A loving couple is jailed after the FBI uncovers their plans to destroy the Baltimore power grid.
– If we achieve what I hope for, it will be legendary, boasted Sarah Clendaniel (34).
She thought she was talking to an opinion trap on the far right wing. Instead, it was with a person who reported everything that was said to the FBI.
She said that it was possible to paralyze large parts of Baltimore’s electricity grid by shooting at five substations.
The informant had similar conversations with Brandon Russel (27), writes The Washington Post.
Clendaniel and Russell connected while both were incarcerated. Both are neo-Nazis, and they became lovers.
Russel served time after police found bomb-making equipment at his home. Clendaniel was inside to rob shops with a machete. Both were on probation when they were arrested last week.
Murder and threats
Russel is a well-known figure on the extreme and most dangerous right wing in the United States. In 2013, he formed the group Atomwaffen Division, which later changed its name to the National Socialist Resistance Front.
According to Wikipedia the group has around 80 members in the USA, slightly over 50 in the Baltic countries and 38 in Italy.
Part of the group’s strategy is to use terrorism and violence to accelerate the breakdown of democratic institutions.
In 2017, Russel lived in a collective with several others. One of the roommates killed two others in the flat. He later told the police that they were planning attacks on US nuclear power plants.
Two years later, a member of the group killed a gay Jewish student. Another member killed his girlfriend’s parents, after they criticized his Nazi sympathies.
Map the web
Russell used open sources to find weaknesses in the power grid around Baltimore.
The police take their preparations seriously.
“Attacks on substations in Maryland would have caused thousands of Americans problems in their daily lives, but the FBI and our partners stopped the threat,” says FBI Assistant Director Robert R. Wells in a press release.
Attorney General Erek L. Barron said the plans posed a real threat, that lives could be lost and society would be at great cost.
Baltimore is located in Maryland and has around 600,000 inhabitants. Over 60 percent of the residents are African American. No other major American city has such a large proportion of black citizens.
Can get 20 years
Now both are charged with having planned an attack on the power supply. That could get them up to 20 years in prison.
US police are investigating similar attacks on the power grid in North Carolina and Oregon. The FBI says it has seen no connection between those attacks and the arrest of the two.
The US Department of Homeland Security recently warned that the threat level is now very high. They highlight in particular the danger of attacks on infrastructure.
