Original subtitles

This is Special Agent James A. Anderson.

On August 26th at approximately 10:15,

I'm preparing to report a telephone conversation.

WOMAN: Hi, is Kevin there?

KEVIN: I was out early around 7:30 a.m.

And I returned to the home around 9:30,

and as you're driving down Home Street where our house was,

it's a one-way street.

And I noticed, "Why is the street so packed?"

There're cars! There's cars everywhere!

And then all of a sudden,

crossing the street in front of me

was somebody in an FBI windbreaker.

I immediately looked over to my house,

saw federal agents walking in and out,

I looked straight forward

and just kept on driving

making no eye contact with anybody.

JAKE: When they left, this guy, like,

took me aside and got in my face and said,

"Where's Kevin?" I was like, "I don't know where Kevin is."

And he goes, "Well, you tell a message that we are after..."

You know, something ridiculous like that.

I was like, "Okay. Yeah, I'll get right on that."

I just kind of laughed at him, and he got really upset.

He was like,

"You think this is funny?" And blah, blah, blah and...

"You tell Kevin, we're gonna get him."

"Yeah, okay."

JOSH: We're six activists who are indicted under

federal terrorism laws.

We didn't break anything,

we didn't burn anything,

we didn't beat anyone,

we didn't even so much as trespass.

Our crime is doing exactly

what I'm doing right now,

speaking.

NEWS REPORTER: The target of SHAC was the animal testing company,

Huntingdon Life Sciences, and companies that did business with it.

WILL: Huntingdon Life Sciences was selected

because it's a key player in the animal testing industry.

They have a lot of money, lot of power,

a lot of resources and a lot of influence.

MAN: This hearing is the second hearing we've had on this subject,

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, a radical animal rights organization

that relies on a campaign that feared to convey

their message of animal liberation.

What we have is an international conspiracy.

These are not random isolated acts.

Legitimate business enterprises are suffering.

WILL: The FBI, Homeland Security

and the federal government

rallied behind this company

to defend them as this victim

of a protest campaign.

And a victim that if they allowed

to close and to shut down

that other corporations will be targeted next.

Corporations get to do what they want.

That's the rule in our society... effectively.

We challenged the right of this corporation to exist.

This is Willie's favorite treat, isn't it, honey?

What you doing?

This is Willie.

Willie is the big Justin Timberlake fan in the house.

I get picked on for this. This is my pillow case.

I'm not afraid to admit it. I'm masculine enough.

Everybody always made fun of me about it.

Like, "Oh, you like pop music."

And so I have got, like, Justin Timberlake bobble heads,

somebody gave me an autographed picture.

Somebody actually made me

a pillow case with him on it. So...

Growing up as one of those people

whose conscience wouldn't let 'em remain silent,

I had to do something.

I was thinking about what career am I gonna pursue.

Because I wanna work at an NGO or a non-profit.

Some people are passionate about the law or medicine,

I was passionate about public policy

and engaging the public on social issues.

The animal rights issue always spoke to me

because there was such a lack of voices

speaking out on behalf of animals.

I've grown up with a beagle.

Barney the beagle is my best friend as a little kid.

In most labs, they use beagles for experimentation

and it really hit home to me.

I got involved with the Student Organization For Animal Rights.

KATIE: We would do a little bit of vegan outreach.

We would do a little bit of anti-vivisection,

a little bit of anti-fur.

It became really focused under Kevin.

KEVIN: Those meetings would ramble on for hours.

And at that point in time, I knew, like, this

feel-good, anarchist, brand of activism

wasn't a fit for me.

I believe in hierarchy and leadership.

I believe in authority.

He actually took over at the U of M SOAR group.

I've never seen anything

like what Kevin was able to do.

He'd get other people to rally behind.

KEVIN: We decided to figure out

what major researchers at the university

were receiving funding

to do animal research.

Our primary target was Marilyn Carroll,

who takes rhesus macaque monkeys

and addicts them to crack cocaine

and studies the withdrawal effects.

We made flyers with her picture on it.

Distributed it to her students,

to her colleagues.

It was at this point of time that I realized,

you're doing a protest against a person

who is doing something wrong.

And so we had to make it personal.

And going to her doorstep made it very personal.

She went through the roof as did her husband.

No broken windows, no paint,

just people at her home.

It touched her nerve.

The press never mentioned Marilyn Carroll

before we started going to her house.

But then they were also talking about it

because they had to explain why we were there,

what Marilyn Carroll was doing to these primates.

The raid that happened at the University of Minnesota

was at a neurological research center

and then, was in a psychology building.

NEWS REPORTER: The vandals dressed in dark clothing, and faces covered,

kicked in doors, tore through labs

and took more than 100 research animals.

The impact of an act of terrorism

is that it's shocking.

That it shocks people. It terrorizes.

The break-in had that impact.

I was out of town when it happened.

When I got back into Minnesota,

I couldn't believe something of this magnitude

had happened at my school.

It felt like we'd received a visit

from somebody really important.

I see individuals were putting their lives

and their freedom at risk

to save these animals.

Since I was a student there,

I could be the campus spokesperson

and try to explain to the media

why radical underground activists

would think it's appropriate to take animals out

and cause damage.

OFFICER: This is a terrorist act.

Come forward and admit to who did it,

go to trial and see what the outcome of the trial is.

I, myself, and nobody from the press office

knows who did this

or where you could contact them.

Maybe it was hubris

and being young and full of oneself

but I felt like

repercussions weren't going to be an issue for me.

I got a page, this is back in the day of pagers,

saying, "Call me. 911. Call me. 911.

The FBI has just spent the last three and a half hours at our home.

They had guns and flak jackets.

They tore our place apart.

You need to come home. You need to come home."

The Nexus would have been domestic terrorism.

FBI was trying to find out

if there's a relationship

between the people who are publicly speaking

in theory about tactics being used

by underground animal rights activists.

Um, if there is a connection

to the people who are actually carrying out the crimes.

KEVIN: Minnesota state legislators were trying

to introduce legislations to make what I did illegal,

speaking out on behalf

of a "Terrorist action."

And even tried to make it retro...

This wasn't about solving a crime,

this was about sending a message,

that you better shut up.

NARRATOR: Saturday afternoon at King's Cross station in London,

and protesters prepare for another rally

against vivisection.

Most are regular, but one organizer is a visitor.

KEVIN: We have sheets right here

on what to do if you're arrested.

Please take one.

Just details what to do in the police cell.

What to do for interviews.

England is the mecca for animal rights activism.

And I always wanted to go there because of that.

I had the intention of moving there.

Being involved with some campaigns on the weekends.

WOMAN: Kevin Kjonass was the ALF spokesman in Minnesota.

And has been questioned

as part of the ongoing FBI investigation into this raid.

KEVIN: After about a month of being there,

I just wanted to campaign full-time

because the success, the energy,

the momentum was intoxicating.

There're such a diversity of people

and they all have the same common desire

and that's to shut these places down.

We will overcome all obstacles to shut 'em down.

In America, the movement is much smaller,

and we can't do this in such a mass scale.

ALL: Close down HLS!

NARRATOR: Their destination, Huntingdon Life Sciences.

WOMAN: Huntingdon Life Sciences

is one of the world's leading contract research organizations.

We take a holistic approach

to bio-pharmaceutical drug development

to ensure that customer gets the best help and support

in developing their products.

We take the care of our animals very seriously.

And our high ethical standards

are core to our corporate philosophy.

Contact us now to find out

how we can help get your next product to market.

WILL: Huntingdon Life Sciences or HLS

is a contract animal testing company.

They don't engage in animal testing

like most people would think

of the term as finding a cure for AIDS or cancer.

HLS will take money

from any private corporation

to carry out product testing.

Tooth paste or pharmaceuticals,

an adhesive, or a bleach,

or laundry detergent or... You name it.

I loved it.

It was a good company. It was looking after us.

It was providing valuable service

for the research in drug development.

