Good morning ladiesand gentlemen, my name is Dr. Randy Atlas. I am your moderator
for this session onEco-Terrorism, otherwise known as “Just when you thought it was
safe to go back intothe water”. Just a joke, wake up. Our speaker today is David Ray
who has 22 yearsexperience in the security industry including positions at the head of
Shell Canada and theMcMillan Blodell, wire housing. His experience also includes
responsibilities forsafety, sustainable development and contingency planning. While at
McMillan Blodell healso held the position of corporate solicitor. Prior to his work in the
private sector hespent 14 years with the World Canadian Mounted Police in various
duties including sixyears with the commercial crime section. He instructs in the
University ofCalgary in the areas of security administration and security law. And
instructs with theUniversity of Alberta in Edmonton. He is the author of two texts on the
private securityadministration and security law. And has authored four chapters in the
Protection of AssetsManual. He is past president and life member of the Canadian
Society forIndustrial Security and a former member of the Law Society of British
Columbia. He holds aBachelor’s degree at York University in Toronto and a Bachelor’s
of Law fromOsgoodhall Law School and is a certified fraud examiner. He is now
currently thedirector of Western Canada with Croll Associates. It’s my pleasure to
introduce David Ray.
There is a guy inCanada who has written a number of works called Court Jesters.
Basically all he didwas, he went out to all the lawyers in Canada and said if you have.2
any funnytranscripts send them in. These are all real stories. I was at a luncheon
presentation he didin Toronto and somebody asked him what his favorite story was. His
favorite story tookplace in a little town called Carlton Place north of Ottawa. What had
happened was a trainhad come down the tracks in Carlton Place and killed a farmer’s
pigs. There was awitness. The lawyer found out rather quickly that this guy was sort of
an interesting type.I guess about twenty years ago we’d be less kind and call him the
village idiot. Hewas a man of few words. And the lawyer realized pretty quickly that if
you asked him aquestion you got an answer but he wasn’t going to embellish on it at all.
The lawyer sent thetranscript in and it went like this: Witness, what was the first thing
you saw? The pigscoming out of the alfalfa. Witness, what was the second thing you
saw? The traincoming down the tracks. Witness, what was the third thing you saw? The
alfalfa coming outof the pigs.
We are going to talkabout eco-terrorism. I got into this topic as a result of several issues.
We had a guy by thename of Ludwig in Alberta who is responsible for about 160 acts of
eco-terrorism, andwas recently convicted. He is doing about 2 ½ years now. He had a
real effect on theOPATCH and the way they did business. The second thing that
happened was theWorld Joint Congress came to Calgary a couple of months back and
again there was realconcern about the demonstrators coming into town and there were
some concerns thatwe were going to end up in another Seattle type situation. So I ended
up doing some workand pulling some stuff together and basically that’s what I want to
present to you heretoday.
Please feel free tojump in at any point with any comments, questions, stories that you
might want to share.Don’t feel you have to wait to the end. I want to keep this fairly low
key.
I had to search abit to get a definition for eco-terrorism. There are a lot of them out there.
The FBI has one, theMounted Police have one. The best one I found is simply the
intentional use ofterror and intimidation to get an ecological goal. These folks are a bit
fuzzy in terms oftheir allegiances and that kind of thing so a lot of time you’ll find they
are going back andforth and you’ll get them doing a bombing with a forest product
company, the nextday they’re in animal rights. T
hey are in a whole bunch of things.Eco-terrorist acts have some definition. They are pre-meditated to insureescape. These folks
are good at whatthey do. They are often done in remote areas so it is very easy to get in
there do the job andget out before law enforcement or any body else for that matter sees
you. They areobviously environmentally motivated hence the term eco. They are
intended to force aparticular audience to react in a certain manner. They want to try and
achieve something.They want to stop progress on a development. Mr. Ludwig in
Alberta, it appearedhe had a couple of reasons for doing the acts he did. One was simply
eco-terrorist actsbut it also was a bit of extortion. He had a piece of land that he wanted
bought. He wasn’toffered the right amount of money for it and he thought if he caused a
certain amount ofdisruption to the OPATCH they might offer him more money. They
also target innocentvictims and noninvolved individuals. These folks are often presidents
of companies, notout there deliberately damaging the environment or doing anything
dastardly, yet theyend up in the gun sights.
