Computer Virus Infects Land Debate

A computer virus incident seems likely to fuel Ferry County’s increasingly uncivil land-use debate.

Sheriff Pete Warner promises to call in the FBI if there is another incident like one in which Curlew environmentalist Gary Woodmansee is believed to have presented a virus-infected diskette for use in a county computer.

There is good reason to believe Woodmansee was unaware of any virus, but the incident comes on the heels of several rancorous events that have heightened tensions in the county. Some of the county’s environmentalists have been branded “terrorists,” and Woodmansee has been charged with trespassing on a rancher’s land to take photographs for use against the rancher.

Under a plea bargain, the charge will be dropped in six months if Woodmansee commits no more trespasses. He contends he was on a public road, but Gordon and Linda Strandberg say they saw him on their land.

Dick Graham, editor of the Republic News-Miner, appealed for “a bit of civility” in a frontpage editorial in March after the public discourse sank to a new low.

Republic resident Carl Stevens suggested in a letter to the editor that environmentalists might have been responsible for a fatal plane crash and vandalism to logging equipment in the late 1980s. There wasn’t a scrap of evidence to support the claim, Graham said.

“I don’t know what it’s leading to, but the whole thing is getting to a point where it could get out of hand,” Warner said. “Tensions are getting a little strung out, but so far nothing major has happened.”

He said some environmentalists who have been attacking ranchers’ grazing practices fear violent retribution, but he thinks the ranchers are too busy with calving season to worry about the environmentalists.

Warner advised county workers to beware of computer diskettes from members of the public. But he said he isn’t investigating the Woodmansee case because Planning Director David Keeley erased the diskette and returned it.

Keeley said Woodmansee arrived at closing time on April 20 and presented a diskette with data intended to support environmentalists’ contention that government payments, not resource industries, are the primary source of income in Ferry County.

“He insisted that we take a look at it,” and didn’t want to come back another day, Keeley said. “He said he had important information on it that was critical to the comprehensive plan.”

Woodmansee disputes Keeley’s account, but acknowledges he and other environmentalists object to a statement in the proposed land-use plan that resource industries are the primary source of income in Ferry County. They contend pensions, public assistance and other government payments are the largest revenue source.

The comprehensive plan statement is part of a broader effort to pass an ordinance declaring county control over federal land decisions, Woodmansee charged.

Commissioners have taken no action yet on the county-supremacy ordinance. But they got on the bandwagon in April after Nye County, Nev., Commissioner Dick Carver came to Republic with his message that states own the national forests.

The Ferry County commissioners passed a resolution declaring their support for the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes states’ rights.

Woodmansee stridently opposes the anti-federal movement.

So Keeley was suspicious and scanned Woodmansee’s diskette with an anti-virus program. He said he found a virus called “AntiEXE.”

But Keeley is not convinced Woodmansee intended to sabotage the computer containing the controversial comprehensive plan.

“The fellow is not that computer literate,” Keeley said.

That’s true, according to Woodmansee and fellow environmentalist Mike Petersen, who got the diskette from the Wilderness Society and passed it to Woodmansee.

If the diskette was infected, “it was just an honest mistake,” Woodmansee said.

“Certainly Gary doesn’t have the computer skills to even keep his computer running,” Petersen said. “I do, but I don’t know anything about viruses.”

Woodmansee is a retired U.S. Forest Service forester; Petersen, a mechanical engineer, works parttime for the Inland Empire Public Lands Council in Spokane and is mining coordinator for the Kettle Range Conservation Group.

People who do know about computer viruses say AntiEXE would be a poor choice for sabotage.

“This virus is relatively benign,” said David Shannon, a supervisor for the Norton Group of Symantec, which produces one of the leading anti-virus programs.

AntiEXE was written to attack one specific file on one specific computer - perhaps a disgruntled employee’s revenge - and then it escaped. The virus is not designed to attack other computers, and causes only accidental problems.

Shannon said the virus might cause a computer to freeze up, “but its damage is going to be relatively invisible to the user.” It would be impossible to transfer the virus to a computer from a diskette unless the diskette were in the computer when it was turned on or “rebooted,” Shannon said. But the virus is easily spread from computers to diskettes, and is one of the 10 most common in the country.

Still, Petersen fears the political opponents will capitalize on the incident to discredit him and other environmentalists. He noted that his past involvement with the Earth First! organization is never forgotten.

The issue was revived in March when the conservative Ferry County Action League sponsored a speaker who claimed to have exposed Earth First! as a “terrorist” organization in a yearlong undercover investigation.

At the same time, the Action League announced that a recent edition of the Earth First! newsletter urged people to send donations to a Republic post office box used by local environmentalist Susan Coleman. She and her husband, Tim, are active in the Kettle Range Conservation Group, which has challenged some timber sales in the region.

Coleman said the couple’s last involvement with Earth First! was in 1989, when they sat in some trees that were to be logged. She said they had attempted unsuccessfully to get off the organization’s mailing list.

Petersen said the listed post office box actually is his, but the Colemans also use it. He reiterated his previous public statements that he also broke with Earth First! when he became involved with the Kettle Range Conservation Group.

Like Susan Coleman, Petersen defends Earth First! as a group whose activities are limited to non-violent civil disobedience.

Any defense of the tree-spiking organization is a tough sell, though, in a sawmill town like Republic.