I'm Ellen Brown. On Drilled Season twelve, we brought you Slapped, a series about the pipeline giant Energy Transfer's massive lawsuit against Greenpeace. It's the story of an indigenous nation fighting for its water, an environmental nonprofit facing extinction, and an energy giant using the courts to punish protesters. And at the heart of it all was the indigenous led movement
to stop the Dakota Access pipeline. But back in twenty eighteen, I covered a different story about Dapple for the intercept about Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, two women who attempted to stop the pipeline through acts of sabotage and vandalism and paid a heavy price for their actions. Today, we're going to play you an episode of another podcast that tells Ruby and Jessica's story. It's called Lawless Planet, and
like Drilled, it's show about crime and the environment. On each episode of Lawless Planet, host Zach Goldbaumb reveals the scams, murders, and cover ups on the frontline of the climate crisis, and the choices people are making to either protect our world or destroy it. The episode I'm going to play for you today is called surveillance and sabotage on the Dakota Access Pipeline. And it's about how far corporations will
go to criminalize protesting and protect their interests. While you're listening, follow Lawless Planet wherever you get your podcasts.
Both candidates are on the board. With wins reproject Clinton, we'll get Vermont's three electoral votes.
Trump breaks in eight in the bluegrass state of Kentucky.
It's Election Night, twenty sixteen. All across the country, Americans are glued to their television watching the results come in. But not Jessica Resna check in Ruby, Montoya. They're driving down a dark rural road in northwest Iowa, heading to a construction site for the Dakota Access Pipeline. The two have been protesting the pipeline for the better part of a year, doing everything possible to stop it from being built. We're talking marches, boycotts, sit ins, hunger strikes, even chaining
themselves to machinery. But after a handful of arrests and no real progress, they've decided they need to do something bigger, something with a little more teeth. In the trunk, they've got empty coffee canisters, motor oil, and rags. They've done their research and built their own makeshift incendiary devices. They're crude, but they should work, and at this point, Jessica and Ruby are willing to do just about anything to stop
what they see as an environmental disaster. The Dakota Access Pipeline or DAPPLE, is a multi billion dollar project designed to transport crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. Once it's completed, it'll be over one thousand miles long and carry more than half a million barrels of oil a day. Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind it, says it expects to make more than a billion dollars every year, and they insist the pipeline is safe and efficient, but critics
call it an accident waiting to happen. The pipeline's root cuts across farms, sacred tribal territory, and under the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. If it leaks, it could poison drinking water for millions, and pipelines do leak. But despite those concerns, construction began in early twenty sixteen, and for activists like Ruby and Jessica, it feels like the rules don't apply to energy transfer partners, so they've decided not to play
by the rules either. They park their car on the edge of the construction site, and under the moon, they start hauling the canisters of gasoline out of the trunk. Machinery looms in the dark, a bulldozer, two excavators, a crane. Jessica and Ruby stuffed the oil soak drags into the canisters and slide them onto the seats of the machines. Then, with trembling hands, they strike matches and light them up.
The flames catch fast, not too shabby for first time arsonists, but Jessica and Ruby don't stick around to admire their work. Around eleven PM, someone driving along the highway spots the blaze and calls nine to one one. By the time the firefighters arrive, the machines are engulfed. What's left in the morning are just charred hulks of metal and estimated two and a half million dollars worth of damages, but no one at the scene of the crime has any
idea who is responsible. Jessica and Ruby are already long gone. The women think they've pulled off the perfect hit, a major blow to the pipeline's construction, but they'll soon realize that what felt momentous to them was just a minor inconvenience to Energy Transfer partners Jessica and Ruby keep up their campaign of sabotage, but Energy Transfer always seems to be one step ahead of them. It's like someone knows what's coming from wondery. I'm Zach Goldalm, and this is
lawless Plant. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis, people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.