How do they evolve?Eco-terrorists usually splinter off from legitimate groups. By
legitimate groups Imean the Sierra Club, in Canada we have the Pemen Institute that gets
a lot of respect inall parts of the organization. Even Greenpeace, which I don’t consider
eco-terriorists, arequite good to deal with. I’ve dealt with them over the years and just
recently on an issuein Alberta where they took over a 400-ton coker that was being
transported fromEdmonton up to Fort MacMurray. They are extremely organized. Their
communications planwas probably better than any corporate communications plan I’ve
ever seen. They arevery organized. When they hit that site they had a van, solar panels, a
laptop, they had alady going around taking digital pictures loading them onto their
website, real time,again at a remote location through a satellite. They had cell phones.
The guys thatchained themselves up top of the coker had real time press interviews from
the top of thiscoker. But no damage. Probably a couple hundred thousand dollars in loss
of time but nosabotage. Extremely safety conscious. Often times they will tell you what
they are going to doahead of time. I find they are not bad to deal with.
Eco-terrorist groupsare often disavowed by legitimate environmental groups. They feel
that they actuallydetract from what they are trying to achieve. You get somebody like the
Sierra Club outthere trying to protect the environment and then you get these guys
blowing things up,and committing sabotage, and the Sierra Club is saying that’s not the
way we act.Consequently it detracts from what they are doing. And like most terrorist
groups they tend tohang their hats around dead heroes, charismatic leaders, folks that
have been capturedby the police and locked up. We had an incident a few years back in
California wheresome folks were transporting a bomb to blow up some facility. The
bomb went offprematurely in the car. These folks will forever live in the minds ofeco-terrorists.
They do tend toevolve also from starting off with threats and developing eventually into
sabotage bombingsand violence. That also goes with being involved with a legitimate
group and breakingaway and setting up their own group. They get frustrated with the
legitimate groups.They say you are not achieving your ends. We’ve got to get more
active here. Moreactive being more violent. And they also use the Internet to broaden
discussions, broadentheir doctrines. We saw a lot of this stuff just prior to the World
Petroleum Congress.There were a lot of training programs set up on webs for protests
and sabotage and howto stop things from progressing.
I talked about EarthFirst and Greenpeace as more or less being legitimate environmental
groups. The spin offs,the Earth and Liberation Front is probably the best known in terms
of eco-terrorism outthere. It was established in Great Britain. They have been involved in
burning down the skilodge in Vale with 12 million dollars of damage there and a number
of other things. Iindicated earlier we are starting to see a
lliances, the Animal Liberation
Front. An example Iguess is the ski lodge in Vale, was actually burned down because
they were trying toprotect a species of lynx that lived in that particular area. So, it was
kind of on behalf ofAnimal Liberation, kind of on behalf of protecting the environment
but they do tend towork together. To show that these folks really don’t know what they
are doing, they weresaying that these lynx were going to become extinct if there was any
more development inColorado. But in fact what was happening was that the Forest
Service werecapturing these lynx and moving them out of the area because there were
too many of them.And there were other areas where they wanted them to develop. So
there they aresaying, no the lynx are going to get exterminated and the forest service is
moving them out.David Foreman quite an active Earth Liberation guy, again these
organizations arevery fuzzy, they don’t have organizational charts, and tend to come and
go. There is nowhere you can go to sit down and try to figure out who reports to who, or
whose involved inwhat particular activities at any particular point in time. He’s been
convicted and didsome time for conspiracy to sabotaging nuclear facilities here in the
US. Rodney Cornado,active Animal Liberation Front guy, he’s done some time for
burning down labswhere they are doing testing on animals. And Theodore Kryzinski, the
unabomber, hadaffiliated himself with the Earth Liberation Front. Theodore obviously
had some seriousmental problems but he did espouse that he was a part of their group
and he ended upmurdering some folks and hurting a lot of others. In Canada a few years
back we had anorganization called Direct Action. Basically set up in the form of French
terrorist groupcalled Action Direct. And they were responsible for some bombings of the
Litton Systems inToronto. They were actually based out of British Columbia and drove
across country toLitton Systems and bombed it and badly injured one of the security
people that was onsite. And Lastly Ludwig that I talked about earlier is probably
responsible forabout 160 incidents everything from a bullet shot through the window of a
manager’s office, todrilling holes in sites. There was one particular incident that was
about 5 milliondollars damage to some logging equipment due to arson. A whole bunch
of stuff that addedup over a two-year period. Incidentally Mr. Ludwig’s van was blown
up.
