by Bobby Akart
By whatever name you choose, ISIS has more than sixty thousand terrorists and is expanding its influence in Syria and Iraq. It’s estimated net worth is three billion dollars, generated by nearly two million dollars a day in revenues from black market oil sales and human trafficking. ISIS terrorists pose an imminent threat to the U.S. electric grid with the capacity to coordinate a devastating assault on our nation’s infrastructure, warned a leading homeland security and terrorism expert.
In a 2015 radio interview, Dr. Pry, outlining the threat, recalled a leaked FERC report that divulged that a coordinated terrorist attack on just nine of the nation’s fifty-five thousand electrical power substations could provoke coast-to-coast blackouts for up to eighteen months. Such an attack would mirror the devastating impact of an EMP attack without the need for any nuclear device or delivery system.
Pry pointed specifically to the possibility of ISIS hiring Mexican extremists, such as the Knights Templar drug cartel, which successfully utilized guns and Molotov cocktails to attack numerous Mexican power stations, leaving 11 towns without electricity. Pry surmised that such an attack on the U.S. power grid would not be difficult for the cartel.
“There are … open-source computer models where you can figure out which of those nine critical transformer substations, if attacked, would take down the whole national power grid,” Dr. Pry said. “So something like that could be arranged. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen next week.”
Pry also pointed out that in the summer of 2015, al-Qaida attacked power lines in Yemen that left the entire nation without electricity for a day.
ISIS use of Radio Frequency Weapons
Non-nuclear weapons, such as radio frequency weapons, can also generate an EMP, although they are more limited in range than a nuclear weapon. The RFW is capable of causing damage to electronics, and could cause the collapse of critical infrastructures locally, perhaps with cascading effects on larger areas like a major city.
ISIS owns no air force and displays little in the way of air defense weapons. However, experts reveal the terrorist group is trying to close the gap with detailed instructions on social media instructing how to make a homemade weapon that could disable jet fighters. In late 2015, an article was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which tracks jihadist websites, social media, and publications. This instructional guide was produced by the Islamic State’s al-Wafa media company and posted on its Telegram and Twitter accounts.
ISIS suggests its fighters target an aircraft’s antenna system using an electromagnetic beam, via a satellite link. This beam would, in theory, disrupt the plane’s complex set of avionics, potentially making it uncontrollable. The article shows photographs of how to assemble a Radio Frequency Weapon using parts readily available online or in electronics stores. A coordinated attack, combining the use of RFWs by ISIS terrorists or their sympathizers within the United States, could cause a cascading effect on our power grid.
PART FIVE
WHO IS RINGING THE CLARION BELL?
Chapter Ten
Respected Advocates
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich is well-known as the architect of the “Contract with America” that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994 by capturing the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. After he was elected Speaker, he disrupted the status quo by moving power out of Washington and back to the American people. Under his leadership, Congress passed welfare reform, the first balanced budget in a generation, and the first tax cut in sixteen years. In addition, the Congress restored funding to strengthen defense and intelligence capabilities, an action later lauded by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission.
Speaker Gingrich has warned the world of his worst nightmare: an electromagnetic pulse. "This could be the kind of catastrophe that ends civilization — and that’s not an exaggeration," Gingrich recently said, addressing members of the Electromagnetic Pulse Caucus. The prevailing theory of Speaker Gingrich is that a Russian-made medium-range nuke in the hands of terrorists out on a barge or freighter off the eastern seaboard or in the Gulf of Mexico could do this sort of damage.
Congressman Trent Franks
Congressman Trent Franks is a conservative, Reagan Republican, and is currently serving his seventh term in the United States Congress. Congressman Franks serves on the House Judiciary Committee and is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, serving as the Vice-Chair of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities and a member of the Strategic Forces subcommittee.
In his capacity as co-chair of both the Missile Defense and the Electromagnetic Pulse Caucuses, he leads efforts to reduce national security vulnerabilities in our electric energy grids and to increase America’s missile defense capability against all enemy missile threats including those potentially launched by jihadists seeking to bring nuclear terrorism to America. Congressman Franks firmly believes the foremost responsibility of our federal government is to provide for our nation’s common defense.
Former Congressman Roscoe Bartlett
Former Congressman Roscoe Bartlett was a U.S. Representative from Maryland's 6th congressional district, serving from 1993 to 2013. He is a member of the Republican Party and was a member of the Tea Party Caucus. At the end of his tenure in Congress, Bartlett was the second-oldest serving member of the House of Representatives.