Huntingdon was doing everything right.

Everything.

MAN: Hold on. That's a bad dog. Look at the shite.

Oh, shut up.

-I haven't got the patience, today. -He's not healthy.

-MAN: I really haven't. -How unsettled they are.

Fucking hell!

I'm really getting fucking mad with you.

-Every fucking time.

Fucking sit still.

Nobody condones that.

That person was fired immediately.

His supervisor was fired.

One technician out of 600 slapped a dog, so...

If... If you're running late, you move faster,

you're rougher with the animals.

If the animals are struggling, you're...

The lab workers would

smack them around the way you smack a computer

that's being sluggish or slow.

I was in the U.S. lab when the UK case broke

and the message that came to the workers

in the U.S. lab was,

"Don't get caught doing anything like that."

Well, I remember driving home one night

and shaking my head and saying to myself,

"It's all through."

The animals are treated awfully.

There's no regard for them.

Their suffering doesn't matter at all.

It's just about the dollar bill.

It's all through.

Huntingdon was enemy number one for the animal rights world.

KEVIN: SHAC stands for Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.

WILL: It had its sole purpose

of shutting down Huntingdon Life Sciences.

ALL: Close down HLS!

KEVIN: SHAC's approach was radically different

than prior campaigns

because tertiary targets were being chosen.

Companies that Huntingdon needs to survive,

but are companies that don't need Huntingdon.

WILL: The reason that was a success

was because they were following the money.

KEVIN: They started targeting their financiers,

their shareholders, their banks.

KEVIN: It was having an immediate effect.

The share price nosedived.

Huntingdon became a pariah.

BRIAN: Pretty quickly it was impossible for us to get

a bank account in this country,

or insurance coverage in this country.

And unfortunately we lost a lot of shareholders as well.

WILL: They took one hit after another.

They found their investors backing out.

Including the most important, the Royal Bank of Scotland.

NEWS REPORTER: The year-long protest

against the laboratory succeeded

in closing it down.

But at the last minute, an anonymous overseas backer

came up with a rescue package.

WILL: The only way that they were saved

was from a 33 million-dollar bail-out

from a U.S. company.

KEVIN: This is coming to the U.S.

and everybody's participation is being sought after.

NEWS REPORTER: ...our viewers that,

we're going to show you what is unfolding...

NEWS REPORTER 1: There's the harpoon. There's the whale.

NEWS REPORTER 2: And there goes the first gunshot

from the, uh, 5 caliber rifle.

JOSH: And I look over and I...

You're driving, you know,

and I'm seeing them past you.

And they're all up on the bow of the ship holding shotguns.

And you just have that moment of, like,

-how the fuck did we get here?

Like, I'm on the ocean

sabotaging a whale hunt.

NEWS REPORTER: But they have a target. The whale's back up.

JAKE: Sure enough, the guy in the front

of the boat goes up with his elephant gun

to shoot this whale in the back.

I just see Josh take out a flare... a lit flare and...

...throw it over the bow of the boat

and I'm like, "Well, fuck it."

Consequences be damned.

Let's get the job done.

JOSH: The sole reason that I chose

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty

versus the myriad other groups out there

was the footage.

One of the most horrifying things for me

was that it featured,

what was supposed to be a necropsy

on a primate.

The primate was still alive

and was still clearly breathing.

And...

Under no anesthetics...

And this man was just callously

cutting open his chest.

And you can see his heart still beating.

And I hated those fuckers.

KEVIN: Josh Harper, he's got one of the biggest hearts

of anybody I know.

JOSH: I remember being 14 years old

and getting involved in punk rock music.

We ain't preaching but this our opinion,

everybody's got a right to free speech.

Nazi redneck assholes, fuck off.

JOSH: Reading the liner notes of all these albums...

You know, hearing these lyrics

about what was going on in the world,

it helped to politicize me.

As I started to dig

more into the history

of how change occurs,

I realized that at every turn,

every ounce of progress that we've had,

towards the more just world

has come because

there were people who were willing to fight

and willing to sacrifice...

and really willing to suffer.

Not all of them ended up succeeding in their struggles.

But there's something beautiful

about a person

who has a degree of selflessness

that takes them from their comfort

and propels them out into the world

against great odds,

and often ends

in... in tragedy.

WOMAN: Okay. Your turn.

JOSH: At times, these issues get to be a real abstraction,

500 a day, 70,000 a year,

but we forget that their lives are very real,

very tangible to them.

And so I wanted to be here, I wanted to be near the lab,

I wanted to see where it was all happening.

JOSH: I wanted to send them a message

that they are not safe from me anywhere.

JOSH: HLS owed millions of dollars

and Stephens bought that debt

and we wanted them to recall it.

KEVIN: We promised if Stephens divested 'em,

Huntingdon would be no more.

They were the crutch

Huntingdon was leaning on to survive.

WARREN: If you wanna sit down and have

a scientific factual debate,

that's fine.

Let's do it.

But they won't do that.

KEVIN: I just simply called

and I asked to speak to Warren Stephens,

the President and CEO, he wouldn't take my call.

NEWS REPORTER: Warren Stephens says his company

will not divest their holdings in Huntingdon.

You know, the animals are treated

as humanely as they possibly can be.

JOSH: My mission was to go to the south

and let them know

you are going to have to deal with some consequences

for your dealings with HLS.

NEWS REPORTER: Hundreds of protesters are reportedly coming to town

to call attention to Stephens' investments

in a research company they say

"Commits horrific acts to animals."

WOMAN: Welcome to the beautiful Little Rock, Arkansas.

JAKE: We were driving around looking at potential protest targets.

We drove to the gas station.

I went in to buy something like orange juice or something

and the woman was freaking out and she said,

"We're under attack! We're under attack!"

I was like, "What are you talking about?"

She's like, "They're dropping planes on us."

And I was like, "What?"

WILL: After the September 11th attacks,

it was, you know, a different environment,

to put it mildly, and there was a lot of discussion

of whether the protest should continue

Little Rock was October 29th, 2001.

It was just a month and a half away.

JOSH: There was this Bush administration campaign

of, you know, you're with us or against us.

Either you're with us

or you are with the terrorists.

JOSH: You know, everyone's gotta unite behind this cause.

The cause was,

"Shut the fuck up and consume."

KEVIN: It became apparent after about a week

when George Bush encouraged everybody to go shopping,

and football had to be played,

that protests had to be held.

We were gonna do our part too.

USA! USA!

It became very clear that there is gonna be

some really big changes.

There was also a sense that hopefully,

law enforcements' focus was on something else

besides political activists.

But obviously, it was the opposite.

BUSH: Our war on terror

begins with Al-Qaeda.

-But it does not end there.

MAN: Well, people that have been in all this crap that we've been,

collecting their license plate numbers,

they got it from damn near every state in the Union here.

KEVIN: We thought it was important to send a message

to Warren Stephens personally,

that we're gonna come directly to your goddamn doorstep.

JOSH: I understand why home demonstrations

and personal targeting is so controversial.

But when you take a billionaire like Warren Stephens,

he's got this tremendous amount of comfort,

billions of dollars.

And on the other hand,

there's this group of activists and all they're doing

is passing out leaflets, and holding signs.

Money wins. Money wins that situation.

But if you suddenly start making it clear

that he has to deal with you.

'Cause every time he plays golf, there you are.

When he goes out shopping, there you are.

And when he comes home, there you are.

WOMAN: We're everywhere you are

and everywhere your executives are.

REPORTER: There is concern that the anger

activists feel towards Stephens Incorporated

could turn violent.

As the members, um, the leaders of this gang,

tried to, um, terrori...

I'm sorry, they're trying to show their threat

that they're going to do today.

JOSH: This was a legal demonstration.

We had gotten permits.

When we showed up,

they'd surrounded the entire area

with this little cage.

We were all supposed to stand inside of this cage

and protest.

DARIUS: The police had set up this free speech zone.

