In May 1984 an ALF cell broke into the University of Pennsylvania's Head Injury Clinic and carried out sixty hours of the researchers' own videotapes — footage of conscious baboons having their heads pistoned while experimenters joked over them. PETA's edit, Unnecessary Fuss, produced a federal investigation, the suspension of the lab's funding, and the movement's greatest propaganda victory: the raid that closed a laboratory with its own evidence.
In April 1985 the ALF took 467 animals from UC Riverside, including Britches, an infant macaque sewn shut in a sensory-deprivation study whose rescue film became iconic. The raids of this era — Penn, Riverside, SEMA's chimpanzees — put the ALF permanently onto the FBI's domestic-terrorism list even as they forced the first real reforms in laboratory oversight.