The Catastrophic Business Model
Where the Attorneys Always Win
The Metcalf Event: Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism
petercbennett123April 28, 2014Data Breach, Domestic Terrorism, Fiber Optics, Public Utilities, Sabotage, sniper, Terrorism, The Metcalf Substation Attack
Custody of Bennett's Laptop |
When Bennett was hired for PG&E in March 2011 it was too good to be true, he was homeless seeking a job but instead he discovers links to his PG&R project to persons standing in his offices days after the PG&E fire that killed eight in 2010 but as research progressed discovers links between his 2004 Arson fire and Walnut Creek CA Broadway Extensions Pipeline Explosion known locally as the Kinder Morgan Fire. When Bennett discovers the link between Alicia Driscoll (The Driscoll Murders) and the heavy equipment operator for Mountain Cascade it was clear the original fire investigation might be flawed.
A critical leg to the story occurred on July 7th 2011 with the arrest of Bennett but more important how that arrest links to the Walnut Creek Bomb Squad and the Benny Chetcuti Jr. US Grand Jury Indictment. which links to Regional Parking who towed Bennett's truck off who happens to be partnered with Chetcuti whose sister is married to Chris Butler convicted for his role in the Dirty DUI Story who happens to know Bennett's former Danville who knows the Mormons who are suspects in Bennett's truck arson fire which precedes the 2004 Pipeline fire by 90 days but there is no police report even though there were police officers on-scene.
Does anyone believe that this is possible? You should because it happened but fortunately the FBI investigated another arson fire connected to Bennett's other attorney where Chetcuti,Butler, Wielsch and others know the commercial property owner whose is listed on Chetcuti's bankruptcy petition. At this point I'd say that Chetcuti and Butler are arsonists.
SAN JOSE, Calif.—The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.
Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.
A sniper attack in April that knocked out an electrical substation near San Jose, Calif., has raised fears that the country's power grid is vulnerable to terrorism. WSJ's Rebecca Smith has the details. Photo: Talia Herman for The Wall Street Journal
With over 160,000 miles of transmission lines, the U.S. power grid is designed to handle natural and man-made disasters, as well as fluctuations in demand. How does the system work? WSJ's Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.
To avoid a blackout, electric-grid officials rerouted power around the site and asked power plants in Silicon Valley to produce more electricity. But it took utility workers 27 days to make repairs and bring the substation back to life.
Nobody has been arrested or charged in the attack at PG&E Corp.'s PCG +0.73%Metcalf transmission substation. It is an incident of which few Americans are aware. But one former federal regulator is calling it a terrorist act that, if it were widely replicated across the country, could take down the U.S. electric grid and black out much of the country.
The attack was "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred" in the U.S., said Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time.
The Wall Street Journal assembled a chronology of the Metcalf attack from filings PG&E made to state and federal regulators; from other documents including a video released by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department; and from interviews, including with Mr. Wellinghoff.
The 64-year-old Nevadan, who was appointed to FERC in 2006 by President George W. Bush and stepped down in November, said he gave closed-door, high-level briefings to federal agencies, Congress and the White House last year. As months have passed without arrests, he said, he has grown increasingly concerned that an even larger attack could be in the works. He said he was going public about the incident out of concern that national security is at risk and critical electric-grid sites aren't adequately protected.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't think a terrorist organization caused the Metcalf attack, said a spokesman for the FBI in San Francisco. Investigators are "continuing to sift through the evidence," he said.
Some people in the utility industry share Mr. Wellinghoff's concerns, including a former official at PG&E, Metcalf's owner, who told an industry gathering in November he feared the incident could have been a dress rehearsal for a larger event.
"This wasn't an incident where Billy-Bob and Joe decided, after a few brewskis, to come in and shoot up a substation," Mark Johnson, retired vice president of transmission for PG&E, told the utility security conference, according to a video of his presentation. "This was an event that was well thought out, well planned and they targeted certain components." When reached, Mr. Johnson declined to comment further.
A spokesman for PG&E said the company takes all incidents seriously but declined to discuss the Metcalf event in detail for fear of giving information to potential copycats. "We won't speculate about the motives" of the attackers, added the spokesman, Brian Swanson. He said PG&E has increased security measures.
Utility executives and federal energy officials have long worried that the electric grid is vulnerable to sabotage. That is in part because the grid, which is really three systems serving different areas of the U.S., has failed when small problems such as trees hitting transmission lines created cascading blackouts. One in 2003 knocked out power to 50 million people in the Eastern U.S. and Canada for days.
