Posted on 10/11/2001 1:49:43 PM PDT by be-baw
I work in a power plant in Michigan. Last Friday afternoon, three young middle eastern-looking men showed up in the plant carrying cameras. They asked for a tour so they can take pictures for a photo-journalism college class they were taking. My boss, the plant director, talked with them, got the name of their professor and turned them away. Having noticed the discussion I talked with my boss afterwards. I asked them if he thought that was peculiar. He said yes. I asked him if he was going to call the police. He didn’t answer. He just turned around and walked away.
This afternoon I noticed on Free Republic a post about three Pakistani men who were discovered inside of a water treatment in Hudson, New York. The similarity of that incident to the one in my plant seemed like it was far beyond coincidental. I called my boss (I’m off today), and told him about it. He told me he had contacted the professor of the three students. The professor told him he thought he knew who those three students were, but that they had had no specific assignment to try to get pictures of our plant. My boss told me he would follow up, without being specific how he planned to it.
Well, I decided I wanted to know for sure that the proper people were being notified, so after contemplating for a couple of hours, I decided to call the FBI. The office listed in my phone directory is in Detroit. I called and was connected to the command center. The gentleman I spoke with would not give me his name. I started out by telling him that I work in a power plant and three students showed up wanting to take pictures. “Oh yeah,” he said,”we’re getting a lot of that.” “What do you make of it,” I asked. “We don’t know what to make of it,” he said.
This guy did not seem interested in hearing about it. I say this because he did not ask me any questions, as I expected he would. Finally, I asked him, “Well, don’t you want to know more about it?” “Sure,” he said, “go ahead.” So I explained the rest to him. I asked what he thinks we should do. He said if it happens again, ask them for picture identification.
I find this rather disturbing. It sounds as if this is happening all over the country, yet those who have a responsibility to investigate don’t seem to want to pursue it. One would think, at the very least, warnings out to be going out to utilities to beware of swarthy men carrying cameras…
(So far, there hasn't been a word of this in the local paper.)
She said that someone called the FBI to report the incident, and that the FBI was not very interested. She said that the FBI told them that if the company itself made an official report, then they would take it more seriously, but since it was just someone calling on their own, they couldn't do anything.
BTW - obviously people are now more suspicious than they were prior to 9/11. We shouldn't be paranoid or pre-judge people soley on the basis of their looks... but on the other hand, we should be cautious.
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