About Organizations
Black Panther Party
Black Liberation Army
American Indian Movement
FALN
Weather Underground
Earth Liberation Front
Animal Liberation Front
MOVE
Republic of New Afrika
Symbionese Liberation Army
Los Macheteros
United Freedom Front
May 19th Communist Organization
Young Lords
George Jackson Brigade
Students for a Democratic Society
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Industrial Workers of the World
Communist Party USA
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
Brown Berets
Socialist Workers Party
African People's Socialist Party
Nation of Islam
About Earth Liberation Front
Origins: from Earth First! to the ELF (1992–1997)
The Vail Arson (1998)
The Campaign at Its Peak — and the Luers Case (1999–2003)
Operation Backfire (2005–2007)
The Green Scare Sentences: McGowan, Paul & the Enhancement (2006–2013)
Entrapment & the Longest Sentence: Eric McDavid & Marius Mason (2006– )
THE VAIL ARSON (1998)
On October 19, 1998, fires destroyed the Two Elk Lodge and other facilities atop Vail Mountain in Colorado — $12 million in damage, the costliest act of environmental sabotage in U.S. history to that point. An ELF communiqué claimed the action against the resort's expansion into the last, best lynx habitat in the state, warning skiers to choose other destinations.
Vail made the ELF a national name and fixed the federal template: sabotage of property, however carefully aimed away from life, would be treated as terrorism. The arsonist, it emerged years later, was William "Avalon" Rodgers of the Northwest cells — and the investigation that eventually named him would become the largest domestic-terrorism case in FBI history.