Many of the system's most important components sit out in the open, often in remote locations, protected by little more than cameras and chain-link fences.
Transmission substations are critical links in the grid. They make it possible for electricity to move long distances, and serve as hubs for intersecting power lines.
Within a substation, transformers raise the voltage of electricity so it can travel hundreds of miles on high-voltage lines, or reduce voltages when electricity approaches its destination. The Metcalf substation functions as an off-ramp from power lines for electricity heading to homes and businesses in Silicon Valley.
The country's roughly 2,000 very large transformers are expensive to build, often costing millions of dollars each, and hard to replace. Each is custom made and weighs up to 500,000 pounds, and "I can only build 10 units a month," said Dennis Blake, general manager of Pennsylvania Transformer in Pittsburgh, one of seven U.S. manufacturers. The utility industry keeps some spares on hand.
A 2009 Energy Department report said that "physical damage of certain system components (e.g. extra-high-voltage transformers) on a large scale…could result in prolonged outages, as procurement cycles for these components range from months to years."
Mr. Wellinghoff said a FERC analysis found that if a surprisingly small number of U.S. substations were knocked out at once, that could destabilize the system enough to cause a blackout that could encompass most of the U.S.
Not everyone is so pessimistic. Gerry Cauley, chief executive of the North America Electric Reliability Corp., a standards-setting group that reports to FERC, said he thinks the grid is more resilient than Mr. Wellinghoff fears.
"I don't want to downplay the scenario he describes," Mr. Cauley said. "I'll agree it's possible from a technical assessment." But he said that even if several substations went down, the vast majority of people would have their power back in a few hours.
The utility industry has been focused on Internet attacks, worrying that hackers could take down the grid by disabling communications and important pieces of equipment. Companies have reported 13 cyber incidents in the past three years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of emergency reports utilities file with the federal government. There have been no reports of major outages linked to these events, although companies have generally declined to provide details.
"A lot of people in the electric industry have been distracted by cybersecurity threats," said Stephen Berberich, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, which runs much of the high-voltage transmission system for the utilities. He said that physical attacks pose a "big, if not bigger" menace.
There were 274 significant instances of vandalism or deliberate damage in the three years, and more than 700 weather-related problems, according to the Journal's analysis.
Until the Metcalf incident, attacks on U.S. utility equipment were mostly linked to metal thieves, disgruntled employees or bored hunters, who sometimes took potshots at small transformers on utility poles to see what happens. (Answer: a small explosion followed by an outage.)
Last year, an Arkansas man was charged with multiple attacks on the power grid, including setting fire to a switching station. He has pleaded not guilty and is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, according to federal court records.
Overseas, terrorist organizations were linked to 2,500 attacks on transmission lines or towers and at least 500 on substations from 1996 to 2006, according to a January report from the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry-funded research group, which cited State Department data.
An attack on a PG&E substation near San Jose, Calif., in April knocked out 17 transformers like this one.Talia Herman for The Wall Street Journal
To some, the Metcalf incident has lifted the discussion of serious U.S. grid attacks beyond the theoretical. "The breadth and depth of the attack was unprecedented" in the U.S., said Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for the Electric Power Research Institute. The motivation, he said, "appears to be preparation for an act of war."
The attack lasted slightly less than an hour, according to the chronology assembled by the Journal.
At 12:58 a.m., AT&T fiber-optic telecommunications cables were cut—in a way that made them hard to repair—in an underground vault near the substation, not far from U.S. Highway 101 just outside south San Jose. It would have taken more than one person to lift the metal vault cover, said people who visited the site.
Nine minutes later, some customers of Level 3 Communications, an Internet service provider, lost service. Cables in its vault near the Metcalf substation were also cut.
At 1:31 a.m., a surveillance camera pointed along a chain-link fence around the substation recorded a streak of light that investigators from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's office think was a signal from a waved flashlight. It was followed by the muzzle flash of rifles and sparks from bullets hitting the fence.
The substation's cameras weren't aimed outside its perimeter, where the attackers were. They shooters appear to have aimed at the transformers' oil-filled cooling systems. These began to bleed oil, but didn't explode, as the transformers probably would have done if hit in other areas.
About six minutes after the shooting started, PG&E confirms, it got an alarm from motion sensors at the substation, possibly from bullets grazing the fence, which is shown on video.
