together, with the two groups claiming joint responsibility for an arson that destroyed a wild-horse corral near Burns, Ore. Then another communique came, this one from the A.L.F. Shortly after that, in July of last year, the group used Rosebraugh again as a conduit for their message, this time claiming responsibility for a fire that burned down a slaughterhouse in Redmond, Ore. In it, the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the release of 10,000 minks from an Oregon mink farm, the largest ever mink release in the United States.
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He will say that when he got the first communique, he faxed it out to newspapers and TV stations. As he puts it, ''If you talk, you basically yourself, and more importantly other people in the movement.'' could trounce on any detail, trace any phone call, if they haven't already. Like all members of the movement, he knows that the F.B.I. Rosebraugh won't say exactly how the communique arrived, whether by E-mail or by fax or simply by mail, just as he won't talk about the mode of transmission of any of the communiques he would later receive. operation, they probably chose the right comrade. Rosebraugh does not know why the group chose him, he says, but if they were looking to outsource their P. It was from a group calling itself the Animal Liberation Front. That's when he received his first communique. But Rosebraugh's life changed in June 1997. Before the Vail fires, Rosebraugh stood out in Portland, if he stood out at all, as the guy who was always getting arrested at anti-vivisection events or locking himself to a door of the corporate headquarters of a hospital group to protest experiments being done on cats.
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Aside from his wire-rimmed glasses and his silver bracelets, he prefers dressing all in black, with each item free of animal hairs and animal skins. ''With the Vail action, we did international press,'' he said last month, sipping tea at the office of the Liberation Collective in downtown Portland. communique.) Rosebraugh also fielded calls from several interested TV newsmagazine producers. Johnson of Eagle County, Colo., whose office, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, is looking into the fire and the E.L.F. (It's an ongoing investigation, according to Sheriff A.J.
He called newspaper and TV stations around the country to stake the E.L.F.'s claim to the arson. Rosebraugh was busy for a few weeks with the Vail fires, especially on top of all his classes. In deep spin mode, he told another reporter, ''To me, Vail expanding into lynx habitat is eco-terrorism.'' and that he knows next to nothing about the group, though he is sympathetic to its cause. ''They instead want this to be seen as an act of love for the environment.'' Rosebraugh is always careful to explain that he is not a member of the E.L.F. ''They don't want this to be seen like an act of terrorism,'' Time quoted him as saying.
He had spoken on behalf of the lynx - whose habitat, he argued, was jeopardized by the resort's expansion plans - but more important on behalf of the underground E.L.F, for which he is now the public face. His comments ended up in Time, for example. But Rosebraugh jumped in quickly to put the movement's spin on it. Many people in the West, where environmental issues are front-page issues, were quick to refer to the fire, in which no one was injured but which caused an estimated $12 million worth of damage, as the largest act of eco-terrorism ever in the United States. He was renting a house with a few other activists, and he had just split off from a local group, People for Animal Rights, to help found a kind of umbrella group called the Liberation Collective, the motto of which is, ''Linking social justice movements to end all oppression.'' Today, though, Craig Rosebraugh stands out in Portland - among activists, at least - as the guy who spoke up on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front, a group that, through Rosebraugh, took credit for burning down a mountaintop ski resort in Vail in October in the name of preserving a lynx habitat. He was 25, and he was a student at Marylhurst University, where he was majoring in social science. Until he received his very first underground communique, which was only last year, Craig Rosebraugh was just another eco-radical living and protesting in and around Portland, Ore.
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