American University Hosts EcoTerrorist

American University (AU) went beyond being environmentally-friendly when it hosted convicted eco-terrorist Rodney Coronado [pictured] two years ago.

Convicted in federal court of a bombing at the University of Michigan ten years ago, Coronado was captured on videotape at AU giving his audience a demonstration of how to make a bomb two years ago. “This little one works nice,” Coronado said while holding a plastic jug, “and you destroy the profits that were brought about through animal and earth abuse.”

“That’s about two dollars.” The videotape of Coronado’s talk was played at a hearing held by the U. S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works on May 18th. Coronado, a federal court determined in 1995, has long been active in the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and planned and executed many of its attacks on businesses and research labs.

“By tracing his use of a telephone calling card, investigators discovered that Coronado was in the vicinity of virtually every ALF attack immediately before or after it occurred,” Coronado’s 1995 conviction reads. “For example, when the ALF struck [Washington State University] WSU’s Pullman, Washington campus, Coronado and two females were in Pullman ‘house sitting.”

“You know, those people, I think that they should appreciate that we only target their property,” Coronado said at the 2003 National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) at AU. The NCOR has been an annual event at AU since 1998. The 2004 meeting featured a workshop on “An Analysis of Politically Motivated Property Destruction as a Legitimate Tactic.”

“Every time a police agency pepper sprays or use pain compliance holds against our people, their car should burn,” Coronado said in his lecture at AU. “So along these same lines, as a direct action warrior, it made a lot of sense to me to attack institutions in the fur trade, in the animal abuse industry, in the timber industry with fire because those, as I said before, those buildings were built for no other purpose than to destroy life.”

“And so there is no purpose for them in today’s world,” Coronado argued. “We need to destroy them by any means necessary.”

The organization that federal investigators linked Coronado to during the Clinton years has been doing just that, as have others in the environmental movement. As tracked by the FBI, their crimes over the past two decades run in the thousands and the damage that they have caused totals millions of dollars, at least.

“From January 1990 to June 2004, animal and environmental rights extremists have claimed credit for more than 1,200 criminal incidents, resulting in millions of dollars in damage and monetary loss,” according to the FBI’s John Lewis. A deputy assistant director of the FBI, Lewis also testified at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.

As well, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) catalogued the explosive acts of ALF and its companion group, the Environmental Liberation Front (ELF). Coronado’s 1995 conviction on arson and other criminal charges fits a pattern that federal agents are familiar with.

“Since 1987, ATF has initiated over 100 investigations related to ELF and ALF incidents,” the agency’s deputy assistant director told the Senate Committee. “Some of the investigations involved explosives incidents, as well as, acts of arson.”

“While the number of ELF and ALF incidents has fluctuated from year to year, the magnitude of the incidents appears to be on the rise with a number of high damage arsons occurring since 1999,” ATF deputy assistant director Carson Carroll told the Senate Committee. “Between 1999 and 2005, ATF opened 58 investigations related to ELF and ALF acts of violence.”

Ironically, Coronado makes the campus lecture circuit at some schools while ALF targets others. Coronado went on from AU in 2003 to give talks at Houston Community College and the California State University at Fresno.

More recently, ALF has attacked the University of Iowa’s research labs as well as those of Louisiana State University (LSU). ALF’s most recent attack on the LSU labs occurred in April.

“It is important to point out that ALF actually harmed mice in the facility,” U. S. Senator David Vitter, R-La., noted. “ALF moved the mice from one cage to another, removed their identifying cage cards and made it impossible to identify which groups the mice belonged to.”

“As a result, this necessitated the euthanasia of all 80+ mice in the room and a repeat of the study,” Sen. Vitter reported. “This will set back the research by a year.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.