SEATTLE — Federal prosecutors announced six arrests Thursday in what they described as a nine-year investigation into several arson cases and the toppling of an electrical transmission tower by environmental protesters in the Pacific Northwest.
Those charged were said to be loosely connected as followers of the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, a radical environmental group.
The arsons were at two lumber company sites and a poplar farm in Oregon, and at an animal-inspection service in Olympia, Wash. The tower was knocked down 26 miles east of Bend, Ore., on Dec. 30, 1999.
Those arrested range in age from 28 to 40 and are from Virginia, Arizona, New York and Oregon.
The indictments "illustrate that we will pursue these arsons as long as we have to solve them," said Kent Robinson, chief of the Oregon criminal division of the U.S. Justice Department.
He said investigations were continuing in other arsons and vandalism in the region.
Rod Coronado of Tucson, who described himself as an unofficial spokesperson for the ELF and the related Animal Liberation Front, said he could not comment on the specific charges faced by the six, but said he thought federal authorities were "grasping at straws."
"This is the government prioritizing what it believes is something important to corporations and industry who have political friends," said Coronado, who is under a federal indictment in Arizona on charges of conspiracy to stop a mountain lion hunt.
Coronado said in a telephone interview that many ELF followers believed that "environmental destruction is preventable only through such direct action."
The FBI and the Building Industry Assn., a Washington, D.C.-based group, have offered as much as $100,000 for tips leading to the arrest and conviction of eco-vandals, but authorities did not say whether rewards were a factor in the arrests.
Charged in the 2001 fires at the poplar farm and at a lumber company in Glendale, Ore., were Stanislas Gregory Meyerhoff, 28, and Daniel Gerard McGowan, 31. Meyerhoff is a student at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Va., and McGowan is from New York City. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of arson and using incendiary devices.
Meyerhoff was also charged, with Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, 28, of Portland, in the sabotage of the electrical tower. Gerlach faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted of conspiring to destroy an energy facility, prosecutors said.
