THERMCON
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Template:NPOV THERMCON was the code name of a FBI operation which targeted members of the environmental organization Earth First! between 1987 and 1989, culminating in the arrest of five activists following an attempt to disable powerlines in the Arizona desert. Four of those arrested, activists from Prescott, Arizona, were only peripherally associated with Earth First!. The fifth, Dave Foreman, was not even involved in the powerline incident in the first place but was nonetheless charged with "conspiracy", solely on the grounds that he had once given a copy of the book Ecodefense to one of the other four.
Short for "Thermite Conspiracy" - thermite being an explosive mixture of aluminium oxide and iron ore - Operation THERMCON employed more than 50 FBI agents and involved the infiltration of an Arizona Earth First! group by FBI agent Michael Fain and paid informant Ron Frazier.
According to an FBI field office file released to Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in 1996, FBI agents provocateur associated with THERMCON spent two years winning the trust of a small group of environmental activists, actively encouraging them to sabotage powerlines and attempting - unsuccessfully - to convince the group that they should use, and even offering to buy, explosives for this purpose.
FBI agents also selected the site and purchased and transported cutting equipment prior to the sabotage attempt on 30 May, 1989, leading to accusations of entrapment. Bari and Cherney, Californian Earth First! activists who were not involved with or directly targeted by THERMCON, later speculated that the operation was a deliberate attempt to link Earth First! to the use of explosives prior to the 1990 car bomb explosion which severely injured Bari on the eve of the “Redwood Summer" campaign of civil disobedience.
See also
External links
- www.judibari.org
- Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement (http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/samples/sam1417.htm)
- Slingshot: Earth First! Exposes FBI Conspiracy (http://www.afn.org/~iguana/archives/1997_04/19970411.html)