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The Intercept
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
How the FBI and Big Ag Started Treating Animal Rights Activists as Terrorists
As COVID raged across northern California in March 2020, a pair of farm industry groups were worried about a different threat: animal rights activists. Citing an FBI memo warning that activists trespassing on factory farms could spread a viral bird disease, the groups wrote a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom to argue that their longtime antagonists were more than a nuisance. They were potentially terrorists threatening the entire food chain. 'The safety of our food supply has never been more critical, and we must work together to prevent these clear threats of domestic terrorism from being realized,' the groups wrote. A coalition of transparency and animal rights groups on Monday released that letter, along with a cache of government documents, to highlight the tight links between law enforcement and agriculture industry groups. Activists say those documents show an unseemly relationship between the FBI and Big Ag. The government–industry fearmongering has accelerated with the spread of bird flu enabled by the industry's own practices, they say. The executive director of Property of the People, the nonprofit that obtained the documents via public records requests, said in a statement that the documents paint a damning picture. 'Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.' 'Factory farms are a nightmare for animals and public health. Yet, big ag lobbyists and their FBI allies are colluding to conceal this cruelty and rampant disease by shifting blame to the very activists working to alert the public,' Ryan Shapiro said. 'Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.' Industry groups did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, the FBI defended its relationship with 'members of the private sector.' 'Our goal is to protect our communities from unlawful activity while at the same time upholding the Constitution,' the agency said in an unsigned statement. 'The FBI focuses on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.' The dozens of documents trace the industry's relationship with law enforcement agencies over a period stretching from 2015, during James Comey's tenure as FBI director, to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the more recent outbreak of bird flu, also known as avian influenza. Animal rights activists have long said that federal law enforcement seems determined to put them in the same category as Al Qaeda. In the 2000s, a wave of arrests of environmental and animal rights activists — who sometimes took aggressive actions such as burning down slaughterhouses and timber mills — was dubbed 'the Green Scare.' The law enforcement focus on animal rights groups continued well after Osama bin Laden's death, news clippings and documents obtained by Property of the People show. In 2015, a veterinarian with the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate told a trade publication, Dairy Herd Management, that eco-terrorists were a looming threat. 'The domestic threat in some ways is more critical than international,' Stephen Goldsmith said. 'Animal rights and environmental groups have committed more acts of terrorism than Al Qaeda.' Four years later, emails obtained by Property of the People show, Goldsmith met with representatives of a leading farm trade group, the Animal Agriculture Alliance, at a government–industry conference. The meeting happened in April 2019, and within weeks the AAA's president was warning Goldsmith in an email about planned protests by 'by the extremist group Direct Action Everywhere,' a Berkeley-based group that conducts 'open rescues' of animals. Within months, the FBI was touting the threat from animal rights groups in stark terms in an official communication: the intelligence note partially produced by Goldsmith's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. The August 2019 note written with the FBI Sacramento field office said activists were accelerating the spread of Virulent Newcastle disease, a contagious viral disease afflicting poultry and other birds. The note claimed that activists were failing to follow proper biosafety protocols as they targeted different farms, and could spread the disease between farms on their clothes or other inanimate objects. While the note did not point to genetic testing or formal scientific analysis to back up this assertation, it said the FBI offices had 'high confidence' in their assessment. Activists have rejected the idea that they are not following safety protocols, pointing to protests where they have donned full-body disposable suits. The most withering criticism of the FBI note may have come from another law enforcement agency, however. Four months after the FBI document came out, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center rebutted the idea that activists were spreading disease. Those activists, the Bay Area-based fusion center said in the note to local law enforcement, were nonviolent and posed a 'diminishing threat to law enforcement.' Citing the activists' use of safety precautions and U.S. Department of Agriculture research, the fusion center said that 'animal rights activists are probably not responsible' for any of the Virulent Newcastle disease outbreaks. Emails obtained by Property of the People suggest that the FBI regularly shared information with the Animal Agriculture Alliance, as both sought to spotlight the threat of animal rights activists. As new animal disease outbreaks occurred, the activists were regularly cast as potential vectors. The nonprofit trade group, based in Washington, D.C., describes itself as an organization that defends farmers, ranchers, processors, and other businesses along the food supply chain from animal rights activists, on whom it regularly distributes monitoring reports to its members. The industry's concerns grew in 2020, as activists created a nationwide map of farms, dubbed Project Counterglow, that served as reference for locating protest sites. The AAA's president, Hannah Thompson-Weeman, sent out an email to industry leaders hours after the map was published. 'This is obviously extremely troubling for a lot of reasons. We are contacting our FBI and DHS contacts to raise our concerns but we welcome any additional input on anything that can be done,' she said. In multiple emails, Goldsmith, the FBI veterinarian, distributed to other FBI employees emails from the AAA warning about upcoming protests by the activist outfits, including Direct Action Everywhere. Another email from a local government agency in California showed that the AAA sent out a 'confidential' message to members in June 2023 asking them to track and report 'animal rights activity.' The trade group provided members with a direct FBI email address for reporting what it called ARVE: 'animal rights violent extremists.' The AAA was not the only industry group using the FBI as a resource. The March 2020 letter to Newsom casting activists as potential terrorists was penned by the leaders of the California Farm Bureau Federation and Milk Producers Council. Those groups did not respond to requests for comment. As the bird flu outbreak ramped up in 2022 and beyond, the industry's claims that animal rights activists could spread disease were echoed by government officials, emails obtained by Property of the People show. Animal rights activists say the claims by law enforcement and industry groups that activists are spreading disease have had real-world consequences. In California, college student Zoe Rosenberg faces up to 5-and-a-half years in prison for taking part in what movement members describe as an 'open rescue' of four chickens from a Sonoma County farm. 'It's always a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists.' Rosenberg, a member of Direct Action Everywhere, has been identified by name in monitoring reports from the Animal Agriculture Alliance. For the past year and a half, she has been on an ankle monitor and intense supervision after prosecutors alleged in a December 2023 court hearing that she was a 'biosecurity risk' because of ongoing bird flu outbreaks. Rosenberg said last week she was taken aback by the similar allegations contained in previously private emails between law enforcement and industry. 'Instead of taking responsibility for what they are doing, they are trying to blame us. Of course, it's always a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists or framed as terrorists,' she said. 'It just all feels backwards.'
