Terror attack on grid would collapse U.S.
Daniel J. Lavigne
and to think that those who were concerned about the possible effects
of the y2k computer breakdowns were called paranoid doom-mongers!
Adam.
>
Terror attack on grid would collapse U.S.
By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4622.htm
WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 (UPI) -- Government scientific advisers and officials
painted a grim picture Thursday of the consequences of a terror attack on
the nation's power grid, saying that any outage that lasted longer than a
couple of days would reduce urban centers to chaos and collapse the economy.
"With power out beyond a day or two, both food and water supplies would soon
fail. Transportation systems would be at a standstill ... natural gas
pressure would decline and some would lose gas altogether -- not good in the
winter time ... Communications would be spotty or non-existent. ... All in
all, our cities would not be very nice places to be... Martial law would
likely follow," Paul H. Gilbert of the National Research Council told a
congressional panel.
Lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee were trying to see what
lessons about the nation's security could be drawn from the massive Aug. 14
power outage, which left 50 million people in the United States and Canada
without electricity for -- in some cases -- up to three days.
But Gilbert said that recovery from an outage caused by a deliberate attack
could "take weeks or months rather than hours or days."
Such frightening scenarios are not the product of a nightmarish imagination.
Gilbert's analysis was based on the work of a high-level brains trust within
the National Academies. Nearly 200 scientists, experts and officials worked
for six months on the report he cited as the basis for his assessment.
Nor is such an attack beyond the realm of reality. Larry A. Mefford,
counter-terror chief of the FBI, told the panel that, "Al-Qaida and other
terrorist groups are known to have considered energy facilities ... as
possible targets."
While cautioning that there was "no specific, credible intelligence about
threats" to the nation's power infrastructure, he said that methods of
attack could range from blowing up pylons or power stations to sophisticated
cyber attacks on the automated computer-run elements of the grid.
Gilbert called these programs -- known as supervisory control and data
acquisition systems or SCADA -- "an open invitation to those who would use
computer technology to attack the grid."
But Mefford told the panel that there was no evidence al-Qaida had the
ability to exploit such weak points. "We have not seen any indication that
al-Qaida possesses a sophisticated computer intrusion capability," he said.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey, one of the panelists who produced the
National Academies' report, agreed it was unclear whether al-Qaida or any
other terrorist group had the capacity to mount such an attack.
"That would depend on their infrastructure in this country and the extent of
their knowledge of the grid," he told United Press International, adding
that a successful assault is "a lot easier than we wish it were."
John McCarthy, director of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Project at
George Mason University, described how a student of his -- using information
in the public domain -- had created a comprehensive map of the nation's
entire fiber optic cable network as part of his Ph.D. dissertation.
The document so alarmed officials -- one described it as "a road map for
terrorists" -- that they wanted to classify it. His student was "very, very
smart," said McCarthy, but his work could be replicated for the power grid.
"I am convinced there are equally smart people looking at our infrastructure
who don't have our best interests at heart."
Some lawmakers were impatient that -- nearly two years after the terror
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and six months after it had been established --
the Department for Homeland Security had not yet completed one of its
primary tasks -- a comprehensive survey of the nation's critical
infrastructure and its vulnerabilities. "We understand they're working on
that," Mefford said.
Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., pointed out that without a comprehensive
assessment of the nation's weak spots, it was hard to know where the country
needed defending.
"In the absence of that it seems you would have a very difficult time
knowing where our priorities should be and where we should spend our limited
dollars."
Gilbert said that the August outage could have lasted much longer, and
pointed out that it exposed the weakness of the "fragile" power grid, which
had "little reserve within which to handle power or load fluctuations." He
said that deregulation and the profit motive had combined to make the system
less robust over the past 10 years, as "competitive price (and) low
operating costs ... are rewarded with profits and bonuses," leading to
"diminishing investments in maintenance and spare parts."
Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International
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