| Media Go to Him for Analysis Of Environmental Violence The FBI Hasn't Spotted By Bob Ortega 03/02/99 The Wall Street Journal Page A1 (Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) EUREKA, Calif. -- From an old logging-company office deep in redwood country here, Barry R. Clausen runs the investigations that he says have made him America's leading authority on "eco-terrorists." "We've documented 2,000" cases of violent environmentalism over the past decade, Mr. Clausen says. "But I'd estimate it's closer to 4,000." By his own account, Mr. Clausen has infiltrated radical environmental groups, staked out logging protests and helped bust a drug ring. He has testified before Congress about a rising tide of eco-terror, has been quoted scores of times in the national and international press and has appeared, he reckons, on 150 talk radio shows. Last fall, when a group calling itself the Earth Liberation Front took credit for torching some ski-resort buildings in Vail, Colo., on behalf of the lynx, CBS News had Mr. Clausen on television three times in a day. "I get calls every day from people wanting information, including the feds," Mr. Clausen says. "I feel good about what I've done." Not everyone does, though, and that has made Mr. Clausen a controversial figure in the endless battles between environmentalists and industry, particularly in the West. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and many other law enforcers don't see any sign of the surging eco-terror Mr. Clausen describes. Pressed, he acknowledges that his list of documented terror incidents includes graffiti and pie-throwings. Even some supporters say he sometimes stretches the truth. "I've chewed him out about that," says Bill Pickel, head of the Washington Contract Loggers Association, which helped fund Mr. Clausen 's infiltration of the activist group Earth First! -- and eventually pulled the plug on him because, Mr. Pickel says, "he wasn't getting anywhere." How Mr. Clausen became the man the media turn to on eco-terrorism is a tale almost as rich as any of his adventures as a gumshoe. It says something about how the media operate, too. Mr. Clausen tells of a troubled childhood in Seattle, where as a 16-year-old he was arrested for car theft. Later, he worked for 14 years as a railroad engineer in Montana. In 1985, he moved to Dallas to sell computers. There, he says, he stumbled across a cocaine ring. "I was fascinated by undercover work," he says, so he began working as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. His tips helped "convict several guys -- they caught one with 12 kilos of cocaine in his car," he says. But in a 1992 deposition in a civil lawsuit in Montana state court, Mr. Clausen said he never worked for the DEA. Asked about that, Mr. Clausen clarifies, "I worked with them, not for them." DEA officials declined to say whether Mr. Clausen ever assisted the agency. The Montana civil lawsuit stemmed from a scrape in 1987. Mr. Clausen had been charged in a criminal case with stealing a rancher's assault rifle and turning it into a fully automatic weapon. Mr. Clausen denies any wrongdoing, and says he was acting as an informant. Charges later were dropped. Mr. Clausen won an out-of-court settlement in the civil lawsuit he subsequently filed against his accusers. He hooked onto the environmental movement while maintaining trails for the U.S. Forest Service. After hearing complaints of vandalism that loggers blamed on Earth First!, Mr. Clausen offered to go undercover for timber trade groups. Mr. Clausen didn't get anyone arrested, but did produce "Walking on the Edge," a 306-page book about his year infiltrating the group. The account mostly details demonstrations and one "tree sitting." His marital difficulties were also prominently featured. Mr. Pickel of the Washington Contract Loggers Association says it published about 5,000 copies, but it wasn't a blockbuster. "We got 2,000 left," he says. "You want one?" Mr. Clausen won national attention in 1995 when he told reporters he could connect Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, to Earth First! He claimed that a Montana law officer leaked to him documents showing that Mr. Kaczynski attended a 1994 environmental gathering with Earth First! members, and that two Unabomber victims were on a corporate "hit list" in an extremist publication. Scores of news outlets picked up the allegations, putting Mr. Clausen in the national media Rolodex. As it turns out, the "hit list" named sponsors of a conference of timber, mining and ranching interests and called for boycotts, graffiti and vandalism, but not violence. The environmental gathering, meanwhile, was actually a forestry conference attended by the U.S. Forest Service, Weyerhaeuser Co. and Louisiana-Pacific Corp., among others. Conference organizers say Mr. Kaczynski wasn't there, and federal investigators never verified his presence. Earth First! denies any connection to the Unabomber. Mr. Clausen says that, to protect his source, he won't disclose his proof. "There's no question in my mind that the Unabomber was there," he says. Mr. Clausen cultivates his press contacts through frequent barrages of faxed tips. But his thousands of eco-terror incidents include mostly vandalism and nonviolent protests and similar actions. As for pies flung in faces of corporate executives and politicians, "that's assault," Mr. Clausen says. The list attributes to eco-terrorists many incidents that law-enforcement officials say they don't know who committed, such as the arson at a U.S. Bureau of Land Management building in Nevada in 1993. A lot of federal officials figure that was just as likely the work of antigovernment right-wing types. Serious episodes do happen, such as the Vail arson, which caused an estimated $12 million in damage and thrust Mr. Clausen into the media spotlight again. In addition to CBS, the New York Times, National Public Radio, the Associated Press and many other news outlets featured him. In general, they now say they didn't know much about Mr. Clausen 's background, or his terror list. Most say they found him through news databases or Internet searches that turned up previous Clausen quotations. "He seemed very credible," says Paulette Brown, a "CBS This Morning" producer who booked Mr. Clausen on that show. Joe Garner, a reporter at the Rocky Mountain News, says that he wasn't familiar with Mr. Clausen 's history, but that the man was hard to miss when the subject was eco-terrorism. "Everybody gets his phone number," says Mr. Garner. Agents at the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms acknowledge knowing Mr. Clausen , but won't comment on the usefulness of his work. Neither agency sees eco-terror as a spreading scourge. John Williamson, chief of domestic terrorism analysis for the FBI, says that "we have not seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of these incidents." An ATF spokesman says there have been "maybe four or five" eco-related bombings or arsons in the last few years, nothing "widespread." A spokesman for the National Association of Attorneys General's task force on terrorism says the issue of eco-terrorism "hasn't come up." Mr. Clausen presses on, sometimes thanklessly. Timber-industry allies provide his office and computers, but, "basically, I'm broke," he says. He can still raise a ruckus, though. Just last week, he spotted an item in Earth First!'s magazine criticizing California wineries for lopping down old oak trees. Mr. Clausen saw it as a threat by the group to conduct sabotage, and indeed, the article's last words mused about the possibility that some night someone might sneak in and tear up vineyards planted where old oaks stood. Mr. Clausen fired off warnings to wineries and the California Farm Bureau that violence might be imminent. Somewhere along the line, his warning got misinterpreted as a direct threat from Earth First! itself, and the local paper in Santa Rosa, Calif., ran a story last week about possible pending attacks by Earth First! against wineries. The AP picked up the story. The muddle was straightened out two days later, and the farm bureau and others now say the threat was overblown. Earth First!'s Darryl Cherney denounces the whole affair as a scare tactic and calls Mr. Clausen a "charlatan." "It was a mix-up," concedes Mr. Clausen . But he still sees the need for vigilance. "I think people are waking up to the truth." Copyright © 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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