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REPUBLIC, Wash. _ 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 front-page 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...