By Lynda Gorov, Globe Staff, 12/03/99

EATTLE - Long before the streets of Seattle erupted, local officials knew trouble was coming.
 

Self-declared anarchists had vowed to stop the World Trade Organization from meeting any way they could in this otherwise easy-going city. Unlike the peaceful protesters, who boned up on nonviolent tactics and were willing to risk arrest for their beliefs, some of the anarchists came ready to rumble.
 

Dressed in black, their faces covered with masks, bands of them rampaged through downtown on Tuesday, hurling newspaper boxes through windows and setting trash cans on fire before disappearing into the throngs. Wednesday night police worried that anarchists would try to take over a precinct station on Capitol Hill. Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper was not surprised.
 

''We knew violence would be coming to our city in the form of anarchists; that wasn't a secret,'' he said. ''It was an avowed purpose. We saw it [at WTO conferences] in Vancouver, we saw it in Geneva, we did not see it in Singapore for understandable reasons.''
 

Added Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, ''We tried our best not to advertise to the world that we were going to have the battle in Seattle.''
 

Stamper said his officers had been trained and armed against the anarchists, many of them believed to be from Eugene, Ore. But more people than expected were bent on destruction, he said, and police and the city were caught unprepared.
 

That admission was made again and again yesterday at a lengthy press conference featuring Stamper and Schell. Three days after the downtown was overrun and a civil emergency that continues was declared, they sorted through the blame, accepting some of it themselves and putting some of it on the anarchists Schell preferred to call ''bad apples,'' as well as on others who were caught up in the chaos and joined in the destruction.
 

Still, as demonstrators circled King County Jail to demand the release of hundreds of protesters who had been arrested and a few tried to take down the US flag flying out front, Schell announced that he would host the WTO conference or a similar group that drew protesters from around the world again. Otherwise the anarchists would in effect triumph, he said, adding that they had won something by forcing the city to put National Guard troops, state troopers, and police in full riot gear on almost every downtown street corner.
 

Schell also noted that creating an armed camp or declaring a state of emergency before protesters and WTO delegates arrived in Seattle would have created an even more confrontational atmosphere.
 

''Hopefully, in the end, as painful as these days are, if we are open to conversations about trade [and] human rights around the world, if those are some of the outcomes of this it's worth it,'' said Schell, who noted his satisfaction at the WTO's ability to keep meeting and his displeasure at seeing his city ''trashed.'' ''If it discourages us as a community from taking a risk again, I would really be saddened.''
 

For their part, demonstration organizers and protesters alike blamed police for overreacting to the mass of people gathered to oppose the Geneva-based trade group as a secretive, undemocratic body concerned with free trade at the expense of labor, environmental and other rights. Like police, however, they also lambasted the anarchists for destroying property and claiming the damage was intended to make a political point. That point was unclear this week, with the violent anarchists - and there are many peaceful ones equally dismayed at their behavior - declining to be interviewed, give their names or state their case beyond sloganeering.
 

In a recent Seattle Weekly article penned by a group calling itself the Anarchist Action Collective and using a Eugene post office box, the author or authors labeled unions and liberal activists as ''part of the glue holding a rotting order together, an order that must be totally dismantled.'' The piece went on to rail against technology, environmental destruction, and world domination by corporations.
 

''Get up off of your knees during the WTO convergence in Seattle,'' it concluded. ''Fight back and don't get caught!''
 

Those words - and the images of marauders - reminded Eugene police spokeswoman Jan Power of the disturbances that have plagued her city in recent years. In mid-June, for instance, a parade that was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration against corporate and government power turned ugly, ending with about 20 arrests and police donning full riot gear. The local Niketown store, also a target in Seattle, was trashed during business hours, she said. A meatpacking plant was set on fire, although a national group of anarchists called the Animal Liberation front claimed responsibility for that destruction.
 

''There are a lot of so-called anarchists who are passive and then there's a core group that believes violence is acceptable,'' Power said. ''What we've seen in Eugene over the past several years is an in-your-face attitude when all kinds of groups come together. Confrontation and property damage has become a more acceptable way to state their issues.''
 

As Seattle's mayor and police chief noted, some Eugene anarchists have now claimed responsibility for the turmoil that hit the city and forced the cancellation of the WTO's opening ceremonies. Stamper described them as well-trained in mobilization and integration, with reports of them changing clothes three times a day to avoid detection.
 

The Eugene anarchists, who range in age from teenagers to people in their 50s, are in fact a loosely knit group whose members come and go, according to someone familiar with them.
 

Requesting anonymity, she described them as difficult to pin down, with a few educated about their causes and the majority simply spouting rhetoric without understanding the underlying principles. Many of them are street kids who made their way to Eugene - where, local expression has it, old hippies go to die - and are involved in anarchy because it is the movement of the moment in town. Among their favorite symbols: a gun pointed at a police officer under the words, ''Revolutions don't happen by themselves.''
 

Schell insisted the city was doing ''everything it can'' to differentiate between lawful protesters and lawless ones, although he stressed that all demonstrators must disperse when ordered. He also encouraged residents and protesters to come forward with any reports of police abuse. Stamper, who called the police effort a ''heroic job against all odds,'' acknowledged that he himself had seen some officers break rank and that internal investigations were under way.
 

But peaceful protesters who had been subject to tear-gassing, pepper spray, and concussion grenades and who had taken it upon themselves to guard stores said they still could not understand why police went after them rather than the vandals, who may or may not be among the more than 500 people arrested.