Animal Welfare Activists More Aggressive By FRANK ELTMAN,
Associated Press Writer
Wed May 18, 8:46 AM ET

Last month, animal rights extremists followed the wife of a pharmaceutical
company executive to her job, rifled through her car and stole a credit
card. They used it buy $20,000 in travelers checks, which they then donated
to four charities.

A Web site announcement boasting of the act included a more sinister threat:

"If we find out a dime of that money granted to those charities was taken
back we will strip you bear (sic) and burn your (expletive). This is OUR
insurance policy."

The actions by the radical Animal Liberation Front appear to be the latest
salvo in an ongoing battle pitting scientists, businesses and labs involved
in animal research against those intent on stopping them — at almost any
cost.

The president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a group backed by
institutions that rely on animal research, said ALF members operate like
terrorists.

"These are unbelievably mean-spirited people who operate under this
delusion that they are on a higher moral ground than the rest of us,"
president Frankie Trull said. "They operate in a classic terrorist
organization mode. There are individual cells, and, as we understand it,
one doesn't know what another is doing. Regrettably, I think this is
actually a growing industry."

ALF's credo on its Web site claims the group "carries out direct action
against animal abuse in the form of rescuing animals and causing financial
loss to animal exploiters, usually through the damage and destruction of
property."

The FBI is investigating a number of incidents over the past year that ALF
claims its members committed against Manhattan-based Forest Laboratories
and its executives. Forest, which employs 3,000 people in several Long
Island communities, specializes in medicines for depression, anxiety,
Alzheimer's disease and hypertension.

ALF wants Forest to end ties with the British company Huntingdon Life
Sciences, which it says kills animals in testing. A Huntingdon spokesman
did not respond to requests for comment, but the company has said it does
not violate laws in its experiments. Forest officials also did not return
requests for comment.

Jerry Vlasak, a physician and ALF sympathizer who operates a Web site in
California that posts the group's communiques, said some of its members
claimed responsibility for making the $20,000 donations with the stolen
credit card of a Forest executive's wife.

Vlasak — who said he is not an ALF member, although he supports many animal
welfare initiatives — said the group also has claimed responsibility for
vandalizing a Forest plant in Inwood, on Long Island, last June.

ALF also claims it used a bullhorn at night for a week last October to
harass a Forest Laboratories executive, glued the locks on the homes of
other company executives in Nassau and Suffolk counties and spray-painted
their homes and cars with words like "puppy killer" and "murderer."

The Foundation for Biomedical Research on its Web site has a 44-page
spreadsheet detailing incidents of vandalism and other crimes across the
country allegedly committed over the past several decades by ALF and other
groups, including Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.

"The Internet has been a huge boon for their kinds of activities," Trull
said. "You can get people to promote their messages above ground, and it's
easier to coordinate tactics via e-mail."

The targets don't even need to be directly involved in animal testing or
research, said Tim Horner, managing director of the international security
firm Kroll Inc.

"Their tactics don't just target a CEO or chairman of the board," he said.
"They go after assistants, engineers, lab technicians ... it could be
anybody."

Seven people are scheduled to go on trial next month in federal court in
Trenton, N.J., for operating another Web site that encouraged the
terrorizing of Huntingdon Life Sciences and businesses associated with it.

Prosecutors say the defendants encouraged vandalism in July 2002 at the
Meadowbrook Golf Club in Jericho, on Long Island. One of the players in a
charity tournament scheduled there was an executive of a company that
insured Huntingdon.

"There is no question that the fringes of the animal welfare and
environmental rights movements have become increasingly radicalized," said
Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence
Project. "These sectors see themselves in a war against the entire
government and industrial democracy itself."

Although ALF says it dissociates itself from actions that harm people,
Potok said it's "fairly miraculous" no one has been injured, noting that
some ALF members have allegedly set fire to homes and factories.

Trull was not optimistic the situation will change soon.

"My fear is that in this climate they have managed to drive away really
brilliant minds from this endeavor," she said. "Is the next lab they target
the one that is about to find a cure for Alzheimer's or cancer?"

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