Electric Grid Security Fears After Leaked Memo's Surface

""A leaked internal memorandum from the company running the electrical transformers near San Jose, California, that were attacked by snipers in April 2013 admits it is “years away” from promised upgrades, raising serious concerns about the security of other critical electrical transformers nationwide, according to a new report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Publicly, Pacific Gas and Electric Corporation has been attempting to build confidence in its commitment to increase security following the attack on the Metcalf Transmission Substation by gunman using AK-47s, which caused $15 million worth of damage to 17 transformers.

The promise of upgrading security at the facility came after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered utilities nationwide to enact standards to protect vulnerable bulk-power systems.

As WND reported, under the FERC order, the facilities must take at least three steps to provide physical security. Owners and operators are required to perform a risk assessment of their systems to identify facilities which, if damaged or inoperable, could have a broad, critical impact. Security plans must then be developed to address potential threats and vulnerabilities.

Soon after the 2013 incident, WND reported the Department of Homeland Security, nevertheless, decided to cut back on training to help electric utilities harden their facilities.

DHS is charged with protecting the country’s critical infrastructures, including the national electric grid system, which would be dramatically affected by either a natural or high-altitude nuclear explosion unleashing an electromagnetic pulse.

Get the rest of this report, and others, at Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

The internal PG&E memo, dated Aug. 30, 2014, leaked to a local television station revealed that despite publicly claiming it has spent millions of dollars on security upgrades at the Metcalf facility, the company was still years away from physically securing its electrical substations.

The memo said on Aug. 27, 2014, there was another early morning intrusion by unknown assailants who entered the general construction yard and then the substation at Metcalf.

Despite triggering alarms and the presence of two onsite security officers, the intruders were able to steal “several substantial pieces of equipment.”

The memo from Stephanie Douglas, senior director of corporate security, to the company’s president, Chris Johns, revealed that security upgrades have remained “unchanged.” It said those are “years away.”""

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http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/leaked-memo-raises-electric-grid-security-fears/

Risk of EMP Attack Crippling North America has NORAD Returning to Cheyenne Mountain Complex

""The potential of a devastating attack to the US power grid by nuclear states such as North Korea or Iran has prompted the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to return to its former location inside Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colorado, two former Reagan-era government officials write in The Wall Street Journal.

"Why the return?" write Henry F. Cooper and Peter Vincent Pry. "Because the enormous bunker in the hollowed-out mountain, built to survive a Cold War-era nuclear conflict, can also resist an electromagnetic-pulse attack, or EMP."

While the Pentagon is moving to shield its global air defense command from being knocked out by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, the Obama administration has failed to act on urgent recommendations to protect the country's civilian electronic infrastructure from a similar catastrophe, they write.

"An EMP strike, most likely from the detonation of a nuclear weapon in space, would destroy unprotected military and civilian electronics nationwide, blacking out the electric grid and other critical infrastructure for months or years," Cooper and Pry write. 

"The staggering human cost of such a catastrophic attack is not difficult to imagine."

The likeliest source of such an attack would be North Korea or Iran, according to Cooper, former director of the Strategic Defense Initiative, launched by the late President Ronald Reagan, and Pry, executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Iran is a nuclear-ready state with ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States now, Cooper, Pry and and two other Reagan administration alumni wrote in an op-ed for Newsmax in February.

In the Journal, Cooper and Pry reiterate that "Iran should be regarded as already having nuclear missiles capable of making an EMP attack against the U.S.," noting, "Iran and North Korea have successfully orbited satellites on South-Polar trajectories that appear to practice evading U.S. missile defenses, and at optimum altitudes to make a surprise EMP attack."

There is no comparable effort under way in Washington to protect civilian electronic infrastructure, even though a prolonged nationwide blackout could result in chaos and death on a massive scale, according to findings of a national EMP Commission authorized by Congress. 

"Yet President Obama has not acted on the EMP Commission’s draft executive order to protect national infrastructure that is essential to provide for the common defense," Cooper and Pry write. "Hardening the national electric grid would cost a few billion dollars, a trivial amount compared with the loss of electricity and lives following an EMP attack.""

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/electromagnetic-pulse-attack-threat/2015/05/01/id/642149/