Student May Fight FBI Charge : Claims Self-Defense in Biting Case on UCSD Campus

Kristen Crabtree, the UC San Diego student accused of biting an FBI agent during a campus demonstration last month, insisted on her innocence Wednesday and warned that she might fight an indictment rather than accept government conditions for dismissing the charge.

“Everything that’s been done to me has been totally unfair and totally unjust,” Crabtree, 18, said in an interview outside the federal courthouse after turning down the latest government offer to defer prosecution of the case. “I’m starting to feel I shouldn’t let people walk all over me.”

At a brief hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court, Magistrate Barry Ted Moskowitz unsealed an indictment charging Crabtree with one felony count of assaulting a federal officer. The charge carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Crabtree, a resident adviser at UCSD’s Third College with excellent grades and no criminal record, quarreled with FBI Special Agent Marene Allison outside the campus Career Placement Center on May 14.

Fought FBI Recruiting

Crabtree was in a group of about 20 students protesting Allison’s appearance at a UCSD job fair as an FBI recruiter. According to student eyewitnesses, Allison objected when Crabtree took her photograph. Crabtree is accused of biting Allison’s hand as the agent grabbed at the strap of her camera.

“I did not assault her,” Crabtree insisted Wednesday. “It was self-defense.”

On and off negotiations in the case broke down again Wednesday morning. A general agreement had been reached that federal prosecutors would defer prosecution of the charge and neither Allison nor Crabtree would press civil suits concerning the incident. Under the deferral, the case would be dismissed if Crabtree committed no additional offenses over the next year.

But Crabtree said she was uncomfortable with the boilerplate language of the agreement, which she said could be construed as an admission of guilt. And she contended that Assistant U.S. Atty. Kevin McInerney had broadened the terms of the agreement by insisting that she give up her rights to the photographs of Allison.

Crabtree said the FBI should have realized that a photograph might be taken of an agent in the midst of a public protest on a university campus. Moreover, she said, she was taking the pictures on behalf of the New Indicator, a leftist campus publication, and had a readily visible press pass pinned to her camera strap.

McInerney said the FBI was concerned that publication of photographs of Allison might imperil her ability to participate in undercover investigations.

Fear Risk to Agent

“It comes down to the question of what the benefit of disseminating that photograph is versus what the future risk is to that agent or any other agent,” he said. “We’re trying to defuse the situation. It seems to me the intentional publication of an agent’s photograph is not something calculated to defuse the situation.”

Crabtree’s camera and undeveloped film were seized by the FBI when she was arrested. Under an agreement between McInerney and defense attorney James Pokorny, the pictures were to be developed prior to a hearing this afternoon so both sides would know the contents of the film.

McInerney, however, said prosecutors will insist that they retain control of the pictures. “If she wants her deal, she’s going to have to give up her right to those photographs,” he said.

Crabtree said she had arrived at court Wednesday uncertain whether to accept the government’s offer to defer prosecution but left with the idea of fighting the charge.

“I’m starting to find they’re feeling as nervous as anybody in my shoes would be,” said Crabtree, a self-described Army brat whose father recently retired after a career in the military. “The fact that they’re nervous about it makes me less nervous and a lot more confident.”

She received encouragement during the morning from three friends who had protested beside her and now are involved in an effort to raise funds for her legal defense.

T-Shirts for Defense

All four wore T-shirts printed with the motto, “Bite the Hand That Bugs You.” Andy Howard, a 31-year-old engineering student, said the shirts are being sold as part of the fund-raising effort.

One, he said, recently was purchased at UC Irvine by veteran activist Abbie Hoffman, who said he planned to give it to Amy Carter. Hoffman and Carter, the daughter of former President Jimmy Carter, were acquitted in April of charges stemming from a demonstration last fall against CIA recruiters at the University of Massachusetts.

McInerney said he remained hopeful that the case can be resolved short of a trial.

“She’s a young lady. She has no criminal record. She apparently, from what I’ve been told, has a good academic background and a good academic future,” he said. “While any sort of assault is serious, fortunately there was no permanent damage done here, and we’d like to give her the opportunity, if she wants to accept it, to settle it at an early stage.”

Crabtree, an anthropology and economics major, said she was prepared to go to jail if necessary to stand up for her principles. But if she is convicted on the assault charge, she insisted, it will only prove that the federal court system is defective.

“They could go through my past history,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m clean. I’m a good girl. I was taking a picture.”

Prosecuting the case, she said, would be pointless.

“I really think it would make them look silly,” Crabtree said. “I really do.”