Four minutes later, at 1:41 a.m., the sheriff's department received a 911 call about gunfire, sent by an engineer at a nearby power plant that still had phone service.
Riddled with bullet holes, the transformers leaked 52,000 gallons of oil, then overheated. The first bank of them crashed at 1:45 a.m., at which time PG&E's control center about 90 miles north received an equipment-failure alarm.
Five minutes later, another apparent flashlight signal, caught on film, marked the end of the attack. More than 100 shell casings of the sort ejected by AK-47s were later found at the site.
At 1:51 a.m., law-enforcement officers arrived, but found everything quiet. Unable to get past the locked fence and seeing nothing suspicious, they left.
A PG&E worker, awakened by the utility's control center at 2:03 a.m., arrived at 3:15 a.m. to survey the damage.
Grid officials routed some power around the substation to keep the system stable and asked customers in Silicon Valley to conserve electricity.
In a news release, PG&E said the substation had been hit by vandals. It has since confirmed 17 transformers were knocked out.
Mr. Wellinghoff, then chairman of FERC, said that after he heard about the scope of the attack, he flew to California, bringing with him experts from the Joint Warfare Analysis Center in Dahlgren, Va. After walking the site with PG&E officials and FBI agents, Mr. Wellinghoff said, the military experts told him it looked like a professional job.
In addition to fingerprint-free shell casings, they pointed out small piles of rocks, which they said could have been left by an advance scout to tell the attackers where to get the best shots.
"They said it was a targeting package just like they would put together for an attack," Mr. Wellinghoff said.
Mr. Wellinghoff, now a law partner at Stoel Rives LLP in San Francisco, said he arranged a series of meetings in the following weeks to let other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, know what happened and to enlist their help. He held a closed-door meeting with utility executives in San Francisco in June and has distributed lists of things utilities should do to strengthen their defenses.
A spokesman for Homeland Security said it is up to utilities to protect the grid. The department's role in an emergency is to connect federal agencies and local police and facilitate information sharing, the spokesman said.
As word of the attack spread through the utility industry, some companies moved swiftly to review their security efforts. "We're looking at things differently now," said Michelle Campanella, an FBI veteran who is director of security for Consolidated Edison Inc.ED +0.90% in New York. For example, she said, Con Ed changed the angles of some of its 1,200 security cameras "so we don't have any blind spots."
Some of the legislators Mr. Wellinghoff briefed are calling for action. Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) mentioned the incident at a FERC oversight hearing in December, saying he was concerned that no one in government can order utilities to improve grid protections or to take charge in an emergency.
As for Mr. Wellinghoff, he said he has made something of a hobby of visiting big substations to look over defenses and see whether he is questioned by security details or local police. He said he typically finds easy access to fence lines that are often close to important equipment.
"What keeps me awake at night is a physical attack that could take down the grid," he said. "This is a huge problem."
—Tom McGinty contributed to this article.
PG&E Hillside Covenant Church possesed Metcalf Sub Station Documents fought Bennett for six months - Lynds knows WCPD Bomb Squad
Letter Regarding Claim #1185580 - it took over six months to get Hillside
Covenant Church to open the claim - in between a domestic terrorism event
known as the Metcalf Event occurred in San Jose. One Pete Bennett core
allegations was the PG&E data that was placed on Bennett's laptop could be
used for a domestic terrorism event.
To see an obfuscated representation please check my
FBI Sting >> King Funding Group
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Benny Chetcuti Jr. Walnut Creek Real Estate Investor Indicted For Fraud
By Pete Bennett CNET Scandal
Date: April 25th, 2014
More About Benny Chetcuti Jr.
Walnut Creek CA -- Walnut Creek Real Estate Investor Indicted For Fraud FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 28, 2014 OAKLAND – A federal grand jury returned a two count indictment for wirie
More About Benny Chetcuti Jr.
Benny Chetcuti Jr. — Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
Bennett Facebook Postings - A Trail of Breadcrumbs to Follow
April 12 at 11:18am ·
https://www.facebook.com/petercarverbennett/posts/10152151245698096?stream_ref=5
https://www.facebook.com/petercarverbennett/posts/10152156644498096?stream_ref=10
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152150260988096&set=a.268504798095.143010.571908095&type=1&stream_ref=10
April 11th Bus Fire
April 9th
https://www.facebook.com/petercarverbennett/posts/10152146164638096?stream_ref=10
Pete Bennett added 2 new photos.
https://www.facebook.com/petercarverbennett/posts/10152124178203096?stream_ref=10Trail of Bodies - BART / PUSD / Broadway Pointe Garage
petercbennett123April 16, 2014Accidents, attorney, BANTA, BART, contra Costa Bar Association, Las Lomas High School, Obituaries, state bar
BART BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Posted April 16th 2014Walnut Creek CA: This page is dedicated to protecting the Widow of one of your former employees. In 2011 I reconnected with a friend from nearly 30 years ago. I was saddened to learn of her husbands suicide.
