OAKLAND, Calif. - When the pipe bomb went off in their Subaru station wagon in May 1990, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were in Oakland, driving from California's north coast to stir up support for demonstrations planned for that summer to stop the logging of ancient redwood trees.

Almost immediately, they concluded that someone had tried to kill them. They were, after all, rabble-rousing leaders of the Earth First! movement, which had clashed repeatedly with loggers by blocking logging trucks, sitting in trees and shouting at rallies. Both had received written death threats and reported them to the police, Bari just weeks earlier. A year before, a logging truck had rammed her as she sat in a car.

But just hours after the blast, as Bari lay in a hospital bed with her pelvis crushed, she and Cherney, who was slightly wounded, were arrested by the Oakland police and the FBI.

The authorities had concluded that Bari and Cherney had accidentally bombed themselves. They accused the pair of transporting the bomb for use in environmental sabotage.

The charges were dropped six weeks later for lack of evidence. But the furor over what has become known as "the Judi Bari bombing" has raged for the past 12 years, even beyond Bari's death from cancer in 1997, overshadowing the radical environmental movement as no other incident has.

A federal lawsuit brought by Bari and Cherney against the FBI and Oakland police ended last week, when a jury found that the authorities had violated their civil rights and awarded $4.4 million in damages.

The decision, however, is unlikely to quell the debate in north coast newspapers and in several books on the environmental movement - with more to come - not only over who did it, but also whether the authorities were justified in assuming the pair had carried the bomb.

The bombing has also continued to cast a large shadow of controversy over Bari and Cherney and environmentalists in general in communities that depend on forests for jobs.

Bari, until she died of cancer at age 47, and Cherney, the star witness in the trial, continued to say the FBI had framed the pair, maybe even bombed the car, so that they could blame the Earth Firsters, besmirch their reputations and cast a cloud over the movement.

Indeed, like Bari, who was permanently maimed by the bombing, Earth First! has never fully recovered from its aftermath. The bombing - and the arrests - have forever since been mentioned in references to the group, along with terms like "fringe" and "marginal."

And Bari and Cherney, who continued to be strident voices for Earth First! and for their vindication in the case, remain controversial figures in the local environs of California's redwood country. The local weekly newspaper in the north coast, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, has repeatedly mocked their federal suit and accusations against authorities as a "scam."

Even the outcome of the trial, which left the large question of who is responsible for the bombing untouched, is unlikely to quiet much of the debate.

Cherney, now 46, who plans to write a movie and a book, acknowledged that the bombing will always cast a shadow over his life. "It has superseded everything for 12 years," he said, "and I expect it always will."