Feds say NY man helped solve Wis. eco-terrorism

[March 21, 2009]  DETROIT (AP) -- Ian Wallace is a graduate student in anthropology in New York who has studied fossils in Kenya, combed excavations in Syria and France and written about his research in scholarly journals.

But next week, he will be sentenced to federal prison for trying to blow up two buildings at a Michigan university in 2001 when he was a radical eco-saboteur.

It is another case of federal agents catching up to people who formerly were passionate members of the Earth Liberation Front, known as ELF.

"Ian Wallace's past has come back to harm him," Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagen Frank said in a court filing this week.

The judge in the case "faces the difficult task of crafting an appropriate sentence for a promising young man of 27 years for things he did when he was barely more than a child," Frank wrote.

Wallace, a graduate student at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y., qualifies for 10 years in prison when he appears Monday in federal court in Marquette in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

But Frank is recommending a significant drop in the sentencing guidelines to as low as 70 months, or just under six years, because of Wallace's help in solving a case in Rhinelander, Wis., where 500 research trees were destroyed or badly damaged in ELF's name in 2000.

"His cooperation with the government has been extraordinary," defense lawyer Edward Panzer said.

In October, Wallace pleaded guilty to attempting to firebomb two buildings at Michigan Technological University in Houghton in November 2001.

After midnight, he and an acquaintance placed homemade incendiary devices outside the buildings. Wallace said the goal was to destroy tree research and intimidate the public. The timers, however, failed.

Frank's filing reveals details of how authorities snagged Wallace years later.

The FBI contacted him in January 2007 after a tip in an ELF-related case in Oregon. Three months later, Wallace spilled his past to the government, admitting the Michigan Tech crimes and providing critical information about the attack on trees in Wisconsin, which caused $1 million in damage.

Three people subsequently were indicted and pleaded guilty in federal court in Wisconsin, Frank said.

"This would not have happened but for (Wallace's) cooperation and his readiness to testify at trial," the prosecutor wrote.

Wallace has acknowledged vandalizing vehicles at a Forest Service research station at the University of Minnesota in April 2000. He also has taken responsibility for an arson at a construction site at the university in January 2002. The loss was $630,000.

Wallace's academic resume on the Stony Brook University Web site says he graduated with high honors from Minnesota in 2006. It shows he has traveled the world to pursue his interest in science.

Wallace "voluntarily abandoned his violent extremism in 2002, many years before this prosecution commenced, and became a productive member of society without the compulsion of imminent discovery or punishment," Frank said.

In October, another ex-ELF member was sentenced to nine years in prison for arson at Michigan State University in 1999. Frank Ambrose was caught after he dumped remnants of his extremist past in a Detroit-area trash bin in 2007.

He blew the whistle on his ex-wife, who was his accomplice in the arson as well as other acts of destruction. Marie Mason recently was sentenced to nearly 22 years in federal prison.

[Associated Press; By ED WHITE]

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