Several businesses in Old Forge and Inlet were paid unannounced, simultaneous visits by undercover New York State Homeland Security agents on Wednesday, December 7 in an effort to test employees’ abilities to identify possible domestic terrorist activity.
Vickie Smith, manager of ACE Hardware in Old Forge said three men and a woman came into the store early in the afternoon and asked for pipe, nails, switches, black powder, and timers-items which Smith described as “normal things people would go into a hardware store to buy.”
But it was the collective nature of the items that raised Smith’s suspicion-identifying them as things that could be used to make homemade bombs. Continue reading
