From Defender of Nature to 'Eco-Terrorist'

By Kelly Hearn, AlterNet. Posted August 2, 2005.

Tre Arrow's unwitting trajectory from candidate for Congress to the FBI's most wanted "eco-terrorist" began on Easter Sunday in 2001, when a firebomb equipped with a fuse destroyed $200,000 worth of gravel trucks belonging to Ross Island Sand & Gravel, a company operating near a national forest in Oregon.

Two months later, on June 1, another arson attack destroyed a logging truck and damaged two others belonging to Schoppert Logging, a company involved in watershed logging operations near Eagle Creek, Oregon. The damage was estimated at $50,000.

Soon the FBI was looking for Tre Arrow, a local green activist who'd made a name for himself as an in-your-face eco-defender, a man the feds said was linked to the Earth Liberation Front (something Arrow denies). Born Michael Scarpitti, Arrow had a reputation to match his passion. He'd once spent eleven days perched on a nine-inch ledge atop of the U.S. Forest Service building in Portland, Ore., protesting the proposed sale of timber rights in Eagle Creek. He was the consummate non-stop activist, a barking dog who in 2000 ran for Congress as a Pacific Green Party candidate, managing to win some 15,000 votes in a bid for Oregon's Third Congressional District.

For his straight talk and ballsy belligerence, Rolling Stone would call him an "environmental rock star." The feds had a different name.

By December 2002, Arrow was an "eco-terrorist" on the FBI's ten most wanted list. Facing a minimum of 40 years to life for his alleged role in the bombings, Arrow had already slipped into Canada earlier that year. He assumed the name Josh Murray (sometimes Josh Rivers) and spent nearly a year traveling, playing music and volunteering until he was arrested by Canadian police during what Arrow says was an activist mission.

Now a cause celebre among many environmentalist, he's fighting extradition and has applied for political refugee status in Canada. But a Canadian judge last month ruled that enough evidence existed to send the thirty-something, yoga-practicing musician back home to stand trail. His lawyer is appealing the decision.

Avoiding the "T-Word"

In two telephone interviews from the North Fraser Pretrial Centre, a prison east of Vancouver, Canada, Arrow talked to AlterNet about his innocence, the FBI's focus on eco-terrorism, corporate excesses, institutional vendettas and the criminalization of dissent in the name of corporate interest.

The obvious first question is, Did he do it?

"I have been emphatic in declaring my innocence," Arrow says. "The kind of activism I engage in has been well documented as being non-violent civil disobedience." He said he's only run afoul with the law for civil disobedience, for which he has received community service. Never anything violent. Besides, Arrow says arson is incongruent with his beliefs. His law, he says, is that of the Iroquois: "In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation. That's how I live my life, so even when I sleep in the woods, I don't burn twigs because of the carbon dioxide," he said. "I would never endorse arson because of the pollution involved in burning tires and plastic."

Arrow doesn't hesitate when asked about why he got locked up. "Basically, the FBI targeted me because I'm an activist," he said. "That's the FBI's modus operandi: They target anyone who gets in the way of the status quo, anyone they view as a threat, or as subversive. They view me as a threat because I talk about truth and expose lies. And my civil disobedience has been effective." As for the three witnesses that testified against him, "they received less than three and a half years in exchange for implicating me. The FBI wanted them to say I brainwashed them into doing it so they would have an excuse to bring the hammer down on me."

Arrow is particularly frustrated with how officials misuse the terrorist label. "I refuse to even say the 't-word,'" he says. "These days anybody that doesn't follow the corporate agenda in the United States is labeled that."

Kelly Hearn is a former UPI staff writer who lives in Washington DC and Latin America. His work has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, American Prospect, and other publications.

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