Biography
Stanislas Gregory Meyerhoff was one of the two most active members of the Eugene-area Earth Liberation Front cell, taking part in nearly all of the cell's major actions between 1996 and 2001 — including the 1998 Vail ski resort arson (then the most expensive act of ecotage in U.S. history), the 1997 Cavel West horse slaughterhouse arson in Redmond, Oregon, and the 1998 fire at the U.S. Forest Industries office in Medford. He pleaded guilty under Operation Backfire on July 20, 2006 to 54 charges and cooperated extensively with federal prosecutors against his co-defendants.
On May 23, 2007, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken sentenced him to 156 months (13 years) in federal prison — the longest of any Operation Backfire defendant, but substantially below the prosecution's recommended 188 months. The terrorism enhancement was applied. He served his sentence in the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Operation Backfire was the multi-agency federal investigation that, between 2005 and 2008, prosecuted approximately a dozen members of the small Eugene-area ELF/ALF cell known to investigators as 'The Family,' which had carried out roughly twenty arsons and acts of sabotage in five western states between 1996 and 2001. After the December 2005 arrests, the defendants split into two groups: those who cooperated with the federal government — testifying against their co-defendants in exchange for substantially reduced sentences — and those who did not (Daniel McGowan, Marius Mason, Joyanna Zacher, Nathan Block, Jonathan Paul, Briana Waters, Joseph Dibee, Justin Solondz, Rebecca Rubin, and the late William 'Avalon' Rodgers). This entry is for one of the cooperating defendants. The Earth Liberation Prisoners support network has consistently distinguished between cooperating and non-cooperating defendants, and many in the radical-ecology movement do not consider cooperators political prisoners. They are included here because they served meaningful federal prison time.
