Official Says Activists Back Kaczynski

A California congressman whose office has been targeted by anti-logging protesters claimed Monday that one of the motivations behind the demonstrators was sympathy for Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski.

Rep. Frank Riggs (R-Windsor) cited a leaflet that he said was circulated by the environmental group Earth First that urges people to “protest the injustice being perpetuated against Theodore Kaczynski by right-wingers.”

“This is not a group of innocent schoolchildren,” said Riggs, whose district office last month was the scene of a sit-in to denounce as inadequate a plan to save ancient North Coast redwoods in the Headwaters Forest. The protest was broken up when police sprayed and swabbed pepper spray in the eyes of demonstrators.

Before a state Capitol rally Monday on the Headwaters Forest controversy, Earth First members disavowed any sympathy for Kaczynski. They said they had no connection to the leaflet, given to Riggs by Eureka police.

“That is a fake leaflet,” said Josh Brown of Earth First, saying that his group is nonviolent.

Kaczynski is accused in three bombing deaths, including an April 1995 blast in Sacramento that killed Gilbert Murray, a lobbyist with the California Forestry Assn.

At the time, a postal inspector asserted that the Unabomber’s anti-technology philosophy seemed similar to the views of radical environmental groups that often oppose positions taken by the forestry group.

But Kaczynski, whose trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 12 with jury selection, has been described by authorities as a loner who lived in the Montana woods. He is the only suspect indicted in the Unabomber case.

Riggs first sought to link Kaczynski and the protesters during an appearance Monday on the national morning television program “Today” that focused on the sit-in at his office and the way police used the pepper spray.

The discussion was sparked by a lawsuit filed last week against the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department and the Eureka Police Department in alleged civil rights violations against environmental demonstrators.

“These are the same protesters, by the way, who condoned the actions of the Unabomber,” Riggs said, citing the leaflet.

Later, in a news release, Riggs once again tied Earth First to the Unabomber.

“As the flier released by police shows, these people are not harmless, brave defenders of 1st Amendment rights they are now claiming,” Riggs said.

“The invasion of my office was part of an escalating campaign of intimidation, violence and destruction of private property that these so-called environmentalists see as a path to stopping all logging in the U.S.”

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During the incident, four protesters brought sawdust and a tree stump into Riggs office and staged a sit-in, locking themselves together with metal sleeve devices.

Police have said they used the pepper spray to get protesters to comply with orders that they open the metal devices.

On Monday, a woman at the Capitol rally who identified herself as Terri Compost of Humboldt County said the pepper spray was applied to her eyes and described what happened as “quite intense, very painful.”

Asked whether she was sympathetic toward Kaczynski, she said, “That’s ridiculous. He’s [Riggs] trying to paint us as eco-terrorists. That’s ridiculous.”

After the rally, protesters marched a few blocks to the state Resources Building where nine chanting demonstrators sat in the building’s lobby. Six locked themselves together with the metal sleeves and three others were lashed together with bicycle locks.

“No more clear cuts,” they chanted as state workers milled throughout the lobby and TV crews filmed the action.

Shortly after 5 p.m., authorities moved in with pipe cutters and arrested the demonstrators on charges of disrupting state services, a misdemeanor. The arrests occurred without incident.

The protesters were far outnumbered by the media and police.

“It’s impeding the efficient work of state government,” Sean Walsh, Gov. Pete Wilson’s spokesman, said of the sit-in.

“When you chain yourselves together in a government building and impede the efficient work of the state, then you’ve crossed the line and you should be arrested and that’s . . . the goal of these individuals,” Walsh said. “The state is essentially with them. We believe we should save the Headwaters Forest.”