Setting Fires in California

FROM ATLASSHRUGS.COM:
Setting Fires in California
FBI: al-Qaeda detainee spoke of fire plot

Firefighters watch a back fire on a hillside in Jamul, Ca., Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007. Deadly, wind-whipped wildfires have triggered the largest evacuation in state history, prompting some 500,000 people to flee ahead of flames that have destroyed more than 1,600 homes and continued Wednesday to threaten tens of thousands more. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
While firefighters are risking their lives trying to save homes, there have been dozens of reports of looters across the mountains. Deputies have not been able to confirm many of the reports, but there have been some arrests. Even worse, authorities made an arrest of a motorcyclist who was allegedly witnessed trying to start an arson fire near Camp Seely on Tuesday evening.On Tuesday evening the Slide Fire advanced through much of the Rowco neighborhood of Running Springs, as well as Fredalba and Smiley Park. The fire reached as far east as Mount R and westward to between Heaps Peak and Nob Hill. Reports of structures lost poured into dispatchers as strained resources were rendered helpless.
PHOENIX (AP) — The FBI alerted law enforcement agencies last month that an al-Qaeda terrorist now in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.
Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, told The Associated Press that officials there took note of the warning but didn't see a need to act further on it.
The contents of the June 25 memo from the FBI's Denver office were reported Friday by The Arizona Republic. Davis declined to share a copy of the memo and an FBI spokeswoman in Denver didn't immediately return a telephone call.
The Republic reported that the detainee, who was not identified, said the plan involved three or four people setting wildfires using timed devices in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming that would detonate in forests and grasslands after the operatives had left the country.
Always protecting the guilty. Yas gotta love America!
The memo noted that investigators couldn't determine whether the detainee was telling the truth.
The newspaper said many forest law enforcement officers it contacted had no idea the warning had been issued.
More here.