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Protest is messy. Just look at American history. The Boston Tea Party was a carnival of property distraction. End it helped spark the Revolutionary War. The Stonewall Riots, which mark the beginning of the modern day rights movement, were a multi day street brawl with the NYPD. Even the Civil Rights movement, the gold standard of nonviolent resistance, had outbreaks of violence. These were not perfect protests, because there is
no such thing. And before these movements were sanitized to the point that they fit on a postage stamp, they all faced the same questions, how far should we go in the pursuit of justice? Where is the line? And when do we escalate? Today, environmental activists are grappling with the same dilemma at a time when where careening passed
every threshold of warming designated to prevent climate chaos. The debate for some members of the movement is no longer when, but how What tactics are required to meet the moment. This is the story of what led Jessica resna Check and Ruby Montoya to take blow torches to a pipeline and what happened after. It's about what people will do when they feel like they're out of options and out of time, but it's also about how far powerful institutions
will go to stop them. After days of walking and hitchhiking, Jessica Resnacheks finally made it. She's reached the standing Rock Sioux reservation in south central North Dakota. She's been on a mission to get here ever since she heard about Indigenous protesters starting a camp to resist the Dakota Access Pipeline. It's summer twenty sixteen by the time she arrives, and she is not alone. Thousands of people from across the country have gathered to stand with the indigenous tribes protesting.
They're camping out, chaining themselves onto construction, and forming human blockades to halt the pipeline's progress. The tension around Dapple has been brewing for years. The pipeline's original route would have passed near Bismarck, North Dakota, but it was re routed out of concern it might contaminate the city's drinking water. Instead, the federal government redirected itself closer to the Standing Rock Reservation. They could do that because they'd seize the land from
the tribe in nineteen fifty eight. Tribal leaders weren't consulted, not about the route, not about the risk to their water, not about the sacred sites and burial grounds that lie in the pipeline's path. And it should come as no surprise that this kind of thing has happened before, in the nineteen fifties and sixties, construction of dams along the Missouri River cut into the already shrinking Standing Rock reservation.
To many, the Dakota Access Pipeline feels like history repeating itself, and once Jessica arrives, the damage is just getting underway. Construction is pushing ahead at full speed. Sacred sites are bulldozed, and the fear is once oil starts flowing, any spill or leak could contaminate the water supply for millions downstream. For Jessica, stopping the pipeline is an emergency.
I think that the oil being taken out of the ground, and the machinery that does it, and the infrastructure which supports it, this is violent by now.
Protest is a central part of Jessica's life. She got her start with the Occupy Wall Street movement back in twenty eleven. Ever since then she's been joining different groups and has found a home with the Catholic Workers of Iowa. They're a movement committed to nonviolence, community service, and resistance, and she identifies specifically as a Plowshares activist. A strain of Catholic Workers who believe that property damage can be a legitimate form of protest.
We do understand the need to dismantle infrastructure when it poses a threat to human life and liberty.
Before Standing Rock, she'd already been arrested several times. Most recently, she was in jail for smashing the windows of a Northrop Grumman office protesting the military drones they made. But compared to every other protest she's joined, the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline feels more personal. Dapple runs through her home state of Iowa. She wants to do more than just march or break a couple of windows, so
she leaves Standing Rock and heads back home. She hitches a ride to a construction site two and a half hours outside of Des Moines, where crews are preparing to bore beneath the Mississippi River. She doesn't have a plan exactly, but she knows her first move make a scene. Jessica's ride drops her on a quiet stretch of road near the Mississippi River, a few miles south of a Dapple construction site. She's alone, it's early fall, and the air
smells like dry leaves and diesel. She walks until she finds the road that leads to the construction zone, the one used by trucks hauling equipment in and out. There's debris scattered nearby, plywood and tires that the crews forgot about. Jessica thinks to herself, perfect one by one. She starts to drag the tires into the middle of the road, stacking them on top of each other. Then she leans a wide sheet of plywood against them. She grabs a marker from her backpack and writes across the wood in
big bold letters, water is Life. Then she starts playing her guitar. It doesn't take long for the first truck to arrive. It rumbles up the road and slows to a stop in front of her blockade. The driver waits for her to move, but Jessica just keeps strumming. The truck driver does not get paid enough to deal with this shit, so he reverses out of there. Ten minutes later, a sheriff pulls up. He asks her to move. She
refuses in a huff. He starts moving the tires himself, but Jessica tells him she's just going to move the tires right back. As soon as he leaves. The sheriff's sighs. It's like Jessica is egging him on to arrest her, and she kind of is.
And I stated to the officials that I came here in the spirit of love and compassion and respect, and I would go to jail for this. And so I went to jail and I was released about twenty four hours later. Then then I came right back out here and I was arrested again. Then the third time I was released, I came right back out here again and talked to the deputy and I said, look, where can I be on this premises.
Jessica sets up camp in a public parking space on the side of the road. Then reporters start coming by. She speaks with one from Tri State's public radio about her hopes for her one woman stand Mine Kampman.
