“Free” felt pretty good as late summer arrived in Eugene, Oregon, in 1999. He and a core group of environmental activists had taken to the trees, living on platforms 150 to 200 feet off the ground to try to stop the logging of a swath of old-growth forest. This action, called a “tree sit,” had gotten the attention of the media, the timber companies and now, finally, after several months, the lawmakers. Free and his fellow tree-sitters had managed to set up a meeting with an aide to U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio. Their voices would be heard in Washington, D.C.

On the appointed day, the protestors brought a small crowd with them to the office DeFazio maintained in Eugene. They wanted to show how much public support there was for stopping logging in the area.

This could be it, Free thought. This could be the end of the timber sale.

Free says he had embraced a philosophy of nonviolence as a teenager. He did not want to tangle with police, destroy property or endanger others. His stated goal was always to protect life, with his own if necessary. Treesitting holds an obvious appeal for people like this. It’s dangerous, but fundamentally peaceful. The only way someone gets hurt is by accident. If this tactic could be successful, if national leaders like DeFazio could be persuaded to accept the protesters’ position, if the old-growth forest could be saved, then the victory would be doubly sweet: environmentalism would win and so too would nonviolent action.

That was then.

Now, today, Free is a convicted domestic terrorist serving a 22-year sentence in the Oregon State Penitentiary for arson and attempted arson – crimes that occurred less than a year after the meeting with DeFazio’s aide.

Free grew up in Downey, California, as Jeffrey Luers, the youngest son of two mid-level IRS workers. (When he later took his “activist” name, designed to mask his identity during protests, he simply lopped off the first part of his first name.) As a teenager, he rebelled a little – mostly the usual stuff: joining a rock band, piercing an eyebrow, shaving his head into a mohawk.

But something else was going on beneath the surface. Free says he took a gun to school one day when he was 14. He intended to kill himself. He won’t discuss details but says his friends talked him out of it and got him to turn the gun in to the school’s vice principal, who was required to call the police. An officer came to school and, according to Free, ridiculed the young man as a closeted homosexual and a “dumb rich kid.” The tale is hard to believe, but whatever happened that day obviously had a profound effect on the young man – and, shortly afterward, Free says he took a slingshot and fired a rock through the windshield of an unmanned police car. He calls that his first “direct action.”

He talks of being “intensely political” as a teenager, especially about environmental and animal rights causes. The smashed windshield aside, however, Free expressed his political views in conventional ways. He wrote letters to members of Congress, but grew frustrated with form-letter responses. His band took a political position he called “anarchist, for lack of a better definition.”

At 18, he started going to protests. He became active in CalPIRG and canvassed for the Sierra Club. But he was bothered by the fact that some of the money he collected went to pay the canvassers and not to fund environmental protection.

He moved to Eugene intending to find a job, get an apartment and start a life. One night, however, he saw a slide show about the successful logging protest at Warner Creek, in the Willamette National Forest.

They're not lobbying about stopping logging, he realized. They're stopping logging. His plans changed just like that, he says, and he found a new home – perched 200 feet up a Douglas fir at Fall Creek.

It was here, some might argue, that Free’s career as a full-fledged terrorist began. After all, the protestors did more than just sit in trees; they built barricades, changed the locks on gates across logging roads, even damaged equipment out in the woods. During this time, Free tackled a Forest Service officer and wrestled him to the ground, for which he served 30 days for resisting arrest. (Free’s version of the event, which is supported by official documents, is that he woke up while camping near a locked gate and saw an unidentified man restraining his girlfriend. He tackled the guy and fought until he realized the man was a cop.)

The tree sit, along with his in-town protest activities and the company he kept put Free on law enforcement’s radar. His anti-authority lifestyle, his willingness to be arrested – and the crime he would soon commit -- were to earn him the label of “terrorist.” But it’s fair to ask whether Free’s punishment was aimed more at a set of political beliefs than his own actions.