[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14602-14608]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE IRANIAN THREAT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Watson). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Madam Speaker, there was a very interesting 
editorial in the Wall Street Journal today. Let me read a bit from it. 
Talk about timing. It is, perhaps, fortuitous.
  ``On Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Prague, 
signing an agreement that's a first step toward protecting Europe from 
ballistic missile attack. As if on cue, Tehran, yesterday, tested nine 
missiles, including several capable of reaching southern Europe as well 
as Israel and U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. Remind us. Who 
says Iran isn't a threat?''
  Yesterday's test offered no big surprises about Iran's missile 
technology, but they are a useful reminder of just how real the Iranian 
threat is and how rapidly it is growing. One of the missiles tested was 
the latest update, the Shahab-3, which has a range of about 1,250 
miles. Replace the payload with a lighter one, say, a nuclear warhead, 
and the range gains 1,000 miles.

                              {time}  1815

  Add a booster, and the range can be extended even farther. North 
Korea did just that with its Taepodong-2 missile.
  Technology that is passed along to Iran. U.S. intelligence estimates 
that Iran will have a ballistic missile capable of reaching New York or 
Washington by about 2015. But Iran may already have the capability to 
target the U.S. with a short-range missile by launching it from a 
freighter off the east coast. A few years ago, it was observed 
practicing the launch of Scuds from a barge in the Caspian Sea.
  This would be especially troubling if Tehran is developing EMP, 
electromagnetic pulse technology. A nuclear weapon detonated 100 miles 
over U.S. territory would create an electromagnetic pulse that would 
virtually shut down the U.S. economy by destroying electronic circuits 
on the ground. William Graham, head of a congressional commission to 
assess the EMP threat, testifies before the House Armed Services 
Committee this morning. We hope someone asks him about that.
  I attended that hearing. And he was asked about that.
  Let me give you a few quotes from his testimony this morning.
  ``Several potential adversaries of the capability to attack the 
United States with a high altitude nuclear weapon generated 
electromagnetic pulse, and others appear to be pursuing efforts to 
obtain that capability. A determined adversary,'' he says, ``can 
achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of 
sophistication. For example, an adversary would not have to have long-
range ballistic missiles to conduct an EMP attack against the United 
States. Such an attack could be launched from a freighter off the U.S. 
coast using a short- or medium-range missile to loft a nuclear warhead 
to high altitude.
  ``Terrorists sponsored by a rogue state could attempt to execute such 
an attack without revealing the identity of the perpetrators.
  ``Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism, has 
practiced launching a mobile ballistic missile from a vessel in the 
Caspian Sea. Iran,'' he says, ``has also tested high altitude 
explosives of the Shahab-3, a test mode consistent with EMP attack, and 
Iran described the test as being `successful.' Iranian military 
writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely 
harm the United States.
  ``While the Commission,'' he says, ``does not know the intention of 
Iran in conducting these activities, we are disturbed by the capability 
that emerges when we connect the dots.''
  Dr. Graham was the principal author of a report produced by the 
Commission to assess the threat to the United States from 
electromagnetic pulse attack.
  And let me read a single statement from the introduction to this 
study. ``The electromagnetic pulse generated by a high altitude nuclear 
explosion is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society 
at risk of catastrophic consequences.''
  And a little later we'll have a chance to note what those 
catastrophic consequences are.
  Here is a report, the CRS report for Congress. ``High Altitude 
Electromagnetic Pulse, HEMP, and High Power Microwave, HPM, devices 
threat assessments.'' And they discuss also this electromagnetic pulse.
  The first chart shows us a quote from one of our now Senators that I 
had the privilege of serving with on the Armed Services Committee in 
the Congress

[[Page 14603]]

