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More ‘Suspicious Activity’ In Missouri: Middle Eastern Tourists Take Exceptional Interest In Area Dam

By Aaron Homer
Published on: 12:37 PST, Dec 16, 2015

More “suspicious activity” is coming out of Missouri, this time involving Middle Eastern tourists who seemed to be exceptionally interested in an area dam, asking questions about it and even trying to rent a boat to tour it — and it’s not tourist season.

As KQFX (Columbia) reports, Corporal Scott Hines of the Camden County Sheriff’s Office recently confirmed that a week ago, one of his deputies was eating lunch at the Osage Beach Golden Corral restaurant when employees told him about a suspicious incident a week earlier. Apparently, a group of Middle Eastern men were “asking questions” about the dam, which is about 140 miles west of Saint Louis, and even asked where they could rent a boat to tour it up close.

Bagnell Dam, built in 1931, impounds the Osage River and forms the Lake of the Ozarks, a popular tourist destination. In the summer, when the weather is agreeable, the lake and surrounding communities, including Osage Beach, are filled with tourists and the lake is filled with boaters.

That the dam would attract tourists in the winter is unusual. That those tourists would be Middle Eastern and want to rent a boat and view it up close seemed even more suspicious, at least to Corporal Hines. He forwarded his report to the FBI.

“With recent things going on in our country and around the world, people are kind of a little bit more alerted. It’s everyone’s responsibility to watch out for each other. We all live in this community, and we’re going to notice things that seem out of place and if we don’t notify the proper authorities, who will?”

Whether it’s due to an extremely poorly timed series of coincidences, or evidence of possible terrorist activity, Missouri has been the scene of several incidents of late that have raised suspicions of terrorism.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, police in at least five Missouri communities have taken reports of Middle Eastern men purchasing large numbers of prepaid cell phones — dozens at a time — in the past couple of weeks. Prepaid cell phones, also called “burners,” are popular with terrorists (and other criminals) because they can be purchased with cash, require no contract, and are thus difficult for authorities to monitor and track. They’ve also been used to remotely detonate bombs.

In all of those cases, police detained and questioned the buyers, but since purchasing pre-paid cell phones in bulk isn’t a crime, the police had no reason to hold them and let them go.

In what may or may not be a coincidence, shortly before the reports of the suspicious cell phone purchases started coming in, several propane tanks — which are potentially explosive — were stolen near Kansas City.

Since the November 13 ISIS-led terrorist attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people and injured over 300, Americans have been on alert for possible evidence of terrorism. In particular, concerns have been raised about ISIS militants and supporters sneaking into the country with Syrian refugees. The Obama Administration is moving forward with a plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. As of this writing, the governors of at least 31 states have publicly stated that they will not accept refugees in their states. Ironically, Missouri is not one of them.

Do you believe that the Middle Eastern tourists who wanted to tour Missouri’s Bagnell Dam are just enthusiastic tourists, or is something more sinister afoot? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

[Image courtesy of K Trimble via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and Resized | via Creative Commons (CC0)]

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