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Government Seeking Wild Punishment for Man Accused of Vandalizing Tesla Dealership
Since Elon Musk took the mantle of power thanks to Donald Trump, Tesla has become a universal focus of protest around the world. In the US, frustrated taxpayers have taken to the streets to occupy dealerships, steal tires, and vandalize Teslas wherever they appear. In response, the federal government has declared a crackdown on dissent. A recently formed FBI-ATF taskforce is said to be working to identify vandals and arsonists on behalf of Tesla — even as Musk decries accusations that the US has descended into oligarchy. Those allegations aren't likely to go away if Attorney General Pam Bondi has anything to say about it. She recently announced that the Justice Department will seek a staggering 20-year federal prison sentence for Cooper Jo Frederick, a Colorado man accused of vandalizing a Tesla Service Center earlier in March. "I've made it clear, if you take part in a wave of domestic terrorism of Tesla properties, we will find you, arrest you, and put you behind bars," Bondi said in a video posted on X-formerly-Twitter. "Let this be a warning: you can run, but you cannot hide. Justice is coming." Bondi's demand for a 20-year stint comes weeks after she announced charges against three other defendants accused of destroying Tesla cars and charging stations. A Justice Department press release states that each defendant faces a "minimum penalty of five years and up to 20 years in prison" for property destruction. "The Department of Justice is committed to ending all acts of violence and arson directed at Tesla properties and otherwise," it concludes. The monumental penalties are part of a push by the Trump and Musk administration to equate property damage and vandalism with "domestic terrorism," even in incidents like this one, in which no people were harmed. Musk and Bondi have also both repeated unsubstantiated claims that Tesla protests and vandalism are funded and organized by a shadowy cabal that needs to be taken down. It's not unlike the rhetoric used during a federal crackdown on nonviolent environmental and animal activism known as the "Green Scare." In May of 2007, two saboteurs with the Earth Liberation Front were charged with 12 and 16 years in federal prison for torching a forest ranger station, a police substation, an SUV dealership, and a tree farm. According to The Intercept, fears of property damage led the fur and animal testing industries to increase "their efforts to convince the FBI and the DOJ to treat animal rights and environmental protestors as terrorists." This led to an expansion of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, allowing acts of property damage to be prosecuted as acts of domestic terrorism. Still, the Tesla crackdown is a notable stepping stone in what seems like ever-harsher sentencing guidelines for acts of non-violent vandalism, which feels especially stark when the goal is protecting the property of a corporation run by the sitting president's best buddy. For context, in 2022, a Philadelphia woman was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison after pleading guilty to torching two police cruisers during 2020 protests. The 17.5 year difference between her sentence and the threat of Frederick's 20-year stint — for roughly the same crime — suggests that Musk's involvement in US politics comes with a heavy hand. Mess with Tesla, and the government will make an example out of you. Even disregarding Tesla's special treatment, prison sentences in the US are already higher than in most nations. In 2022, an analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice found that the US is a global outlier in its use of prison sentences of 10 years or more. And when it comes to non-violent property damage, sentencing has skyrocketed in recent years, from an average of 18.3 months in 2016 to 60 months in 2023. All told, it's a troubling time as demonstrations against Tesla become a nearly everyday occurrence. If vandalism can be prosecuted as domestic terrorism, how soon until peaceful protests incur the wrath of Musk's FBI? More on oligarchy: Mothers and Children Are Already Dying Because of Elon Musk's Cuts