In 1995 Bartlett, who is a scientist, engineer, and inventor with 20 patents, was one of the few members of Congress who understood the threat from EMPs. Between 1995 and 1999, Bartlett held a series of congressional hearings on the EMP threat, including the first unclassified hearings ever held on this subject. The hearings proved that in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, America's defense and intelligence communities stopped paying attention to EMP threats.
In the late ’90s, during the U.S.-backed and NATO-led bombing campaign of Serbia, Russians leaders who were backing Serbia, threw an EMP threat in the face of the U.S. congressional delegation. Vladimir Lukin, the former ambassador to the United States, warned that if Russia wanted to hurt the U.S. in retaliation for NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, Russia could fire a submarine-launched ballistic missile, and detonate a single nuclear warhead at high altitude over the Midwest. He added that if one missile wouldn't do the job, the Russians had more on hand.
Bartlett warned Congress that the resulting electromagnetic pulse would massively disrupt communications and computer systems, effectively shutting down the U.S economy. After hearing this EMP threat, then Congressman Bartlett introduced a bill signed into law by President George W. Bush that established the Congressional EMP Commission in 2001. When the Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, they re-authorized the EMP Commission that continued its work until 2008. The Congressional EMP Commission report, an Executive Summary of which is found in Exhibit C, warned that terrorists, rogue states, and nations like China and Russia could make a catastrophic EMP attack on the United States.
James Woolsey, Former Director of the Central Intelligence
Mr. Woolsey previously served in the U.S. Government on five different occasions, where he held Presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations—most recently (1993-95) as Director of Central Intelligence. During his 12 years of government service, in addition to heading the CIA and the Intelligence Community, Mr. Woolsey was: Ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), Vienna, 1989–1991; Under Secretary of the Navy, 1977–1979; and General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, 1970–1973. He was also appointed by the President to serve on a part-time basis in Geneva, Switzerland, 1983–1986, as Delegate at Large to the U.S.–Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and Nuclear and Space Arms Talks (NST). As an officer in the U.S. Army, he was an adviser on the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), Helsinki and Vienna, 1969–1970.
Mr. Woolsey currently chairs the St
rategic Advisory Group of the Washington, D.C. private equity fund, Paladin Capital Group, chairs the Advisory Board of the Opportunities Development Group, and he is Of Counsel to the Washington, D.C. office of the Boston-based law firm, Goodwin Procter. In the above capacities, he specializes in a range of alternative energy and security issues, focusing on the threat we face as a nation from an EMP.
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry
Perhaps there is no greater advocate of protecting our nation from the devastating impact of an EMP, than Dr. Peter Vincent Pry.
From the Task Force on National and Homeland Security website:
“Dr. Pry is Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and Director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both Congressional Advisory Boards, and served on the Congressional EMP Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA.
The Task Force on National and Homeland Security is a privately-funded and operated body with a mandate to educate and help protect the United States from the existential threat posed by a natural or manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) catastrophe and other threats vital to U.S. national and homeland security that imperil the survival of the American people. A natural EMP from a great geomagnetic storm, a rare but inevitable threat that many scientists fear is overdue and may soon recur, perhaps as soon as the next solar maximum, could collapse electric grids worldwide and all the critical infrastructures – communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water – that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions. A nuclear EMP attack would inflict a similar catastrophe upon the U.S., slowly killing about two-thirds of the national population, 200 million Americans or more dead within one year, from starvation, disease, and societal collapse. Dr. Pry believes such an attack could be executed by both state and non-state actors, in the latter case through the launch of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile from a freighter or other platform off the coast of our country.”
Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy
From the Center for Security Policy website:
“Frank Gaffney formerly acted as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy during the Reagan Administration, following four years of service as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy. Previously, he was a professional staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee under the chairmanship of the late Senator John Tower, and a national security legislative aide to the late Senator Henry M. Jackson.
For twenty-five years, the Center for Security Policy has pioneered the organization, management and direction of public policy coalitions to promote U.S. national security. Even more importantly, the Center’s mission has been to secure the adoption of the products of such efforts by skillfully enlisting support from executive branch officials, key legislators, other public policy organizations, opinion-shapers in the media and the public at large.
The philosophy of “Peace through Strength” is not a slogan for military might but a belief that America’s national power must be preserved and properly used for it holds a unique global role in maintaining peace and stability.
