The banner proclaimed that the three luxury homes in a Seattle suburb Monday were torched by the Earth Liberation Front — the same group behind a string of blazes at Vail ski area and across the West.
Ecoterrorism experts, however, say those behind the latest fires likely were only sympathizers and not directly related to the ecoterrorist cell that was broken up in 2005.
“The Earth Liberation Front is what you could almost call a ‘quasi-group,’ ” said Robert Norton, a professor at Auburn University who tracks ecoterrorism.
“It’s a leaderless organization,” Norton said, “and people consider themselves part of it because of their activities. You can’t look at this like a group that’s got a hier archy.”
On Monday, the arsonists left a sign mocking the builders’ claims that the homes were environmentally friendly.
The homes are in a development near the headwaters of Bear Creek, which is home to endangered Chinook salmon.
The sign — a sheet marked with spray paint — bore the initials ELF.
The local law-enforcement officials estimated that the predawn fires did $7 million in damage.
The FBI was investigating the fires as a potential domestic terrorism act, said FBI spokesman Rich Kolko in Washington, D.C.
No injuries were reported in the fires, which began before dawn in the wooded subdivision.
The sign left behind said in red scraggly letters, “Built Green? Nope black!” and “McMansions in RCDs not green,” a reference to rural cluster developments.
“It’s very disappointing to take a situation where we’re trying to promote good building practices — Built Green practices — and that it’s destroyed,” said Doug Barnes, the Northwest division president of Centex Homes in Kirkland, Wash.
Since 1990, more than 1,200 criminal acts in the U.S. have been attributed to ELF and its sister organization, the Animal Liberation Front, said FBI spokesman Bill Carter.
“I suspect there may be a link somewhere, but it may not be a conspiratorial link,” said Brent Smith, director of terrorism research at the University of Arkansas. “It may be that these people sat in the same room of some of the others at some point.”
“Assuming the banner is accurate, it’s somebody who is very familiar with what ELF does,” Smith said.
He cautioned, however, that someone with a similar radical environmental viewpoint simply might have mimicked the tactics of the most notorious cell operating under the auspices of ELF.
That group — about 20 dedicated activists known as “The Family”— was responsible for the fire that destroyed Vail’s Two Elk Lodge and dozens of other buildings during a five-year period.
A decade later, federal investigators infiltrated the Family, and last year federal prosecutors won guilty pleas from a dozen participants.
Such a trial, however, doesn’t end “leaderless resistance,” said James O. Ellis III, research and program director for the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.
“You can prune that bush by cutting out that particular cell,” he said, “but you don’t cut out the roots.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Steve Lipsher: 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com
