Lights Out

by Ted Koppel

  It doesn’t help that the Department of Homeland Security: The “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” rankings are produced by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that seeks to strengthen the federal civil service.

  CHAPTER 20: Summing Up

  Cotter produced his fourth white paper: Cotter sends his white papers to a selected list of recipients, but does not make them available to the public.

  Panetta warned that an aggressor nation or extremist group: Transcript, U.S. Department of Defense, October 11, 2012.

  In an Oval Office conversation: Thomas Friedman, “Iran and the Obama Doctrine,” New York Times, April 5, 2015.

  Ashton Carter ordered the release: U.S. Department of Defense, DOD Cyber Strategy, April 2015.

  issued a presidential memorandum: White House Office of the Press Secretary, “Presidential Memorandum—Establishment of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center,” February 25, 2015.

  “Such expansive development”: Charlie Savage and Jonathan Weisman, “N.S.A. Collection of Bulk Call Data Is Ruled Illegal,” New York Times, May 7, 2015.

  wrote Judge Gerard E. Lynch: Jonathan Stempel, “NSA’s phone spying program ruled illegal by appeals court,” Reuters, May 7, 2015.

  The president now has the authority: The amended Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Act of 1988.

  EPILOGUE

  In his magisterial volume: Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2013).

  infamously bombed the town of Guernica: “The Bombing of Guernica, 1937,” EyeWitness to History, 2005.

  A contemporaneous account in a local newspaper: “Deposit Became Civil Defense Evacuation Zone in 1957 test,” The Daily Star, November 12, 2012.

  In 1956 Congressman Chester E. Holifield: Civil Defense and Homeland Security: A Short History of National Preparedness Efforts (Washington, DC: Department of Homeland Security, 2006).

  In July 1957 mock atomic bombs were dropped: www.nebraskastudies.org.

  a bizarre exercise that involved a two-week survival test: “Sheltering Cattle from Atomic Radiation in Nebraska,” www.nebraskastudies.org.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To acknowledge comes dangerously close to being obliged to admit something. It does not convey a sense of wholehearted enthusiasm. There is, in fact, something almost grudging about the word, and since custom dictates that an author acknowledge his indebtedness to those who contributed to the publication of a book, custom further undermines sincerity.

  Perhaps if I explained how this book came to be…

  I read a great deal and can’t recall what, precisely, planted the idea of a cyberattack on the grid, but it seemed plausible. I was at home, looking out the window of an enclosed porch, wondering how I would care for my wife and myself if the power went out and stayed out. How would we survive? There are deer and wild turkey on our property and in the winter they roam the fields looking for food. I could shoot a deer, but I don’t have a gun. I could buy a gun, but my chances of bringing down a deer would remain slim. Even if I got lucky, how would I skin and gut the animal? How would I preserve the meat? In very short order, I came to the conclusion that disaster survival is not my strong suit. Nor, for that matter, had I spent any part of my career investigating the survivability of the electric power grid.

  I have, however, always been much taken by Will Rogers’s observation that “we’re all ignorant, just about different things.” One of the great joys of a lifetime in my chosen profession has been my understanding that it entitles me to pursue and occasionally even harass the most knowledgeable experts in any field, and that they are obliged by some unwritten compact to answer questions from me, for no other reason than that I am a reporter.

  For well over fifty years now, I have been enabled in this conceit by the woman I love: Grace Anne, the aforementioned wife. Her love for me has never wavered. She abandoned a brilliant academic career near the end of her work toward a PhD at Stanford to accommodate my youthful insecurities. Somehow she completed her studies as a Georgetown Law student while raising four children and catering to an ambitious husband. Scan a history of the last fifty years—the Kennedy assassinations, the Viet Nam war, the civil rights struggle, Nixon in China, troubles in the Middle East, Bosnia, South Africa, a succession of presidential election campaigns, two wars in Iraq—and you will have an incomplete index of why I was so often away from home and why Grace Anne’s legal training was put to the service of managing her husband’s production company and the family’s financial affairs. That glosses over, entirely, the twenty-six years I spent anchoring Nightline. In such a context, it does not seem adequate to merely “acknowledge” her support during a further eighteen months of researching and writing a book. I can only embrace Grace Anne’s latest round of sacrifice as yet further evidence of her great love and acknowledge, with a full heart, that love as the most precious gift I have ever received.

  After a professional lifetime of working with a team of other reporters, producers, editors, and researchers, where the interaction is constant, writing a serious book can be disorienting. There are many comparable interactions, but they tend to be conducted at arm’s length and only sporadically. Writing, everybody understands, is lonely work. For all that, those who contribute to the endeavor are particularly important, in that they support morale even as they perform their own critical roles.

