fair use... (just seeing this even though it occured Saturday)

Link

Dam Security High After Suspicious Incident

Report Of Three Middle-Eastern Men Asking About Plant

BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. -- The owner of 14 hydroelectric generating plants along the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers has posted 24-hour armed guards at the facilities, a company spokesman says.

The unusual move was partly prompted by a "suspicious situation" at the U.S. Generating New England power station in Bellows Falls sometime Saturday, spokesman Ken Alton said. US Generating is owned by PG&E National Energy Group, based in Bethesda, Md.

"It was a very strange situation going on down there, and in the light of what happened, extra security is the prudent thing to do," Alton said.

"I think the word suspicious, can be used, these kinds of things," he said Wednesday. "If you see something that doesn't seem right, and looks suspicious, we want to get out and let people know."

Alton said Bellows Falls police told him three men of Middle Eastern descent made detailed inquiries about the Bellows Falls plant. He didn't know whom the men approached with their questions.

No one got inside the plant, he said.

A Bellows Falls police officer said an alarm inside the building on Saturday brought the on-duty officer to the power plant, where he found the three men outside the fence at the plant.

The three men were questioned by the police officer but were not detained or arrested. There was a second alarm at the plant on Sunday, but no one was found at the site.

Alton said the decision to place the armed guards at the plants was made Monday morning in conjunction with PG&E security officials in Maryland.

He said the decision was prompted not only by the three men spotted at the Bellows Falls facility, but also in the wake of the U.S. attacks in Afghanistan on Sunday.

PG&E operates six generating stations on the Connecticut River and eight stations and a pumped storage project, called Bear Swamp, on the Deerfield River.

In addition to Bellows Falls, the utility also has stations in Vernon, Wilder, Barnet and McIndoe Falls. The stations have a total generating capacity of more than 1 million kilowatts, most of which provides power for eastern Massachusetts.

Bellows Falls is about 25 miles north of the Massachusetts border.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

Answers

Sure are a lot of reports of middle eastern men asking obnoxious questions SUBSEQUENT to 9/11. That tells me it wasn't preplanned, and that these are either isolated vigilantes or noise.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

Brooks,

It could be part of the plan. They are smart enough to figure out that we'd be very suspicious of any ME person snooping around after the attacks. Heck, most people are scared crapless. I think they are doing just what was intended. Sad to say.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

"The three men were questioned by the police officer but were not detained or arrested."

???

They weren't?

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001