That person was friends with more than person connected to persons connected to numerous US Grand Jury Indictments.
Your widow is my friend and my adversary is a retired San Francisco Police Officer whose been too close to arson cases, fires, accidents and controversial incidents.
In 2012 out of frustration with incidents near me I posted openly about this cop who has copies of my legal papers, knows where my sons live and knows police officers now in Federal Prison.
The Student Stalker - why the blog instead of calling the Police
► Simple on September 28th 2013,
- Driver tried to run me over in Walnut Creek
- See the police report here
Broadway Pointe located in Downtown Walnut Creek bounded by Mt. Diablo, Duncan, N. Broadway and N. Main Street.
A Snapshot of my Story
08/2004 - Truck Arson Fire - Truck Burst Into Flames on 68009/2004 > Nearly beaten to death in residence - Assailant / Critical Witness now decease
09/2004 > Chris Butler arrives full knowledge of assualt - now in prison
10/2004 > SRPD Lombardi shoves gun at Bennett
10/2004 > Traffic Violations and fine campaign begins
10/2004 > Pipeline Explodes Killing Five - Bennett is in court same day sees flames from court house up street
Friends of Judge Golub - > Officer Stephen Tanabe now in Federal Prison for setting up divorces.
Yesterday I called CHP Internal Affairs Unit on how a CHP officer would come to Starbucks in Walnut Creek adn try to convince me that truck explode everyday - what bullshit.
Yesterday I called CHP Internal Affairs Unit on how a CHP officer would come to Starbucks in Walnut Creek adn try to convince me that truck explode everyday - what bullshit.
last year I informed Paradise Unified School District that in my court motion was direct references to Students and School Districts were being targeted for Profitable Plaintiff cases.
it's clear that no one wants my 2004 Arson case to surface.
The 2004 Walnut Creek Pipeline Explosion >> Bay Area investigator wins eight-year battle to expand Amber Alerts
petercbennett123April 16, 2014City of Walnut Creek, County of Sonoma, Murwood Elementary, The Driscoll Murder Story, The Kinder Morgan, Walnut Creek Police
Few knew that explosion witness Joe Driscoll, sister and niece were murdered in June 2005, it is also important to note his employer Mountain Cascade site of deadly Nov 9th 2004 took over for Modern Continental just before the explosion.
Bay Area investigator wins eight-year battle to expand Amber Alerts
By Matthias Gafni Contra Costa Times
POSTED: 12/01/2013 04:17:30 PM PST1 COMMENT
UPDATED: 12/02/2013 10:32:08 AM PST
Cristina Harbison woke up on June 9, 2005, stunned to find blank freeway signs -- and no statewide Amber Alert for a troubled mother from unincorporated Walnut Creek and her 5-year-old daughter.
Harbison, a Walnut Creek patrol officer at the time, had received a disturbing call the night before about a missing 39-year-old mother, Mary Alicia Driscoll, who had told family members she planned to harm herself and her daughter, Jineva.
But the next morning, colleagues informed Harbison that the California Highway Patrol had denied the request for an Amber Alert. Because Driscoll had sole custody of Jineva, they said, this did not qualify as an "abduction" under CHP guidelines.
"My heart sunk," said Harbison, now an Alameda County District Attorney's Office inspector. "You want every possible thing to be done that can be done."
A day later, the bodies of the mother and daughter were found in an unincorporated area of Sonoma County; police ruled the deaths a murder-suicide.
In the eight years since then, Harbison has fought to change the law's criteria, to make clear that the taking of an endangered child -- regardless of the child's custodial status -- could qualify for an alert. California's Amber Alert program is staggeringly effective: More than 96 percent of the victims who are the subject of one have been found safe.
On Sept. 23, Assembly Bill 535 was signed into law, ending an emotional rollercoaster ¿of a journey for Harbison that included help from the law enforcement community, a state assemblyman and Driscoll's family -- none of whom could shake the image of the missing-person photo of Jineva, a Murwood Elementary preschooler, wearing a swim mask and snorkel.