before he went to the Senate, John Kyl. He says, ``Last week the Senate 
Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and 
Homeland Security, which I chair,'' he says, ``held a hearing on a 
major threat to the United States, not only from terrorists but from 
rogue nations like North Korea,'' and he might have added Iran.
  ``An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack . . . is one of only a few 
ways America could essentially be defeated by our enemies, terrorists 
or otherwise . . . Few if any people would die right away. But the 
long-term loss of electricity would essentially bring our society to a 
halt . . . few can conceive of the possibility that terrorists could 
bring American society to its knees by knocking out our power supply 
from several miles in the atmosphere. But this time we've been warned, 
and we better be prepared to respond.''
  The next chart is a quote from Major Franz Gayl, ``The impact of EMP 
is asymmetric in relation to our adversaries. The less-developed 
societies of North Korea, Iran and other potential EMP attack 
perpetrators are less electronically dependent and less specialized 
while more capable of continued functionality in the absence of modern 
conveniences.''
  What they're saying is that if this EMP attack was made in one of 
these countries, that they would not be hurt anywhere near as much as 
we because they have a much less sophisticated infrastructure.
  ``Conversely, the United States would be subject to widespread 
paralysis and doubtful recovery,'' doubtful recovery, ``following a 
surprise EMP attack. Therefore, terrorists and their coincidentally 
allied state sponsors may determine that given just a few nuclear 
weapons and delivery vehicles the subjection of the United States to a 
potentially non-attributable EMP attack is more desirable than the 
destruction of selected cities. Delayed mass lethality is assured over 
time through the cascade of EMP's indirect effects that would bring our 
highly specialized and urbanized society to a disorderly halt.''
  What is this EMP that these several reports and articles have been 
talking about?
  The next chart, and this comes from the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency, 
and this shows how an EMP is produced. Our first exposure to this was 
way back in the early 1960s, 1961, I believe, over Johnston Island in a 
test, and then we were testing nuclear weapons in a test called 
Starfish. I think that was one in the series of the Fishbowl tests. And 
this test was the first one that we had conducted above the atmosphere. 
All of the other tests had been on a tower or underground. This one was 
above the atmosphere.
  And we had some very surprising results from that. It was about, I 
think, 800 miles away from Hawaii and almost instantaneously, there 
were effects, electronic and electrical effects, in Hawaii from this 
extra atmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon.
  This chart shows what happens when the nuclear weapon explodes. There 
are some gamma rays that come out. They produce Compton electrons. And 
these Compton electrons then flow at the speed of light, line of sight, 
and if the weapon is, say, 300 miles high above the United States, that 
would cover all of the United States.
  This EMP wave is like a lightning strike, although different than 
lightning. Or a static electricity. A really strong static electricity 
everywhere all at once. It's just hard to conceive of something like 
this, that there would be a simultaneous over all of the United States 
lightning strike, although not quite like lightning, that would 
destroy, if it were strong enough, all of the electronic devices in our 
country.
  The features in EMP from a high altitude burst they say is wide-area 
coverage, high-field strengths, and they note here 50 kilovolts per 
meter. A little later we will talk about what the EMP Commission 
learned from a couple of Russians, Soviet generals who are now Russian 
generals, who said that the Soviets had developed 200-kilovolts-per-
meter weapons. We will discuss a little later what that means.
  Broad frequency band of a very broad range or frequency from D.C. to 
100 MHz. ``Absence of most other nuclear weapons effects.'' There isn't 
any fallout because there is nothing to fall out. Fallout is produced 
when a weapon is detonated at the surface or near the surface and it 
blows a lot of radioactivity up in the air. In this case, there isn't 
any material blown up in the air so there really isn't any conventional 
fallout.
  The next chart shows us the range, what would be covered by a weapon 
detonated at various altitudes. And this is looking at the center of 
our country near Iowa and Nebraska. And the surface, little red dot 
here in the middle, if it's detonated on the surface, very small area 
is impacted. If it is 60 miles up, you'd get a broader area; 200 miles 
up, you get a still broader area. And if you go 300 miles up, it covers 
all of the United States, the tip of Maine and Florida and the State of 
Washington.
  The next chart shows, again, the coverage of an EMP, and this one 
shows how the intensity of the field degrades with distance. And there 
is this so-called ``smile effect'' from it. And the color coding over 
there shows the degradation of the intensity. It starts out with red in 
the middle, which is 100 percent, and then we get to the purple out 
here, and that's 50 percent. And you see that the degradation is cut 
into about half by the time you reach the margins of our country.
  That's important when we look at the next chart because the next 
chart redacted the names of the Soviet generals, and now Russian 
generals is now redacted. The Commission--this is from the EMP 
Commission report.
  ``The Commission met with Russian Generals `blank' and `blank' who 
claimed: Russia designed a `Super-EMP' nuclear weapon capable of 
generating 200 kilovolts per meter. Russian, Chinese and Pakistani 
scientists are working in North Korea and could enable that country to 
develop an EMP weapon in the near future.''
  And one needs to note the close working relationship between North 
Korea and Iran.
  The next chart further looks at this threat. And this again is from 
the EMP Commission, a Commission set up 4 years ago by legislation that 
I initiated. They have been working for 4 years now, and we are 
planning this year to extend their life another 4 years because it is 
absolutely essential, as you will see as we go on with the discussion, 
that both our military and our national infrastructure be aware of this 
threat and do reasonable things to protect our military and our country 
against this threat.
  ``EMP is one of a small number of threats that may,'' they say, 
``hold at risk the continued existence of today's U.S. civil society.'' 
That is quite a statement. What that means is that EMP is one of a 
small number of threats that may end life as we know it. It could 
``disrupt our military forces and our ability to project military 
power.
  ``The number of U.S. adversaries capable of EMP attack is greater 
than during the Cold War.'' Then there was only one adversary. Today 
there are potentially many who have nuclear weapons or could acquire 
nuclear weapons and missiles and even short-range missiles, as was 
pointed out, that could be launched from a tramp steamer off our coast.

