Jim Bensman thought his suggestion during a public hearing (on July 25 in Alton, Ill.) was harmless enough: Instead of building a channel so migratory fish could go around a dam on the Mississippi River, just get rid of the dam.
Within days, the FBI had Bensman on the phone, asking whether he was any threat.
"To think I'm a terrorist is utterly ridiculous," Bensman, 46, said from his home in Alton, just north of St. Louis. "How could any reasonable person think a terrorist is going to come to a public meeting held by the Army Corps, let them know who they are and announce their terror plot? It just doesn't make sense to me."
(Army Corp spokesman Alan) Dooley isn't offering apologies, casting the agency's deferral to the FBI as a judgment call.
"I don't want to dispute anything with Jim at this point," Dooley said. "We're not going to debate whether this is oversensitivity or undersensitivity."
~The Army Corp of Engineers certainly has reasons to be oversensitive. What their poorly constructed levees did to the city of New Orleans was a monumental crime. Nobody in the Corps lost their jobs or was demoted because it but Army Corp projects all over America must be getting re-inspected and scrutinized by proactive local residents like never before.
Posted by Stubbornson at August 26, 2006 05:37 PM