FBI hunting for top domestic terror suspect.

• Author: Elias, Paul
• Position: News

Byline: Paul Elias

SAN FRANCISCO -- The FBI said Wednesday agents are hunting in Hawaii for the nation's most wanted domestic terrorism suspect.

The FBI office in San Francisco said the agency received ''credible intelligence'' that Daniel Andreas San Diego might be on the state's Big Island. Agents are searching for him in the island's eastern district of Puna and in the small, eclectic town of Pahoa.

San Diego, 36, is suspected to be an animal rights extremist. He is charged with exploding pipe bombs in front of two San Francisco Bay Area companies with ties to a lab that conducted animal experiments.

San Diego is atop the FBI's list of most-wanted domestic terrorists, and the agency is offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

Kai Sorte, who manages an organic deli in Pahoa, said FBI agents had visited the small, countercultural town about 18 months ago in search of San Diego. Sorte said he was interviewed again Monday and said FBI agents believe San Diego is looking for ''some sort of cause or movement'' to join.

''This town is a melting pot of a lot of different cultures,'' Sorte said.

Sorte said the agents didn't say why they returned to Pahoa.

FBI spokesman Peter Lee declined to comment on the nature of the ''credible intelligence'' that compelled agents from San Francisco to travel to Hawaii in search of San Diego.

This is the second and most specific alert the FBI has issued for him since he disappeared in October 2003 in San Francisco while being tailed by FBI agents. In 2011 the FBI said it had ''substantive and credible'' information that San Diego might have been in western Massachusetts after it received a tip prompted by an airing of the case on the television show ''America's Most Wanted.''

San Diego's image appeared on electronic billboards from California to New York, including above Times Square, for about a week earlier this month.

Late last year, the FBI called on the...