                              {time}  1830

  Potential adversaries are aware of the EMP's strategic attack option. 
My wife raised this question: Should you really be talking about this 
because you are giving these people ideas? And I assured her that every 
one of our potential enemies has in their open literature detailed 
discussions of an EMP attack and how it could be used and how they 
would use it.
  A little later I'm going to show you a chart which is in Russian 
writing, and we can show you from the open literature of any of these 
countries that might launch an attack against us, in their open 
literature they know. Ninety-eight percent of the people in our country 
may know nothing about EMP and what it could do to us, but I will 
assure you that 100 percent of our potential enemies know all about EMP 
and what it could do.

[[Page 14604]]

  The threat is not adequately addressed in U.S. national and homeland 
security programs. Dr. Graham is a scientist, and scientists frequently 
are capable of understatement. This is a gross understatement. The 
threat is not adequately addressed. The threat is not addressed.
  You know, some things are too good to be true, and usually if 
something is too good to be true, it's not true. This thing is so bad, 
the potential is so enormous, that some people think, gee, that's just 
too bad to be true, so it can't be true, like that's too good to be 
true so it can't be true, but I'm afraid this is true.
  The next chart, and I'm really pleased at the quality of the nine 
members of this commission. These are top people with many, many years 
of experience. When I was just finishing my first two years of teaching 
medical school, 56 years ago now, Dr. Johnny Foster was designing 
nuclear weapons for our country, and he was the director of LLNL and 
the director of DDR&E.
  Mr. Earl Gjelde, chief engineer and acting director, Bonneville Power 
Administration, very knowledgeable in our grid and its vulnerabilities.
  Dr. Bill Graham, who was the chairman, he's had a long, long 
experience, has been appointed by a couple of different 
administrations. He was a science advisor, for instance, to President 
Reagan. He was Rumsfeld's deputy in their very important study on the 
emerging threat of ballistic missiles.
  Dr. Robert Hermann, director of NRO. NRO is very interesting. Of 
course, just a moment to talk about NRO, National Reconnaissance 
Organization. Until just a few years ago even that name was secret, and 
they spend probably more money than almost any other agency in our 
country. There were several billion dollars that they couldn't account 
for, and we finally decided, gee, for what they do, that's small 
change, and we won't worry about that. You see, the NRO is the 
organization that buys and launches all of our incredibly expensive spy 
satellites, and he was the director of NRO; principal deputy assistant 
secretary to the Air Force; senior vice president, United Technologies.
  Hank Kleupfel, advisor to the President's NSTAC; vice president of 
the very prestigious International Science Applications International 
Corporation.
  General Lawson, a four star general, with a lot of experience.
  Gordon Soper, who has a lifetime of experience, is director of the 
Nuclear Forces C3, the chief scientist at DCA.
  And one of my favorites is Dr. Lowell Wood, director's staff, LLNL; 
technical advisor, SSCI and the House committee, the committee on which 
I serve.
  When I first became interested in EMP, I called Tom Clancy, whom I 
know, and I knew that he had an EMP sequence in one of his books. And 
so I knew he knew something about it. And so I called to ask him about 
it. He said, well, if you read my book you know all I know about it 
because I put it all in the book. But he referred me to the person who 
he said was the smartest person hired by the U.S. government. That's a 
tall order because we hire a lot of people, but this Dr. Lowell Wood, 
he said, is the smartest person hired by the U.S. government.
  And then Dr. John Woodard, who is executive vice president and deputy 
director of Sandia National Labs. That's an interesting one because I 
went out to visit the last of our 10 children who has a Ph.D. in 
computers working at the Sandia National Labs, and he brought home from 
work some little things that they had sent him that led me to believe 
there might be some expertise in Sandia National Labs that would be of 
use in our evaluations of this EMP threat.
  So I asked him to inquire about that, and the next day I was over 
there I think for four or five hours for a classified briefing. Well, I 
didn't know when I went there that Dr. John Woodard, who is the 
executive vice president, was one of the nine members of this 
commission. So that was a very, very fortuitous trip.
  I just wanted to note how impressive this group of people are.
  Potential adversaries know about EMP. I wanted to spend just a moment 
on this because I don't want anybody to believe that we're somehow 
letting the cat out of the bag here in telling people what they don't 
know, and this is from the EMP Commission itself.
  ``Hypothetically, if Russia really wanted to hurt the United 
States''--oh, let me tell you about this. I was there and I think there 
were about nine of us, a codel, and we were in Vienna, Austria, with 
three members of the Russian Duma, Vladimir Lukin, who was ambassador 
here at the end of Bush I, and the beginning of the Clinton 
administration; the third ranking Communist, a tall, handsome blonde, 
Alexander Shabonof; and a bright, rising star in one of their parties 
there, Vladimir Rushkoff.
  And we were there in Vienna with a personal representative of 
Slobodan Milosevic, and Slobodan Milosevic had the three captives, 
remember, and he wanted rid of them. And his personal representative 
there said, you understand how important it is for him to get rid of 
those three people, because if any harm comes to them while they're 
under his control, that's going to be bad news for him.
  Jesse Jackson was there, and they really did not want to release them 
to Jesse Jackson. They wanted to release them to us. The head of our 
codel had promised that he wouldn't go there. I had not promised I 
wouldn't go, and so I volunteered to go. Other members of our codel 
said, gee, I wonder if we really ought to go, and maybe there will be 
several additional captives there if we go.
  I assured them that if the Russians went with us--and by the way, the 
Russians joined the G-7 to become the G-8, and 6 days later, the 
framework agreement which we negotiated there was approved by the G-8. 
The only large country in whom the Serbs had confidence was Russia, and 
Russia told us, whatever we agree to in these negotiations, the Serbs 
will agree to.
  Well, Vladimir Lukin sat in this hotel room in Vienna, Austria, for a 
couple of days during these talks, with his arms folded across his 
chest. He was very angry. He was looking at the ceiling. He said, you 
spit on us; now, why should we help you? And he made that statement 
because the United States had kind of said, you know, then oil wasn't 
$140 a barrel and Russia was very poor and their military was in decay, 
and we essentially told them, you know, we're the big boy, we'll take 
care of this, we don't need you.
  And so Vladimir Lukin was kind of smarting under that, and he said, 
You spit on us; now, why should we help you? And then he made this 
statement. He said, If we really wanted to hurt you, with no fear of 
retaliation, we'd launch an SLBM, submarine launch missile. We wouldn't 
know where it came from; it came from the sea. And we'd detonate a 
nuclear weapon high above your country, and it would shut down your 
power grid and your communications for 6 months or so.
  Alexander Shabonof, the third ranking Communist who was there, smiled 
and said, And if one weapon wouldn't do it, we have some spares, like 
about 10,000 is how many spares they had.
  So I was there when they made that statement. The Chinese military 
writings describe EMP as the key to victory and describes scenarios 
where EMP is used against U.S. aircraft carriers in a conflict over 
Taiwan. They read all statements from the EMP Commission.
  A survey of worldwide military and scientific literature sponsored by 
the Commission found widespread knowledge about EMP and its potential 
military utility, including in Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, India, Pakistan, 
Iran and North Korea.
  As I said earlier, maybe 98 percent of our people don't know much, if 
anything, about EMP, but I can assure you that 100 percent of our 
potential adversaries know everything about EMP.
  Terrorist information warfare includes using the technology of 
directed energy weapons or electromagnetic pulse. This is from the 
Iranian Journal, March of 2001.
  Iran has tested launching a Scud missile from a surface vessel, a 
launch

