Ecoterrrorist pleads guilty

The posters located around the Pacific Northwest were a study in contrasts. "Wanted" they screamed in bold, red type, "Should be considered armed and dangerous." Pictured inside the space usually reserved for hardened and dangerous suspects was instead the slight, unassuming countenance of a 25-year-old Canadian, her hair pulled back, her mouth pursed. It was this image that defined Rebecca Rubin during her seven years on the run, from the month before charges were filed in January 2006 until Thursday, when she eased herself into a leather-backed chair in a Portland, Ore., federal courtroom and pleaded guilty. Rubin, now 40, was a member of the eco-terrorism group "The Family," which claimed responsibility for 20 fires across the West that caused $40 million in damage between 1996 to 2001, when the group effectively disbanded. But federal investigators, working under the aegis of "Operation Backfire," used a former member's drug habit to turn him into an informant, and one by one, members of the group fell into prosecutors' hands. Ten of them pleaded guilty to arson and conspiracy charges in 2007. Two of them remain in hiding. That only left Rubin...more