Here, I visualize is just the beginning of a beautiful, widespread mass movement like we've seen up in North Dakota. And it starts sometimes just with one person and a supportive community to make these things grow and our voices will be heard.
Word spreads, activists start showing up, or water protectors as they like to be called. By the end of the week, there are fifty of them together, they call the encampment Mississippi Stand, but Jessica keeps calling for even more people to join.
Folks, the time is now to join us in this effort. What we need to do is put our bodies in front of this black snake. It's time to protect our waters and to take our land and water back. Join us here at Mississippi Stand.
One of the new arrivals is Ruby Montoya. She pulls up in an suv with Arizona plates and a brand new tent, still smell of plastic. She's got yoga gear, military time on her watch, and cookwar that's clearly never touched a flame. Jessica's and tennas go up. Is this girl a cop? She's not? And in the weeks to come, Jessica and Ruby will lock arms with hundreds of others, chaining themselves to machinery and blocking trucks in a high
sakes game of chicken. But the pipeline is still advancing, and soon both women will start asking an uncomfortable question, what if peaceful protest is not enough? Okay, let's rewind for a second and talk about Ruby. Before Mississippi Stand. She wasn't an activist. She was a preschool teacher. Her days were spent in classrooms, reading picture books and helping toddlers tie their shoes. But then she saw a headline about the Dakota Access Pipeline.
I read about what they were intending to do to put these dirty petroleum pipes underneath our major waterways here in the United States, and I was aghast by their intentions. So I quit my job and I went to Standing Rock.
In North Dakota. Ruby camped, protested, and listened, and while she was there she heard about another protest site forming hundreds of miles away, a single woman building a blockade in the middle of a road in Iowa. Ruby was intrigued. Her mom's family was from Iowa. It felt like a sign, so she packed up her SUV and headed east. As I mentioned, Ruby stood out at Mississippi Stand when she first showed up, and not necessarily in a good way. Her gear was too clean, her tent too knew, she
did yoga and spoken idealistic soundbites. But she was earnest and she was all in.
Believing in this cause so much. I came here to Mississippi Stand to support these people and to support what we believe in this future for our children. Yesterday's action was successful, and these small actions from these people here there is what is going to stop the pipeline.
It doesn't matter whether they hold off the machines for days or hours, because every minute of disruption counts. But then in early September news comes out of Standing Rock that horrifies both Ruby and Jessica.
People have gone through the fence and men, women and children. The bulldozers are still going and they're yelling at the men in hard vets.
One man in hard hut throwing protesters down.
Some of the security have dogs, security has going to gas.
People are being pepper sprayed those security guys. They're one of many private contractors that Energy Transfer Partners had hired to protect the pipeline. Some are using militarized tactics like dogs, tear gas, water cannons in freezing temperatures. Others, including an outfit called Tiger Swan, are focused on intelligence gathering and they're all working hand in hand with law enforcement to
protect construction. Ruby and Jessica know that it's only a matter of time before the same tactics come to Iowa, but they're not going to let that stop them. They keep on with their mission, even when it lands them in jail.
In southeastern Iowa, twelve activists who are arrested Saturday as they disrupted efforts by the Dacota Access Pipeline Company to drill under the Mississippi River, fearing a possible oil spill could contaminate the water. Three of the protesters chain themselves to a backode just before the start of the workday, delaying construction at the site for several hours.
Ruby and Jessica are thrown in the same cell, and they get to talking, like really talking about what they're up against and about what they're willing to do about it. Are they serious about actually stopping this thing? When they get out of jail, a Mississippi stand are dire. Despite
all their best efforts, construction has plowed ahead. The pipeline is now just days away from being fully connected beneath the Mississippi River, and if that happens, the section running through Iowa becomes operational and is nearly impossible to stop. Jessica and Ruby know the clock is ticking. They have less than a week to make something happen. Jessica offers a final plea on Facebook begging any protesters who have left because of arrests to come back.
Only have a few days left to get this done.
We know how you feel about it, we know your dedication because you've risked your life.
And your and your freedom.
Already wants please come back. We need people, please be here. Even as they wait to see who answers the call, Jessica and Ruby already know what they're going to do and what happens next will push them across the line. They can't come back from.
Oh what democrapay look, this is looks mocracy.