[[Page 14605]]

mode that could support a national or transnational terrorist EMP 
attack against the United States.
  And the next chart shows a continuation of these statements to assure 
us that when we talk about EMP and the fact that we are vulnerable and 
we really need to do something about that that we're not letting the 
cat out of the bag.
  This is from an Iranian Journal, December of 1998. ``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. 150,000 computers [belong] to the U.S. Army. If the 
enemy forces succeeded in infiltrating the information network of the 
U.S. Army, then the whole organization would collapse, and the American 
soldiers could not find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a 
single shot.''
  This, by the way, is one of the other--when the report said there 
were just a few weapons that could bring us to our knees and end life 
as we know it, a really aggressive cyber attack that brought down all 
of our computers--and our computers control everything. They control 
your power grid. They control your communication. That is what they're 
talking about here.
  ``Terrorist information warfare [includes] using the technology of 
directed energy weapons or electromagnetic pulse.'' This is the Iranian 
Journal.
  Terrorists have attempted to acquire non-nuclear radio frequency 
weapons.
  What we're talking about specifically today and what our hearing was 
about and what the editorial in The Wall Street Journal was about was 
nuclear-produced electromagnetic pulse. We can produce here on Earth a 
very focused, targeted EMP. It is conceivable, for instance, that you 
can mount one of those in a van and go down Wall Street and shut down 
all the computers in the buildings right next to you. That is a very 
local thing. It would be hurtful, but we could recover from that.
  The next chart really is an interesting one. To convince you that our 
potential enemies really do know about this, this is from a Russian 
journal, and there it is in Russian and it's obviously EMP. You can see 
the detonation of the weapon. You can see the sparks here in the power 
grid. You can see the resisters here, the fuses probably, they're all 
exploding.
  The next chart shows an American translation of what the Russians 
were saying in this chart, and you will notice the same two figures 
here.
  Electromagnetic fields arise from nuclear explosions which produce 
impulsive electrical currents and stress in aerial and ground 
conductors and cables--this is a direct translation, and it's sometimes 
hard to translate into smooth English words in another language--and in 
radio station antennas. Radio waves are also produced which propagate 
to large distances. And boy, they do propagate to large distances.
  Electromagnetic fields and currents in the atmosphere arise as the 
result of the formation near the explosion of a shining region and a 
large region of ionized atmosphere produced by penetration radiation.
  This is our translation of their description of the nuclear 
detonation and the production of these alpha particles and these 
Compton electrons.
  Source, currents and stresses exhibit transient impulse with 
characteristics close to the impulse caused by lightning discharges. 
Its duration is a few milliseconds.
  Well, some of the pulses, as a matter of fact, last a couple of 
minutes. There are some very long wavelengths in this that will couple 
with railroad tracks, for instance. There's some very, very short 
wavelengths which will couple with the tiniest fields in a chip.
  For ground and aerial explosions, at a radius of a few kilometers 
from the center of the explosion, overstress between conducting aerial 
lines or electrical supplies and grounds reach tens and hundreds of 
thousands of volts.

