60,000 acres preserved: a amount that would end all logging in
Humboldt County, and leave over 1,000 people out of work in an already depressed area where
unemployment hovers over 10%. But Earth First! wanted more and they were determined to
terrorize any one who opposed them.
I believe the incident in my District Office is not a small isolated incident. It is the tip of the
iceberg and endemic of Earth First!: an organization the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
has characterized as a “militant environmental group.”
Earth First! is an organization which, while purporting to practice nonviolence, outwardly
advertises “monkeywrenching” on the Earth First! web site. Monkeywrenching, also
euphemistically called “ecotage,” is the practice of sabotaging logging equipment. The web site
also refers to such destruction of private property as “unauthorized heavy equipment
maintenance.” Earth First! also advocates tree spiking, the act of driving a metal spike into a tree
to damage a saw, or outright vandalism. The results of monkeywrenching vary. Most of the
time it causes the cessation of logging activities. Often times it causes property damage. In
Ukiah, California, which is in my Congressional District, it killed a logger. Too many times
these activities have caused grave injury and even the loss of life. Many a rigger, logger and
treefeller have suffered injury because of a severed hydraulic line or tree spike. Yet the Earth
First! website and the Earth First! Journal actually advertise and sell Ecodefense: A Field Guide
to Monkeywrenching.
Earth First! members are not simply backwoods vigilantes or merry pranksters. They are
members of a highly organized, nationwide movement bent on the destruction of the entire
natural resource industry and the families and communities bound to that livelihood. Earth First!
has put the “rights” of the tree and the insect before the rights of the humans.
Earth First! practices the politics of siege warfare. They condone the use of sit-ins to halt lawful
logging practices or, in my office, the normal operation of business. While these protests are
certainly within the rights guaranteed to every American under the Constitution, their goal is not
public awareness. Their goal is to sap local resources by tying up law enforcement and clogging
the judicial system.
Unfortunately, the end result is the loss of money from local communities’ annual budget.
Depressed rural communities, hurt by the decline of the federal timber program and the rise of
environmental zealots, are faced with smaller and smaller operating budgets. The drain on the
local treasury is immense. So many dollars are being spent on law enforcement and judicial
review, citizens are being deprived essential functions of the local government, such as
education, infrastructure maintenance and law enforcement protection.
Cuts in the education budget hurt our children, the future of America. Cuts in the infrastructure
maintenance force roads into disrepair and sidewalks to crumble. By tying up law enforcement
officers at protests, oftentimes in remote locations, citizens are no longer afforded the
community the protection their tax dollars pay for. During the October 1997 protest at my
Eureka office, no police officers were available to respond to any police emergencies anywhere
else in the city for nearly two hours. In their zeal to save nature, they cause irrevocable harm to
our communities and our children.
Earth First! also condones the assault of public officials. On March 23, 1997, a member of Earth
First! threw bison entrails on Senator Conrad Burns, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman,
and Montana Governor Marc Rocicot. Included in my testimony is a list of the most recent
attacks on public officials by environmental extremists.
Mr. Chairman, these protesters are not satisfied with simply objecting to a policy or practice,
they are intent on disrupting whatever they can for as long as they can. To this end, Earth First!
has designed and specially constructed a device known as a lock box. These lock boxes are
constructed out of two eighteen-inch steel pipes welded together in a v-shape. Inside, at the crux
of the “v,” is a steel bar to which the protesters handcuff themselves. The protesters link arms
inside these devices. Their wrists and forearms are encased in the steel pipes to prevent law
enforcement officials from breaking the protesters’ hold. The only recourse for law enforcement
is to cut the devices with a metal grinder, which generates hot sparks and is dangerous to the
surrounding area, law enforcement officers and the protesters. Or police are required to wait,
which ties up the officers for hours.
These devices are specifically designed, built and used for one purpose: to purposely and
deliberately resist arrest. They are intended to force law enforcement in using more aggressive
forms of action. In an attempt to combat the use of these devices, I have asked the elected state
officials in my Congressional District, Democrat State Senator Mike Thompson and Democrat
Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin, to enact legislation banning these devices.
Unfortunately, my request fell on deaf ears. It took a Republican outside of the North Coast to
introduce the legislation. When the bill came up for a committee vote, it was killed along party
lines by Democrats in the California state Senate. I have included a copy of the correspondence
between my office and the offices of the State officials.
As I stated earlier, the incident in my Congressional Office is not an isolated case. I believe that
the Earth First! invasion on October 16th is only a small example of a larger, some would call
criminal, nationwide organization that believes in the politics of intimidation and terror. This
organization, and all organizations like it, should be treated as all terrorist organizations are
treated in this nation: as wanton criminals.
Mr. Chairman, I come before you today to ask this subcommittee to expand the scope of the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute to include the illegal activities of
these organizations. A casual reading of the RICO statute speaks volumes about the validity of
expanding RICO authority to include ecoterrorism and ecotage.
Earth First! engages in a deliberate, orchestrated, systematic criminal conspiracy that should be
punishable under the RICO statue. While RICO is stigmatized as a law for “mobsters” or
“organized crime,” the statute has been expanded to protect all Americans from organized crime
syndicates, a moniker I believe that fits Earth First! like a black glove.
The systematic, organized ecoterrorism of Earth First! and other militant organizations must
stop. Lives have been lost. Too many communities have been damaged. Too much time has
been wasted. These organizations are a threat to every American who dares to think differently
than they do.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.