Animal-Rights Group Sends Booby-Trapped Letters to Dozens of Primate Researchers By ALISON SCHNEIDER
An extremist animal-rights group mailed more than 80 letters booby-trapped with razor blades to scientists who study primates. The activists, who call themselves the "Justice Department," threatened to step up the violence if the researchers don't stop their experiments.
The letters, which were mailed on Friday, contained a succinct message: "You have been targeted and you have until autumn of 2000 to release all your primate captives and get out of the vivisection industry. If you do not heed our warning, your violence will be turned back upon you."
To underscore their point, the activists affixed razor blades to the inside of the envelopes, positioned so that anyone opening the letter would slice a finger.
"Animals had suffered long enough," the group said in an on-line communiqué. "The time has come for abusers to have but a taste of the fear and anguish their victims suffer on a daily basis."
The group announced its plan on the Internet and included a list of the 83 scientists it planned to attack. A watchdog group called Americans for Medical Progress, which monitors animal-rights organizations, notified the researchers whose names were on the list.
By Wednesday evening, 31 letters -- all of them with Las Vegas, Nev., postmarks, handwritten addresses, and no return addresses -- had been intercepted at institutions around the country, including Emory, Harvard, and Tulane Universities, the Oregon Health Sciences University, and the Universities of California at Davis, Michigan, and Wisconsin at Madison.
Only a handful of the letters were actually opened, and no injuries have been reported. All of the letters are being turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has taken over the case.
Peter Gerone, director of Tulane's Regional Primate Research Center, received his letter on Monday morning, an hour after an e-mail message alerted him to the danger. His secretary opened the razor-blade-rigged envelope. "Fortunately, she was using an envelope opener," Mr. Gerone said.
Three other Tulane researchers received letters; 11 of the university's scientists were on the list. All of the letter recipients there, Mr. Gerone said, had one thing in common: They had all listed their names, addresses, and research interests on a World-Wide Web site called Community of Science, a global registry that helps researchers find out what their peers are working on.
Despite the brush with the extremists, Mr. Gerone said, "we're not going to do anything differently." He continued: "The threat has always been there, but my personal feeling is that they're not going to act on it. I think it's just a scare tactic. It might even be a publicity stunt."
Jacquie Calnan, president of Americans for Medical Progress, isn't so sure. The booby-trapped letters were the latest in a spate of attacks on American researchers, she noted.
On Sunday, vandals raided a psychology-department laboratory at Western Washington University, and the evidence suggested that a group known as the Animal Liberation Front was responsible. Forty-one animals were stolen from the lab, and two offices were ransacked.
On Tuesday, the Bioengineering Action Network of North America scheduled a "National Day of Action" and called on its members to destroy crops, equipment, buildings, and vehicles at any institution involved in biotechnology or genetic-engineering research.
This is the first time the "Justice Department," a little-known extremist group that originated in Britain, has focused on researchers in the United States, Ms. Calnan said. In 1994, the group sent six letter bombs to European companies that export live animals. In 1996, the organization mailed 65 letters containing razor blades covered in rat poison to Canadian hunting guides. The group subsequently sent 87 envelopes to Canadian furriers. Those letters were rigged with razor blades allegedly contaminated with AIDS-infected blood.
"Of all the animal-rights groups, the Justice Department is clearly the most dangerous," Ms. Calnan said. "The Animal Liberation Front will steal animals and destroy labs, but the Justice Department says it wants to punish scientists for the work they do. They are not concerned about any possible loss of life."
Although the extremist groups appear to be separate organizations, communiqués from the Justice Department have been posted on the Animal Liberation Front's Web site, and many of the groups use similar rhetoric.
"I'm deeply concerned that this is beginning to mirror the situation of doctors who perform abortions," Ms. Calnan said. "There's been specific targeting of scientists by name. There's been incredible rhetoric. And it probably takes two clicks of a browser to go from a list of scientists' names who work in these labs to instructions on how to build an incendiary device. I'm convinced this will lead to someone suffering grievous bodily harm."
Institutions around the country have stepped up security to insure that doesn't happen. At the Oregon Health Sciences University, where four researchers were singled out and one received a letter, officials are monitoring the mail and have warned scientists to exercise caution opening letters sent to their homes, said James Parker, a spokesman for the institution.
Twelve researchers at Harvard's medical school were warned on Monday by the university that they had been targets of the "Justice Department"; six received letters. "Our researchers are taking this in stride and hoping to continue their work," said Don L. Gibbons, a medical-school spokesman.
No one was singled out at Washington State University, but the institution has increased security nonetheless, just in case something arrives in the mail from the "Justice Department," or the National Day of Action against biotechnology strikes close to home. "We make a convenient target," said Hugh Imhof, a university spokesman. "We're the primary research institution in the state, and we have sites all over."
The university, he said, is on "high alert." It has beefed up security and is posting extra staff members in the research labs at night to ward off possible attacks. Researchers have been advised to leave lights and radios on in their offices and labs when they're not there; to remove computer disks, slides, and paperwork from desktops; to lock their desks and file cabinets; and to take irreplaceable data off the premises, Mr. Imhof said.
Ms. Calnan of Americans for Medical Progress added a few other caveats: Beware of any mail that makes mistakes with your name, has a handwritten address, no return address, excess postage, or grease marks on the outside of the package. And always use a letter opener. Those are common-sense precautions, "but folks' lives are on the line," she said. "This is going to be a fact of life for researchers well into the millennium. I just don't see this going away."