                              {time}  1845

  While between the arteries of underground cables--ah, that's another 
thing, burying your cables won't protect you. Some of these long 
wavelengths reach underground and couple with the cables underground. 
So essentially everything is taken down. The one thing that is immune 
to it is fiberoptics. But unless you're using optical switching, it 
will do no good to use fiberoptics because the EMP will take out the 
switching. So if you have optical switching and fiberoptics, then 
you're immune to it.
  But we can make all of our systems immune to it. It costs some money. 
Our fighter planes are all immune to it. The President's Air Force One 
is EMP hardened. We have a few satellites up there that are EMP 
hardened. But about 95 percent of all of our military communications go 
over commercial satellites. And the satellites are the weakest link in 
the chain because it is very expensive to put stuff in space; it costs 
$5,000, $10,000 a pound. And hardening increases weight as well as 
expense. And so nothing of our civilian infrastructure, space 
infrastructure is hardened.
  A single detonation 300 miles high above our country would take out 
all low Earth orbit satellites that are a line of sight. The prompt 
effects take that out. And then the Van Allen belts are pumped up, and 
the other satellites will all be dead in a few days to a week or two. 
And it would do you no good to launch other satellites even if you 
could because the Van Allen belts will stay pumped up for a year or so.
  Of course this affects everybody. This is the strike that comes back 
to bite you. And so your enemy would have to be prepared that they 
would also have no satellites because a single weapon would take out 
all of the Earth's low orbit satellites; no more GPS, for instance.
  The next chart is a look at why EMP? Why would an adversary use 
electromagnetic pulse? States or terrorists may well calculate that 
using a nuclear weapon for EMP attacks offers the greatest utility. EMP 
offers a bigger bang for the buck against the U.S. military forces in a 
regional conflict or a means of damaging the U.S. homeland.
  There is no way that a nuclear weapon could be used at ground level 
that would produce anywhere near the effects that are produced by a 
nuclear weapon detonated in space, producing this EMP pulse.
  EMP may be less provocative of U.S. massive retaliation compared to a 
nuclear attack in a U.S. city that inflicts many prompt casualties.
  If there was an EMP attack on our country, all that it has done is to 
take out all of our computers, which means we have no power grid, we 
have no communications. How do you respond to that? Are we now 
justified in vaporizing the grandmothers and babies in the country from 
which it was launched? By the way, unless it's launched by Russia, 
which has thousands of missiles, or by China in the future, I don't 
think we will know who launched it because I don't think that any 
nation will launch against us from their soil because our satellites 
would detect the launch and we would know where it came from. And why 
should they? They're a long way off. Our shores are close to the 
oceans, and there are thousands of ships in the north Atlantic shipping 
lanes. It is impossible to keep track of those ships. It would be very 
easy to--and their literature talks about this--using a short range or 
a medium range missile, to launch from a ship.
  There is a very interesting story--I hope that it is published, I was 
given a prepublication copy of it--called ``One Second After.'' And 
it's a story of what happens in our country with an EMP attack. It's a 
very well written story. It's in the hills of North Carolina. And there 
is a retired colonel who is there teaching in a university there. And 
on his child's 12th birthday, I think it was, they're having the 
birthday party and the lights go out. And he notices in a few minutes 
that there is no noise from the interstate, which is just over the 
hill. And he walks over to where he can look down on the interstate and 
he sees that all the cars are parked on the interstate and people are 
walking around the cars.
  The story runs for a year. And at the end of the year--and I asked 
the members of the commission, they said, well,

[[Page 14606]]

