Why Should Terrorists Run Wall Street?

On September 7, 2005 a disturbing social movement reached critical mass in New York City 's financial district. A domestic terror group with a single-issue focus—the “rights” of laboratory animals—trained its sights on the New York Stock Exchange. The exchange was preparing to list the pharmaceutical laboratory firm Life Sciences Research International (LSRI, also known by its British name, Huntingdon Life Sciences) on the Big Board.

In the animal-rights world, few issues arouse more self-righteous indignation than biomedical research that makes necessary use of laboratory rats and other animals. Despite decades of accumulated medical miracles and a global regulatory framework that requires animal testing to establish the toxicity of experimental drugs, the animal rights movement clings to the dogmatic, flawed notion that LSRI's field of expertise is unnecessary, outmoded, and just plain evil.

So when the NYSE's public embrace promised to ensure the firm's continued success, animal-rights militants reportedly began issuing telephone and e-mail threats. In itself, this was nothing new. A violent animal-rights terror group called SHAC (“Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty”) has been targeting LSRI for nearly seven years, with the singular stated goal of putting it out of business. But now the group was targeting the stock exchange itself.

During the first week of September, SHAC's websites provided willing thugs with the names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of 100 New York Stock Exchange leaders and staffers. SHAC's New York City subsidiary, which calls itself W.A.R. (“Win Animal Rights”), announced in similarly pointed e-mails to 10,000 like-minded supporters that the exchange was now the “primary focal point” for its campaign.

It's not clear whether the stock exchange received polite phone calls, death threats, or something in between. But NYSE president Catherine Kinney quickly blinked. And LSRI was denied its listing less than an hour before its scheduled launch.

“The stock exchange reserves the right to decide who it will and won't list,” National Public Radio would later report. “But generally its concern is a company's bottom line, not whether or not it's popular with protesters.” London's Daily Telegraph was less artful, quoting one unnamed investor's astonishment “that the New York Stock Exchange would knuckle under to a load of English hippies.”

In truth, they're not just any band of hippies. The U.S. Department of Justice describes SHAC as a “terrorist threat.” A jury also used the “T”-word in February 2006, convicting the group and six of its leaders on federal domestic-terror charges. (They will be sentenced in June.)

There's no longer any doubt that SHAC is a terrorist group. What's left unresolved, however, is whether powerful players in the business world will grow the kind of familiar anti-terror backbone which Americans (New Yorkers, no less!) have come to expect.

The NYSE's unceremonious brush-off of LSRI caused The Times of London to opine that “the war on terror suffered a setback … Four years after 9/11, the authorities here [in New York ] could be expected to find a bit of backbone.”

Seven months after the September debacle, the NYSE has yet to find its spine. It has offered no meaningful statement, explanation, or rationale for its actions. When the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works asked Kinney to testify in a hearing on the matter, she refused, sending the NYSE's top lawyer to dissemble in her place.

And the story may not end with LSRI. If one gang of unfiltered extremists can successfully hijack Wall Street, another can too. And another. And another. Given fervor, time, and the right set of tactics, any publicly traded company could be similarly targeted.

Why should terrorists run Wall Street? They shouldn't. But the New York Stock Exchange hasn't gotten the memo.