Which makes you wonder, you know,

if this is like, the free speech zone

then what's everything outside of the free speech zone?

Like, the whole country

is supposed to be a free speech zone.

You could come in one at a time

and they insisted on searching everybody.

MAN 1: These cops won't even let me have deodorant.

JOSH: They were turning people away for things like,

having spikes on their jackets.

DARIUS: And the police were just taking their sweet time.

So, we had hundreds of people waiting to get in.

JOSH: Pretty quickly we understood

that this was a tactic

to basically make this protest impotent.

Somebody came to me and they were like,

"This is unacceptable."

People started marching out.

We have a right

under the United States constitution, First Amendment,

and under the Arkansas constitution, Fifth Article

to peacefully assemble.

JOSH: I remember actually saying,

"I think this is a bad plan."

But I headed out.

We started marching around the Stephens building

and eventually came back and converged there.

There was a group of maybe about four or five kids

that started shaking the barricade.

OFFICER: We will use force.

Get away from the barricade. Get away from the barricade.

OFFICER: Stand back!

JOSH: During the police riot,

I heard a cop say, "Get Harper."

Which is my name.

I got pepper-sprayed,

and then I got shot in the face with a rubber bullet.

After the protest, the cops were following me.

I was tackled and dragged into a parking lot

where they punched me in the head,

knocked my glasses off,

put me in a chokehold till I couldn't breathe,

handcuffed me

and then carried me down to a bus

where I was charged with $11 million in damages.

MAN: Fucking fascists!

LAWYER: Your Honor, I continue to present Mr. Harper,

plead not guilty.

JOSH: Some of the people who were arrested

had never been arrested before.

In some cases, this was the first demonstration

that they had ever attended.

Many of them were standing legally on the sidewalk

when the cops rushed in

and just started snatching people at random.

JILL: A policeman comes from behind me

and he says, "Get out of here."

And then another cop grabs me from behind

and puts the cuffs on me and tells me I'm under arrest.

And I said, "That policeman just told me to get out of here

and I'm trying to follow his instructions."

Didn't matter.

And there's something very radicalizing about that.

JILL: Honestly, I think the Little Rock police

are the ones that put us

on the suspected terrorist list.

Just for standing on the street,

they put us on this list.

JOSH: They started going back to their communities

and they were outraged and they were angry...

And they were raring to go.

WILL: Stephens Inc, from day one

said they were not gonna bow to pressure.

But a few things were happening.

One was that, the SHAC campaign

the lawful, above ground protest campaign continued.

REPORTER: Police say they were well-prepared,

but that preparation came at a cost

of more than $200,000.

JOSH: The cops were going to Warren Stephens and saying,

"Your company makes billions and now half of our budget

is gone because of one protest."

At the same time, the underground covert elements

continued their illegal activity as well.

KEVIN: They found out Warren Stephens personal credit card

charged $100,000 on it,

buying them cappuccino makers and washing machines.

They also found out where his

eight million dollars penthouse apartment was.

They threw red paint all over it

and smashed the front window.

There was an uncontrollable element

to this movement

that was even beyond SHAC.

That was taking things to a level

that made it way too uncomfortable

to stay connected to Huntingdon.

This combination of relentless, above-ground organizing

and relentless underground or illegal activity as well,

all helped to force the hand of Stephens Inc.

REPORTER: Stephens sold its stock

in the medical testing lab.

A decision Stephens officials say

had nothing to do with this protest.

It was a business decision that's good for everybody,

Huntingdon, us and the new entity

that's gonna be the majority owner.

I felt...

I felt and I feel wonderful about beating Stephens.

All of the money and all of the resources they had,

and to be able to stare them down

and say, "We won this time. We won."

KEVIN: It was satisfying on like, a personal level

because we got mano a mano with this billionaire brat

who thought he could stand up to us.

And we won.

It wasn't satisfying in that,

"Oh, finally this place is done and we can move on."

It didn't pan out that way.

Somebody bought the damn shares.

KEVIN: We set up a little house and operated out of there.

The whole top floor was an office.

When I went to work in the SHAC office,

I was only supposed to go for three months.

And I never came back.

MAN: We weren't paid. We were all broke.

JAKE: I think we just had to roll a carpet on the floor

that everyone sat on.

MAN: We were able to raise enough money through donations

to pay for the rent.

I couldn't believe that they had sacrificed

and had given up absolutely everything.

They just had no food

in the house that they were living in.

They drink fasting tea.

You wake up and your stomach is growling and you're hungry,

and you drink fasting tea.

MAN: We worked, you know, seven days a week,

sometimes 15, 18 hours a day.

JAKE: This is how I'd go about

working on some of the projects.

You know, we'd come up with something very generic

and then I'd maybe sketch out a few ideas

and then I put it into action.

KEVIN: We put an advertisement in for a brick.

You know,

a smashing idea in the war on vivisection.

After a while, we just kind of got a reputation

for being smartasses.

Learn to recognize gang members.

That's good, huh?

SHAC as a campaign,

coordinated national campaign targets

in the dissemination of information.

But it was left up to the local groups

as to how they wanted to use that information.

ACTIVIST: The website was the cornerstone of the campaign.

Everything that happened in the campaign

went up on that website.

It was mobilization, energy and excitement.

Up to date, minute-by-minute reports of what your communities

across the world were doing.

JOSH: And this was before Facebook.

It was a complete turning point

in social movement organizing.

LINDSAY: Any time we read an update,

we really felt like a part of, like, the bigger campaigns.

Oh, fudge.

All right.

Story of my life.

Always a little bit out of gas.

We're punk kids,

we don't have money to be throwing around

to change the world.

I don't keep a gas can in my car

because I dread that one day, that like,

the cops pull me over and then say

I'm in possession of bomb-making instruments

or some bullshit like that.

So instead, we just see the ebb and flow

of where the money is.

Yeah, 40 cents of gas.

And through our direct actions

we're gonna try to become part of this process.

You haven't been part of the corporate world

and you don't know how they work,

but you can figure all that stuff out.

JAKE: Then you understand not only its strengths,

but you understand its weaknesses.

And then, you can start picking these places apart.

ANDY: Something like Huntingdon Life Sciences

needs to be targeted, financially.

Because they speak in the language of money.

JAKE: One of us just called up someone at the SCC

and we pretended that we were college students.

And was like, "Hey, can you answer some questions

about how financials work for a corporation?"

And this person was really excited to tell them.

I think we carried on a relationship with that person

for almost two years of just being like,

"Hey, it's so-and-so, doing my papers still.

Like, could you answer this question for me?

What's a market maker?"

This stuff is really complicated.

They had to learn about the pink sheets

and market makers.

And this is not the type of campaigning

that a lot of people are willing to do.

It's not glamorous, it's not fun.

This movement embraced those tactics

because they realized it had the potential for change.

There were hundreds of companies

that were severing themselves from this laboratory

'cause they didn't want to put up with activist pressure.

So, because I work for a company?

-Yes. -Absolutely.

You guys are interrupting my family.

They just sent me 3,000 e-mails today.

And now they're at my door.

What the fuck?

We'd kinda look at what other cities were active

and say, "Oh, we're gonna do a better demonstration than them.

We're gonna have more people."

Keep any business

from having anything to do with Huntingdon Life Sciences.

There are no lab coats

because the linen service is no longer functioning.

Trash is piling up because

the waste removal company is not working with you.

KEVIN: Huntingdon's janitors quit, the cafeteria supplier quit.

Internet companies, auditors.

The idea was, we will stick with this until we win.

JAKE: Phone blockades, e-mail blockades.

Denial of service attacks.

No one would participate on their board anymore.

We love animals too.

We would never hurt an animal.

-Never. -WOMAN: But you do!

We started this protest campaign against a guy in Pakistan.

He called up and said, "I don't want to deal

with you people anymore. I'm quitting."

The largest accounting firm in the world, just backed up within 24 hours.