it might not be quite that bad, but at the end of the year in this 
story called One Second After there are only 25,000 people still alive 
in New York City, 90 percent of the country's population is dead, only 
80 percent of the population in the area in which the story is set in 
North Carolina is dead. I said that for many people this is just too 
bad to be true, and so they don't even want to think about it.
  During the Clinton administration he had a commission to set up, 
headed by General Marsh, to look at critical infrastructure. And they 
came to testify before our Armed Services Committee and we asked them, 
did you look at EMP? He said yes, we looked at EMP. Well? Well, we 
decided there was not a high probability of an EMP attack, so we didn't 
look at it anymore. I said, well, gee, with that attitude, if you 
haven't already, when you go home tonight you're going to cancel your 
fire insurance. I mean, that's why we have insurance, when there is a 
low probability, high-impact event. And I know of nobody at the end of 
the year, I've never heard anybody come and complain, gee, you know, I 
bought that fire insurance and my house didn't burn.
  All that I want my country to do is to make the kind of an investment 
that represents the equivalent of buying fire insurance on your house. 
Now, I have fire insurance on my house, I wouldn't sleep well tonight 
if I didn't, but I haven't hired somebody to stand there and to yell 
``fire, fire,'' when he sees a fire. I'm content with my smoke alarms 
and so forth. But I've done what I think is a reasonable thing. But as 
the EMP Commission pointed out, our country has not done what would 
appear to be a reasonable thing in preparing for this eventuality, 
neither in the military nor in the private sector.
  And these two studies that I referred to, the one by CRS, the 
Congressional Research Service, and the other by this commission, both 
of them paint the same picture, that an EMP attack on our country would 
be catastrophic. Now, there is something that we can do about that. And 
the Commission ends with a number of recommendations.
  What would we do if there was an EMP attack on us? Not a building is 
hurt, you are not hurt--for the moment. Although, if it was really this 
200 kilovolt per meter weapon--and we have not tested anything more 
than a fourth of that, about 50 kilovolts per meter--if it really was 
that weapon, the members of the commission are fairly confident that 
everything comes down, which means that you're in a world where the 
only person you can talk to is the person next to you, unless, by the 
way, you happen to be a ham operator with a vacuum tube set because 
vacuum tubes are a million times less susceptible to EMP.
  I remember a number of years ago a Soviet MiG pilot defected to 
Japan, and you may remember that. And we were disdainful of the 
Russians because their planes still had vacuum tubes; they're a million 
times less susceptible to EMP. And the only way you could go anywhere 
after this really robust EMP laydown is to walk, unless you happen to 
have an old car that has coil and distributor. These are really tough; 
they almost certainly would be immune to this.
  EMP could compare to a nuclear attack on a city, kill many more 
Americans in the long run--nobody immediately--and we die in the long 
run because we do not have any electricity, we do not have any 
transportation. The average city has 3 days supply of food. And go to 
any of our major cities and have the lights go out for a few hours and 
you will see how thin the veneer of civilization is.
  EMP could, compared to a nuclear attack on a city, kill many more 
Americans in the long run from indirect effects of collapsed 
infrastructure, power, communications, transportation, food and water. 
City water is not flowing, the septic system is not working.
  What do you do? There are a number of recommendations--we'll look at 
a few of those in a few moments--that they make. But the commission is 
convinced that, with reasonable expenditure, we can do something 
meaningful to protect ourselves against this. And by the way, our very 
vulnerability invites this attack. They know how vulnerable we are, 
it's in their public writings. They know that.
  Strategically and politically, an EMP attack can threaten entire 
regional or national infrastructures that are vital to U.S. military 
strength and societal survival--vital to survival, they're making the 
point--challenge the integrity of allied regional coalitions and pose 
an asymmetrical threat more dangerous to the high-tech West than to 
rogue states.
  To a state without our sophisticated infrastructure, losing 
electricity wouldn't matter much. There are many countries in the world 
that have a few hours of electricity in the morning and a few hours of 
electricity in the evening, that may have only water at certain hours 
of the day. And when they do that, they plan to store that water so 
that they will have enough for the rest of the day. So cultures like 
that would be nowhere near as much affected by an EMP attack as we 
would.
  Technically, an operational EMP attack can compensate for 
deficiencies in missile accuracy--if you miss by 100 miles, it doesn't 
matter; it really doesn't matter if you miss by 100 miles--fusing 
range, reentry vehicle design, target location intelligence, and 
missile defense penetration. It really doesn't matter. None of these 
things matter. You just shoot a weapon. If a scud launcher goes up 
about 180 miles, that's plenty high to shut down the whole northeast 
and well down the mid coast. And it really doesn't matter if you miss 
where you would like it to detonate by 100 miles, it really doesn't 
make any difference.
  The next chart shows the kind of technology we used to have during 
the Cold War. This is a trestle on which we have a large airplane. And 
we are doing simulated EMP attacks on that airplane to make sure that 
we have hardened the airplane. That's all mothball now, we aren't doing 
that anymore. By the way, it was impossible to really simulate an EMP 
attack because of the long line effect. There isn't any way, with this 
EMP burst created here on Earth, that we could cover an area miles 
long. And railroad tracks, power lines, any of these things are 
antennas. And there are some very long wavelengths here that, coupled 
with very strong structures like miles of power lines or miles of 
railroad tracks, and you really can't simulate the line effect. But 
we've done as good as we can do. And after hardening, we would test the 
planes to make sure that we had hardened them.
  The next chart is one that is from this study of the EMP Commission. 
They started out looking at the military, but since all of our military 
bases are surrounded by towns and cities and suburbs and so forth, and 
since none of our military bases are stand-alone, as far as how power 
is concerned, they have some UPS units, some units that will produce 
temporary power, but few of them will last more than 48 hours and then 
their tank of fuel has run out and the generators stop working.
  And so they started looking at the interface between the military and 
the civilian infrastructure, and they became very, very concerned about 
how interrelated and how fragile our national infrastructure was. It 
has grown to accommodate the growth of our population and our increased 
demands for energy, and it is not designed as an integrated system as 
it would be if you didn't have any of this and you started from scratch 
and put the whole thing in; it's kind of added on to and added on to. 
And so they have this little chart which shows, like a house of cards, 
the interrelationships between oil and gas and communications and water 
and banking and finance and government services and emergency services 
and transportation and electrical power and fuel. Look at the lines 
that run there, they all run from electrical power. If you don't have 
electrical power in our world, you don't have anything. Very few things 
operate without electrical power. So they were very concerned about the 
vulnerability of our national infrastructure.
  One of a very few high-altitude nuclear detonations can produce EMPs 
simultaneously over wide geographical

