PORTLAND, Ore. — Twenty-six years ago, a Portland social justice activist named Craig Rosebraugh moved into the public eye as a spokesman for an eco-terrorism group called the Earth Liberation Front.
That role put him in the crosshairs of the FBI, and this week we're learning how far the agency went to try to get information about the group out of Rosebraugh. That's thanks to a New York Times story, 'The Case of the Eco-Terrorists and the Book Deal,' authored by Portland-based investigative journalist Bryan Denson.
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) was a domestic eco-terrorist group responsible for several high-profile arsons beginning in the late 1990s. That was also the period when Rosebraugh became their spokesman, taking in communiques from the anonymous saboteurs and putting out news releases for them.
The ELF burned a wild horse slaughterhouse in central Oregon, and later a wild horse corral used by the federal Bureau of Land Management, as well as setting several fires on Vail Mountain in Colorado, which caused tens of millions of dollars in damages.
Denson is a former Oregonian reporter who covered the ELF for years, and his reporting brought him into frequent contact with Rosebraugh back in the day. KGW reached out to Denson to learn the story behind his latest story.
Denson said he's been contemplating writing a book about the ELF, and during a recent visit to California, he decided to visit Rosebraugh.
"We had been communicating about his desire to obtain all of his FBI records, which he did," Denson said. "As I understand it, he actually had to file a lawsuit to get those records, and so I went to his house and we sort of reminisced about those days when he was the spokesman for the ELF."
During the visit, Denson said, he raised the idea of doing a longer story with Rosebraugh to hear his tale of what it was like to be the ELF spokesman. That's when Rosebraugh brought up a fascinating detail: he had dealt with someone who posed as a book editor but was in fact an informant for the FBI.
"And he told me about this strange experience with this book deal," Denson said. "... this guy had had sort of a shady past, in his opinion — Robert Eringer, we're speaking of — and so I wound up writing the story."
As Denson reported in his story, Eringer posed as a book editor and convinced Rosebraugh to write a book about his experience as an ELF spokesman. The FBI was apparently hoping he'd name names, but he didn't, and eventually Rosebraugh got the sense that something was wrong and canceled the deal.
"... and so I wound up reaching out, obviously, to Robert Eringer," Denson said. "But Craig Rosebraugh, in the meantime, had sent me all of their e-mail, communications between the two of them. And I realized: yeah, Craig had been worked over by a professional informant, and so that made the story way more interesting. And so I wound up doing interviews with Mr. Eringer."
KGW asked Denson how he got the fake book editor to open up. He said Eringer was initially reluctant to do a long-form interview, but he was very open from the start and ultimately agreed to come to Portland and talk.
"He's very above board about what he's done," Denson said. "He wrote a whole book called 'Ruse' years ago, about the various ruses that he had worked as an informant for the FBI, some of which is recounted in the story."