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unattended
    substations, a series of widely scattered district offices and a central
    headquarters comprising two connected high-rise buildings, provision of
    strict security, even if possible, would cost a fortune. This, at a time
    of soaring fuel, wage and other operating costs, while consumers
    complained that bills for electricity and gas were already too high and
    any proposed rate increase should be resisted. For all these reasons
    security employees were relatively few, so that much of the utility's
    security program was cosmetic, based on calculated risk.
    At La Mission, the risk-at a cost of four human lives-proved to be too
    high.
    Ile police inquiries established several things. The supposed Salvation
    Army officer was an impostor, almost certainly wearing a stolen uniform.
    The letter be presented, while it may have been on official GSP & L
    stationery-not difficult to come by-was a fake. The utility would not,
    in any case, allow its employees to be solicited at work, nor could
    anyone be located in the GSP & L organization who had written such a
    letter. The La Mission security guard did not remember a name at the
    bottom of the page, though he recalled the signature was "a squiggle."
    It was also established that the visitor, once inside the powerhouse, did
    not go to the superintendent's office. No one there saw him. If anyone
    bad, the fact was unlikely to have been forgotten.
    Conjecture came next.
    Most probably the bogus Salvation Anny officer descended a short metal
    stairway to the service floor immediately beneath the main turbine ball.
    This floor, like the one above it, had no intervening walls so that even
    through a network of insulated steam pipes and other service lines, the
    lower portions of the several La Mission generators could be clearly seen
    through the metal grating floor of the turbine hall above. Number 5-Big
    Lil-would have been unmistakable because of its size and that of the
    equipment near it.
    Perhaps the intruder bad advance information about the layout of the
    plant, though this would not have been essential. The main generating
    building was an uncomplicated structure-little more than a giant box. He
    might also have known that La Mission, like all modern generating
    stations, was highly automated, with only a small work force; therefore
    his chances of moving around without being observed were good.
    Almost certainly, then, the intruder moved directly under Big Lil where
    he opened his briefcase containing a dynamite bomb. He would have looked
    around for an out-of-view location for the bomb, then would have seen
    what seemed a convenient metal flange near the junc-

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tion of two steam lines. After actuating a timing mechanism, undoubtedly he
    reached up and placed the bomb there. It was in this choice of location that
    his lack of technical knowledge betrayed him. Had he been better informed,
    he would have located the bomb nearer the monster generator's main shaft,
    where it would have done most damage, perhaps putting Big Lil out of action
    for as long as a year.
    Explosives experts confirmed that this indeed had been a possibility. What
    the saboteur used, they decided, was a "shaped charge"-a cone of dynamite
    which, when detonated, had a forward velocity similar to that of a bullet,
    causing the explosion to penetrate whatever was directly ahead. As it
    happened, this was a steam line leading from the boiler.
    Immediately after positioning the bomb-the hypothesis continued -the
    saboteur walked unaccosted from the main generating building to the plant
    gate, leaving as casually and with even less attention than when he
    arrived. From that point his movements were unknown. Nor, despite intensive
    investigation, did any substantial clue about identity emerge. True, a
    telephoned message to a radio station, allegedly from an underground
    revolutionary group-Friends of Freedom-claimed responsibility. But police
    had no information as to the whereabouts of the group or