Let's look. Oh what democraphay looks like? This is what say? Let's what. In October of twenty sixteen, Ruby and Jessica are protesting in Iowa. When they get some bad news construction is complete on the section of pipeline they've been trying to stop. It feels like the end of something, but not the end. Ruby goes live on Facebook.
We gave it all we had, and we're giving more.
The fight is not over.
There is plenty of pipeline to fight. There's plenty of Dakota access to confront and stop.
From there, Ruby, Jessica, and other organizers take to Facebook, rallying supporters to keep the fight alive. If they can't stop the pipeline here, they'll stop it somewhere else. A few activists head north to Standing Rock. Others form a convoy trailing the pipeline across Iowa, locking onto machinery wherever construction is underway. More protesters join the effort. There's Alex Cohen, a young guy who quickly became one of the vocal
leaders of Mississippi Stand. There's Kima Sealine, who was studying aromatherapy in Ohio before joining the movement. And then there's Joel Edwards, a former marine with a bushy beard and a friendly dog named Sully that everyone adores. At first, it feels like momentum is building, but as the group gets bigger, it's harder to know who's really in it for the right reasons. And then strange things start to happen. Energy transfer partners always seems to be one step ahead.
Protest actions are stopped before they even begin. Police show up with alarming precision. It starts to feel like someone somewhere is leaking their plans. No one says it out loud, not yet, but the suspicion is there lingering in the background. Still, the activists try to stay focused. That kind of doubt is how the other side wins. While Jessica and Ruby plan their next moves, other members of the movement start
meeting in a hotel room. One of them, Joel Edwards, works for the hotel chain and gets a free room once a week, a place for the activists to take a hot shower, warm up, sleep in a real bed. One night, they're all huddled in Joel's hotel room. Keema had picked up some alcohol from a local liquor store, and the conversation shifts to Standing Rock, specifically the Red Warrior Camp, a controversial group within the larger protest movement.
Some activists think they're being too aggressive. Others like Alex push back, arguing that Red Warrior is a necessary force that's willing to take bold action. They talk about posting in support of the group, making a public statement of solidarity. It's the kind of honest, vulnerable debate you have when you think you're among allies. But somehow everything the group is saying that night is making its way back to
Energy Transfer Partners. In November twenty sixteen, Energy Transfer Partners receives a message confirming that Mississippi stand leaders have endorsed the Red Warrior Camp faction. The two groups might even work together in the future. The message is from a private, shadowy security firm called Tiger Swan, and they're on Energy Transfer's payroll. By this point, Tiger Swan has deployed operatives
across five states. There are the public facing employees who are making sure construction stays on track, and then there are the undercover agents who are embedded in protest camps gathering intelligence. The operatives collect names, track social media posts, and compile dossiers on individual protesters. Their internal group chats are full of racist jokes, like one about drunk Indians,
and their messages refer to protesters as jihadists. A lot of the employees of Tiger Swan are veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they're treating the protesters as the enemy. From Tiger Swan's perspective, this all feels necessary. Equipment has been vandalized, construction sites sabotaged, and on the night of November eighth, the night of the US presidential election,
construction equipment in Northwest Iowa was torched. We know those arsonists were Jessica and Ruby, but their actions remain a secret even to their fellow protesters. For now. It's near the end of twenty sixteen and Jessica is trying a new strategy to protest the pype blind. She's on a hunger strike. On Thanksgiving Day, she sits outside of the Iowa Utilities Board building, hoping to get their attention.
I've been up and seeing the atrocities at Standing Rock twice, now faced tear gas, and alliance with Indigenous peoples who are fighting just to protect their land and their water, and our land and our water. They're doing it for us as well, and can only return the favor by fighting on a local level in my own city, in my own backyard, untelling the i Utilities were to do their job.
The Iowa Utilities Board doesn't budge, but then something unexpected happens. They're overruled by President Barack Obama, who makes a decision During his final weeks in office.
The Obama administration denied a permit Sunday that would have completed the last leg of the Dakota Pipeline project, prompting celebrations and can involve North Dakota camps, where the numbers of supporters of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe had swelled to over five thousand.
