JAFFREY — The bomb threat letter that led to the cancellation of the 23rd annual Jaffrey Festival of Fireworks was aimed at town officials.

Last Thursday morning, the Jaffrey Select Board, the Jaffrey Chamber of Commerce and the Keene Sentinel received the threatening letter that caused Police Chief William Oswalt to announce Friday the cancellation of the festival that was to have taken place Saturday.

Though authorities have not released the contents of the letter, excerpts released by the Keene Sentinel on Tuesday suggest the author of the letter has a grudge against town officials.

According to the Sentinel, the letter was addressed to “all the Jaffrey selectmen and all town officials.”

The Sentinel also included this passage: “All of you are in your happy homes but some of us are not ... because of your poor decisions,” the author said. “I have a lot more time on my hands since I have no job or home anymore, but I had a little stash to invest and with my extensive military background training I will be setting off my own ‘fireworks’ display on Saturday and it will not be a crowd pleaser to all your fun festival goers who are there.”

Oswalt said Wednesday he recognizes that there is a strong public interest in the investigation, but he would not comment on or release the letter yet.

“It’s a major portion of what we are looking at, at this point, to try to develop leads,” he said. “The contents are very important and the specific details are very important that we think it outweighs making the information public at this time.”

The investigation is being led by the Jaffrey Police Department with assistance from the county, state and federal Attorney General’s offices, state police as well as agents from the FBI, ATF and the Postal Inspection Office.

“Our investigative intensity remains high and this is a situation, an investigation of highest priority here at the department,” Oswalt said.

Oswalt said he met with state police and county and FBI officials Wednesday.

“They remain involved in offering their services, both in terms of manpower for investigating and in some of the resources they have available to them,” he said.

The public has provided some leads to the investigation and some interviews have been conducted, he said.

Oswalt did not rule out releasing more information as the investigation continues.

“It very well may occur in the not-too-distant future that we are prepared to release more details, to provide something the public might respond to that would give us more leads to investigate,” Oswalt said.

The annual fireworks festival has been a fundraising event for the Jaffrey Chamber of Commerce for 23 years.

The event is held at the Silver Ranch Airpark, in partnership with the airpark and Jaffrey-based Atlas PyroVision Productions, which does fireworks shows around the country. The airpark alone attracts 30,000 to 35,000 people to the festival. Many people also park in the surrounding area for the show.

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Meghan Pierce may be reached at mpierce@newstote.com.