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FBI seeks suspect in East Bay bombings
Officials search home in Sonoma County

Stacy Finz, Jaxon Van Derbeken, Pamela J. Podger,
Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, October 10, 2003

A clean-cut, soft-spoken 25-year-old Sonoma County man, who was trying
to invent a vegan marshmallow, is being hunted by federal agents on
charges that he bombed two Bay Area companies in the name of animal
rights.

Agents from the FBI and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives identified the man Thursday as Daniel Andreas
San Diego, son of a prominent city official in Marin County. An
all-points bulletin lists him as being armed and dangerous.

A no-bail arrest warrant accuses San Diego of planting explosives on
Aug. 28 at Chiron Corp, a biotechnology company in Emeryville, and at
Shaklee Corp.,

a Pleasanton firm that makes health, beauty and household products,
less than a month later. No one was hurt in either blast.

Huntingdon Life Sciences, a research firm that uses animals for
testing and is particularly hated by activists, is a common
denominator between Shaklee and Chiron. Shaklee's parent company,
Yamanouchi Consumer Inc., and Chiron have done business with
Huntingdon.

Shortly after both bombings, a group calling itself Revolutionary
Cells claimed responsibility for the blasts in anonymous e-mails.
Authorities are not saying whether they believe San Diego wrote the
notes.

The key break in the case came when ATF agents discovered that a
Pleasanton police officer had pulled San Diego over for a traffic
violation in the business park where Shaklee is located. That traffic
stop happened an hour before the predawn blast on Sept. 26. Pleasanton
police Lt. Dave Spiller called it good old-fashioned police work.

Authorities acknowledge that the traffic stop led them to San Diego
and say physical evidence links him to the bombings. They would not
divulge what that evidence is.

San Diego's parents urged their son Thursday to surrender to
authorities. In a written statement, San Diego's father, Ed, who is
the city manager of Belvedere, expressed support for his son.

"Andreas is a very bright and sensitive young man who would refuse to
harm anybody or any living thing," he wrote. "We are very saddened
about today's developments . . . and were utterly surprised when
approached by the authorities regarding the warrant for his arrest."

Belvedere police Chief John Lundquist said Ed San Diego had told him
to be on the lookout for his son.

"He told me if Andreas comes around, we are to take appropriate
action," said Lundquist, adding that the son had been involved in
animal rights protests in San Francisco. "His dad had mentioned it."

"He's a very polite young man," the chief said. "This is pretty
surprising, actually."

A string of messages posted to an Internet bulletin board suggests
that San Diego had strong ties to the animal rights movement and
supported the work of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA, or SHAC. The
group is dedicated to putting Huntingdon out of business and advocates
damaging property and economic sabotage to forward its cause.

"I think SHAC is having some more national demos coming up, and
national demos are always good," said a message using San Diego's name
that was posted on Feb. 14, 2001.

SHAC representatives say they don't know San Diego and have had no
contact with him. On its Web site, the group criticized the FBI,
saying that it routinely named the wrong people in these cases.

"The FBI couldn't catch a cold, let alone an underground liberation
activist," a member for the group wrote.

FBI Agent LaRae Quy, a spokeswoman for the bureau's Northern
California office, said investigators had information that San Diego
is linked to animal rights groups. "But that is not why we are issuing
the arrest warrant," she said, alleging that there is strong and solid
information connecting San Diego to the bombings.

"We believe there is a likelihood that other people were involved in
this," Quy said. But no other arrest warrant has been issued.

The FBI has been watching San Diego for some time, authorities said.
Agents told Sonoma County sheriff's detectives last Friday that they
were surveilling San Diego at his rental house in Schellville, a tiny
rural community four miles south of the town of Sonoma. A complaint
was filed in U.S. District Court two days later charging San Diego
with maliciously damaging and destroying property and buildings with
explosives. Documents supporting the arrest warrant were filed under
seal.

Quy said agents had lost track of San Diego last weekend. On
Wednesday, agents searched his two-story home on Acacia Lane.
Neighbors said they had watched as investigators, wearing hazardous
material suits, went in and out of the house.

Myles McMonigle, who lives close by, said it appeared that the agents
had been looking for residues and chemicals that could be used in
bombs. McMonigle said an FBI agent had asked him if he had any new PVC
pipe, which he didn't.

Norman Gilroy said he had rented the house to San Diego in June. The
organic farmer, who lives in a house behind the 25-year-old, said San
Diego appeared to be a law-abiding, "extremely poised man."

"The last thing I would picture him as is a bomber," Gilroy said. "He
is a very nice young man -- a well-spoken intellectual."

Gilroy said San Diego was a vegan who was working on developing a
marshmallow made without gelatin. Gelatin is made by boiling animal
tissue in water.

Other neighbors said San Diego did not appear to have a full-time job
and received unemployment checks in the mail. They said he would
sometimes go off for days at a time.

Chronicle staff writer Matthew B. Stannard contributed to this report.
/ E-mail Stacy Finz at .