After looking at the SHAC website,

they do not want to be part of this.

KEVIN: The world's biggest financial corporation,

Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab,

they realized one thing, that it wasn't worth it.

ACTIVIST: Their share price dropped from like

$30 to a few pennies.

KEVIN: Try suing us, it doesn't work!

Try the FBI, try police beatings.

We don't fucking care!

We're never going away

and we always win.

We really felt unstoppable at that point.

REPORTER: This week activists vomited

on an HLS display table at a pharmacological conference

in San Francisco, on Monday,

and then turned over tables yesterday.

We're gonna be a royal pain in the ass

and then a rude embarrassment

to any company

that is connected to Huntingdon.

Ah, well, first of all,

I'd like to thank all the federal agents

and informants who made it out tonight.

It's always special to see you.

You know, I don't know if there would've been a campaign without hubris.

You have to have a degree of arrogance

to think you can take on multinational corporations

and win.

But then I think, underestimating

the connections of those individuals

and how far that they were willing to go to push back.

They started out small by watching us.

There was this sedan.

There were these two guys that were clearly agents.

You knock on the window and they go,

"Yeah, I'm gonna leave now. I'm gonna go to the store,

I'm gonna go to the video store, maybe get a movie or something.

You guys ready? You ready?"

They're like, "Yeah."

Since that failed,

they started searching our trashes.

Here is these two well-dressed men,

they're rifling through my garbage.

Uh, so we started coming out here all the time

with all the cat litter boxes

and dumping it all over our garbage.

Anybody who has studied

resistance movements in this country

understands that the FBI

has always been an enemy

to people who are attempting to create change.

And then here, it bears out, how I also feel about the FBI,

that I hate them.

I think they're perverse, pathetic bullies.

MAN: People are back here demonstrating

in front of Harper's house.

They have picketers, they got bullhorns.

They're here to harass these people.

We have an injunction against them.

The law has been something where I've said, "This is what I was made to do."

Some people are good at sports,

I'm good at the law,

including following it, I might point out.

Um, you know...

some would disagree.

WILL: Protests at individuals' homes

is certainly controversial,

but it's also constitutionally protected.

Sometimes there are local ordinances

or some kind of injunction that comes into play,

attempting to rewrite that First Amendment protection.

KEVIN: You can't do demonstrations

unless it's between 4:00 and 6:00,

and you can't have a bullhorn,

and there can only be ten people

and you have to give 72 hours' notice.

Well, fine. We'd follow those instructions to a T,

but we wouldn't stop going.

LAUREN: Your neighbors don't like us here.

We're not going away until your company severs ties

with Huntingdon Life Sciences.

LAUREN: I received an indictment in the mail,

charging me with,

I believe, threats, extortion and conspiracy to commit both,

and I was facing 20 years in prison.

I read the complaint, and I got very nervous.

I thought to myself,

"Hmm, everything they've said in here is true."

OREN: They're chanting, "Burn this house to the ground."

That's unacceptable.

That's just not what we do in this country

to get things done.

There were attempts by Marsh using that example,

raising the spectra that they might actually

burn this house to the ground.

JAKE: The SHAC, uh, matches.

One of those things we probably should've thought through

a little more before actually doing.

Yeah, they have a little, like, ALF guy on the cover

and that says, "Smash HLS,"

and the back says, "Strike a match."

And the inside, Huntingdon Life Sciences' address.

Not that we're inciting anything,

but just in case people need 'em.

WILL: They knew the ins and outs

of civil rights campaigning,

and decisions like NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware.

The scope to which you're able to engage,

in not just controversial speech,

but really bold, ambitious speech

that in a lot of other countries would be over the line.

But the First Amendment case law in the United States

has defended all of it.

The First Amendment protects advocacy.

Including advocacy of illegal actions

unless it meets the incitement test.

It's not enough to have outrageous speech.

That speech has to result in

what's called imminent and lawless action.

Remember, Arthur, get him alive if you can!

-But get him!

It has to set fire to reason.

ALL: White lives matter! White lives matter!

HEIDI: We will tolerate a wide range

of impassion, even threatening speech,

as long as it doesn't target a specific individual

for imminent harm.

Imminence is the key,

and it really is interpreted to mean immediate.

I don't think that that chant was my most flattering moment.

But I think it's pretty clear I wasn't inciting a mob.

We weren't carrying torches.

There were police, private investigators there

who seemed unconcerned.

I didn't really want the man's house to burn down.

My attorney argued that the speech was protected.

And the court agreed and dismissed the case.

That was a really powerful thing for the campaign,

to understand what it was about the law

that protected what we were doing.

JOSH: You know what people care about?

People care about winning. They care about victory,

and that's the most beautiful thing

about the Huntingdon Life Sciences campaign.

We're not here to tell you how to behave.

What we're here to convince you to do

is to take the personal initiative

to shut this fucking lab down.

WOMAN: Hey, Marsh!

What do you say? 500 animals died today.

Tell your employer to stop insuring HLS.

KEVIN: When a corporation thought

that with all their money and political clout,

they could silence us,

the more recalcitrant and stubborn we became.

Tell your employer this is what happens

when you insure animal cruelty

for your own...

Fuck off my fucking...

WOMAN: Did you tape that? There's a camera.

I don't give a shit. This is my house.

Go ahead and call the cops.

KEVIN: Hey, that's assault, man, sir.

WOMAN: You're fucking...

We encourage anybody no matter where you come from

to get involved.

You can do whatever you feel comfortable doing,

whether that be writing a letter,

making a phone call, going on a demonstration,

throwing a brick through the window

or breaking into Huntingdon

and getting all those animals out.

Whatever you do, we will support.

NEWS REPORTER: An act of domestic terrorism,

that's what police are calling two attacks in downtown Seattle.

A military-style smoke grenade flooded offices--

-NEWS REPORTER 1: Within hours, suspicion focused...

on an animal rights organization known as

"Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty."

SHAC praised the attacks targeting Marsh Ltd.

Oh, my fucking God.

I'm the public face of this campaign in this city.

And this is something I do not wanna be blamed for.

And I'm not even sure

if I wanna be seen as... supporting it.

Our organization does not take responsibility,

does not elicit and does not participate

in the underground illegal direct action campaigns.

We support it enthusiastically, but that is not us.

JOSH: I was thinking about the thousands of people

in those buildings who don't know what's going on,

who are panicked.

I didn't know that it was going to

do a whole hell of a lot to help animals

inside of Huntingdon Life Sciences.

JAKE: On occasion, there were things

that people went out and did

we disagreed with tactically or ethically.

And ultimately, we decided that this webpage,

this campaign, this movement belonged to all of us.

And we could all participate in a way that we wanted,

and you can do that without being censored.

MAN: The defendants had a policy with the organization,

that every communique

and message they received anonymously,

it was related to the campaign,

any tactic, they would post on the website.

We get a purchase report,

cut and paste, put it on the website.

JAKE: I mean, we've got thousands

and thousands of reports over the years,

and it was difficult.

A number of times,

we would spend, sometimes days, going for walks in the woods,

and having these really, like, tough discussions about, like,

"We want this to be open to everyone.

We want people to try new things.

We want people to succeed and fail.

And we want people to feel empowered

to do what they think is best."

But at the same time,

what are we promoting,

and what are we putting on our webpage?

Some of the things that I really despise

about the campaign...

I wanna make it clear that I love the people

who undertook these actions.

I can see how that would be... totally despicable

to somebody watching this.

How could I love somebody in Dallas

who went to the wrong home

and smashed up the home of somebody

who had nothing to do with Huntingdon Life Sciences?

Some of these heinous things that occurred, um,

were committed by people with the best of intentions.

Does that mean

that I forgive them responsibility?

No, um,

but it does mean that I appreciate

that they were taking those risks,

and that they so sincerely wanted to create change.

People need to develop the skills

to resist these multi-national corporations.

People have to take risks.

And they have to learn by trial and error.

