Scouting of base worries officials

By Brian Kelly

Herald Writer

COUPEVILLE — Island County Sheriff Mike Hawley was forced to call a rare press conference Wednesday to downplay a report of Middle Eastern men checking out the Deception Pass Bridge around the time of last month’s terrorist attacks.

But Hawley said he was worried about another report of a man who bought maps of land next to Whidbey Island’s naval base on Sept. 10.

The Navy is investigating those incidents and others at naval installations worldwide.

One report detailed how three men were seen videotaping in a restricted area by the bridge, Whidbey Island’s only link to the mainland and one of the state’s most popular tourist attractions. But Hawley said detectives contacted the six men and learned they were roofers working on a project in the area.

"They were legitimately here. They had been up at Deception Pass park as vacationers, videotaping the sights and sounds," Hawley said.

Authorities, however, are still searching for a man who bought maps of private property around the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station on Sept. 10, the day before terrorists crashed jetliners into the Pentagon and the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Hawley said a man of Middle Eastern descent, in his late 20s to early 30s, visited Oak Harbor City Hall and the Island County Assessor’s Office asking about property near the naval station.

The man — who was described as having a "calm but out of place" appearance and a distinct body odor that caused one worker to back away from the service counter — bought four maps from the assessor’s office.

Those maps detailed access points to the base, property owners’ names, nearby streets and other information, Hawley said.

The man remains a mystery, however. His name was not written on the receipt, and a subsequent computer check could not determine which plat maps near the naval station he had purchased.

Hawley said the plat maps are public records, but the incident was suspicious in hindsight.

"On Sept. 10, no one gave it a second thought," he said. "We’re still unable to locate where he is and exactly what his intentions were."

Police were not sure if the man was the same person who visited Oak Harbor City Hall seeking the same information. County workers said the man who bought the maps looked older than the description of the man who talked with an Oak Harbor planning official.

Information on the suspicious man has been forwarded to the FBI, along with an e-mail the county received on Sept. 20 from Islamabad, Pakistan. That e-mail asked for information on how Island County handled hazardous waste and where it was stored.

Since Sept. 11, the sheriff’s office has been deluged with citizen reports of suspicious men, packages and letters.

"We’ve had numerous, numerous reports from citizens. We are tracking down every one of them," Hawley said.

"Most of them, of course, turn out to be false alarms," he said. "We still want the public to report, we just don’t know which ones are going to turn out valid and which ones are not."

The department has been getting a dozen calls a day. Most, such as a report Wednesday morning about a suspicious powder near a phone at South Whidbey High School, turn out to be completely unrelated to terrorist activities.

However, a press report Wednesday in The Washington Times in Washington, D.C., of several suspicious incidents on Whidbey Island left sheriff’s department workers hustling to handle more than 50 inquiries from international news outlets and media from across the region and country.

At first glance the report seemed sinister — three men on the beach near the Deception Pass Bridge, supposedly fishing but with the wrong gear and more interested in videotaping the bridge itself — but Hawley said the incident had an easy explanation. The three men were actually the six roofers and had been ordered out of a day-use area at Cranberry Lake because they were there after dark. Like many out-of-state visitors, the Californians had brought freshwater instead of saltwater fishing equipment.

Not every citizen report has left police empty-handed, however.

Hawley said a Camano Island woman reported a Middle Eastern man at Camano Island State Park on Sept. 13 taking photos of Whidbey Island Naval Air Station with a telephoto lens.

The man, later identified as Mir Latif Ahmad, is a native of Afghanistan who was convicted in 1991 of three counts of child molestation in Cowlitz County. He is now in the custody of immigration officials in Seattle, said Hawley, who added that he was surprised the Renton man had not been deported after his 1997 release from a state prison.

Despite the flurry of reports, Hawley said he was not ready to say that every one was a false alarm.

"I’m concerned about the plat maps. It’s just too much of a coincidence," he said.

"If we’re having reports like that here, I’m really concerned about the major bases throughout the United States where — if there are people actually working here — there must be dozens working there."

You can call Herald Writer Brian Kelly at 425-339-3422 or send e-mail to kelly@heraldnet.com.

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