Via Ray, interesting DHLS info, courtesy the Northeast Intelligence Agency (as always, take their reporting with a grain of salt; this report filed by Douglas J. Hagmann ):
15 January 2006: On Wednesday, 11 January 2006, environmental divers working for Merkel Associates of San Diego, hired to check on algae growth in the Huntington Beach Harbor discovered seven or perhaps eight commercial-grade explosive detonators that were “strategically placed†on the ocean floor in Long Canal, near Bonaire Circle in about 10-15 feet of water.
According to law enforcement officials, each detonator, or blasting cap, was attached to a 10-foot-long, brightly colored wire. An analysis of the explosives determined that they were placed on the harbor floor within 36 hours of their discovery. Following their discovery, eight law enforcement agencies responded to the scene; at least 15 divers, including ten from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, four from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and one diver from the FBI searched the floor of the harbor for additional explosives and to recover the explosives that were found.
During the recovery operation, Jim AMORMINO of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department described the explosives as “commercial grade detonators used to trigger large explosions in mines or other sites and are considered highly unstable. They are concussion-type explosive devices, as opposed to fragmentation type. The detonators could cause an explosion equivalent to a hand grenade, and could definitely injure anyone near, any diver near there, any person in water, any boat near that explosion. They are typically attached to a bigger explosive device. This was our concern, (that) they were attached to a bigger explosive device,†stated AMORMINO.
About the size of a shotgun shell, the explosives were spread over a 150-yard area and could be detonated by the use of cell phones or specific radio signals. During the recovery of the explosives, authorities banned cell phone use to prevent accidental detonation. AMORMINO added: “The situation is very serious. We’re confident we located all of them. Now the question at this stage is how they got there. They were intentionally placed there.”
Meanwhile, official publicly stated that although they have no idea how the explosives got there (in the harbor) or how many more of them are out there, they stated that “terrorism was not suspected.†Officials also believe that it is unlikely that the explosives are from the nearby Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. Authorities continue to interview nearby residents for any information to this discovery.
As a follow up, CBS 2 / KCAL 9 reports that “Harbour Divers Now Find Railroad Signal Flares”:
Divers, responding to reports that some detonators remained in Huntington Harbour despite seven brought to the surface earlier, returned Thursday and found railroad signal flares, authorities said.
As of midday, the eight divers had been unable to find more blasting caps like the ones they fished out of the water yesterday, said Jim Amormino of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. But they planned to continue searching for the rest of the day, he said.
The flares, which are not considered dangerous, “could very well be related” to the detonator find, Amormino said.
The initial cache of commercial-grade detonators was discovered Tuesday by environmental divers hired by the Huntington Harbour Association to survey algae in the water.
The team saw two blasting caps in about 10 feet of water near Bonaire Circle.
A team of 15 law enforcement divers spent yesterday searching in 9 to 15 feet of murky water. The devices were believed to have been stolen and dumped.
Amormino said blasting caps, usually attached to a bigger explosive device, are used to cause explosions in mines and things like that. He called them concussion-type explosive devices, as opposed to the fragmentation type.
When the search was called off at 3:30 p.m. yesterday, officials said they were confident that they had found all of the blasting caps.
The devices were placed in a reinforced box that would contain any explosion and were expected to be detonated, but investigators hoped to find out who was responsible for dumping them, Amormino said.
He ruled out terrorism.
I am always happy to hear when terrorism is ruled out, but I’m also cautious enough to maintain a degree of suspicion when it is ruled out so very quickly, especially considering the strategic location of the devices.
And considering that the OC is the home of Adam Gadahn and Hadayet, the LAX El Al killer, and a wahabbi mosque.
Speaking of being suspicious of things that are ruled out to soon (cause we were), you should see this follow up.
Hey those bottlenose dolphins are the wife-abusing bastards of the cetacean world. Wouldn’t surprise me to learn they’d started embracing Islam.
As with code words (ever so cutesy and knowing and clever) of “intoxication”, “arrogance” etc., and some creative applications like ‘priorities’ seen here, whenever someone “rules out” a possibility, one should be suspicious.