Social change always happens

through a wide variety of forces.

It's always pluralistic.

And people wanna revise history.

They wanna say, "Well, Gandhi won

the Indian independence movement alone."

Sorry, Gandhi didn't win it alone.

There were forces

that were violently attacking the British,

and that helped pressure the British to leave India.

Dr. Martin Luther King did not win

the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by himself.

Standing behind him was Malcolm X.

It wasn't hippies that stopped the Vietnam War.

It was the Vietnamese peasantry

that kicked the American army's ass.

Violence and sabotage, and property destruction,

threats of violence and coercive change,

uh, of various kinds is what moves history.

DARIUS: We have this really rosy picture

of our history, you know, where we talk about women suffrage,

we don't talk about arson.

We don't talk about random property destruction.

America was founded on agitation,

throwing crates at sea into the Boston Harbor

because they were gonna protest the tea tax.

That was economic sabotage. That was direct action.

That's not terrorism. That's American.

The moment Marsh pulled,

that was a big victory.

Because everyone thought there's a chance

that HLS might not open the next day.

Marsh pulled out,

cut ties with Huntingdon Life Sciences.

It was another major victory in the campaign,

but it was one that was fairly short-lived.

KEVIN: The UK government was stepping in

to provide Huntingdon with insurance services

so they could continue their operations,

and stealing the victory we'd earned.

WILL: The legal efforts that Marsh had undertaken

through the restraining orders and the injunctions

and the public relations campaign,

that army and that mentality continued.

And it was really rolled in to the criminal investigation

of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.

The scope of this investigation included

more than 100 FBI agents.

There were more wiretaps used

against people associated with this movement

than any other counterterrorism investigation in US history.

LAUREN: Marsh is out, baby.

Clearly, we're planning illegal activities,

and it's just a matter of time

before they hear us doing it.

Either they're really, really terrible at their jobs

or they just...

we weren't doing what they thought we were doing.

JOHN: We're currently seeing a significant amount

of direct action activity

that we are unable to effectively address

given the federal statutes we have to work with.

JAMES: There is a need for a tighter legislation

to curb this criminal activity

that up to date has been impervious

to law enforcement authorities.

We're committed to working with our partners

to disrupt and dismantle these movements,

to protect our fellow citizens

and to bring the justice to those who commit crime

and terrorism in the name of animal rights.

WILL: The single most powerful word

in our language right now is "Terrorism."

JAMES: This level of violence and propensity

for harm has led the FBI to include SHAC

as the most serious domestic terrorist threat today.

MAN: There is a congressional hearing

attempting to label activists as eco-terrorists.

It's a call for new legislation,

and to expand the concept of terrorism.

It was clearly the senate judiciary committee meeting

to decide what they could do to stop us.

The department supports amending

Title 18, United States Code, Section 43,

to include, among other things,

economic disruption to animal enterprises.

WILL: Members of the Congress

on the Democratic side said,

"Hey, we gotta have a witness. One opposition witness."

Our final witness today, Mr. William Potter.

Mr. Potter is a reporter.

WILL: This was all political theater.

I was told by Democrats on the committee that,

"It's okay if you raise some minor objections.

Just keep in mind that all the Democrats on that committee

support the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act."

The bill criminalizes any activity

against an animal enterprise,

or any company tangential to an animal enterprise

that causes economic damage.

The fine is including the loss of profits.

That's not terrorism. That's effective activism.

The point of this activity, very successfully executed

in recent cases, I might add,

is to force business owners

to sever ties with a principle target.

An act that disrupts business,

one that can inflict serious economic damage.

HEIDI: They have pinpointed boycotts

and traditional forms of protest, and criminalized it,

so that any threat

to cause a loss of profit to a corporation

is now considered an act of terrorism.

WILL: The pharmaceutical, agriculture,

animal entertainment, pet food industries,

these are all the industries that were rallying

behind the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act

behind the scenes.

Last month, HLS was to be

listed off New York Stock Exchange.

And the exchange refused to go through the scheduled listing

because of threats from SHAC.

JAKE: When you let a bunch of grassroots, obnoxious kids,

running around in bandanas and masks,

determining who gets to trade and not trade

on the New York Stock Exchange,

that makes people really, really nervous,

the government really nervous, corporations really nervous.

And they wanted something done.

WILL: The senate passed the legislation

in the middle of the night, it was by a unanimous consent,

which means we have no idea who actually voted for

or against the piece of legislation.

On the House side,

it was passed by an obscure procedure called

"Suspension of the rules."

They decided to use this procedure

to pass the terrorism law

because they could usher it through quickly.

There were only four or five law makers

in the room at the time.

KEVIN: The fear in the industry that if Huntingdon fell,

any company could be next.

That was a legitimate fear for them.

If we don't stop this social movement,

who's gonna be next?

What will happen when the activist move

to the timber industry or the defense industry?

If this continues, the animal extremists will have won

and the loser will be humanity.

WILL: That is the precise strategy

of these corporations and industry groups,

to redirect the nature of the conversation.

I never... imagined

that people would actually be fearful for their lives.

And I think that why they might have felt that way

is because of what the government was whispering in their ears,

or what corporations were telling them.

There were actually people that were knocking on the doors,

telling people what to expect

when the Animal Rights people come.

The Department of Justice had a handout

that they gave to companies targeted by SHAC.

It suggested that we are capable of anything,

even shooting people.

"Had car windows broken." That is not true.

"Tires are slashed." That is true.

"Houses spray-painted." That is correct.

"His wife is reportedly on the brink of a nervous breakdown..."

Let's get right to it.

The FBI says we've gotta go after a domestic terrorist.

They say he's crossed the line from being a protester...

to being a terrorist.

Surveillance cameras caught

a shadowy figure approaching Chiron's headquarters.

Cops say he was delivering two bombs.

Luckily, no one was injured in the blast.

ANDREA: A few days later,

a communique came out

written by an organization called the Revolutionary Cells taking credit

for the explosion at Chiron,

and accrediting it to Chiron's involvement

and Huntingdon Life Sciences.

People breaking windows wasn't something new.

But people placing bombs under windows was something

that I don't think any of us would have expected at the time.

No, property destruction is not violence.

It's sabotage.

I think it's enormously important

to make a distinction between damaged property

and damage to people and animals.

The harm is just not the same.

It's just not the same kind of harm to break a window

as it is to break an arm.

WILL: This was a bombing. Someone could have died.

Someone could've been hurt.

Law enforcement was using those talking points

to elevate the nature of the perceived threat.

Today, we're announcing the addition

Daniel Andreas San Diego

to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list.

San Diego is involved

with the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign.

WILL: Daniel Andreas San Diego

was the first domestic terrorist

to appear on this list of FBI's Most Wanted

alongside Osama bin Laden and others.

These are serious crimes, but to put them on par

with the most deadly terrorist attack in U.S. history,

I think, would be shocking to a lot of people.

So this is the building where I was living...

when I got arrested by Homeland Security.

At 6:00 a.m., the phone rang

and it was my friend, Aaron, on the line

and he said, "Hey, don't panic."

"But there's been a couple of arrests

around the country this morning."

I woke up to hear my mother yelling.

And I couldn't figure out what was going on.

Few minutes later, there was a pounding at my door.

I assumed it was the police from the get-go

with someone knocking like that.

20, 30 guys come through the door

with guns and a helicopter.

And this is the hallway where they all came in.

The thing that I remember most distinctly is an FBI agent,

uh, holding a gun in my face, a big gun.

I had to hold Buddy's collar

with one hand and open the door with the other,

and they're screaming at me to put my hands up.

And to shut that... that damn dog up

or they would shoot him.

They have, like, one FBI guy, one ATF guy, one US Marshal.

Vests, face masks, and a battering ram.

It was sort of impressive,

but it was also kind of, like, shocking

that, "Really? That's how important you think we are?"

"We have a warrant for your arrest."

"On what charge?"

"Animal enterprise terrorism."