One of the problemsthat we find is you often end up protecting the protestors. I found
that with Greenpeacewhen I dealt with them recently. I started overhearing a lot of.7
comments abouthigh-powered rifles. You are dealing with a bunch of truckers. They are
moving this stuff.They want to get on with life and get this coker up to Fort MacMurray
and here are thesefolks chaining themselves to the equipment. One young lady from
Greenpeace, therewere two cement barrels with holes in them in the sides and she had
chained herselfinside the barrels. She overheard one of the truckers making the wish.
You end up having tomake sure that these folks don’t get killed or injured. They were
taking this coker upto Fort MacMurray and we were really concerned that they were
going to follow itup there. Fort MacMurray is full of New Foundlanders. And the reason
the New Foundlandersare in Fort McMurray, Alberta is because they can’t hunt seals
anymore because ofGreenpeace. So you can imagine if a bunch of Greenpeacers showed
up in a place likeFort McMurray. This picture was actually taken by one of the fireman of the newski lodge they were building to replace the one that was burned down to protectthe lynx.
Some research I’vedone around costs, these are some Canadian provinces and U.S.
states, because ofMr. Ludwig you see where we have gone way over 20 million dollars.
This is in about afive-year period. The Colorado fire drove that up over 10 million and
Oregon has had awhole bunch of lesser incidents but the cumulative costs were much
higher. AB isAlberta, BC is British Columbia. It seems to be where most of the activity
is occurring inCanada. It seems to be a West Coast phenomenon in North America.
Religion isinteresting. We had another incident; Ludwig is a defrocked minister and as
often happens withthese guys they are doing it in the name of God. That’s how they
rationalize things.But we had another unfortunate incident in Alberta. We had a farmer
who had some mentalproblems and a guy who was vice president of an oil company was
doing somenegotiations with him. Up on his land there had been a bit of a spill the
farmer was so upset,he pulled a gun and killed the guy. What’s coming out now as the
trial approaches,this guy saw Ludwig being a minister that it was okay in the name of
God so it was okayfor him. It’s the kind of thing that evolves.
The otherinteresting thing around religion, I’m not sure what the relationship is, butthe
Earth Liberationtalks about the seven days of earth just prior to Halloween. And a lot of
the abortion murdersare taking place around that time. They haven’t gotten the guy yet.
What the associationbetween abortion activist and eco-terrorists is I have no idea.
(Question from theaudience) Answer: I’m not that familiar with PETA Are you familiar
with any of theiractivities and what they are doing? But to fall within the definition of
eco-terrorism theiractivities would have to be acts of vandalism, violence and that kind
of thing. Are they?Yes? Are they the folks that throw blood around? Okay.
In terms of numbersof incident, you can see Alberta tends to be the highest. It tends to be
a West Coastphenomenon for some reason. They are very active in the UK, but not so
much in Europe. Iwas surprised, I did a similar presentation during the World Petroleum
Congress and a lotof the European oil people had never heard the term eco-terrorism or
the people fromAfrica. It just doesn’t seem to be a big issue there yet.
Their ideology, isantisocial and pessimistic, “we are going to hell in a hand basket,» as
far as they areconcerned. They tend to think of civilization as the source of
environmentalproblems even to the extent of their own detriment. They think things like
AIDS and worldhunger are good things because they are wiping out the population and
more of theenvironment and animals will survive. Rodney Coronado was quoted as
saying during theBiafra hunger crisis when there was discussion of transporting food to.9
help these folksout. He indicated that we should simply let nature take its course. In
other words let themstarve. Anti-immigration – that startled me a bit when I first looked
at them. You came tothink of these people as extreme right winged liberals, yet they are
not. They don’t wantimmigration into North America because we have too many people
here already andthey are already destroying the environment so keep everybody else out.
