The attack happened in April, 2013. Until the Wall Street Journal broke details of the event this week, hardly anyone knew of a sniper attack on a power substation in California.
Now, former federal officials are saying the attack looks like a test run for terrorists.
The attack on a Pacific Gas and Electric substation involved someone breaking into an underground vault and cutting all phone lines while snipers fired over 100 shots into the station destroying 17 transformers. While PG&E was able to avoid a major blackout as a result of the attack, it took the company 27 days to repair all the damage.
Jon Wellinghoff, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission when the attack happened, believes the incident was a terror attack despite FBI claims otherwise.
Wellinghoff called the attack “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the U.S. power grid that has ever occurred.”
Wellinghoff says he bases his view on the evidence the scene. Shell casings from the sniper’s rifles had no fingerprints. The shooting positions had obviously been pre-arranged.
Wellinghoff said that most electrical grid sites don’t have nearly adequate protection to stop a terrorist team.
The FBI has quietly changed their primary mission.
The FBI Fact Sheet has declared for decades the primary function of the FBI was “law enforcement.” A Washington-based National Security lawyer noticed earlier this year that the Fact Sheet has changed to say the primary function is “national security.”
An FBI spokesman would not confirm the day the change to the FBI’s Fact Sheet was made but said the change is more accurate.
“When our mission changed after 9/11, our fact sheet changed to reflect that,” FBI spokesman Paul Bresson told Foreign Policy online. He pointed out that counter-terrorism is the agency’s biggest mission right now so it’s proper to say their primary function is national security.
The FBI doubled the amount of agents working on counter-terrorism between 2001 and 2009 according to a 2010 Inspector General report.
A Kansas man is under arrest after plotting to blow up Wichita Mid-Continent Airport.
Terry Loewen, an aviation tech at the airport, reportedly spent months planning the attack to destroy the airport. The plot involved using his access card to drive a vehicle loaded with explosives to a terminal and then planned to die in the attack.
FBI agents arrested Loewen was arrested early Friday morning while trying to gain access to a tarmac with the vehicle he thought was loaded with explosives. Authorities said that the car had been filled with fake explosives and the public was never in danger.
He faces life in prison on federal charges including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.
Loewen was under investigation since summer after making statements he wanted to commit an act of violent jihad against the United States.
The FBI has announced they will be launching a system in 2014 that will allow law enforcement to use facial recognition to track and follow citizens.
The computer-based system will automatically identify a person based on a digital image or video source that is matched to a massive database.
The process had been a work of fiction on TV shows like CSI and other police procedurals but now such a system will be used in real life. The facial recognition program is part of a $1 billion Next Generation Identification System being created by the FBI.
The system will also include iris scans, DNA analysis and voice identification.
The FBI says the new system will allow them to reduce terrorist and criminal activity by expanding criminal history information services.
The FBI is reporting that several dozen suspected terrorist bombmakers have been allowed to enter the United States under the guise of being war refugees.
The FBI discovered two al-Qaeda terrorists living in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 2009 and the men admitting being part of a group that made improvised explosive devices (IEDs) targeting American troops.
The discovery of the terrorists led the FBI to back through every piece of evidence collected in Iraq connected to IEDs. The specialists looked at over 100,000 IEDs collected in war zones to find fingerprints that could be used to check against databases of refugees.
An ABC news investigation had discovered the two terrorists had slipped through the U.S. refugee screening system even though they had been detained during the war by Iraqi authorities for terrorist related activities.
State and federal officials rushed to say that despite the FBI’s “dozen of counter-terrorism investigations like [Bowling Green]” that most of the refugees from Iraq are peaceful, law abiding residents.
An accused al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Anas al-Liby has been brought to New York to face charges.
Al-Liby, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, was questioned on a Navy ship while being transported to New York. He is facing charges connected to bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Over 220 people were killed in the two terrorist attacks.
Al-Liby has been on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for over a decade and had a $5 million bounty on his head.
U.S. prosecutors have evidence stretching back decades of al-Liby’s work conducting surveillance of terrorist targets and planning attacks on Western targets in Africa.
Al-Liby was captured by U.S. special forces in a raid inside Libya on October 5th.
U.S. intelligence groups and Special Forces carried out raids Saturday that landed one of the world’s most wanted terrorists.
American troops with FBI and CIA assistance arrested Abu Anas al-Liby on a street in Tripoli, Libya. Al-Liby had been indicted in 2000 for his part in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. There was a $5 million bounty on al-Liby; intelligence groups had been searching for the al-Qaeda leader for 15 years.
Libya’s government denied knowledge of the operation and citizens were very upset that a foreign military conducted an operation on their soil.
In Somalia, a Navy SEAL team exchanged gunfire at the home of a major leader of the al-Shabab terrorist group. The raid was in response to the al-Qaeda related terrorist group’s raid on a Nairobi shopping mall that killed more than 60 people.
Unfortunately, the SEAL team had to withdraw from the fight before confirming the senior leader of al-Shabab was killed in the assault.
A web company that is accused of helping child abusers share files on a hidden part of the internet has been compromised by malware.
The sites were using the service provider Freedom Hosting and had code attached to their pages that could be used by law enforcement to reveal the people visiting the pages. Continue reading →
The FBI is vowing a worldwide investigation into the Boston bombing but admitted that they have no suspects in the attack.
“At this time there are no claims of responsibility,” FBI officials said in a press conference Tuesday. “The range of suspects and motives remains wide open.” Continue reading →
Tens of thousands of computers in America will lose their internet connection ability on Monday when the FBI turns off special web servers aimed at keeping the infected computers from losing access.
The FBI worked with international groups to break an organization of international hackers who secretly infected millions of computers and used them as servers to send information and steal information from the host computers. The information was used in identify theft scams and other cyber crimes. Continue reading →