So, the FBI busts a militant animal rights organization.

DOUG: Again, it's all contained here

in this federal indictment.

Today, U.S. attorneys called it a campaign of terrorism.

And their business, quite frankly,

is thuggery and intimidation.

They advocate physical assaults,

they advocate smashing windows of people's homes,

specifically, when they are at home.

WILL: Chris Christie was relatively unknown,

he was trying to make this bid for power.

This is still just a couple of years after September 11th.

If you wanna get ahead, you need to show

that you're cracking down on terrorism.

I'm in the process right now of hiring eight new

assistant United States attorneys who'll work on terrorism.

The Justice Department gave us one of the largest allocations

of new terrorism Assistant United States Attorneys

to be able to work just on terrorism.

After that big show of force,

all those agents, all those guns,

all that energy, all those resources,

and by noon, we were home.

The judge could pretty clearly see

that I wasn't a danger to the community or anything.

But these people had just heard the word, "Terrorism"

shouted over and over.

And they're retreating into their apartments

and I could feel, like, the fear.

What're we being arrested on?

Like, you know, this fear that we were gonna get

the indictment, and read it, and be like, "Oh, shit."

But instead, I read the indictment

and I was relieved.

I was like, "This is their case, really?"

Their case is, "You posted this on the Internet," which we knew.

KEVIN: We started learning that our search warrant

for our home, the wire intercepts

for our telephone were signed

by a judge in Minnesota?

Why was a judge in Minnesota, an agent in Minnesota

in charge of running this case?

If I had a tribute

why that SHAC case became so important,

I think it's the Nexus

that was made to the break-in and animal release at the U.

Operation Trailmix was a plan

to break the animal rights movement.

And they went about it any way they could.

WILL: Operation Trailmix, which was the code name

of what ultimately became the SHAC investigation.

All has roots in trying

to go after the more covert illegal elements

of animal rights movement,

after failing to actually catch the people

that are responsible for some of those crimes.

The FBI then changed its focus again,

with the influence

of corporations and cooperate lobbying.

They started focusing on the above-ground elements

of the SHAC campaign.

RYAN: The FBI established a plan

targeting the above ground in order to eliminate

both the above and underground.

JOSH: If you get Kevin Kjonaas' head

up on a pike, everyone knows what that means.

They know who that is.

These are the same assholes

who raided my apartment because I had the temerity

to speak up in support of people

that would break the law to help animals.

It's the same people, it never stopped.

MAN: Because they are not concerned with rights,

they are concerned with the bottom line.

WILL: As an author and a storyteller,

I had to be in awe of the skill of the prosecution

in weaving this narrative in front of the courtroom.

I can already tell, this is gonna make me angry.

All right.

The court says, "Counsel are ready

for opening statements, Mr. McKenna."

LAUREN: "If it pleases the court, Your Honor

Counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. On a summer day

in suburban Dallas..."

Sorry.

ANDY: "On a summer day in suburban Dallas, Texas,

Sally Dillenback, an employee with Marsh Incorporated,

was home with her young son."

"...of the house to answer the door."

"When she got to the door, she saw her young son

cowering behind the door with a kitchen knife.

He was cowering behind the door that day,

ladies and gentlemen of the jury,

because he thought that the animal people

were coming to get him."

LAUREN: "Because you see, the animal people had been in his house before."

"They had plastered his house

with pictures of mutilated puppies

and they had been found on his property at night

and they held rallies outside his house

where they shouted through bullhorns

that his mother was a puppy killer."

"So when the doorbell rang that day,

the little boy was scared."

"And when his mother saw

her son that way, she was scared too."

"The animal people were coming."

I can't read this out loud. I can't. It disgusts me.

MAN: Why?

Because it's all smoke and mirrors.

I didn't know of the story, but once he told the story,

I was like, "This is pretty terrible."

And I can only imagine that the jury thinks it's terrible too.

Obviously, I don't want a child to be scared.

I don't want a child to be at a point

where he's cowering behind the door with a knife.

Um, neither myself or any of my co-defendants

had ever protested at Sally Dillenback's house.

This was the first of a long line of examples

of us being put on trial for other people's actions.

Actions which we had no foreknowledge of,

and no part in the planning of.

ANDY: A lot of these new activist movements

are totally decentralized.

There is no leader to go after.

That structure is something

that doesn't make any sense to the government.

They can't really step inside someone's head and understand

that some of these issues tear them up at night.

And they don't feel good about themselves,

unless they go and do something.

JAKE: They just can't accept that idea

of people working autonomously,

and I think that blows their mind

if there's not someone in control or in charge.

"Be careful because while the defendants

were at some of the demonstrations,

they weren't always at all of them."

The prosecutor's argument is that our speeches

essentially amount to incitement.

And that our speeches are part of this conspiracy,

perhaps with people we don't know,

to get them to do our bidding of illegal activities.

"Bad things happen, ladies and gentlemen.

Bad things happen."

No one disputes that.

The question is, why are the people

who didn't commit the bad things on trial?

WILL: Right out of the gate, the fact that the prosecution

put Brian Cass on the stand and were talking

about violence against Huntingdon Life Sciences

in the UK and trying to bring that into a U.S. courtroom

was the signal of where everything was gonna go.

KEVIN: As the managing director of the lab,

somebody in England had beat him up on his doorstep.

JOSH: Three people assaulted him

and he was hit in the head with a stick.

His experience happened on another continent

at the time that the supposed United States conspiracy

hadn't even began.

What possible relevance could his testimony have?

He was put on the stand to ... the trial

to hurt the defendants.

I mean, if I was the prosecutor,

I'd say "I would've put him on first."

JOSH: We have a prosecutor who wants to fight dirty,

who's not going to run a case based on the legality

of the Huntingdon Life Sciences campaign,

but instead is going to just attempt

to prejudice the jury against us.

LAUREN: The prosecution strategy was primarily

to put people on the stand

to read printouts of our website

and then say, "I was so scared."

WILL: They were brilliant in using the witnesses

to concoct a story

that wasn't true to reality.

I think that there were a lot of people who got up there

during that, you know, "parade of victims"

that weren't entirely sincere.

Come on, show us. Show yourself!

Come outside!

LAUREN: You fucking coward!

Get out of my... Get out of my house!

MAN: You are moving out of our neighborhood! That's what.

This is not your neighborhood!

-This is our fucking neighborhood! -Where do you live?

JAKE: They got kinda rowdy. Eventually, the cops came

and they arrested them for trespassing,

which rightfully so, if they were trespassing,

they should be arrested for it.

But she gets up on the stand during the trial

and she gets up there all teary eyed.

"These people came and I was at home with my child.

He was upstairs taking a nap, home from school."

And they show the video, and there's Miss...

and she's laughing and joking

and then her son, who's home from school,

he's like a 19-year-old kid that's home from college.

It's the way that they kinda took this and misconstrued it

to make it seem, like, we're these thugs out there

trying to, like, you know, kill little kids.

When really, it's just... It just wasn't the case.

ATTORNEY: And you have how many children?

-Three. -What are their names?

I'm not gonna provide that information.

Are you instructing her not to answer that question?

I'm not answering that question.

ATTORNEY: She does not want her children threatened

and if she is reluctant to provide that information,

I certainly understand why

and I think the court will agree.

KEVIN: People really honed in on that.

Now I'm not saying that's something

I'm personally proud of or I would participate in

or at the time, I thought was a good idea. But again...

it wasn't that the kid was a target at the campaign.

Maybe that kind of stuff should be censored,

but at the time, everything was just put up automatically.

OREN: "We know where your kids live, we know their names."

That is extreme. Uh, I don't think

that people are debating whether that's extreme rhetoric or not.

Whether it's protected speech, whether that's legal.

We have not had very restful nights' sleep.

We don't know who might be lurking out

somewhere in our yard.

It's caused mental anguish with my children

who don't sleep well through the night.

