On the weekend of around June 8-9 of last year, which is my birthday, my fiancee, best friend of 28 years and his family and I travelled to Lake West Point to camp and rent a pontoon boat for the weekend.
Lake West Point is a 30,000+ acre resevoir located on the Chattahoochie river, 90 miles or so downstream from Atlanta, and is kept backed up by a hydro-electric dam. Unlike Lake Lanier(which has humvees and helicopters patrolling it's dam) upstream and closer to Atlanta, West Point(has nothing patrolling it's dam) is probably 90% fisherman and very few pleasure boaters. I have been fishing there since the early 80's.
Since I knew the lake better than any else in our group, I was chosen to be dropped off at the marina to pick up the rental pontoon boat and would then navigate the 3 miles downriver to our campsite.
There are 2 bridges between the marina and the campground we were at. The first one is the hwy 109 bridge. As with all bridges, there is a state law that mandates a no-wake zone around them.
As I slowed the boat down to approach the bridge, I noticed something weird; a small 2 or 3 man bass boat approaching me from the opposite direction with what appeared to be 6 people in it.
I thought to myself,"Those guys are asking to get hassled by the game warden". As West Point has an abundance of game wardens eager to take your money over any infraction of the game or boating laws, especially an obviously over loaded boat.
Then, I noticed that the guys looked of middle eastern ancestry but not like the Indian and Pakistani gas station owners I had dealt with in my 5 year stint remodeling their stores.
They were all fully clothed in the broiling June heat, except for one who had a wet head and what looked like a wet suit on.
One other weird thing, as they passed the no wake bouy on the other side and throttled up their boat, their motor had a sound unlike any boat motor I have ever heard. And I have heard alot in my time.
At the time, I thought the incident odd but no big deal. Probably just some college students doing experiments or something. Although I had never before seen Middle Easterners out at West Point or any other lake, Atlanta has a large population of them so it wasn't out of the question.
The following Monday, we were back at home and I was catching up on my missed freeptime from the weekend. The first thread I clicked on was about ME's being seen taking pics of dams, resevoirs and other realted objects and something clicked in my birthday beer riddled brain.
I freepmailed a poster on that thread and told him what I saw and asked him if he thought I should report this to the feds in Atlanta. He advised me to call the feds and to file a report with the local police.
I called the local FBI office and after leaving a message, received a call back within 15 minutes.
After spending the first 5 minutes explaining to the nice lady exactly what and where Lake West Point was, I then told her what I saw. She asked if I would be willing to come to the office and make a statement and I said yes but that never happened and I haven't heard from them since.
I then called the local sheriff and told him. He contacted the feds and asked if they wanted him to take a statement from me, and they replied that it wasn't neccesary at this time.
My last call was to the game warden post on West Point. They were very interested in what I had to say and asked to come down to the office and talk face to face, which I did. There were also two GBI agents present.
With all the continued talk of these events occuring, I felt compelled to share this with you freepers that have been following the Iraqi-terror connections closely.
I know that Georgia isn't considered a priority target like NYC or Washington D.C., but they have arrested several people in connection to terror investigations here. There was a round up of mall jewelry kiosk operators and there was a guy caught in a motel room across from the CDC with fake ID's and stolen credit cards.