Very, very scary

Cohen · Sep 18, 2001

Esp. read the U.S. Pentagon official and Hazel O'Learys' quotes.

http://www.nci.org/index.htm

Cohen · Sep 19, 2001

Frames. Sorry the first link was a little off.

http://www.nci.org/nci-nt.htm

Cohen · Sep 19, 2001

OK, no one thought that the last one was as scary as I did? How interesting is this? Link: http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has280010.000/has280010_0.HTM . Sorry for the length of the excerpt, I highlighted some to help the read.

(FYI: EMP stands for Electromagnetic Pulse...weapons)

The end is amazing...it sound like 'yeah, thats interesting, we have to go to lunch.'

Excerpt:

...it has also been reported in The New York Times that the Iranians have been seen testing the launch of SCUD-type missiles from barges in the Caspian Sea, and so they are not waiting to develops ICBMs, Shahab-5 and so forth; that the CIA has publicly said they will likely have in well under a decade, they are looking to a possibility, one which was identified by the Rumsfeld Commission and tabled before the Congress, of shipping their short-range ballistic missiles presumably with weaponry of mass destruction in them as close to the U.S. as they can get in tramp steamers or barges or whatever and launching them from there.

This is not a conjecture anymore. They have been seen testing such equipment in the Caspian Sea.

...

They say that America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland—a scary thought and similar to some of the things that we have been hearing from you this morning—and our military superiority will not entirely protect us. States, our traditional adversaries as well as terrorists and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction and mass disruption, and some will use them.

...
We talked about some of the weapons that are—that will be available to them. They include nuclear EMP. They include radio frequency weapons. It includes weapons used in cyberattacks, chemical weapons and biological weapons of warfare. All scary thoughts.

And when I saw this theme running through their conclusions, it reminded me of something that I think about often, and that is the fact that in today's world we no longer have the luxury, if you will, of being able to identify our foe as we did during the Cold War. Funny thing to call a luxury. But in a sense at least it gave us a pretty clear idea of what we had to deal with.

But today, I think, at least beginning in the early 1990s when we demonstrated to the world that we had the kind of conventional capability which very few around the world can compete with, there emerged, I think, an enhanced determination on the group of people who want to influence world events through other means to use terroristic types of activities in order to accomplish those goals. They proved, for example, in Afghanistan that those kinds of guerrilla warfare tactics and terrorist tactics were pretty effective.

My question to you is can you help us understand with regard to radio frequency weapons which have been discussed here to some extent this morning, and, of course, EMP as well, what kind of capability this might offer in a nonstrategic—I don't know what we call it today. There is probably—as far as I know, there has not been a phrase termed or developed to really describe this issue—but in terms of terrorists, small groups of people, guerrilla-type warfare, what kind of capability and what kind of attack does this type of technology—what kind of capability does that give these other types of groups that are nontraditional types of adversaries? May I just ask each of you to respond? Dr. Wood, would you start?

Dr. WOOD. Very substantial capabilities, sir, to impose damage, and in some circumstances perhaps impose very considerable pain and even loss of life.
The means for generating very large pulses, electromagnetic pulses, without nuclear explosives have been published in the technical literature for over three decades, and they are of the nature and scale that would suffice to attack in a very effective fashion an entire urban industrial complex like, for instance, greater New York City in an attack that, for instance, might be mounted from a light aircraft, privately-owned light aircraft.

It is obviously not appropriate to provide technical detail in open session, but I would be happy to expand on the possibilities in closed session. There is no point in coaching the bad guys. But the possibilities basically are very substantial ones.

We saw what could be done by incompetent amateurs with deadly intent in the Tokyo subway attacks using neurotoxins. Just a little bit more competence on the part of those people in dispersing the material that they had prepared, and instead of killing a dozen people and permanently injuring a couple of hundred, the likely casualty levels would have been about two orders of magnitude higher. They probably would have killed on the order of 1,000 people and crippled 100,000 just with the materials they had if they had used them in a more effective manner.

So the prospects for terrorists imposing really wide-scale damage by a variety of means these days are peculiarly potent, and EMP just happens to be one of the more technically advanced ways to do the job.

The low-tech stuff would be what was done at the World Trade Center. The story that Jim Woolsey, former CIA Director, relates there was that the guy who masterminded that particular attack was being taken by helicopter over Manhattan by Federal agents for arraignments, and one of the Federal agents pointed to the World Trade Center and said, it is still standing, and Ramsi Yosef said, yes, but if I had had $5,000 more materials, it wouldn't be.
If they had knocked over the World Trade Center, they would have killed 100,000 people. That is the super low-tech garden fertilizer approach. The medium-tech is the Tokyo subway approach. The high-tech way would be just to destroy the electronic and electrical infrastructure in large part over an entire urban industrial complex with an EMP weapon, a nonnuclear EMP weapon of the type that a very small terrorist group could build.