We probably didn't realize what the impact

of this train of individuals was gonna have on the jury.

They saw this conduct that to them was intolerable.

Criminal or not, I'm not sure they cared, it was intolerable.

The jury felt the need for someone to be prosecuted

for what was happening around the country

and we were the only people the government was providing.

KEVIN: I'm here with Josh Harper,

co-defendant extraordinaire.

And he's off to the bathroom.

Josh spends a lot of time in the bathroom.

Here's the support group for the SHAC seven.

-Minus the olive oil.

You know, I don't know how much money

I'm gonna have to spend in therapy in the years to come.

Or how many AA meetings I'm gonna have to go to,

because by the time this case is done,

I will be a full-fledged alcoholic.

-MAN: I understand. -Yeah.

AARON: The last two days in court

have been pretty grueling.

The whole Chiron incident was brought up.

SHAC is basically, kind of, being, uh, charged,

I guess you could say, with this.

You know, I feel like...

I... I had a part

in having this brought up in trial in such a big way.

REPORTER: The main suspect in the Chiron bombing,

Daniel San Diego was still at large,

but the FBI says it was a link between Kjonaas

that assisted in the investigation.

The FBI made a claim that there was a phone call

from Kevin to Andreas the day of the Chiron incident.

WILL: They took whatever little bits of information they could,

such as the phone call registers

between the SHAC house and a phone number

they had connected to Daniel Andreas San Diego.

We do have evidence

that Mr. San Diego and Mr. Kjonaas

were in communication with one another.

I made that phone call.

I made a call to half a dozen people

in the Bay Area that day asking them to record the news.

Somebody said, "Call Andreas."

Andreas answered the phone, I talked to him

and I asked him to record the news.

That's the content of that phone call.

Here we are,

basically nine days into the case and, uh,

the prosecution rests and, uh, now it's the defense's turn.

So, uh, let's hope for a good defense strategy.

That's it.

JOSH: This was a case that the prosecution

had been immersed in for years and years.

And they knew every detail and how to bend every detail.

Um, and meanwhile, our attorneys didn't even know

the names of some of the major players.

At one point during opening statements,

I looked over at my attorney and he's scribbling these notes.

And I leaned over and I was like,

"Jim, you're not writing your opening right now, are you?"

And he looked at me and he said, "It's only an opening."

You have this naive faith in the system of justice,

it doesn't exist. It's so set against the defense

and some favor of the prosecution.

Judge Thompson granted the prosecution's request

that we couldn't talk

about what happened inside of Huntingdon.

"That might prejudice the jury."

For most people, standing outside

of someone's home in the middle of the night,

yelling and screaming and holding placards,

it seems pretty unreasonable.

I think if people got that full narrative,

they'd understand that what's going on there,

it needs to be challenged.

And that, it needs to be challenged with force.

JOSH: The reason that we would fight so hard

for a being that has nothing to do with you,

a beagle or a cat or a horse

or a cow that you've never met,

that in some cases, you've never seen

and never will, um...

you've got to have an awful lot of heart.

Myself and my co-defendants

were intelligent, caring people,

um, who had been so distraught

over what they'd seen happening inside

of Huntingdon Life Sciences,

that they had been moved to take action.

The prosecution was able to talk about animal testing

and they used phrases like, "Life-saving research."

"Huntingdon Life Sciences is saving children's lives."

There's no evidence that's allowed to refute that.

We'll fight this and we'll make this case

as much about Huntingdon and animal cruelty

as it is about the First Amendment.

JOSH: Every step of the way,

the judge refused to allow it in the courtroom.

And our case is just about a bunch of unruly kids

who for some reason or another, the jury doesn't know

because we can't tell them,

are running around neighborhoods with signs

and blowhorns, and being belligerent.

There's no context to anything.

You'd think this isn't about a political movement at all.

It's just a bunch of kids with nothing better to do.

'Cause the jury will never hear why we did it.

MAN: Open your mouth.

You wanna play? Let's fucking play.

Let's fucking dance, bitch.

WOMAN: God, there's, like, no skin here...

-MAN: All I could give you. -WOMAN: I know.

JOSH: The phrase that I always use is that,

"You see the train coming, but it hits you anyway."

Judge asked if they had their verdict.

JOSH: They just went down the list and it was,

"Guilty as charged." "Guilty as charged."

"Guilty as charged."

Every defendant, every count.

"Guilty, guilty."

"How do you find the defendants?" "Guilty."

"How do you find the defendants?"

"Guilty, guilty, guilty."

Like, "Holy crap."

I remember my lawyer put his hand on my shoulder

and he said, "You can still go to law school."

And I wasn't crying over that, I was so...

stunned. I didn't know what else to do

other than cry. I was just floored.

I was always get emotionally committed to my clients.

Um...

Andy, I guess a little more so.

It hurt everybody to see these kids be prosecuted.

CHRISTOPHER: In my seven years as United States Attorney,

we were equal opportunity prosecutors.

Believe me, I know how to hold people accountable.

BOB: Putting these people in jail

was not what the case was all about.

It was about

appeasing the appropriate business interests

and making a statement.

It sent a very clear message to, uh,

the pharmaceutical and biomedical industry

of having their back and earning their support.

I, enthusiastically,

declare my candidacy

for governor of the state of New Jersey.

WILL: The rhetoric from prosecutors during the trial

was that, this was a campaign of lawlessness

and the reality was very far from that.

There was no direct evidence

of any unlawful conduct.

So, now you're in the area

of either inciting unlawful conduct,

or conspiring to commit unlawful conduct.

When you mix that stew up

and you have a zealous prosecution,

you have created a time bomb

as far as the punishment

of First Amendment activity is concerned.

PAUL: This was a prosecution

of a political movement,

simply by using the charge of conspiracy,

that envelops both criminal and protected activity.

A lot of the speech that ends up being protected takes place in the abstract.

People advocate something. Nothing happens.

The question is, can the First Amendment really do its job

when you're engaging an effective advocacy,

and, I mean, effective in a very particular way,

which is, I am advocating that something should happen,

and then, someone agrees with me and makes it happen.

I mean, can the First Amendment handle that?

Your gut responds to speech.

Look at all these fucking police

that you need to protect you from this campaign.

That gut feeling that, "Oh, God,

this is not okay."

That's not the measure of First Amendment protection,

that's what the First Amendment is protecting against.

MAN: The appeal focused on the right of the defendants

to say what they said.

On paper,

the case was so strong.

The government's argumentation was so weak,

this might turn around.

In the courtroom during the appeal,

it quickly appeared that

things were gonna be much the same

as they were at the trial level.

Defense tried to talk about

the true nature of the campaign

and the judges would interrupt.

This was outlandish talk, but it's just talk.

And then, the judges would interrupt.

One of the judges of the Third Circuit,

sort of, angrily, like, got up out of his chair...

"Do you have children, sir? Do you have children?"

"Yes, Your Honor. I do have children.

I don't think that's relevant to the issue here."

They already know how they're gonna decide.

The opinion itself just reeked of prejudice.

MATTHEW: They write, quote...

First off, the bombing was a smoke bomb.

Certainly still illegal, but a smoke bomb.

Per personal participation that they quote,

was heard calling into a radio station.

That's not really the kind of personal involvement

in a bombing that is illegal.

In fact, it's the kind of personal involvement

in a bombing, that's protected by the First Amendment.

MATTHEW: Mr. Harper, and now quoting,

"Coordinated the SHAC campaign in Seattle.

Gave speeches advocating

electronic civil disobedience."

"He visited a Deloitte & Touche office

during which, it appears, he did nothing illegal."

MATTHEW: "Called Kjonaas to express his surprise and pleasure

with SHAC's successes."

"He wrote an editorial."

"Harper's personal conduct

does not cross the line of illegality.

To punish him simply on the basis of his political speeches

would run afoul of the constitution."

The analysis should've ended there.

But the Third Circuit then went on

to say that that conduct

showed that he was part of the conspiracy.

