Three indicted on charges of plotting against Forest Service lab

Three indicted on charges of plotting against Forest Service lab
DON THOMPSON
Associated Press

SACRAMENTO - Three activists were cooking up homemade plastic explosives and planned to test their device the day they were arrested, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday as they indicted the trio.

The three face five to 20 years in federal prison if they are convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage property. Eric McDavid, 28, of Foresthill, Calif., Zachary Jensen, 20, of Monroe, Wash., and Lauren Weiner, 20, of Philadelphia, remain in Sacramento County Jail awaiting arraignment and bail amounts. They could enter a plea at their arraignment Thursday.

They planned a series of assaults this spring in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a "loosey-goosey, sort of mist-of-the-fog kind of an organization" of environmental activists, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said. He said the potential stiff prison sentences should be a warning to other idealistic young people considering violent acts.

The three are not known to have a connection to 11 alleged ecoterrorists who were indicted in Oregon last week, but the series of recent shows that the loosely knit groups are widespread, Scott said. The FBI says such groups have claimed 1,200 criminal acts causing more than $100 million in damage in the last 15 years, and are the bureau's No. 2 priority behind only international terrorism.

Yet the three arrested on Jan. 13 didn't know they were working with an undercover FBI informant or living in a cabin in Dutch Flat rented by the FBI and wired for audio and video surveillance, authorities said. Their first attempt to boil bleach into crystals ended when the glassware broke, prosecutors allege, and they were buying more when they were arrested outside a Kmart in nearby Auburn, east of Sacramento in the Sierra foothills.

"Just because they aren't necessarily career sophisticated criminals does not in any way lessen the threat that they posed," said Scott, dismissing suggestions that the trio amounted to "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." McDavid in particular threatened violence, Scott alleged.

McDavid's attorney, Mark Reichel, said the activities of the three never became dangerous. He said they were enticed by the informant who was paid $75,000 over two years, although Scott denied any entrapment.

"It looks like some talk and a little mischief, if the indictment is true," Reichel said. Jensen's attorney declined comment and Weiner's did not immediately return telephone messages.

Three days before their arrests, the three scouted the Nimbus Dam and nearby fish hatchery on the American River near Sacramento, and toured McDavid's top target, the indictment says: the U.S. Forest Service's Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville, in the foothills east of Sacramento. McDavid drew a map of the genetics lab that was recovered after his arrest, the FBI alleges in its affidavit.

"We'll never know how close we came to a major boom," Scott said.