Terror targets: Power towers
FBI confirms another case of bolts yanked from electrical transmission lines in West
Posted: October 29, 2003
5:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Another electrical transmission tower in the West has been tampered with, a week after a spate of similar incidents in California and Oregon prompted federal alerts and concerns of terrorism.
According to the Associated Press, the FBI got a call Monday, and upon investigation, found bolts had been removed from a tower in Sacramento.
Since Oct. 20, towers in at least four other locations have been tampered with, having bolts either loosened or completely removed. Three of the previous locations were in the Oregon towns of Madras, McNary and Klamath Falls, with the fourth incident in the northern California town of Anderson.
"We're not releasing anything saying they're all connected," FBI spokeswoman Karen Ernst told AP. "Our main concern is locating the individual we have the arrest warrant for."
 Michael Poulin (courtesy: Klamath Falls Herald and News) |
The individual sought is 62-year-old Michael Devlyn Poulin, who is described as a 5-foot-11 white male, with blackish-gray hair and a salt-and-pepper beard, brown eyes and wire-rim glasses.
An arrest warrant was issued Thursday for Poulin, charging him with destroying an energy facility, a federal crime carrying up to a 20-year prison sentence.
A man matching Poulin's description was spotted in Anderson lugging large wrenches, prying at least 18 bolts from a tower before witnesses intervened and chased him unsuccessfully on Interstate 5.
"It clearly has overviews of some kind of domestic terrorist act," Anderson Police Chief Neil Purcell told the Record Searchlight of Redding, Calif., last week. "It certainly smacks of that."
Purcell said electricians contracting for Sierra Pacific Industries got involved when they noticed a man leaning down at one of the towers.
"They thought that it was rather suspicious," the chief told the Searchlight. "They decided, 'Let's make it our business.'"
The electricians began to chase the suspect south on the highway, but gave up pursuit after notifying the California Highway Patrol and spotting a state trooper. All CHP units, though, had not received the bulletin, and the suspect was never stopped.
It was discovered one of the tower's four legs was completely unbolted, and a second leg was found to have half its bolts gone. All the bolts have since been replaced.
"There's the potential if you take all the bolts, the tower could come down," David Christy, spokesman for the Western Area Power Administration, told the Searchlight. "We're taking this very seriously."
In the wake of the incident, ground patrols were instantly hiked at the administration's lines in the western United States. The tower in Anderson is part of a 17,000-mile network of wire in 15 states, according to the Herald and News in Klamath Falls, Ore.
Officials say the suspect seen in California is similar to a man spotted in Klamath Falls pulling bolts at another tower, and the FBI says Poulin is wanted for questioning in connection with the Oregon cases.
AP reports Poulin was divorced in September, and his ex-wife, Marianne Torres of Spokane, Wash., said she hadn't seen him since mid-October and was unaware of his whereabouts.
Police chief Purcell told the Redding Record Searchlight the tampering is similar to that seen by groups like the Earth Liberation Front considered by the FBI to be one of the biggest domestic terrorist-based movements in the country.
WorldNetDaily reported in August and September about concerns the nation's power grid was vulnerable to terrorist acts, especially by cyber-attack.
The U.S. suffered its worst blackout in history on Aug. 14.
The record outage struck parts of the Northeast and Canada, affecting some 50 million people, including residents of New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ottawa, Toronto, Cleveland and Detroit.
A London-based Arabic newspaper said the terrorist network al-Qaida took responsibility.
"What's puzzling," one terror expert told Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin last month, "is how these government officials rule out terrorism just minutes or hours after an outage hits, yet days and weeks later they still can't pinpoint the actual cause."