How do you, on the one hand, say, outright,

"That speech is constitutionally protected."

And then, at the very next sentence say,

"That speech is enough to get you convicted for terrorism."

-Oh, yeah.

I'm not taking anything more than two sweatshirts...

five pairs of white underwear.

Pack 'em all in under my jeans tomorrow.

But aside from that, I'm not taking anything else.

WOMAN: Your name?

My name is Jake Conroy.

And?

-That's my whole name.

Um, tell us what you are accused of.

LAUREN: When you believe the First Amendment protects your speech,

you're believing in a rule.

But if the law is an instrument of power,

it doesn't really matter what the rules say.

I never would've expected this.

It's pretty devastating.

KEVIN: Evidence against Dari was,

he called me to talk about

when there was gonna be a protest.

And he was gonna go to jail for that.

Metaphorical fingerprints are...

metaphorical fingerprints. What does that even mean?

What did he do?

What did he do?

Were there actual fingerprints anywhere?

That would be actual evidence

of engaging in an illegal activity.

MAN: What do you think they mean?

I think they mean he was a leader.

We should bring that tape thing.

I don't know if my mom's car has a tape player though.

MAN: Is it a CD?

I believe so. Cars aren't made with tape players anymore.

Yeah.

Do we have any good CDs that we wanna take?

I don't remember having any CDs anymore.

But I really wanna make sure it really gets picked up.

MAN: I wanna be there, like...

I can be one of your first visits,

and, like, you know, get there immediately.

Put money on your books and...

-That's nice. -You know?

Just make sure my mom does pick up Willie.

No, I know she does. I mean,

she loves Willie and there's no question about that

and Willie will definitely be happy with her.

-Yeah. -So...

KEVIN: I need to touch the piggy.

Do you wanna say anything else?

Uh...

-It's kind of all been said-- -It sucks.

It's kinda all been said at this point, huh?

Well, not really, under the camera.

-Yeah. -But, um...

You know, it sucks.

You live in America and you don't have any rights.

Yeah.

So I'm done with it.

I'm all done.

I'm just gonna dedicate myself to Willie now.

You're getting a lot of attention there, huh?

That's it.

WILL: When I first began investigating this, I thought

the explanation of why this is happening.

It's the same explanation you see so many times

on Washington and any

seat of government power, and it's money.

JAKE: You can point fingers at Huntingdon and Brian Cass,

Charlie McKenna and Chris Christie and

all these people.

Are they the symptom of a bigger problem?

Probably, yeah.

If we really wanna, like,

stop picking away leaves and branches off this tree,

and dig up, like, the roots of the issues,

we're not gonna find Chris Christie down there.

Or, you know, Brian Cass.

We're gonna find capitalism and

quest for absolute power.

WILL: There clearly is a very well-articulated fear

that if these beliefs and these values take hold

across a broader segment

of American society,

they'll be a threat to

the entire American way of life,

of how we view our place in the world

as human beings.

Hello. My name's Brian Cass.

I'm the CEO of Envigo.

Anybody heard of Envigo?

Prior to Monday of this week,

you would know us as Huntingdon Life Sciences.

I just wanna welcome you to tonight's festivities.

An evening of gambling and drinking,

which I think is a great beginning

for our new company.

I'm not sure that the SHAC strategy is a winning strategy.

Because we didn't win.

We didn't win.

We didn't close the lab.

There was mass mobilization

which, I think, is spectacular.

I'm not sure how useful it was,

to mobilize

around a target,

that we framed as being

somehow extraordinary.

Because it's not extraordinary.

Huntingdon is not extraordinary.

There's nothing happening at HLS

that isn't happening all around the world...

in hundreds of different

contract research organizations.

Or for that matter,

in thousands of universities.

The suffering that people saw

in that undercover video...

As someone who has worked in that industry,

it was not shocking.

It is typical.

That is a normal day.

This lab and other labs and other...

institutions of violence against animals

will close when that sort of violence becomes...

unacceptable.

Becomes something that we,

as a society, don't want.

KEVIN: Junior and I have this special bond

with each other because

he spent the last four-and-a-half years

in an animal testing lab,

in a cage.

And I spent the last four-and-a-half years in a prison.

And now that I'm free,

I'm restarting life with a partner,

who is the embodiment

of everything I gave up

those last five years for.

Thank you. Wow.

-It's good to be back.

So let's just address that elephant in the room.

Yes. Lauren and I and a few other people

ran the "Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty" campaign.

And yup, I got a six-year prison sentence

of which I did four years, nine months and twelve days.

That chapter

is mine alone.

I survived it with the help of my family,

my friends,

Aaron.

KEVIN: These two guys came from a rescue organization

called "Beagle Freedom Project."

They're from research laboratories.

MAN: Oh, really?

Yeah, they were tested on, both of them,

-for a couple of years each. -Oh, no.

My beagle, Junior,

came to me as a scared,

confused and fragile little survivor.

And his body bore the marks...

His scars where incisions were made.

Notches on his floppy ears that are missing.

I watched as that first night,

he cautiously jumped into our bed,

his bed,

for the first time,

and he decided, bravely enough

that he was gonna try again with our species.

If Junior wasn't gonna be defeated by animal testing,

why the hell would I?

One of the things I learned about myself

from the SHAC campaign,

is, I'm highly competitive

and very stubborn, and I don't like losing.

And so, when I start a fight with, uh, somebody,

an industry or an issue,

I'm in it for the long haul.

Beagle Freedom Project existed for five years,

and we rescued well over a thousand animals

from laboratories.

Gave them a second chance at life.

Just this week,

New Jersey, Assembly member there,

introduced our signature piece of legislation,

the Beagle Freedom Bill.

Already a law in five other states

that mandates any tax payer-funded

research laboratory

must give the dogs and cats up

for public adoption when the research is done.

The industry hates us,

because they complain that

we're using "their dogs" in propaganda

against them quite effectively.

And for that...

Yeah, we are.

God bless you. You're really doing, uh, work.

-So thank you. -I appreciate it.

-Thanks for having us on. -Thanks, Kevin.

Just like 15 years ago,

when I stood before you

and I gave you a speech,

free of fear

without regard to consequences.

I do it again tonight,

because I know what those consequences are.

I survived them and so can you.

ANDY: Oh, it's here.

It's here.

It's kind of got a little bit of flood damage on it.

You know, someone wrote for theFinancial Times of London...

about the campaign,

to have the premiere paper

for the world's capital markets,

have a line in it that said

that these individuals are succeeding with

fighting capitalism where Karl Marx

and the Red Brigades failed.

It was, kind of, a really serious...

serious, uh, statement to read.

And so when I read that, I was like...

Feel like I'm part of history, being part of this.

MAN: These tactics worked then

and they'll work again.

JOSH: Although I'm most certainly

not the same person

that I was when I walked into prison,

the difference is then it removed from me

the most valuable parts of who I am.

All the things that I had gone to prison

for fighting for

still matter to me.

And in many ways seem more urgent

to me now than they did then.

None of us do have the magic solution.

Revolution is not really a science.

I think that revolution is a little bit more like surfing.

There's a wave coming at you.

You don't really know what it's gonna bring,

or when it's gonna stop,

or how it's gonna drop out.

But you've gotta ride it anyway.

Right now, I really do believe

there's a new wave coming.

People's anger and passion, compassion

will only stay suppressed for so long.

JAKE: It's not just about Earth liberation.

It's not just about human liberation.

It's not just about animal liberation.

It's about collective liberation.

The liberation of everyone.

Because at the end of the day,

like, we all want to be free.

And if we start picking and choosing

who gets to be free,

we're never gonna get anywhere.

JOSH: As frightening as it is

to talk about the need for confrontation

after I'd gone to prison

for talking about that need,

I can't in good conscience

turn my back on

what history has told me.

And that is that,

without struggle, there is not progress.

And that unless you are willing

to rise up and to fight with your hands...

nothing changes.