People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is walking, talking, and quacking like a very strange duck. In a stunning statement rivaling warnings issued by the Anarchist Black Cross Network or the White Aryan Resistance, PETA's leadership is counseling members to avoid any contact with law enforcement, including the FBI and investigators connected with the newly created Department of Homeland Security.

In an open letter to activists yesterday, PETA co-founder and president Ingrid Newkirk advised animal-rights zealots: "It is dangerous to engage in even the most innocuous-seeming discourse with the FBI/Homeland Security/a local detective."

Newkirk, loathe to concede that her organization is involved with anything illegal, insists that Americans have "the freedom to associate with whomever you choose, and the right to say what you believes [sic] in without fear of reprisal." Fair enough -- but PETA's right to oppose meat producers or medical research professionals does not include the right to blow up their trucks or burn their buildings down (as PETA's allies in the Animal Liberation Front have done on many occasions).

And just how has Newkirk exercised her own "freedoms"? If a 1995 U.S. Government Sentencing Memorandum is any indication, she just might personally be guilty of aiding a terrorist in the commission of a felony.

It seems that PETA was involved in the multi-million-dollar arson at Michigan State University that resulted in a 57-month prison term for Animal Liberation Front bomber Rodney Coronado. At Coronado's sentencing hearing, U.S. Attorney Michael Dettmer said that Newkirk arranged ahead of time to have Coronado send her a pair of FedEx packages from Michigan -- one on the day before he burned down an MSU research lab, and the other afterward [see pages 8 and 9 of the official court record].

The first FedEx, according to the Sentencing Memorandum, was delivered to a woman named Maria Blanton, "a longtime PETA member who had agreed to accept the first Federal Express package from Coronado after being asked to do so by Ingrid Newkirk" [emphasis added]. The FBI intercepted the second package, which had been sent to the same address. It contained documents that Coronado stole before lighting his firebombs, as well as "a videotape of the perpetrator of the MSU crime, disguised in a ski mask."

This sort of legal defiance quite rightly lands people in jail all the time. Even those accused of helping eco-terrorists and other home-grown bad guys.

A search warrant executed at Maria Blanton's home turned up evidence that PETA's other co-founder, Alex Pacheco, had been planning burglaries and break-ins along with Rodney Coronado. At Blanton's home, the feds seized "surveillance logs; code names for Coronado, Pacheco, and others; burglary tools; two-way radios; night vision goggles; [and] phony identification for Coronado and Pacheco."

In this light, perhaps it's easy to see why PETA's Ingrid Newkirk is trying to keep a lid on animal rights activists who might decide to talk with the authorities. When you're hooked up with people who burglarize legitimate businesses and burn down buildings, you have an awful lot to lose.

One can almost hear a booming Tony Soprano in Newkirk's warnings: "You don't talk to the cops, you don't talk to nobody. You understand? Fuggedaboutit!"

Subj: DawnWatch: - Campaign to end hunting and trapping on wildlife refuges -- ABCNews.com story
Date: 3/18/03 4:55:47 PM Central Standard Time
From: KarenDawn@dawnwatch.com
To: DawnWatch@dawnwatch.com
Sent from the Internet

ABCnews.com has published an article focusing on the Fund for Animals campaign to stop hunting and trapping on national wildlife refuges.

Reporter Dean Schabner begins, "Is a wildlife refuge not a refuge if people are allowed to hunt there? That's what an animal rights organization maintains. And to drive home its point, the Fund for Animals has filed suit against the federal government to bar hunters from areas in 39 refuges that have been opened to them in the last five years."

Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Mitch Snow is quoted: "Ever since the inception of the refuge system, hunting has been allowed, largely because hunting is good for conservation — hunters contribute enormously to conservation. Without hunting, we couldn't do what we do."

Mike Markarian, president of the Fund for Animals has let me know that Snow is "mistaken" (he may have used different words) - hunting and trapping were prohibited on national wildlife refuges for the first half century of the refuge system.

There is a nice quote from Markarian in the article: "We believe it is obscene that refuges should be turned into killing fields.
There's plenty of public land in this country where hunters can hunt. Unfortunately there's a lot of political pressure to allow hunting on
refuges."

Rob Sexton, vice president of the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, provides another spin on the argument that by killing the animals the hunters are helping them. He says of the Fund for Animals, "The very animals they seek to help would be in big trouble if it weren't
for the money that comes from hunting."

You can read the whole piece on line at:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/SciTech/refuge030318.html

You can thank Dean Schabner for covering this issue at:
dean.schabner@abc.com
Link: mailto:dean.schabner@abc.com

You may like to ask ABC's World News Tonight to cover the issue since it is on the ABC website. World News Tonight just won their second consecutive Genesis Award for a series of animal friendly articles last year. The producers are open to animal friendly material. The show takes comments at:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/WorldNewsTonight/WNT_newemail_form.html

And please visit http://www.refuges.org/ to learn more about the issue and what you can do to help. The beautifully put-together site will tell you what preserves in your area allow hunting and trapping and will help you send polite letters of protest either electronically or through the post.

Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
www.DawnWatch.com

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in
the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets.
You can learn more about it at www.DawnWatch.com. To subscribe to DawnWatch,
email KarenDawn@DawnWatch.com and tell me you'd like to receive alerts.  If
at any time you find DawnWatch is not for you, just let me know via email
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