Mr. SAXTON. When you speak of a nonnuclear EMP-type weapon, are you referring more to the radio-frequency-type weapon-type situation?

Dr. WOOD. I would recommend, if it is agreeable to you, that we speak about this in closed session.

Mr. SAXTON. Any of you other gentlemen? Dr. Graham? Dr. Bernardin?

Dr. GRAHAM. You asked a question that is both very broad and very deep as to how we respond as a country and a society to the growing range of potential threats that we face at different levels.

Mr. SAXTON. Let me try to narrow it down because we are going to run out of time, and I didn't mean to ask that broad a question.
With regard to nuclear EMP and with regard to radio frequency weapons, are these effective weapons that can be used by small groups who want to effect political change?

Dr. GRAHAM. Certainly they both, and the nuclear the most, can send dramatic messages to the U.S. We implicitly have an insular mentality, because it has been so long since we have been attacked to any substantial degree. I believe any kind of an attack against us which has either a major infrastructure, military, or population effect will have the same effect on our country as Sputnik had on our science and technology in 1957. It—1956, I guess. It will cause us to think about the world in a different way than we think about it now.

Mr. SAXTON. Could an individual or a group of individuals use an radio frequency weapon to, say, shut down significant parts of Wall Street?

Dr. GRAHAM. I would prefer to address the specifics in closed session, if that is all right. But certainly attacks against our infrastructure using radio frequency weapons as well as the possibility of the other threats that you mention is a definite possibility. Steps we can take, of course, to counter that are first to have a coherent, consistent national policy on how we are going to approach such concerns; second, on being able to tell if such an attack is, in fact, being mounted against us not just by our intelligence to anticipate it, but, when it is actually being put into effect, to be able to know what is happening; and then third, having plans to respond to it.

And I believe we can make a great deal of progress in each of those areas, and certainly some very careful thought in that is warranted.

Mr. SAXTON. Dr. Bernardin?

Dr. BERNARDIN. I am a nuclear weapon expert and speaking on nonnuclear matters, nonnuclear type of weapons, I have limited knowledge. I know that both our laboratories have explored the technology in the past, both Livermore and Los Alamos.

Mr. SAXTON. Let me ask you a nuclear question then.

Dr. BERNARDIN. Okay.

Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Bartlett a short time ago asked the question about the Koreans potentially detonating a nuclear device off one of our coasts and what kind of damage that would do. Is it feasible in your mind that someone like Osama Bin Laden, who reportedly has a wealth of about $7 billion, could acquire the necessary equipment, ships, SCUD missiles, to detonate such a device? Is that within the realm of feasibility?

Dr. BERNARDIN. I think it is within the realm of feasibility to acquire the launching equipment like a missile. Acquiring the special nuclear materials in order to fashion a nuclear weapon is something that the intelligence agencies would have to address.

Mr. SAXTON. You don't think he would buy one?

Dr. BERNARDIN. That is another possibility. A loose nuke is certainly a scenario that has been postulated.

Mr. SAXTON. Tough question, I understand.

Dr. BERNARDIN. It is.

Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Jakubiak?

Mr. JAKUBIAK. The military has always looked at various scenarios, and that includes situations such as loose nukes appearing and being detonated over the U.S., and we play those scenarios in war games and see what the impact would be on military systems.

Mr. SAXTON. I am going to stop.

Dr. WOOD. Mr. Chairman, if I could just give a very brief personal example that ties some numbers to your question, last year a few of my colleagues and myself, as a demonstration along these lines, offered to take a vanload of equipment which we estimated would cost less than $10,000 and go out and in a fashion that would be totally fingerprint-free destroy a government facility that cost about $1 billion to build, could not possibly be reconstituted now, and would punch a very major hole in the national strategic capabilities, and do so at no risk to ourselves. And the equipment was specifically EMP weaponry. But it obviously didn't involve nuclear energy, and as I said, it packed into a rental van—I mean, an ordinary passenger van.

Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. We really have to stop because we have some people waiting for us at 1:30.
... and so I thank you for helping me to make these points in public. Thank you.

Mr. BARTLETT [presiding]. ...Because a number of our Members could not be here and are very interested in this, I would ask unanimous consent that the record be held open so that they can make comments or pose questions to which I hope you will give answers.
... This meeting is adjourned.

October 7, 1999
[This information is pending.]
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Very, very scary

Cohen Contributing Member

Cohen Contributing Member

Cohen Contributing Member

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