  It does not take much to crush an idea. That’s all a book is in its earliest stage. A dose of skepticism or ridicule from the right person at the wrong time can so undermine a writer’s confidence that many wonderful ideas have surely been abandoned because there was no Jonathan Segal to nurture them through their most fragile infancy. Jonathan is a brilliant editor at Knopf. We had worked together on a previous book of mine and hoped to collaborate on this one. That hope collapsed under the weight of my expectations, but not before Jonathan helped me shape the concept into something that captured the attention of Bob Barnett. Bob’s range as an attorney and advisor is frequently reduced to the phrase “power broker,” or simply a recitation of a few dozen of his most famous clients. Among his clients, it is true, are those who have been or aspire to be president of the United States. I believe the current White House occupant has also engaged Bob’s services at one point or another. I can only hope that he treats all of them with the same encouragement, attention, and kindness that I have enjoyed. Engaging a publisher’s attention is difficult enough. Convincing several of them to consider investing generously in the mere concept of a book requires more than I could have brought to bear on my own. Bob is not just a fine lawyer and a skilled negotiator; he has also been a good friend.

  Molly Stern is the publisher of Crown Publishers. She has the instincts of a good psychoanalyst and the nerve of a riverboat gambler. I have always had a particularly warm place in my heart for those who take a chance on me at a time when others are still expressing their reservations. That aura of confidence has persisted throughout the project. There is nothing that so lifts the spirits of a lagging writer as an ebullient message from the publisher. Molly does ebullient well. As does Crown’s executive editor, Rachel Klayman, whose enthusiasm for this project, from its earlier stages on, never faltered.

  A great deal of time has been wasted speculating on the possibility that an infinite number of chimpanzees banging away indefinitely on an infinite number of typewriters (it’s an old idea) would eventually come up with the works of Shakespeare. To which I can only add: if they had Meghan Houser as an editor, their chances would be greatly enhanced. Her keen eye for organization often substituted clarity for confusion. To those who remain confused by one part or another of my book I can only explain that I did not always accept Meghan’s recommendations. Meghan is a wonderful editor who never faltered in the face of difficult deadlines and an occasionally petulant author. She is at an early stage in her career, but before long, many will recognize her for what she is already—a great editor.
r />   I have already referenced Ryan Ellis a couple of times in the body or in the endnotes of this book. He was brought to my attention by an old friend and colleague, David Sanger of the New York Times. David suggested that Ryan’s work as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard gave him the expertise to make him a reliable advisor on the vulnerabilities of the grid and the complex relationship between NERC and FERC. Ryan did, in fact, provide invaluable observations on early drafts of several chapters and on transcripts of numerous interviews. David Sanger, in turn, was most generous in introducing me to a number of very helpful sources. My old friend, Harry Rhoades, who, in my view, runs the classiest lecture agency in North America, extended himself repeatedly establishing connections for me with sources who were enormously important to this project. He did this, I should note, without ever violating their privacy but by encouraging them to contact me.

  I suspect that almost every writer, at one point or another in a project, needs the support of an old friend. In the person of Tom Bettag, I also had a valued colleague. Together, over the course of almost two decades, we had collaborated on more than a thousand hours of television news programming. Tom knows how to most productively calibrate criticism and praise. He read an early draft, proposed some genuinely helpful changes, and, most important of all, provided encouragement at a time when it was sorely needed.

  I had so many qualified applicants for the job of research assistant that I ended up hiring three. Rachel Baye, Katie Paul, and Morrow Willis were graduate students already working full-time jobs. We agreed that if each was occasionally available for this project, they would add up to the equivalent of a full-time research assistant. I don’t know how Rachel and Katie found time for any life outside study and work. I can only say that neither ever let me down and both contributed mightily to the book.

  I have saved word of Morrow to the last. Shortly after accepting my offer of a part-time job, Morrow learned that he had cancer and would have to return to his home in Texas for radiation treatments. I suggested that however much work he could do might be a distraction. It was, I said, of course up to him. Morrow eagerly took up the challenge and never missed a deadline. His research was clear, professional, and enormously helpful. Somehow, he managed to continue typing transcripts until the week before he died.

  About three hundred of Morrow’s friends and classmates gathered in a Georgetown University courtyard on a frigid winter evening to exchange memories of this remarkable young man. I had come to know his humor and his courage, but it was only through the reminiscences of his fellow students that I finally gained a more complete understanding of the man. Morrow and I talked often but we never met. It was my loss.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TED KOPPEL was anchor and managing editor of ABC News Nightline from 1980 to 2005. Over those years he hosted more than six thousand programs, becoming the longest-serving network news anchor in U.S. broadcast history. Overall Koppel spent forty-two years at ABC News, serving as bureau chief in Miami and Hong Kong, covering events as diverse as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s march from Selma to Montgomery and more than two years as a war correspondent in Viet Nam. In 2003 Koppel did his final stint as a combat correspondent, embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq.

  As ABC’s senior diplomatic correspondent, Koppel accompanied President Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972 and Henry Kissinger during his shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East. He covered every presidential campaign from Barry Goldwater in 1964 to Barack Obama in 2008. In 2012 New York University named Koppel one of the top 100 American journalists of the past 100 years. He has won every significant television award, including eight George Foster Peabody Awards, eleven Overseas Press Club Awards (one more than the previous record holder, Edward R. Murrow), twelve duPont-Columbia Awards, and forty-two Emmys. Since 2005 he has served as managing editor of the Discovery Channel, as a news analyst for BBC America, and as a special correspondent for Rock Center, and he continues to function as commentator and nonfiction book critic at NPR. He has been a contributing columnist to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and is the author the New York Times bestseller Off Camera.

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