“Ruling out” is code language like the other slop usually meaning—not ‘serving’ community interests or doing something genuinely for love, but in practice simply obedience to and toeing some established party lying, itself, in my experience, invariably full of crap and usually corrupt.
I don’t know about the specifics of this situation however, merely preaching healthy and Constitutionalist skepticism. The notion of ‘serving’ in society has become, as [conservative Christian capitalist] Conan Doyle addresses in classical (indirect, not explicit) form in the “Red Headed League”, wholly corrupt and perverted in practice, including from its meaning to the founding fathers, seen indirectly and in classical form in the case of Holker v Parker (S. Ct. 1813).
I am of course, of a different perspective of both the Holker Court and Conan Doyle (both freemasons), but as a socialist, agnostic who is among other things NOT classical about my expression, but explicit about things normally veiled—an approach I have noted elsewhere is necessary to, among other things, a terrorism free world— I agree with at least that portion of their views that takes all this unhistorically minded obedience frenzy for what it is: crap.
As a socialist agnostic skeptic who is also (perversely and confusingly) anti-authoritarian in his pronouncements of government reliability (PARTY LINE, man! Know it. Learn it. Live it!)—AND a Conan Doyle critic (you appear to be a critic of good faith; or, more simply, a paranoic: the “code” you distrust could simply be an acknowledgment that there is no reason as of yet to suspect terrorism, which would speak to a very technical denial intended to protect againt unnecessary panic)—here, have a blast.
I love me some Conan Doyle!
See Jeff, this is what happens when you start leaving piles of spare punctuation around where just anybody can get it.
At least patchy fog is keeping the input down to a size that fits on the screen without scrolling.
– Actually Moe, that paragraph Collossus ate up all the spare punctuation. We had to send out for a spare 1971 IBM selectric ball. (With MS Word in Punch Card form, and paste on “tm“‘s…..)
shouldn’t this be the concern of some certain operative in a pea coat?
Conan Doyle was a Mason? Cool.
(So was Mozart, by he way. And Salieri.)
I blame Col. Sebastian Moran (keeping with the Holmes references)
Orange County Sheriff’s Department: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw our attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of jihadist involvement in all this.
Orange County Sheriff’s Department: We made no mention of jihadist involvement!
Holmes: That was the curious incident.
Oh, man. I’d forgotten about Cloudy. I actually tried to read that thing. You want to talk about torture techniques McCain should be railing about . . .
I don’t suppose we could get the format changed so that each comment had “So-and-so said” at the TOP, could we? For the children!
The reference to “strategic’ is in that Huntington Harbour shares a sea outlet with the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Depot. Ammunition for the Pacific Fleet has been stored and disbursed there since WWII. Many people claim that nuclear arms have been been stored there the Navy has always had, rightly I think, a no comment policy. Of course it could also be a bunch of Huntington High kids getting back at daddy’s yacht.
The one glimmer of hope is that the FBI is simply not talking in order to preserve their investigation. When Hadayet killed the folks at LAX, the FBI said all day they didn’t have an ID on the shooter. We then see footage of agents carrying out the computers and files from the guy’s apartment at about 9 p.m. So, they didn’t release his name in order to get his cache of info.
I worked in court in OC in pre 9/11 days and, believe me, law enforcement knows who’s who in radical politics and crime. Whether or not they act on it because of PC fears is another thing. Also, I wonder if they knew it was there and used Merkel as a cover.
One can hope.
I imagine one can rule out terrorism when there’s no god damn explosives attached the to caps.
If terrorists are so stupid they think blasting caps by themselves are going to Do The Job, underwater, well… we might have alreay won.
Given that the terrorist organisations actually have some long-term experience and knowledge of IED production and other explosives technology, I can’t but believe they know what a blasting cap is, and that they’re just not that dangerous, as such things go, underwater, by themselves.
Now, stuck in a few pounds of high explosive, that’s another matter… but they weren’t.
Yet.