Over the past year, the American press has started to report on the extensive, expensive, and sometimes invasive investigations that law enforcement agencies—usually led by the FBI—have conducted in their search for "ecoterrorists." There have been stories in the New York Times and other papers about misguided witch hunts (I wrote "The Long Con" in the May 4 issue of The Stranger, as a local example), plus a new book by journalist Will Potter called Green Is the New Red. The book is about the FBI's COINTELPRO-style tactics, after 9/11 made it imperative for them to get high-profile terrorism prosecutions—sometimes with ludicrous results.

But what about members of the Earth Liberation Front who actually did burn things down: the ski resort in Vail, SUV dealerships, the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington? If a Tree Falls follows a handful of them (especially Daniel McGowan), arrested four years after their arsons. One of their former comrades, a heroin addict in legal trouble, collaborated with the Feds to travel the country, find them one by one, wear a wire, and get them to "reminisce."

The film also tracks the rise of the green anarchy movement in Eugene, Oregon, during the 1990s, when protesters and police kept raising the stakes and radicalizing each other (in opposite directions), and what happened in Seattle during the WTO riots. In one piece of footage, taken a day after the riots, an anonymous cameraman asks a lady what she thinks about all the property destruction. "Vandalism is vandalism," she says angrily, "destruction is destruction. Whether it's lives or property, it's not acceptable!" "What did you think of the Boston Tea Party?" her interlocutor asks. "Oh," she says, breaking into a huge smile, "I thought it was wonderful!"

This quandary is at the root of Tree: Should people who engage in property destruction (large or small) for political reasons be tried as "terrorists"? Even Eugene's police chief, who helped lead a violent charge against the green anarchists, isn't so sure. He's comfortable running down arson as a crime, but not as terrorism. Another interviewee points out that in the 1,200 actions on record from the ELF and Animal Liberation Front, not one has resulted in an injury or death.

No matter what you think about the ELF or the FBI, Tree makes one thing clear: You cannot overestimate the American public's deep reverence for private property. recommended