A Suspected Terrorist Dates the FBI

In 2009, I, along with three co-defendants, was charged with violating an unused and unknown law called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

My friends and I were campaigning against the University of California’s practice of using live animals in painful and deadly research; known as vivisection. Our alleged crime was demonstrating in the neighborhoods and outside the homes of the vivisectors who tortured and killed animals in their laboratories.

We were arrested by a slew of FBI agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force. We faced up to 5 years in prison.

A team of experienced movement attorneys represented us and challenged the use of a terrorism statute to target protesters. In 2010, our indictment was dismissed by a federal judge, who ruled that the one-page indictment was void for vagueness.

The case would not go to trial. The FBI was not happy and the domestic terrorism unit of the San Francisco FBI kept me under an incredible amount of surveillance.

I had met this woman known as Desiree on the internet around 2010. Her story was that she was a part of a recently formed animal rights group at UC Santa Cruz, Banana Slugs For Animals. We texted and stayed in contact, but we had never met face to face.

Fast forward to 2013 and my second major FBI investigation. Fur farms were raided by activists all over the U.S., with thousands of mink freed from captivity and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages dealt to the…