Ares
5th February 2014, 07:57 PM
Last year, a team of well-coordinated snipers attacked a PG&E Corp’s Metcalf substation located near Silicon Valley in California. For 19 minutes, they fired strategically-placed shots that ended in 17 major transformers becoming non-functional. During that time they also cut underground cables in a vault of a local Internet service provider, wiping out the internet for many AT&T customers. Operating under the cover of night, the team of snipers slipped away without leaving anything but shell casings and position markers, one minute before police arrived on the scene.
Sounds like the story line of a Tom Clancy novel, but the largest coordinated attack on the United State’s power grid happened last April, just after midnight and got very little attention. Until recent revelations made public spotlight, the knowledge of this sniper attack has remained a secret, known only by a handful of Americans.
Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the time of these attacks, said that he considered this attack to be “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred.” Hard to believe that an attack of such magnitude could have gone unreported for this long. Had it not been for the ingenuity of power station engineers thinking to reroute power around this station and increase outputs at other stations, the length of time people could have been powerless is anyone’s guess. It took PG&E Corp 27 days to restore functionality of the damaged substation.
http://www.thewestwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Sniper-Showdown-The-West-Wire-Emergent-News.jpg
In contradiction to Jon Wellinghoff’s opinion, a spokesperson for the FBI said they were not considering the event as an act of terrorism, perpetrated by a terrorist organization, and that they were “continuing to sift through the evidence” related to the attack. It is unfortunate that statements from government agencies don’t come with the definitions for the terms they associate, or dissociate, with an event of interest. For example; two brothers with a home-made pressure cooker can be declared terrorists and have a militarized Boston Police Department invading peoples homes. However, a well-coordinated sniper attack, debilitating a power substation and communication hub, don’t seem light up the FBI’s terrorism radar very brightly.
Following the electrifying shootout, Jon Wellinghoff assembled a team of utilities executives and federal agency representatives to try and understand what exactly happened and why. What was said behind the closed doors of the meeting has remained among the participating interests. However some of the federal agencies in Jon Wellinghoff’s investigation, had less-than-encouraging remarks to divulge. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland security said that utility companies are responsible for protecting the United States power grid.The spokesman continued by saying “the department’s role in an emergency is to connect federal agencies and local police and facilitate information sharing.” Maybe DHS is planning on loaning some of that ammo they’ve been stocking up on to the utility companies to help protect the grid. After all, does one really need bullets to “facilitate information sharing?”
Convinced that the attack was perpetrated by a well-coordinated group, Jon Wellinghoff consulted the U.S. Navy’s Dahlgren Surface Warfare Center in Virginia to lend an opinion on the situation. Their opinion can be summed up by the reporting of The Wall Street Journal:
After walking the site with PG&E officials and FBI agents, Mr. Wellinghoff said, the military experts told him it looked like a professional job.
In addition to fingerprint-free shell casings, they pointed out small piles of rocks, which they said could have been left by an advance scout to tell the attackers where to get the best shots.
“They said it was a targeting package just like they would put together for an attack,” Mr. Wellinghoff said.
When pressure cookers and gunpowder can turn someone into Public Enemy No.1 within an hour, it seems unbelievable that a well-coordinated team of snipers can take down a portion of US power and telecommunications infrastructure without getting a mention on the evening news. Perhaps, in a time when the media is largely controlled by only a handful of companies,the narrative of this sniper attack wasn’t deemed fit for mass consumption. After all, how would it sound if media outlets across America started reporting that, in the face of the world’s largest defense budget, a handful of men with single-shot rifles caused so much damage and slipped away without leaving any evidence?
http://www.thewestwire.com/snipers-wipe-out-us-power-station/
Sounds like the story line of a Tom Clancy novel, but the largest coordinated attack on the United State’s power grid happened last April, just after midnight and got very little attention. Until recent revelations made public spotlight, the knowledge of this sniper attack has remained a secret, known only by a handful of Americans.
Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the time of these attacks, said that he considered this attack to be “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred.” Hard to believe that an attack of such magnitude could have gone unreported for this long. Had it not been for the ingenuity of power station engineers thinking to reroute power around this station and increase outputs at other stations, the length of time people could have been powerless is anyone’s guess. It took PG&E Corp 27 days to restore functionality of the damaged substation.
http://www.thewestwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Sniper-Showdown-The-West-Wire-Emergent-News.jpg
In contradiction to Jon Wellinghoff’s opinion, a spokesperson for the FBI said they were not considering the event as an act of terrorism, perpetrated by a terrorist organization, and that they were “continuing to sift through the evidence” related to the attack. It is unfortunate that statements from government agencies don’t come with the definitions for the terms they associate, or dissociate, with an event of interest. For example; two brothers with a home-made pressure cooker can be declared terrorists and have a militarized Boston Police Department invading peoples homes. However, a well-coordinated sniper attack, debilitating a power substation and communication hub, don’t seem light up the FBI’s terrorism radar very brightly.
Following the electrifying shootout, Jon Wellinghoff assembled a team of utilities executives and federal agency representatives to try and understand what exactly happened and why. What was said behind the closed doors of the meeting has remained among the participating interests. However some of the federal agencies in Jon Wellinghoff’s investigation, had less-than-encouraging remarks to divulge. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland security said that utility companies are responsible for protecting the United States power grid.The spokesman continued by saying “the department’s role in an emergency is to connect federal agencies and local police and facilitate information sharing.” Maybe DHS is planning on loaning some of that ammo they’ve been stocking up on to the utility companies to help protect the grid. After all, does one really need bullets to “facilitate information sharing?”
Convinced that the attack was perpetrated by a well-coordinated group, Jon Wellinghoff consulted the U.S. Navy’s Dahlgren Surface Warfare Center in Virginia to lend an opinion on the situation. Their opinion can be summed up by the reporting of The Wall Street Journal:
After walking the site with PG&E officials and FBI agents, Mr. Wellinghoff said, the military experts told him it looked like a professional job.
In addition to fingerprint-free shell casings, they pointed out small piles of rocks, which they said could have been left by an advance scout to tell the attackers where to get the best shots.
“They said it was a targeting package just like they would put together for an attack,” Mr. Wellinghoff said.
When pressure cookers and gunpowder can turn someone into Public Enemy No.1 within an hour, it seems unbelievable that a well-coordinated team of snipers can take down a portion of US power and telecommunications infrastructure without getting a mention on the evening news. Perhaps, in a time when the media is largely controlled by only a handful of companies,the narrative of this sniper attack wasn’t deemed fit for mass consumption. After all, how would it sound if media outlets across America started reporting that, in the face of the world’s largest defense budget, a handful of men with single-shot rifles caused so much damage and slipped away without leaving any evidence?
http://www.thewestwire.com/snipers-wipe-out-us-power-station/