ISIS Can Bring U.S. To Its Knees With Attack On Power Grid
ISIS terrorists pose an “imminent” threat to the U.S. electric grid and possess the capacity to coordinate a devastating assault on our nation’s infrastructure, warned a leading homeland security and terrorism expert in an interview with this reporter on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s AM 970 The Answer.
Dr. Peter Pry, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards. He also served on the Congressional EMP Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, and the House Armed Services Committee.
“There is an imminent threat from ISIS to the national electric grid and not just to a single U.S. city,” said Pry.
Outlining the threat, Pry recalled a leaked U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report divulged this past March that coordinated terrorist attacks on just nine of the nation’s 55,000 electrical power substations could provoke coast-to-coast blackouts for up to 18 months.
Such an attack would mirror the devastating impact of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack without the need for any nuclear device or delivery system.
The congressional EMP Commission previously estimated that within 12 months of a nationwide blackout, upwards of 90 percent of the U.S. population could possibly die from disease, lack of food and resources and larger societal breakdown.
Pry pointed specifically to the possibility of ISIS immediately hiring Mexican extremists such as the Knights Templar drug cartel, which last year successfully utilized guns and Molotov cocktails to attack numerous Mexican power stations, leaving 11 towns without electricity.
“Now those guys are just across our southern border,” stated Pry.
Pry continued: “That means that ISIS doesn’t have to actually come to the United States on those U.S. passports. You know, Obama is always talking about how he’s got a phone. Well, ISIS has got a telephone, too. All they’ve got to do is contact the Knights Templar, wire these guys $10 million, I mean they’ll do anything for money. And say, ‘Hey, go across that open U.S. border and take out the electric grid in Arizona, or New Mexico, or Minnesota or New York. Or the entire nation.’”
Pry surmised such an attack on the U.S. power grid “wouldn’t be difficult for them.”
“There are…open-source computer models where you can figure out which are those nine critical transformer substations where if attacked would take down the whole national power grid,” he said.
“So something like that could be arranged. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen next week.”
Hamas Back At Work Digging Tunnels
Four days into a cease-fire, Hamas is already starting to construct new tunnels in the Gaza Strip, Hamas sources claimed to this reporter.
The Israel Defense Forces had no immediate comment on the Hamas boast.
One of the primary objectives of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza the past few weeks has been to demolish the series of tunnels that snaked throughout Gaza, with exits both inside Israel and across Egypt’s border.
Hamas uses the Egypt-Gaza tunnels to smuggle goods and weapons. It uses the internal Gaza tunnels to traverse the territory under the radar of Israeli surveillance. And the tunnels exiting inside Israel are designed for commando raids and terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
The Hamas sources would not disclose which kinds of tunnels the group is purportedly constructing.
Hamas Has New Weapon In Its Arsenal
In the week leading up to last Tuesday’s cease-fire announcement, Hamas deployed an alarming new weapon: Russian-manufactured mortars with accurate GPS capabilities.