daniel andreas san diego
Daniel Andreas San Diego grew up in a safe and quiet suburb of San Francisco, the son of a city manager in California’s affluent Marin County. Now 30, he swore off drugs and drink as a young man — and even milk and meat — but the straight-edge San Diego was no straight shooter.
“He looks like a personable young man,” says David Strange, the FBI agent who’s been following San Diego’s case for five years. But San Diego’s bespectacled face masks a violent hate that authorities say turned him into an eco-terrorist, a vicious vegan with an ax to grind.
Before dawn on Aug. 28, 2003, two homemade pipe bombs went off at the headquarters of Chiron Corporation, a biotechnology firm based in Emeryville, Calif. The second blast was time-delayed; the FBI suspects that may have been a tactic to harm emergency teams responding to the blast.
“They were well built, very sophisticated devices. They were not made with garbage — he actually went out and bought chemicals,” said Strange. “You have to know what you’re doing to build a bomb like this.
A month later, on Sept. 26, San Diego struck again, authorities say, this time leaving a bomb strapped with nails at the Pleasanton, Calif., headquarters of Shaklee Corporation, which makes eco-friendly products like vitamins and shampoos.
The FBI says San Diego, who was 25 at the time, targeted Chiron and Shaklee for their ties to Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British-based research firm that performs laboratory testing on animals. The blasts caused damage to the buildings, but no people were hurt.
Posted on behalf of Shaklee Corporation: The comment in this story that Shaklee had “ties” to Huntington Life Sciences is wrong. As a socially-responsible company, Shaklee does not conduct animal testing, we have never conducted animal testing, and we will never conduct animal testing.
Shaklee’s corporate headquarters was bombed years ago by an individual who mistakenly targeted them for animal testing conducted by a pharmaceutical corporation that formerly owned Shaklee (we have been independently-owned since 2004). It was this misguided act of violence that sometimes still results in statements that erroneously link Shaklee with animal testing. Nothing could be further from the truth and we appreciate this opportunity to correct the record.
