This definitely sounds like a carefully orchestrated attack, with special emphasis on response times by local police. Also significant is that although it happened last April, it is only now being publicly reported, which may indicate some DHS, FBI or CIA oversight to leak information (or misinformation), perhaps to try to draw out the perps.
Combined with recent reports of Muslims arrested for a plot to sabotage a train from Canada into New York, and several Muslims arrested last year for trespassing after midnight at a Massachusetts water reservoir (here, here, here & here), and brazen statements recently by Iranian and Hizbollah leaders that they have targets inside the U.S. and agents ready to attack, casts a dark shadow.
These may all be isolated incidents, but then again, it seems as if they have been testing our infrastructure, civil defense, and response times for years, and especially so in the last two years.
California: Snipers open fire on electrical substation, “most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred”
JihadWatch — February 5, 2014
It happened last April, but we are only hearing about it now. Why is that? There have been no arrests and there are apparently no suspects, but it does appear to have been a carefully planned and coordinated attack. Said Mark Johnson, a former PG&E executive: “This wasn’t an incident where Billy-Bob and Joe decided, after a few brewskis, to come in and shoot up a substation. This was an event that was well thought out, well planned and they targeted certain components.” Were they jihadis? Possibly. Possibly not. Johnson also said: “My personal view is that this was a dress rehearsal.” If anyone was taking notes on how well the dress rehearsal went, it was Islamic jihadists.
“Sniper Attack On Calif. Power Station Raises Terrorism Fears,” by Mark Memmott for NPR, February 5:
Was an attack last April on an electric power station near San Jose, Calif., the work of vandals or something far more dangerous — domestic terrorism or a trial run by an individual or organization bent on damaging the nation’s electric grid?
The Wall Street Journal, picking up from an earlier report by Foreign Policy magazine, explores that question Wednesday in a long account about what happened at PG&E Corp.’s Metcalf transmission substation — an event that has received relatively little attention until now.
The top of the Journal‘s story grabs your attention:
“The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.
“Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.
“To avoid a blackout, electric-grid officials rerouted power around the site and asked power plants in Silicon Valley to produce more electricity. But it took utility workers 27 days to make repairs and bring the substation back to life.”
According to Foreign Policy, which was less definitive about whether the attack was the work of more than one person, at least 100 rounds were fired from at least one high-powered rifle.
No one has been arrested in connection with the attack.
An FBI spokesman, without going into details, tells the Journal that the agency does not believe a terrorist organization was responsible.
But, as Foreign Policy reported, a former PG&E vice president for transmission operations said at a conference last November that “these were not amateurs taking potshots.”
“My personal view is that this was a dress rehearsal” for future attacks, added Mark Johnson, the former PG&E executive, according to Foreign Policy.
The Journal quotes Jon Wellinghoff — chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time of the attack — as saying it was “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred” in the U.S.…
Meanwhile, there’s another mysterious detail to report. According to the San Jose Mercury News, about 3 a.m. one morning a month after the attack, “a man dressed in all black was spotted … in a field next to the property, setting off a large search by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. … Sheriff’s deputies searched the area but did not locate the man.”…
The attack “seems to have been the work of people who knew what they were doing,” the Journal‘s Rebecca Smith just told NPR’s Audie Cornish. The evidence, Smith said, indicates that the sniper or snipers “methodically” shot at equipment that would disable the substation if damaged — but also would not explode. Then, “one minute before police arrived, they faded into the night.”
Regarding the FBI’s view about who’s responsible, “we don’t know why the FBI feels it was not a terrorist attack,” she added….