Kevin P. Casey

Briana Waters: from a bad “Family”?

When a group of radical environmental activists burned down the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001, it turned out to be a big mistake. Contrary to what the perpetrators believed, there was no genetic engineering going on at the professor's office they targeted.

Now, one of the approximately 20 defendants indicted in twin cases (which tie together a string of other arsons in Washington and Oregon) is trying to prevent what she claims would be another mistake: her conviction. On Monday, 32-year-old Briana Waters will be the first of these defendants to actually go to trial. Some of the rest are fugitives; most have taken plea bargains. Waters, who claims she was home in bed at the time of the crime, was fingered by one of those who pleaded.

Last week, Waters emerged from a pretrial hearing in the Tacoma federal courthouse wearing a purple scarf and looking weary, her long blond hair pulled back from her face. She had traveled here from Oakland, Calif., where she and her lanky, blond male partner, who was by her side, are raising their 3-year-old and where, according to Waters' attorney Bob Bloom, she gives violin lessons to children and plays in Balkan bands. Waiting for her outside the courtroom were nine supporters, including a dreadlocked woman in a flowing turquoise robe. Many of these supporters decried as excessive the mandatory minimum sentence Waters faces should she be convicted: 35 years.

Bloom, a feisty attorney from Oakland, along with local co-counsel Neil Fox, insists Waters is not only innocent but the victim of government misconduct and dirty tricks. For example, they believe prosecutors improperly moved the case to Tacoma in order to find jurors who would be less sympathetic to the environmental movement. Prosecutors counter that the "center of gravity" of the charges is actually further south, since Waters and others in the underground movement were in Olympia at the time the plan was allegedly hatched. (The judge has ruled the change of venue to be acceptable.)

"Here's my situation," said the wise-cracking, gray-haired Bloom over sandwiches at a cafe across from the Tacoma courthouse where Waters, who declined to be interviewed, was having lunch with her supporters. "I'm [originally] from New York. I've practiced in a lot of political cases." Past clients have included members of the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, and the Puerto Rican independence movement. Call Bloom's voice mail and you'll be greeted with the following: "Hey, Britney's sister is pregnant and there's 151,000 dead people in Iraq. Leave a message."

Meanwhile, in hundreds of pages of documents both sides have already filed, a fascinating picture is taking shape: of an underground environmentalist cell that the government says was known among its members by the weirdly Mafia-like tag of "the Family." In Olympia lived the head of "the Family," a man named William Rodgers who went by the moniker "Avalon," according to government briefs. He was eventually arrested in Arizona and died in his jail cell, an apparent suicide.

According to the government, the cell was part of the Earth and Animal Liberation Fronts. Rodgers led divisions located in both Olympia and Eugene, Ore. In gatherings sometimes referred to as "book club meetings," members fixated on the genetic engineering of poplar trees. Genetic engineering has inflamed the passions of some environmentalists who believe it to be interfering with nature's biodiversity. The "Family" cell, the government says, staged arsons to stop it and even, at one point, "discussed whether it would be necessary to 'up the ante' and resort to assassinations." Although prosecutors don't suggest any assassinations were carried out, they say cell members, including Waters on at least one occasion, engaged in target practice. Waters denies it.

At the time of the UW arson, Waters was, by her account, finishing up her degree at Evergreen State College in Olympia. Her briefs say she was "spending hundreds of hours" on a school project: a documentary she was making about a tree-sit in the town of Randle, Wash., aimed at protecting old-growth forests. In a student report on "personal achievement" she submitted to Evergreen, she talked about taking part in a related protest at the Seattle offices of Plum Creek Timber Company. She was then dating a fellow Evergreen student named Justin Solondz, who is also charged in this case and remains a fugitive.

But Waters says she was a law-abiding environmental activist. In the early morning of March 21, 2001, when the Center for Urban Horticulture burned to the ground, Waters was asleep in bed, she says.

Prosecutors, however, say she borrowed a rental car from a family member on March 20 and drove with her boyfriend, Rodgers, and two others to the Greenlake Bar & Grill in Seattle. They ate dinner, then, sometime after midnight, headed to a dead-end street near the Center for Urban Horticulture, which is just outside the tony neighborhood of Laurelhurst, in the shadow of Husky Stadium. According to the government, Waters hid in the bushes with a walkie-talkie to alert the rest of the group if anyone was coming. Two of the others got into the Center and planted plastic tubs filled with gasoline, which were ignited by a switch triggered by an alarm clock. When Waters returned the rental car to her relative in Olympia, the government says, she told them she had traveled to Seattle to find an open emergency room because she needed treatment of some sort.