Electromagnetic Pulse (12 page)

“As a result of not having the other destructive effects that nuclear weapons possess, among them the loss of human life, weapons derived from electromagnetic pulses have attracted attention with regard to their use in future wars. The superficiality of secondary damage sustained, as well as the avoidance of human casualties, serves as a motivation to transform this technology into an advanced and useful weapon in modern warfare.”

Because EMP destroys electronics directly, but people indirectly, it is regarded by some as an acceptable use of a nuclear weapon under Sharia Law.
Passive Defense
and other Iranian military treatises seem to ignore the fact that a high-altitude nuclear EMP attack will result in an incredible loss of human life due to the accompanying societal and economic collapse. One Iranian scholar wrote:

“If the world’s industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults, then they will disintegrate within a few years. American soldiers would not be able to find food to eat, nor would they be able to fire a single shot.”

The Iranians have done more than just think about an EMP attack.

The Congressional EMP Commission, summarized in Exhibit C, found that Iran has practiced launching missiles and fusing warheads for a HEMP attack, including off a freighter. Iran has apparently practiced surprise EMP attacks utilizing orbiting satellites on south polar trajectories to evade U.S. radars and missile defenses, at altitudes consistent with generating an EMP field covering the continental U.S. Iran launched its fourth satellite on such a path as recently as February 2015.

Through an interpretation of
Passive Defense
, and other Iranian documents, it is clear the Iranians are unconcerned with the deterrent effect of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine. They recognize that a single nuclear weapon would complete the list of requirements. Further, because a properly planned, nuclear EMP attack can be conducted by surprise and with anonymity — deterrence may not work against EMP. Deterrence depends on knowing who attacked, and possessing the ability to retaliate. Unlike a nuclear weapon used to blast a city, a high-altitude EMP leaves no collectible bomb debris for forensic analysis to identify the aggressor.

An EMP attack by missile or balloon launched off a freighter could be from many possible actors. Even Yemen’s Houthis have Scud missiles, and know how to use them, having recently killed the Chief of Saudi Arabia’s air force with a Scud strike on King Khalid Air Force Base.

Hundreds of satellites are in low earth orbit, unseen when approaching the U.S. from the south, which could help disguise the origins of an EMP attack. Also, the EMP could damage not only the means necessary to identify the attacker, but U.S. retaliatory capabilities.

Ayatollah warned that the U.S. deserved a punch in the mouth

One Iranian nuclear weapon is one too many for an Iran ruled by theocratic totalitarian, genocidal imperialists. The spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned the U.S. to stay out of his country's affairs and in particular, its nuclear program, which has resumed in late 2015. Speaking on a tour of southeast Iran, Khamenei commented that the US
deserved a punch in the mouth
. Khamenei offered up some additional, more specific harsh words to America. "America is evil and rude. They need to be punched in the mouth," stated Ali Khamenei. "By punched in the mouth, I mean that we need to continue to enrich uranium, build nuclear weapons, get them in the hands of as many terrorists as we can and assist them in detonating them in the northeastern United States.”

In response, as Iranians celebrate Ashura, a bloodied Shia Muslim rite, chants of
We shall give our blood for you, Oh Khamenei,
were heard.

Khamenei said that it was not up to the U.S. to decide which countries needed nuclear technology. There is increasing concern within Congress over Iran's missile program, which has been determined by a commission of U.S. scientists, to pose a serious threat to U.S. security.

ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State of DAESH

Let’s address what to call this terrorist group first.

ISIS
: The militant group, which began as the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, gained this name after it invaded Syria in 2013. ISIS is short for "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria," or "Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham," which is an old Arabic term for the area.

ISIL
: ISIL translates to “the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.”
The Levant
is a geographical term that refers to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean -- Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Jordan. It’s the term that the U.S. government uses, stating, "Levant" is a better translation for al-Sham, the Arabic name for the region. But it is also true that
The Levant,
includes the land bridge between Turkey to the north and Egypt to the south. By Arabic tradition and definition,
The Levant
includes Israel. Some scholars, therefore argue that by referring to this terrorist group as ISIL, one is acknowledging that the Nation of Israel does not exist.

Islamic State
: This is the English version of what the terror group calls itself. It also claims to be a
caliphate
, which is a state ruled by a
caliph
—Arabic for
successor,
, meaning
successor
to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. The last acknowledged Muslim caliphate was the Ottoman Empire, which ended in 1923. Many governments and media refuse to use this name because it gives the group legitimacy as a state and a representative of Islam.

Daesh
: This is a term the militant group hates. French President François Hollande has used it after Paris attacks in 2015. It’s an Arabic acronym for, “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham.” It can sometimes be spelled DAIISH, Da'esh, or Daech, a popular French version. The hacktivist group, Anonymous, and President Barack Obama have used the term since the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris. ISIS threatened “to cut out the tongue of anyone who publicly used the acronym Daesh, instead of referring to the group by its full name,” the Associated Press wrote in September 2014.

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.