Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 34, and her associate, founder of a Florida neo-Nazi group, Brandon Russell, 27, have been arrested by authorities on suspicion of conspiracy.
The two met in prison and are said to have devised and worked out plans to attack the power grid in Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city, last year. They themselves called their plan ‘legendary’.
Racist motif
The authorities speak of a ‘racist motive’, because the plan was to lay down the electricity grid in a predominantly ‘black city’.
In Baltimore, more than sixty percent of the population is black and the electricity grid that the two had in mind provides electricity for about 1.2 million residents in Maryland.
Vulnerability of the power grid
According to authorities, the attack that the two planned is not related to previous attacks on electricity facilities in North Carolina, Washington state and Oregon, writes The New York Times. It does, however, expose the vulnerability of the power grid to such attacks.
The neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen that Russell founded also planned attacks on Florida’s power grid and nuclear plants in 2017. He was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018, but was released in 2021.
