Flushing Out Eco-Terrorism
By Marc Levin
An epidemic of eco-terror is rapidly spreading across America, and it is time for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether these criminal activities are being illegally bankrolled by tax-exempt money.
In August, fires set by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) gutted a warehouse at an auto dealership and destroyed 20 Hummers and damaged 20 others at a California auto dealership, resulting in $2.5 million in losses.. Vehicles were spray-painted with slogans like “Fat, Lazy Americans.” In September, ELF "activists" torched six homes under construction and burned down an apartment complex in San Diego County.
All told, in August and September alone, ELF’s acts of eco-terrorism have cost individuals and businesses some $54 million, the most damage ever inflicted by eco-terrorism in a two-month period. The FBI has now declared ELF the nation’s most threatening homegrown terrorist organization.
A related group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), targets laboratories that conduct vital scientific research on animals. Walter Low, a researcher at a University of Minnesota laboratory, noted that a recent ALF attack on his facility “has set back two years research conducted there on Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.”
The ELF and ALF have also taken credit for arsons at a Vail, Colorado ski resort, as well as damaging crop fields at university research centers in the Midwest, fur farms in the Pacific Northwest, meat vendors in the San Francisco Bay area, and department stores on the East Coast.
Since the ELF split off from the radical environmental group Earth First! in 1998, its attacks have caused more than $100 million in damage in the United States.
However, the plague of eco-terrorism is hardly confined to America. In Europe, terrorist incidents in the name of animal rights have increased from 39 in 1999 to 110 in 2002. The European news agency Novum recently reported that the damage caused by animal rights activists in Europe in the last 20 years totals $60 million.
While these acts of eco-terror are, of course, illegal, few people realize that the money being used to support or commit these crimes has itself been illegally laundered through tax-exempt organizations. Environmental organizations designated by the IRS as 501(c)(3) groups are illegally transferring funds to non-exempt groups, which then use the money for eco-terror campaigns.
Wholesale transfers from more tax-restrictive organizations to less-restrictive organizations are illegal on their face because there is no way to be sure that co-mingled funds won’t be used for non-exempt purposes. Tax-exempt activities are limited to: charitable, religious, educational, scientific, and literary work, public safety testing, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.
On September 22, the charitable oversight group Public Interest Watch filed a complaint with the IRS charging Greenpeace with making such illegal transfers. In a report entitled “Green-Peace, Dirty Money: Tax Violations in the World of Non-Profits,” Public Interest Watch found that Greenpeace Fund, a 501(c)(3) transferred over $10 million in exempt funds to non-exempt Greenpeace organizations such as Greenpeace, Inc., between 1998 and 2000. The Canadian equivalent of the IRS recently denied Greenpeace tax-exempt status because it determined its activities were not wholly charitable.
Greenpeace, Inc. and other non-exempt Greenpeace entities benefitting from these transfers have committed numerous acts of eco-terrorism. They have blockaded a U.S. naval base, broken into the central control building of a nuclear power station in England, overrun the Exxon Mobil corporate headquarters in Texas, and rammed a ship into the French sailboat competing in the 2003 America’s Cup, permanently damaging the vessel.
In April 2002, Greenpeace activists forcibly boarded a cargo ship in Florida carrying Brazilian wood. In connection with this incident, federal prosecutors obtained an indictment against Greenpeace this July for violating an 1872 law prohibiting the unauthorized boarding of “any vessel about to arrive at the place of her destination.” The trial in this case is scheduled for December in Miami.
Greenpeace isn’t alone in funneling tax-exempt dollars into eco-terrorism efforts. According to the Center for Consumer Freedom, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has donated at least $70,000 from its tax-exempt coffers to the ALF.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Verhey, who prosecuted the 1992 ALF firebombing of a Michigan State University laboratory, recently noted the challenge of prosecuting eco-terrorists because of “a lack of witnesses and the group’s ‘cell’ structure that lacks centralized leadership or a membership roster.”
The difficulty in nabbing individual eco-terrorists is precisely why it is critically important that the IRS do its part to immobilize eco-terror groups. Eco-terrorism is a sordid stain on the wholesome causes of nonviolent environmentalists. We should protect the environment through vigilance, not vigilantism.
Marc Levin, a former law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is an appellate lawyer in Austin, TX, President of the American Freedom Center, and associate editor of The Austin Review.
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