Summary: If only nine of the United States’ tens of thousands of power stations were attacked by ISIS, the assault could cause the demise of most of the country’s citizens in only a year.
WND.com reports that Dr. Peter Pry, former CIA officer and current executive director of both the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, warned that ISIS terrorists have the potential to unleash a devastating assault on the United States. “There is an imminent threat from ISIS to the national electric grid and not just to a single U.S. city,” he explained.
On “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” aired on New York’s AM 970 The Answer, Pry described a leaked U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report from this past March. Should terrorists plan attacks on only nine of the United States’ 55,000 electrical power substations, citizens could suffer nationwide blackouts for a period of 18 months. Essentially, such an assault on the United States would be similar to an electromagnetic pulse attack, but without the requirement for any nuclear devices.
Within one year of such a blackout, over 90 percent of the population could be wiped out due to disease, societal breakdown, and lack of food and resources.
Last year, the Knights Templar drug cartel, a group of Mexican extremists, used only guns and Molotov cocktails last year to leave eleven Mexican towns without power—all by attacking Mexican power stations. Should ISIS hire extremists such as the Knights Templar, who are conveniently just across the border, the United States could be in major trouble.
“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.”
Such an attack, Pry cautioned, “wouldn’t be difficult for them.”
Pry added that Iran and North Korea could also assist with such an attack by providing a nuclear device to ISIS. Such a device, along with a delivery system such as a SCUD missile, could launch an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States.
“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,” Pry added. “It could happen tomorrow. It could happen next week.”
ISIS allies in Al-Qaida attacked power sources in Yemen last year that left the entire country without power for a day.
Former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morell, had previously dismissed ISIS’ capability for such an attack, theorizing it would take ISIS up to three years to develop the power to conduct a 9/11 style attack.
Pry responded, “I don’t think that’s true at all. You know, because they can hire these criminal gangs that are south of our porous border. Or criminal gangs that are already present here. We also have Muslim terror cells already in this country that would be wiling to do anything for money and it’s very easy to attack the electrical grid.”
Photo credit: science.howstuffworks.com