Jessica can't believe the news. Her stomach twists, not from hunger, but from shock. Could this be real? Do they just win? She ends her strike, breaking her fast with a spoonful of chicken soup. Her photo runs in local news and she is beaming. After months of tireless protesting, it finally seems like the pipeline is dead in the water, but the victory is short lived. Just weeks after he takes office,
Donald Trump reverses Obama's decision. The permits are back, construction resumes, and activists like Jessica are right back where they started. In February, Jessica links back up with Ruby and they discuss their next moves. They both feel like it's time to escalate things. Big action when they fire bomb those machines in November had made more of a difference than
anything else they'd done. But they know that property damage isn't wholeheartedly accepted by the movement, because once you start down that road, you sacrifice the high ground and give the other side ammunition. The corporations in the government can argue that the entire movement is engaged in acts of eco terrorism, but Jessica and Ruby believe that as long as no people are getting hurt, then their actions are justified.
We are removing destructive machinery from construction sites, and we are not the destroyers.
We're the property improvers. So in an effort to improve on the property, they get to work. Their new goal is to disable the pipeline itself, not just the machines, but they have to figure out how to pierce steel. They learn that their best bet is to use oxyacetylene cutting torches. They go out and buy supplies from welding stores out the side of the city to avoid suspicion actually.
Settling towards it.
Came with instructions on how to cut and how to weld, and we just focused on how to cut because we weren't welding it.
It was a process of trial and error taking ourselves.
Jessica and Ruby practice until they can slice through a valve in under seven minutes, and then they set off on their mission.
So after acquiring that knowledge, we began first in Mahaske County, Iowa, piercing through a valve there, and later we continued until we ran out of supplies, hitting multiple valve sites.
Every time they do this they delay construction by days or even weeks at a time. Their goal is to drain Energy Transfers resources, and by some estimates they'd inflicted six million dollars in damages. Then one night in early May, they're in Wappolo County, Iowa, torch in hand, same as always, only this time they hear something inside the pipe, something coursing through it, a low gushing sound. They freeze. There is already oil flowing through the pipe. It's a sobering moment.
Despite everything they've done, the pipeline is still fully operational, and these latest acts of sabotage they haven't even made the news. It was crickets. But just because their vandalism isn't getting much attention, it doesn't mean that energy Transfer isn't taking notice. That's because Tiger swans surveillance net is
tightening and Jessica and Ruby have no idea. Tiger Swan has an operative that's been surveilling Jessica and Ruby's group, and their strategy is spelled out in a PowerPoint presentation that would later be leaked to reporter at the news outlet the intercept. But that PowerPoint it's so ridiculous they literally call it Operation Brathian, as in House Brathian from Game of Thrones. It is twenty sixteen, but still come on either way. Operation Brathian is on. Tiger Swan headquarters
gets regular updates via coded messages sent over WhatsApp. If everything is good, they'll receive an innocuous note, but if an imminent action is going to take place, the message will say Shit's about to get real, which like is an actually coded language, but anyway, the Tiger Swan support team responds in civilian speed. They're specifically ordered not to use any military syntax. That's because the person leaking this
information isn't observing the group from afar. They are deep inside, pretending to be an activist day after day, sending code messages back to Tiger Swann for planning sessions, protests, even hotel rooms. And soon the Moles reports will start mentioning two new names, Jessica Resnicek and Ruby Montoya. In March twenty seventeen, while Ruby and Jessica are out on the road, sabotaging the pipeline. They're fellow activists start getting weird Facebook messages.
One of those dms lands in Heather Pearson's inbox. She's an activist with Bold Iowa, a grassroots environmental group that's been fighting the pipeline since the beginning. The message comes from a user going by the name Bert Macklin, which, if you don't know, is a shout out to the TV show Parks and Recreation. They had a running joke about a fake FBI agent with that name. Bert's message is short and to the point, Heather, you don't know me, and this is a fake Facebook obviously, but I know
who the Iowa mole was from the pipeline. Macklin then sends a link to a military news website. When Heather opens it up, she recognizes the face right away. It's Joel, the former marine with the friendly dog who'd been providing hotel accommodations for the protesters. But his last name isn't Edwards, it's actually McCullough. Heather is stunned. Joel must be the mole. There had been growing suspicions that someone in Iowa was feeding information to the other side, but this message confirms it.
Heather starts quietly warning others they don't confront Joel directly. Instead, they keep an eye on him. Meanwhile, Joel is bouncing between activist groups collecting intel. In April, he shows up in Chicago for a climate march. He takes pictures and videos of the protest, and he subtly or maybe not so subtly, starts asking around about Jessica and Ruby. Their sabotage work has begun to circulate through activist networks, and Joel wants to know if the two of them are responsible.
