Back on December 27, I asked in the Morning Jolt newsletter, “who’s attacking our power grid?” In the case of the attacks on four electrical substations in the Seattle area in the early morning hours on Christmas day… apparently, just a pair of dumb thieves.
The FBI arrested two suspects Saturday.
According to the criminal complaint, the FBI identified two cell phones that were within the vicinity of the substations that were attacked, around the time of the attacks, and concluded it was unlikely that those two cell phones would coincidentally be near all four electrical substations at the time of the attacks. At the time of the arrest, days later, one suspect was wearing clothing that matched the clothing worn by the masked perpetrators of the attacks, recorded on security surveillance video, and owned a pickup truck that was also visible in the security surveillance video.
The complaint states that one of the arrested suspects, Matthew Greenwood, said that he and his accomplice, Jeremy Crahan, have been “planning to disrupt power to commit a burglary,” adding, “while the power was out, after the Graham and South Hill attacks, the two went to a local business, Crahan drilled out a lock, and Greenwood entered to steal from a cash register.” The FBI also recovered two unregistered firearms, a short-barreled shotgun and a short-barreled rifle. The pair are facing charges of possession of unregistered firearms and conspiracy to damage energy facilities.
So at least in the case of these attacks on these power substations in Washington on Christmas, it wasn’t white supremacists, or anti-gay extremists, or eco-terrorists, or other ideologically-motivated terrorism. It was just a pair of (alleged) dumb thieves.