The process the Center has repeatedly demonstrated is the unique ability that makes the Center the “Special Forces in the War of Ideas”: forging teams to get things done that would otherwise be impossible for a small and relatively low-budget organization. In this way, we are able to offer maximum “bang for the buck” for the donors who make our work possible. This approach has enabled the Center to have an outsized impact.”
F. Michael Maloof, Author, and former senior security policy analyst to the Secretary of Defense
F. Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, has almost 30 years of federal service in the U.S. Defense Department and as a specialized trainer for border guards and Special Forces in select countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
While with the Department of Defense, Maloof was the Director of Technology Security Operations as head of a 10-person team involved in halting the diversion of militarily critical technologies to countries of national security and proliferation concern and those involved in sponsoring terrorism. His office was the liaison to the intelligence and enforcement community within the Office of the Secretary of Defense in halting diversions and using cases that developed from them as early warnings to decision-makers of potential policy issues.
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States, Maloof was detailed back to report directly to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to prepare an analysis of worldwide terrorist networks, determine their linkages worldwide and their relationship to state sponsors. Before his career at the Defense Department, Maloof was a legislative assistant to various U.S. Senators specializing in national security and international affairs.
George Noory, media icon and advocate of EMP preparedness
George Noory, the host of the nationally syndicated program, Coast to Coast AM, says if he weren’t a national radio talk show host, he’d be in politics. Heard by millions of listeners, Coast To Coast AM airs on I Heart Radio, SiriusXM Satellite, and over six hundred radio stations worldwide.
In 2014, Noory announced a campaign to protect and insulate the U.S. power grid against an EMP event or attack via nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and solar flares, all of which could endanger the lives of millions of Americans. The threat of an electromagnetic pulse event or attack on the U.S. has prompted Noory, host of “Coast to Coast AM,” the most-listened-to overnight radio program in North America, to launch a campaign to prepare a defense.
“I implore all individual states, the President and members of Congress to immediately develop a plan to protect our power grid,” said Noory. “The preservation of our great nation and the lives of its people are critical.” The goal is to protect and insulate the U.S. power grid against an EMP event or attack from a solar flare, nuclear weapon or ballistic missile, all of which could endanger the lives of millions of Americans, according to Noory.
Chapter Eleven
The EMP Commission
The EMP Commission
Through the warnings of Representatives Franks and Bartlett, Congress finally began to recognize the potential threat of this powerful nuclear phenomenon. Congress established the EMP Commission under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2001 in order to provide an independent assessment of this threat against the United States. The authorizing provision directed that the EMP Commission investigate and report to Congress its findings and recommendations for the United States concerning four aspects of the EMP threat:
The duties of the EMP Commission, among other things, included assessing the following:
1. The nature and magnitude of potential high-altitude EMP threats to the United States from all potentially hostile states or non-state actors that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles enabling them to perform a high-altitude EMP attack against the United States within the next 15 years
2. The vulnerability of United States military and especially civilian systems to an EMP attack, giving special attention to vulnerability of the civilian infrastructure as a matter of emergency preparedness
3. The capability of the United States to repair and recover from damage inflicted on United States military and civilian systems by an EMP attack
4. The feasibility and cost of hardening select military and civilian systems against EMP attack.
The Commission is charged with identifying any steps it believes should be taken by the United States, to better protect its military and civilian systems from EMP attack.
Multiple reports and briefings associated with this effort were produced by the EMP Commission including the often cited Critical National Infrastructures Report.
According to the Commission report, protecting the United States against the evolving EMP threat will require a mix of active defens
es, passive defenses, and policy changes. Specifically, the United States should:
· Develop a clear policy about how it would respond to an EMP attack. An adversary may be emboldened to use EMP because the U.S. has no clear retaliation policy. As the commission's report makes clear, an EMP attack could devastate both civilian and military assets without harming humans--in the short term. An adversary could therefore, calculate that the United States would respond less severely to an EMP strike than it would to a more traditional attack that results in physical destruction and casualties. That makes EMP very attractive. It could carry decreased risk but promise great reward. By itself, a policy guaranteeing significant retaliation may not deter all hostile groups from using EMP, but it may deter some. Better yet, a policy to retaliate combined with other actions--such as installing active defenses, increased passive defenses, and assuring military survivability--would decrease the likelihood of an EMP attack against the United States because such measures would make a strike less likely to succeed. If it did succeed, the consequences for the United States would be minimal. Thus, the value of an EMP strike would be significantly reduced, but the risk of launching an attack would be greatly increased because the U.S. would not only have a policy to retaliate, but also the capability.