After the march, a group of activists head out to dinner and Joel tags along. He keeps pressing people about plans for the next day, but the group's not as forthcoming as usual. Finally, one of the group's organizers pulls Joel aside. She tells him flat out that they know
he's the mole and he's no longer welcome. Joel laughs it off, denies it, but after that he quickly fades out of the Chicago activist scene, and soon everyone will understand just how deep the betrayal went, because the next month, the Intercepts starts publishing leak situation reports from Tiger Swan. The reports are filled with surveillance of activists and the groups that Joel embedded himself in. They're all over the documents. The expose also reveals emails and records between Tiger Swan
and government agencies, and what they show is chilling. Tiger Swan was regularly sharing intel with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the US Justice Department, the Marshal Service, and local law enforcement. In effect, a private oil company had its own secret police, treating American citizens like enemy combatants and coordinating with actual government agencies and using tactics developed in the War on Terror against climate activists on
US soil. An invoice from that time shows that Tiger Swan had built a subsidiary of Energy Transfer seventeen million dollars for just fifteen months of work. That's a lot of money and a lot of incentive to keep chasing activists who are causing problems. Jessica and Ruby aren't named in the Intercept article, but they are in actual Tiger Swan reports. In July twenty seventeen, a reporter from the
Intercept reaches out to them. Jessica and Ruby agree to talk, but they deny being involved in any pipeline vandalism or sabotage. When the interview ends and they're alone again, the question lingers should they take credit? Ruby recounts what happened next.
So, after we got off the phone, we talked together and I was like, fuck it, man, let's plain it. Because we didn't stop the pipeline. We both feel personally responsible for that. And this is the last thing they can do, and you know what, people need to talk about it.
It's the morning of July twenty fourth, twenty seventeen. Jessica and Ruby wake up knowing exactly what kind of day this is going to be. Jessica others are thoughts. Ruby pulls on a stop the Pipeline t shirt. They step out onto the porch of the Catholic workers home where they're living, and they set off for the Iowa Utilities Board building. At ten am. They stand in the tall grass just in front of the building's sign and they begin to read. It's not a protest speech, it's a confession.
They calmly deliver a full account of everything they've done and take responsibility for millions of dollars in damages.
Some may view these actions as violent, but be not mistaken, reacted from our hearts and never threatened human life nor personal property. What we did do is find a private corporation that has run rapidly across our country, seizing land and polluting our nation's water supply.
When they finish reading their prepared statements, they unzip their backpack and pull out a hammer and crowbar. They begin ripping letters off the utilities boards sign behind them. They each get one letter off before the move in and arrest them. They're charged with fourth degree criminal mischief for defacing the sign. And that's it for now that there is no way that Jessica and Ruby are going to get off scott free. They know it, the government knows it. It is just a matter of when.
During two des moin women accused of vandalizing the Dakota Access Pipeline have been indicted on federal charges. Prosecutors say Ruby Montoya and Jessica Resnachk could each face decades in prison if convicted.
Two years after their press conference, Ruby and Jessica are officially hit with nine felony counts for intentionally damaging energy infrastructure. They face up to one hundred and ten years in prison plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. At first, Ruby's hopeful that the trial will go their way.
I was a preschool teacher last year. Now I'm pure facing felonies or whatever, so.
We don't know what's going to happen.
I don't think it's going to be this open and shut throw us in usself. I think will be surprised we get acquitted.
But after about a year and a half of legal back and forth, they agree to plead guilty to one of the charges, conspiracy to damage and energy facility. It seems like a strategic move to avoid the harshest penalties. Prosecutors have other plans, because then, after they've already pled guilty, the government pushes for a terrorism enhancement. It's an additional penalty reserved for acts considered a threat to national security.
Because the pipeline was classified as critical infrastructure, their protest is rebranded as terrorism. It feels like a total bait and switch. The government coakexed a guilty pleay out of them in exchange for a lighter punishment, only to hit them with an even harsher sentence after the fact. Ruby is sentenced to six years in prison, and Jessica ends up getting sentenced to eight. She plans on appealing the terrorism enhancement, hoping to get her sentence reduced.
I'm very well convinced that I am not a terrorist. Yeah, I'm a little confused as to how like this this came to be, particularly when the actions that I took were against a private industry, not against any public office, any public official. And the judge was very clear that she was sentencing me harshly so as to make it a deterrent from others to make similar stands.
