Report of Smoke at University Prompts FBI Visit

Another embarrassing blunder in the “war on terrorism”.

Shortly after I finished giving a talk last month at Utah Valley University, a student called to report the smell of smoke in the Humanities Building. The source of the smell was quickly determined to be a cup of water that had spilled on some wires.

Campus police, aware of the presence of an “eco-terrorist” on campus, quickly made the keystone cop calculation that the smoke must be the work of militant animal rights activists. At some point, the FBI was contacted.

The FBI – the agency on the forefront of “the war on terrorism” – was hot on the case. Soon, an agent was driving “a good distance” to the home of the student who reported the smoke, to question her about the possibility the smoke was the work of an eco-terrorist.

(Some disclosure in the interest of fairness: The person interviewed did not see a badge, and the person only identified themselves as “an agent”. It was her assumption this person was with the FBI.)

When the woman told the agent the smoke was merely a cup of water that had spilled on wires and not “eco-terrorists”, she described the agent’s response as “let down”.

Wearing their true agenda on their sleeve

A couple things to highlight here:

One, a person in law enforcement with a genuine interest in the preservation of law and order and protecting people should have been thrilled the smoke was not the work of an “eco-terrorist” – not disappointed they weren’t getting a gold star for their naive Barney Fife theory failing to pan out.

Keystone cop logic

Second, try to follow the logic at work:

1) Animal rights activists are terrorists.

2) Terrorists set fires.

3) Smoke comes from fire.

Therefore, animal rights activists set a fire.

(…in the Humanities building).

Is this really the chain of logic? Do they really believe their own narrative? Or is there something else going on?

Dean Kuipers in his book Operation Bite Back talks about how completely out of touch most law enforcement is in their understanding of the Animal Liberation Front. When a police officer was interviewed years after an ALF raid of an experimental fur farm at Washington State University, he told Kuipers he had been told – and believed – the ALF carried guns. This belief doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny, and would be funny if it didn’t mean that someone who hops a fence to open cages may actually be shot by a police officer one day.

This kind of unquestioning, robotic behavior among police should not be a surprise. In this instance, their bizarre investigative anti-logic was of no consequence, and only resulted in a fruitless and embarrassing questioning of a college student.

However the framing of activists as free-for-all criminals, committing crimes that are totally disconnected from any purpose (such as setting a fire in a Humanities building, at a school that appears to do little if any animal research), has and will continue to have many consequences in the form of falsely jailed activists and the harassment of everyone around them.

– Peter Young

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