[[Page 14607]]

areas. Just one will do, as the previous chart showed, if you detonate 
it about 300 miles high over Iowa or Nebraska. Unprecedented cascading 
failure of our electronics-dependent infrastructure could result. As a 
matter of fact, if one of these super EMP-enhanced bombs is used, you 
will change that word to ``would'' result because there is no question 
but that that would bring down our whole infrastructure.

                              {time}  1900

  Power, energy, transport, telecommunications, and financial systems 
are particularly vulnerable and interdependent, and they would all come 
down. EMP disruption of these sectors could cause large-scale 
infrastructure failures for all aspects of the Nation's life.
  Again, I say you would essentially, if this biggest weapon was used 
that produces 200 kilovolts per weapon, you would be in a world where 
largely the only person you could talk to is the person next to you 
unless you had that ham radio with a vacuum tube in it, and the only 
way you could go anywhere is to walk unless you happened to have a car 
that had a coil and a condenser.
  Both civilian and military capabilities depend on these 
infrastructures, almost totally. Without adequate protection, recovery 
could be prolonged months to years. That's a very long time to hold 
your breath in a situation like this.
  Now we will look at the conclusions and they had a number of 
conclusions. One of the conclusions was the EMP threat is one of a few 
potentially catastrophic threats to the United States. By taking 
action, the EMP threat can be reduced to manageable levels. U.S. 
strategy to address the EMP threat should balance prevention, 
preparation, protection, and recovery. And one of the first things that 
we should do is to look at recovery. Should it happen, what would you 
do?
  I remember that during the Cold War, I was working for IBM 
corporation, and I was concerned about what we would do when we came 
out of the fallout shelter. And then those fallout shelters were so 
prevalent, so omnipresent, that IBM was giving their employees 
interest-free loans to build a backyard fallout shelter. And I asked 
myself what would I do when I come out of the fallout shelter because 
it's going to be a whole different world? Then we were looking at 
perhaps hundreds of nuclear weapons falling on our cities and taking 
them out, but we had all of the fallout shelters, the civil defense 
things. Any public building you went into, there were brochures there 
telling you what you ought to do and how to do it. So people were 
really thinking about it. And in schools you practiced what you would 
do if there was an attack. You would put your head down between your 
knees and so forth. I remember that when I worked for the National 
Institutes of Health, we had drills there because our big research 
hospital there was going to become, I think, a 500-bed hospital for 
casualties. Then we developed and the Soviets developed the hydrogen 
bomb, and we weren't even sure that the hospital was going to be there 
after that. It was certainly going to be there after the conventional 
nuclear weapon. But we were preparing for that. So we can do something 
to prepare.
  Critical military capabilities must be survivable and durable to 
underwrite U.S. strategy. If the enemy knows that they cannot shut down 
our retaliatory force, they will be much less inclined to do this 
unless they plan to do it in a very covert way. By the way, the book 
that I mentioned, this attack on our country, ``One Second After,'' the 
attack comes from a missile which is launched at sea, and then after 
the missile is launched, the ship is sunk so there are no fingerprints.
  The next chart shows some conclusions, some action items. The 2006 
defense authorization bill contains a provision extending the EMP 
Commission, and now we have the 2008 bill, and we are hoping to extend 
it now until 2012. The commission has been very effective. I will tell 
you that your military now is acutely aware of this and the Pentagon is 
aggressively addressing it. I come from Maryland, and I was pleased 
when the commission members told me today that Maryland is one of two 
States in the country that is as a State doing something about this. 
And so we hope the Commission will be very active in the next 4 years, 
and they are going to States, they are going to rotary clubs, they are 
going everywhere they can go to tell the people about this and what we 
can do and should do.
  Terrorists are looking for vulnerabilities to attack, and our 
civilian infrastructure is particularly susceptible to this kind of 
attack. As I mentioned, our very vulnerability invites attack, and we 
can reduce the probability of attack if we do something meaningful to 
protect ourselves.
  The Department of Homeland Security needs to identify critical 
infrastructures. Indeed they do. I have been concerned that our 
Homeland Security Department is doing essentially nothing in the area 
of civil defense. And I remember very well the Cold War. I was born in 
1926, and I grew up during the Depression and then the long World War 
II and the long Cold War after that. And I remember we would have 
blackout drills, and one of the neighbors would be assigned on a 
volunteer basis to make sure that everything was blacked out. This was 
during the war when there was some threat that enemy bombers might be 
coming over our country. And then during the Cold War that followed 
that, every public building you went into would have literature telling 
you how to produce a fallout shelter, how to improvise one in your 
basement if you hadn't built one outside, the kind of food to store. It 
was available for sale at many places. How much water you needed. They 
had pictures of the fallout shelter and the beds and so forth and how 
you would make due there for the several days to a couple of weeks. And 
they made available monitoring equipment so that you would know when it 
was safe to go out when the radiation levels had fallen down to where 
it was safe to go out. So everybody--we practiced in schools. At our 
workplaces we practiced. And today there is essentially no attention 
given to advising individuals, businesses, churches, social clubs what 
they can do individually and collectively, and I will tell you that our 
strength is going to be determined not so much by our military, which 
is going to be okay, but our strength as a country is going to be 
determined by what we have done individually as families, as small 
communities to protect ourselves so that we do not become immediately a 
ward of the State.
  And they asked Dr. Bill Graham what he had personally done. He has a 
generator which is not plugged in. Plug it in. It's hooked to the 
electrical system. It's a long line, effective, a big antenna. It's 
much more likely to be damaged if it's plugged in. With 200 kilovolts 
per meter, by the way, it's probably all gone anyhow. But if it's a 
lesser intense weapon than that, not plugging in it would make a 
difference. He has food and water for several days.
  The average city has 3 days supply of food, 3 days supply of food. 
And I noted in the hearing today that if in anticipation of this, a 
year or 2 before and even a decade because this food, nitrogen packed 
and freeze dried, will last a very long time, then you are a patriot 
because now you're stimulating the economy. But if you wait until the 
hurricane is at the door or the missile attack is imminent and you do 
exactly the same thing, now you're a horder. Have you thought about 
that difference? You've done exactly the same thing. You put away food 
and water and essentials for survival. If you do it well ahead of the 
event, now you're a patriot, doing the right thing. If you do it 
immediately before the event, now you've become a hoarder. And nobody 
likes a hoarder.
  The Department of Homeland Security also needs to develop a plan to 
help citizens deal with such an attack should it occur. This is not me 
saying that. It is the EMP Commission saying that. Citizens need to 
become as self-sufficient as possible. And they note something which is 
really very important. There are a number of things, a Hurricane 
Katrina, almost nobody there had made any preparation for this. And 
with hours they now were dependent on services from a government

