Randy Wight doubts the helicopters had anything to do with the flames. Wight is a captain for the Deschutes County, Ore., Sheriff's Office and the coordinator of the Central Oregon Arson Task Force, which is now single-handedly investigating the B & B fires -- and planning to release a report on their cause next week. "I don't have any indication that it was political arson," Wight told me. "The only people discussing that is the media." Wight went on to say that the fires could have been started by a lightning strike whose fire smoldered for days, held in check for a time by the rain that came with the thunder. "Humans could have ignited the fires accidentally," he added. "We really just don't know what started them, and at this point we're not foreclosing any possibility."

The task force is a 15-year-old group comprised, in part, of reps from the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Oregon State Police and five local fire departments. Environmentalist Joe Keating is dubious of the group's claims to neutrality. "The fox is guarding the chicken coop," says Keating, the issues coordinator for the 500-member Oregon Wildlife Federation. (He is also a part-time issues coordinator for the Sierra Club.)

Keating notes that, if the fires are deemed to be human-caused, investigators will then take direction from the agency whose land is burning -- in this case, the Forest Service. And, he argues, "the Forest Service has a vested interest in saying it wasn't arson. Their boss, Mark Rey, likes Bush; he likes the Healthy Forest Initiative."

Keating has made a solo, and as-yet unheeded, call on the FBI and the Oregon governor's office to launch their own investigations of the B & B fires. "I smell a rat," he says. "These fires were the perfect backdrop for Bush to talk about his forest plan."

Keating, 60, is a former Army lieutenant and investment banker who lives near me in Portland, riding his bicycle everywhere, a fisherman's hat askew on his sparse horseshoe of white hair. Over the years, he has helped launched Oregon's Pacific Green Party and also headed up a "Yellow Bikes" program, which saw him scattering unlocked, donated old bicycles around Portland, so that pedestrians could hop on, gratis, and ride. He is a socially nimble fellow who has at times slipped into a gray suit and tie to lobby in Washington, D.C. But in his pursuit of fire justice, he has enlisted some rather fringy and colorful scouts to search for hard evidence. One of them is named Russ Taylor; I called him too.

"I'm backing up a logging road at the moment," Taylor said over his crackling cell. "I'm following up on a credible lead from a woman here in Detroit, and --"

"Detroit?" I asked. Detroit is a small Oregon town over 20 miles northwest of where the B & B fires started.

"This woman," Taylor continued, undeterred, "used to work for the Forest Service. She was the secretary for this guy who was a real 7-foot timber beast -- they called him Chainsaw Dave -- and her son, he was out in the woods here and he saw a young man in his 20s. This is way out in the middle of Bumfuck, Egypt, and the young man was wearing a blue, lined fleece jacket. Now, I've been around pilots and that's what they wear." Taylor alleged that the pilot was a Bush operative, and that he touched down to set fires.

"But what difference does a fire in Detroit make?" I asked.

"You make it look like there's a pattern," Taylor explained. "You set a fire here, you set a fire there, and then everybody just says, 'Oh, it's just a dry day. The woods are burning all over the place.'

When I remained unconvinced, Taylor continued emphatically: "Look, we can't give you a smoking gun on a silver platter. I'm sorry, but if you're a real investigative reporter, you'll need to do some digging around. You'll need to go out to Sisters yourself."

He was right, of course. I packed and got in the car.

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