What had initially been a lower priority missing person case took a drastic turn on June 8, 2005, when Harbison fielded a call around midnight from Driscoll's sister, Tricia Ramia. Driscoll had mailed alarming letters to family members, Harbison said, telling them "their bodies would be found" in Mendocino County.
"When I received that call, it was very clear it was an urgent and very, very dangerous situation," Harbison said.
Deputies sent an Amber Alert request to the CHP's state warning center, where requests are weighed against a checklist of criteria required to put information, such as license plate numbers and car makes and models, on highway billboards and across television screens. While this case met most "Amber" conditions -- a victim under 17 facing imminent danger, information available that could locate her -- the CHP turned it down.
"I think this was something where they felt their hands were tied, and they were following the letter of the law," Harbison said. "I can only imagine the frustration on their part."
Even without an Amber Alert, Joe Gorton -- then a Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office sergeant and now the interim San Ramon police chief -- drove up the California coast with his partner, searching for Driscoll and her daughter, finding themselves "steps behind."
On June 10, as Gorton was driving to Fort Bragg following up on a tip, he got a call he says he will "forever remember."
The bodies of Driscoll and Jineva had been found in their white Dodge Durango off Lakeville Highway near Petaluma. A firearm lay on Driscoll's body.
Would an Amber Alert have helped?
"I don't know. I really don't know," Harbison said. "We'll never know."
With no one to prosecute, the case was closed -- but for Harbison, the frustration festered. In 2007, she wrote letters to politicians pushing for changes to the Amber Alert system, with little success.
Once she started working in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, she tried again, meeting with District Attorney Nancy O'Malley on Dec. 14, 2011, and relaying Jineva's story.
With the help of O'Malley's in-office legislative committee, Harbison eventually drafted a proposal, and in February Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, sponsored the bill.
By that time, a similar case had arisen in South San Francisco, where again an Amber Alert was turned down because there were no legal restrictions on the custody of the father who snatched his two children. Fortunately, in that case the children were found unharmed.
Quirk's bill passed the Legislature in late August and was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown soon after. It's difficult to tell how broad its impact will be.
Since the inception of the Amber Alert program in 2002, the CHP has issued 216 alerts and denied 365. The agency says it does not track why requests are denied; it did say that nearly half of all alerts, 92, involved parental abductions.
The most common sort of parental abduction involves an estranged father or mother, often with limited custody of a child. But while the old law was clear that Amber Alerts could be issued in such cases, it was less clear about what happened when no custody decree was being violated, as was the case with Driscoll.
The new law says that an Amber Alert can be issued when "a child has been taken by anyone, including, but not limited to, a custodial parent or guardian."
A state Senate Appropriations Committee analysis estimated only a couple of additional activations each year owing to the change, in part because the CHP was interpreting the law liberally in most cases. However, CHP spokeswoman Jaime Coffee believes there will be more.
The new law will take effect Jan. 1.
When she heard Brown has signed the bill, Harbison called the same woman she spoke to more than eight years ago, Jineva's aunt, Tricia Ramia, of Walnut Creek.
"I walked outside and started thanking God, and I was just grateful because it had been a long, long time coming," Ramia said. "I think this is a beautiful example of something that was a huge tragedy, but as a society we came together, identified a hole and fixed it to help others and hopefully avoid a future tragedy."
Contact Matthias Gafni at 925-952-5026. Follow him at Twitter.com/mgafni.
amber alerts
Since 2002, California law enforcement has had the ability to issue Amber Alerts for missing and endangered children. Here are Amber Alert statistics in its decade-plus existence:
Amber Alert activations: 216
Amber Alerts denied: 365*
Number of victims abducted: 264
Victims recovered or deemed safe: 254
Suspects apprehended: 124
Stranger abductions: 41
Parental abductions: 92
Acquaintance abductions: 58
Hoax: 15
Unfounded: 10
*Reasons for denial are not tracked
Source: California Highway Patrol
Since 2002, California law enforcement has had the ability to issue Amber Alerts for missing and endangered children. Here are Amber Alert statistics in its decade-plus existence:
Amber Alert activations: 216
Amber Alerts denied: 365*
Number of victims abducted: 264
Victims recovered or deemed safe: 254
Suspects apprehended: 124
Stranger abductions: 41
Parental abductions: 92
Acquaintance abductions: 58
Hoax: 15
Unfounded: 10
*Reasons for denial are not tracked
Source: California Highway Patrol