Biography
Daniel Gerard McGowan is an American environmental activist previously affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front. He was arrested and charged in federal court on multiple counts of arson and conspiracy in relation to arsons committed at Superior Lumber company in Glendale, Oregon on January 2, 2001 and Jefferson Poplar Farms in Clatskanie, Oregon on May 21, 2001. His arrest is part of what the US government has dubbed Operation Backfire, a crack down on animal rights and environmentalist activists. Facing a life sentence if convicted, he accepted a non-cooperation plea agreement and was sentenced to a 7 year (84 month) sentence on June 4 in Eugene Federal Court. In prison, he is in the Communication Management Unit, a unit created to heavily monitor communications of its prisoners. Daniel Gerard McGowan is a former environmental and social-justice activist who participated in two Earth Liberation Front arsons in Oregon in 2001 — the burning of Superior Lumber and the burning of Jefferson Poplar Farm — both targeted for their roles in old-growth timber harvest and genetically modified poplar research, respectively.
He was arrested in December 2005 in the FBIs Operation Backfire roundup of the Eugene-based ELF cell known as The Family. He pleaded guilty to two counts of arson and conspiracy in a non-cooperating plea agreement. On June 4, 2007 he was sentenced by federal Judge Ann Aiken to 84 months (7 years) in federal prison, with the federal terrorism enhancement applied. He served his sentence largely at the federal Communications Management Unit at Marion, Illinois, the most restrictive non-supermax facility in the federal system, and was released to a halfway house in 2012 and home in 2013. The 2011 documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, in which he is the central figure, was nominated for an Academy Award. He has since worked as an organizer with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Contemporary custody chronology
The Warrior Wind, issue1 (February2006), p3 reports $1.6million bail granted to McGowan January25,2006, and states that McGowan, Jonathan Paul and Suzanne Savoie actually received conditional pretrial release around January25-26 detention hearings. It gives no individual exact physical-release day. This supports an earlier, interrupted pretrial episode, not changing his later recorded sentence-service admission or counting the entire arrest-to-sentence interval as imprisonment.
Source: The Warrior Wind, issue1, February2006, an advocacy newsletter. Bail orders, future hearings and actual release are distinguished.
Documented CMU and general-population movements
A February 1, 2011 Bureau of Prisons memorandum states that Daniel McGowan was placed in the Marion Communications Management Unit on August 22, 2008 and transferred to Marion general population on October 19, 2010. These are prison-unit movements, not an initial arrest or release from imprisonment; the memorandum does not establish uninterrupted CMU residence between those dates. It then recommends renewed CMU designation, rather than documenting that recommendation as an actual transfer. Earlier memoranda list June 5, 2013 as a scheduled good-conduct release date, not a completed discharge. These records therefore do not change the final-release field or the custody counter.
In his Summer 2009 account, McGowan wrote that he received a Wisconsin grand-jury subpoena while being transferred to the Communication Management Unit. He refused to answer questions, was held in civil contempt for eight days, and was released from the contempt order after an indictment issued, before his appeal was heard. This occurred during his existing federal arson imprisonment: release from contempt was not release to the community. Exact contempt admission and termination days are not printed, and the overlapping eight days must not be added to the already counted arson custody.
Fire to the Prisons, issue 2, lists Daniel McGowan as then confined at FCI Sandstone, Minnesota. Its Operation Backfire roster distinguishes the guilty plea and imposed sentence from the fact of ongoing prison custody. This is a historical location listing; it does not establish the original reporting day, a transfer date or final discharge, and it does not replace the existing institution field for other phases.
The December 2011 ALF Supporters Group newsletter reports that Nathan Block, Daniel McGowan, Jonathan Paul and Joyanna Zacher entered non-cooperation plea agreements in November 2006: they accepted responsibility for their own actions but did not agree to provide information or testify against anyone. This dates the agreements to a month, not an independently verified plea-hearing day.
His family’s Spring 2011 update dates McGowan’s transfer back to a Communications Management Unit, at Terre Haute, to February 25. This was an internal transfer during existing imprisonment.
The Wisconsin contempt order ended July 23, 2008; McGowan remained imprisoned on his separate federal sentence.
The March 29, 2010 CMU complaint dates McGowan’s guilty plea to November 9, 2006; his agreement did not require cooperation against other defendants.
