Mystery in Spokane -- the update

Remember the case of the powerful and sophisticated backpack bomb found along the route of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, a case of what the FBI called "domestic terrorism" yet nonetheless was underreported by the national media?

Kudos to the New York Times, which has the resources to send a reporter to Spokane, for not forgetting:

"To me, it's that God's gracious hand moved," said Chief Anne Kirkpatrick of the Spokane Police Department. "This was a bomb of significance that would have caused devastation."

Nearly a month after a cleanup crew found the live bomb along the planned route of a large downtown march honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the F.B.I. is investigating the incident as an act of domestic terrorism. And Spokane has cycled from shock to relief to reassessment: have the white supremacists who once struck such fear here in the inland Northwest returned at a new level of dangerousness and sophistication?

"We don't have that kind of intelligence level to make that kind of explosive," said Shaun Winkler, a Pennsylvania native who recently returned to the region to start a landscaping company and a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

I'm not sure where to begin with that last quote, which does Pennsylvania proud on so many different levels. Later in the story, the Keystone State native returns to add:

Mr. Winkler, the Klansman, said he still believed that the region was a good place to nurture a racist movement.

I'm sure the vast, vast majority of decent, God-fearing folks who live there would disagree, although it would make for an interesting welcome sign: "The inland Northwest: A good place to nurture a racist movement."