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Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack Threat Raised in US Senate and Washington Post

"An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the American homeland...is one of only a few ways that the United States could be defeated by its enemies -- terrorist or otherwise. And it is probably the easiest....Depending on the location and size of the blast, the effect would be to knock out already stressed power grids and other electrical systems across much or even all of the continental United States, for months if not years."
  -- US Senator Jon Kyl in the Washington Post, 4/16/05


Dear friends,

The below article in the Washington Post is written by US Senator Jon Kyl, the chairman of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security. Senator Kyl warns of an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack which could devastate the entire United States. He claims this extremely debilitating attack could come "not only from terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda but from rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea."

So what, or better who, is the real threat here? According to BBC the yearly military budget for Iran is $7.5 billion, and for Korea is $1.3 billion. USA Today estimated al Qaeda's annual budget at a mere $30 million before 9/11, adding that this has "decreased significantly" since 9/11. So where are these countries and al Qaeda getting funding for developing and implementing this sophisticated kind of attack? For comparison, CNN notes that one B-2 stealth bomber costs $2.2 billion. And though the US budget for intelligence is classified, the Congressional Budget Office website states that for "new intelligence-related activities" alone, $20 billion was allocated in 2004, while the US defense budget is well over $400 billion.

Do these "rogue states" and terrorist organizations have the budget and sophistication to produce a devastating electromagnetic attack which could disable the entire United States? Remember that most of us have never ever heard of an EMP attack. When we consider the abundant evidence of complicity in the 9/11 cover-up, could it be that rogue elements within the shadow government are the ones actually planning a sophisticated electromagnetic attack to then blame on others in order to manipulate the public into supporting a war?

There are certainly precedents for this. Consider Operation Northwoods, the Pentagon plan to foment terrorism on US soil in the early 1960s in order to provoke the US public into supporting a war against Cuba. Approved in writing by the Pentagon Joint Chiefs, Operation Northwoods even proposed blowing up a US ship and hijacking planes as a false pretext for war. Details of these highly deceptive plans are reported by ABC, and the declassified Operation Northwoods documents are available for free viewing on the official website of the US National Archives and Records Administration.

As the highly decorated US General Butler stated many years ago in his powerful book War is a Racket, war is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, racket around. Many citizens and even top government officials have over the years been manipulated into supporting war to profit certain elite groups with hidden agendas. Please help work towards a brighter future and a safer, healthier world by spreading this information to your friends and colleagues. Take care and have a good day.

With best wishes,
Fred Burks
for WantToKnow.info


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57774-2005Apr15.html

Unready For This Attack

By Jon Kyl
Saturday, April 16, 2005; Page A19

Recently a Senate Judiciary subcommittee of which I am chairman held a hearing on a major threat to the American people, one that could come not only from terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda but from rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the American homeland, said one of the distinguished scientists who testified at the hearing, is one of only a few ways that the United States could be defeated by its enemies -- terrorist or otherwise. And it is probably the easiest. A single Scud missile, carrying a single nuclear weapon, detonated at the appropriate altitude, would interact with the Earth's atmosphere, producing an electromagnetic pulse radiating down to the surface at the speed of light. Depending on the location and size of the blast, the effect would be to knock out already stressed power grids and other electrical systems across much or even all of the continental United States, for months if not years.

Few if any people would die right away. But the loss of power would have a cascading effect on all aspects of U.S. society. Communication would be largely impossible. Lack of refrigeration would leave food rotting in warehouses, exacerbated by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still working simply ran out of gas (which is pumped with electricity). The inability to sanitize and distribute water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention the safety of anyone in the path of the inevitable fires, which would rage unchecked. And as we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, such circumstances often result in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order.

American society has grown so dependent on computer and other electrical systems that we have created our own Achilles' heel of vulnerability, ironically much greater than those of other, less developed nations. When deprived of power, we are in many ways helpless, as the New York City blackout made clear. In that case, power was restored quickly because adjacent areas could provide help. But a large-scale burnout caused by a broad EMP attack would create a much more difficult situation. Not only would there be nobody nearby to help, it could take years to replace destroyed equipment.

Transformers for regional substations, for example, are massive pieces of equipment that are no longer manufactured in the United States and typically take more than a year to build. In the words of another witness at the hearing, "The longer the basic outage, the more problematic and uncertain the recovery of any [infrastructure system] will be. It is possible -- indeed, seemingly likely -- for sufficiently severe functional outages to become mutually reinforcing, until a point at which the degradation . . . could have irreversible effects on the country's ability to support any large fraction of its present human population." Those who survived, he said, would find themselves transported back to the United States of the 1880s.

This threat may sound straight out of Hollywood, but it is very real. CIA Director Porter Goss recently testified before Congress about nuclear material missing from storage sites in Russia that may have found its way into terrorist hands, and FBI Director Robert Mueller has confirmed new intelligence that suggests al Qaeda is trying to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction. Iran has surprised intelligence analysts by describing the mid-flight detonations of missiles fired from ships on the Caspian Sea as "successful" tests. North Korea exports missile technology around the world; Scuds can easily be purchased on the open market for about $100,000 apiece.

A terrorist organization might have trouble putting a nuclear warhead "on target" with a Scud, but it would be much easier to simply launch and detonate in the atmosphere. No need for the risk and difficulty of trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon over the border or hit a particular city. Just launch a cheap missile from a freighter in international waters -- al Qaeda is believed to own about 80 such vessels -- and make sure to get it a few miles in the air.

Fortunately, hardening key infrastructure systems and procuring vital backup equipment such as transformers is both feasible and -- compared with the threat -- relatively inexpensive, according to a comprehensive report on the EMP threat by a commission of prominent experts. But it will take leadership by the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies, along with support from Congress, all of which have yet to materialize.

The Sept. 11 commission report stated that our biggest failure was one of "imagination." No one imagined that terrorists would do what they did on Sept. 11. Today few Americans can conceive of the possibility that terrorists could bring our society to its knees by destroying everything we rely on that runs on electricity. But this time we've been warned, and we'd better be prepared to respond.

The writer is a Republican senator from Arizona and chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security.

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Electromagnetic Pulse Attack