Man who caused terror alert returns to the area
George “the terrorist?” Thiel shows off the airplane that made Grant County law enforcement scramble in March.
DESERT AIRE — George Thiel, from western Washington, made it over to Desert Aire Airport last weekend to attend the annual Fly-in Breakfast.
Thiel was laughing as he identified himself as the cause of a terror alert in March near the Priest Rapids Dam. As reported in the Sun Tribune back then, Thiel had landed his plane on a road near the dam and the Wanapum Village to do some fishing.
Problem was that no one knew he was coming, who he was or what he was doing. The Mattawa Police Department, the Grant County Sheriff and the Washington State Patrol sent officers to investigate.
Thiel was sitting on a rock ledge angling for sockeye when the authorities arrived. After they checked him out, he went back to fishing, perhaps with a little nervousness.
“I didn’t catch a thing,” he said.
The incident probably wasn’t funny to Thiel when in occurred. Last Saturday he laughed as he said: “I’m the terrorist.” What made him laugh even more was that he’d been referred to as an “eccentric” in the paper.
Thiel is far from that. He’s just a regular Joe who grew up in Alaska. He was a bush pilot and also a commercial pilot.