[[Page 14608]]

that wasn't there, that couldn't get there. And the Federal Government 
will tell you don't count on us for at least 72 hours. You need to be 
on your own. And I think that the really wise thing to do would be to 
be prepared for several days to several weeks. And there are any number 
of natural events or human-caused events that could result. Suppose it 
was a major strike. Oil is now 141 or so dollars a barrel, gas is over 
$4 a gallon, diesel nearly $5 a gallon. At some point the trucker may 
decide enough is enough, we quit, in protest, you've got to do 
something about this. A 3-day supply of food in the stores. Wouldn't it 
be nice if you had a meaningful supply in your home so there are a 
number of storms that you could weather in addition to this one? 
Citizens need to become as self-sufficient as possible.
  Well, I have been concerned about electromagnetic pulse now for a 
number of years. I am very pleased that we were able to get this 
commission set up. I am really pleased with the quality of the 
commission and what they have been able to do. And now we are extending 
it. We have already passed the bill in the House here. We're extending 
it now for 4 more years, to 2012, and I look forward to the 
commission's being active. And this is really very stimulating and 
challenging, and meeting a big challenge like this and overcoming it is 
exhilarating. And I will tell you, rather than watching silly programs 
on television, the family would be much better rewarded and would feel 
better if they would sit down and say what can we do to prepare for 
this? Because our country is going to be stronger if I am self-
sufficient and maybe I have enough to help somebody else, so that I'm 
not a ward of the State. And I hope that your government--the Homeland 
Security is the right place to look--is going to become more active in 
telling you what you need to do. But if they don't, go back and look at 
the advice given during the Cold War. What we were encouraged to do 
then, what we did then is precisely the kind of thing we need to do 
now. Now, there was lots of preparation. There were fallout shelters 
that would accommodate hundreds of people. If you went to Switzerland, 
if you go today, you will find that all of Switzerland can go 
underground with enough food and water to last them for quite a while. 
Now, we never had that level of preparedness, but we were enormously 
better prepared then than we are now.
  Well, Madam Speaker, I am pleased for this opportunity to talk about 
this very important subject, and I hope that we become less and less 
vulnerable, which will reduce the threat more and more.

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