The Sierra Club is wondering if the Bush Administration’s efforts in the war on terror are impeded by the way they keep focusing on the wrong targets. No, I’m not talking about confusing Saddem Hussein with Osama bin Laden, I’m talking about blowing it here at home.

Jim Bensman, a resident of Alton, IL and environmental activist working with the group Heartwood, innocently suggested at a public hearing in late July that the Army Corps of Engineers destroy one its dams on the Mississippi River to restore fish habitat. When newspaper accounts said that Bensmen wanted to “blow up” the dam, the FBI came calling to interrogate him. Never mind that the Army Corps of Engineers really does use explosives to decommission dams and had itself considered doing so in this case.

The FBI, by the way, never bothered to check with anyone at the Corps of Engineers before harassing Bensman, who is also a Sierra Club volunteer. Had they done that they would have quickly learned there was nothing to fear. The Corps’ Kevin Bluhm gave the New York Times his impression of Bensman, “He’s not malicious, oh no…if [the FBI] would have asked me first, I would have said no, there’s not that kind of risk there.”

On one hand, this could be just an innocent mistake of an agency erring on the side of caution. On the other hand, it could also be a sign of something more ominous. The FBI has dubbed environmental extremists America’s number one domestic terrorism threat.

Are there political motives at work here? One can only speculate. It is disturbing that the FBI made it sound to Bensman like they had started a file on him before he publicly damned the dam.