Man has an intrinsicdis-value to nature. There is a real sense of moral superiority, which
ties in to thereligious aspect. That’s the way you rationalize your acts I guess. This was
an Earth Liberationrelease, find an office, subsidiary, corporate executive’s home near
you and act. CEOsare attacked at their homes and offices because they threaten the
existence in thenatural world. Very, very, violent some of these guys. There was a
construction guy inCalifornia and they started on him. He was doing some work in
southern Californiaand he became their target and at one point they threatened to come
into his house tiehim up, rape his daughter in front of him and kill both of them. That’s
the mindset thesefolks have.
This is Mr. Ludwig’sproperty. It says if you can’t read it, “ Beware of the mounting
anger of the localresidents. Abandon any thought of further oil exploration in this area
laissefaire.»There are about 22 people that live in this compound. Ludwig is the leader
but there are other activegroups. And what one of the interesting phenomena is that the
police have spent asmuch money protecting him as they have on the investigation. I was
talking to anofficer in Alberta and back then they had spent over a million and a half
dollars justprotecting him, keeping people patrolling the property and trying to keep the
residents out. Areally unfortunate incident occurred a couple of months back. a couple of
teenagers went out,in Alberta you either work for the OPATCH or you sleep with someone who worksfor the OPATCH, so guys like this don’t have a lot of support and
what happened wassome of the teenagers from a local town went out and started doing
some donuts in hisyard, A shot fired and a girl, a sixteen year old girl was killed. It hit
her in the head andshe was killed instantly. That murder has not been solved yet because
of the 22 peopleinside the complex they don’t know who fired the shot. And nobody’s
talking. We’ve gotthe gun, but we don’t know who killed her. Imagine how upset the
local residents arenow.
The difficulty witheco-terrorism is first, the law enforcement isn’t effective because of
lack of resources.Related to that is that the crimes are often viewed as a series of small
incidences. In theAlberta case we probably had over a hundred incidences occur. The
local detachmentcommander in that area said I think we’ve got a serial here and
everybody refused tobelieve him. Again they were minor acts, bullet holes through
windows, pipes beingdrilled, wells bombs. Then finally somebody woke up and said,
yeah, it looks likeit is one group or one individual that’s committing all of these acts.
Let’s start devotingsome resources. Often crimes are late at night, remote locations; I
mean how do you dosurveillance in a place like northern Alberta where the population is
probably four peopleper square mile. You can’t. Helicopters, vehicles, planes just don’t
work. You are tooobvious. And of course the groups are very tight knit. They ain’t
talking to anybodyoutside their organization. In fact, often times they won’t even talk to
each other. Theytake the approach that a lot of the international terrorist groups do.
My suggestions aboutthe kinds of things I think we need to do, and I’ll talk about the
corporate responsein a minute, Firstly, around government we have to treat this stuff as
organized crime. Infact that is what ended up happening in Alberta. The commanding officer had nomoney to spend on surveillance and that kind of thing, so he simple called
it organized crimeand they had all kinds of money to deal with organized crime. So that
allowed them to getthe extra manpower and do some leads on the security area and
eventually they wereable to capture Mr. Ludwig. The way they got him was through an
informant. A guy heconsidered a friend, they wired him for sound, sent him in and
eventually got somepretty good recordings. That’s how they eventually got the
convictions. Withthe police international intelligence gathering, again borders mean
nothing to theseguys; they are back and forth in traveling, so intelligence gathering,
special tasks force.I’m not suggesting that you have to have a special task force foreco-terrorism, but when you do see these things starting to develop or you dosee a risk, that’s
when they have tohave the wherewithal to put a team together and start working on it.
With industry, somesuggestions for you folks in your jobs; public communication is key.
You’ve got to getyour resources together, deal with your corporate communications
department, makesure you are doing the right things in terms of talking to the public out
there about what youare doing, admit that there are risks, admit that you are doing
damage to theenvironment. Do not go into the denial mode. By the same token if you are
admitting that youare doing damage to the environment, if you are admitting that you are
taking risk, tellthe public what you are doing about it. In the forest industry for example,
yes we are going inthere and cutting the stuff off and yes it looks ugly but we are doing
reforestation.Here’s how many million of dollars a year we are spending on
reforestation. Youhave got to get out that good news message because you want to keep
the public on yourside. We talked about the farmer that murdered the vice president of
