Environmental Fringe Group Takes Credit for Boise Cascade Fire
12/31/99
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Title: Environmentalists take credit for Boise cascade fire
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 31, 1999
PORTLAND - Federal authorities were investigating a Christmas Day
fire that destroyed the Oregon regional headquarters of paper
manufacturer Boise Cascade after radical environmentalists claimed to
have
set the blaze, an FBI spokesman said yesterday.
In a press release sent to news agencies, a group claiming to be the
Earth Liberation Front said its members started the fire using four
buckets of diesel fuel and a kitchen timer, and alleged Boise Cascade
was "ravaging the forests of the Pacific Northwest."
"Now that E.L.F. has allegedly taken credit for this fire, it does
move into a potential violation covered by the FBI under the domestic
terrorism statutes and the FBI will conduct the investigation as
such," said Gordon Compton, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's Portland office.
"We will be investigating those individuals responsible for the
fire," Compton said. "It has been determined that the fire was
started by an accelerant, an arson."
Boise Cascade spokesman Michael Moser said the paper company's
Monmouth, Oregon administrative offices, where 25 employees work, was
destroyed by a fire on Dec. 25 and that state and federal authorities
were investigating the incident as an arson.
He said he could not comment on the press release allegedly sent by
E.L.F. because he had not seen it yet. A spokesman whose name
appeared at the bottom of the press release was not immediately
available for comment.