The judge argued that Ruby and Jessica put the lives of pipeline workers and firefighters at risk, and because their actions were intended to quote affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, they met the federal definition of terrorism. It's a frightening precedent that, if if applied elsewhere, could have a chilling effect on climate activism. And that's not
the only thing. In recent years, lawmakers in twenty one states have passed so called critical infrastructure protection laws that make it a felony to even trespass around oil and gas pipelines, as well as ports, refineries, and waterways. In the past few years, dozens of activists have been arrested and charged under these laws and face up to ten years in prison, the kind of punishment once reserved for
violent offenders. And it's not just the punishment that's escalating, but the machinery behind it, surveillance, infiltration, federal terrorism enhancements, which the judge rationalized using the Patriot Act. Of all things. These are Posts nine to eleven tactics used on American activists, all spurred by a private security firm deputized by a
fossil fuel company. In twenty eighteen, the CEO of that company, Energy Transfer, spoke at an industry conference and he was asked about his views of environmental activists.
Well, for example, you're talking about somebody needs to be removed from the gene pool.
We had people.
Drilling holes in our pie drilling holes.
Yeah, you heard that right, somebody that needs to be removed from the gene pool for an extra dose of irony. Jessica signed her plea deal on January sixth, twenty twenty one, the same day as the Capital insurrection, but unlike many high profile J six defendants, Jessica and Ruby were the ones who got the terrorism enhancements, and last I checked, President Trump hasn't given them a pardon. Today, both women
remain incarcerated. Ruby is expected to be released in October twenty twenty six and Jessica in October twenty twenty seven. So what does it mean when climate defenders are punished more harshly than those who stormed the capitol? Why is protecting a pipeline treated like a national security priority while protecting the water and land it threatens isn't. Jessica and Ruby's story is messy. There are a lot of activists that see their action as harmful to the broader environmental movement.
They believe that violence, if that's what you want to call property damage, is the fastest way to alienate potential allies. But Jessica sees it differently.
There are many who have come before me who have spent time in prison for their convictions, and spent time in prison and really affected change in this nation and in the world.
In twenty eighteen, a year after Jessica and Ruby stood in that grassy field in Iowa and took responsibility for what they had done, the United States became the number one producer of crude oil in the world, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. Joe Biden had promised no more drilling on public lands, but approved as many new permits for oil and gas as Trump, who is now vowing to
drill baby drill. Today, the Dakota Access Pipeline is still running, transporting roughly seven hundred and fifty thousand barrels of oil a day. But even though she wasn't able to stop the pipeline, Jessica says she has no regrets.
I can't imagine having done it differently because I conducted myself with integrity. I think there are times when I was like, I shouldn't have claimed responsibility for these actions. They didn't have any evidence to hold against me. But those aren't the things that keep you up at night being honest.
I can sleep still being.
Honest, whether or not you agree with their tactics. Jessica and Ruby didn't simply throw up their hands when it comes to the threat of climate change, because for them, the only thing scarier than the consequences of their actions are the consequences of inaction.
I was a preschool teacher, and I love kids, and we're not leaving them anything, and it's it's scary. It's scary what everyone is going through. And I think it's feared that prevents people from acting. And I was afraid as well, but it had to be done.
Coming up next week, the story of the largest green energy scam in US history, carried out by a seriously unlikely duo. Levaughn was a bel Air billionaire and gas station tycoon when he joined forces with members of the
polygamous Kingston Clan. We use a lot of sources when researching our and for this episode, we really recommend you check out Allen Brown's reporting from her time at the Intercept and Julius Shipley's piece from Grist and Rolling Stone called You Strike a Match, and also Democracy Now for the interviews of Ruby and Jessica. Lallas Planet is produced and hosted by me Zach Goldaum. Alex Burns wrote this episode. Our senior producer and story editor is Derek John. Senior
producers for Wondery are Peter Racooney and Andy Herman. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. Our managing producer is Sarah Kenny Corrigan. Our associate producer is Lexi Pierre. Music and sound design by Kenny Kusiak, dialogue edit by George Draving Hicks. Our music supervisor is Scott Velaskin is for freezon Sync fact checking by A Naomi bar Our. Legal counsel is Deb Druze. Executive producers are Marshall Louis, ern
Old Flaherty, Nigerie Eaton and Jenny Lauer Beckmann. For Wondering, Okay, thanks for listening. To see you next week by Well
Wondering