FBI warned of neo-Nazi plots as attacks on Northwest grid spiked

As a string of attacks on electrical substations unfolded in Oregon and Washington in 2022, the FBI was warning utilities of white supremacists’ plots to take down the nation’s power grid. A KUOW/OPB investigation reveals the scope of the threat to the Northwest grid.

A white pickup truck with a rack of roof lights blazing pulled up to an electrical substation in the small town of Morton, Washington, about 70 miles south of Seattle, on June 16. In the predawn dark next to the city cemetery, a man in a dark hoodie and baseball cap hopped out of the truck. He broke a steel gate apart, likely with a crowbar later found at the scene, and walked inside the fenced facility, on his way to sabotaging its high-voltage transformers.