September 11, 2018—Remember 9/11 if you can . . .

Do you recall what you were doing when you became aware of 9/11? I was in a company managers meeting in Alexandria, VA when we got word a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Then the second, and so we knew neither was an accident. And shortly thereafter we were looking for the smoke from the third that impacted the Pentagon …and somewhat later we learned that a fourth had crashed in Pennsylvania — thanks to alert and heroic passengers. Otherwise, the White House or Capitol might be part of the 9/11 images we remember . . . Lest we forget!

Click here for Dan Gallington’s summary of his deeply imbedded memory of American 77’s crash into the Pentagon, as experienced from his nearby E-Ring office and in the immediately subsequent confusion and chaos. While we may be better prepared today for a similar event as he suggests (or especially for a possible more daunting one), I doubt it.

Today, a growing number of Americans have little recollection of these events — and the immediate shock they caused, except as they are kept alive by the shrinking number of those of us who do remember. Subsequent consequences attract more of our leaders’ attention, whether they recognize obvious ties to 9/11 or not. Moreover, important 9/11 lessons should not be forgotten as we contemplate today’s challenges.

Certainly, they present major conundrums for our leaders who must still engage in various aspects of the “Global War on Terror” that continues by whatever name. And associated political realities should demand attention as we approach the mid-term elections now less than two months away.

Not the least of our concerns is the growing role of those who have no personal recollection of those events 17 years ago. Consider a few demographic facts from a March 1, 2018 Pew Research Center analysis — click here for the full report, entitled “Millennials projected to overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation.” Note the following chart. Most High School students were not even born before September 11, 2001. And anyway, I am generally unimpressed by the quality of history currently taught in our public schools (or our colleges and universities for that matter).

When I consider these facts and reflect on recent meetings I have attended that dealt with issues I care a lot about, I have to observe, as member of the “Silent Generation” (according to this chart), that we concerned citizens are in the minority — and not by a small margin.

According to Pew, Millennials (with immigration adding more numbers to this group than any other) are on the cusp of surpassing Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living adult generation, are expected to overtake Boomers in 2019 and to peak in 2036 at 76.2 million. (Click here for a few pertinent, largely ignored, and threatening aspects of this growing immigration — more discussion of this aspect of the threat for another time.)

Thereafter, the oldest Millennial will be at least 56 years of age and mortality is projected to outweigh net immigration. By 2050 there will be a projected 74.3 million Millennials. Generation X (ages 36 to 51 in 2016) is projected to pass the Boomers in population by 2028. And we “centurions” will be vanishing.

With these thoughts and their political consequences in mind, consider major impacts that unpredicted/unanticipated calamities can have on our population. And how lessons from 9/11 also speak to these prospects.

We knew that the World Trade Center was a terrorist target, because it had been attacked in 1993 with a car bomb in the basement, as planned by al Qaeda. And we failed to take account of the all too real possibilities that could be employed by terrorists, as shown by terrorist attacks abroad, including during my five years in Geneva and travels throughout Europe during the 1980s. Earlier, the 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon killed 241 service members including 220 Marines.

After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, 19 USAF servicemen were killed and 320 wounded in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Before that, a major bombing within the United States occurred, when the 1995 Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City killed at least 168 and injured at least 680 others.

Concern that terrorists might employ weapons of mass destruction (WMD) led to serious consideration by senior policy and technical reviews, such as by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board (DSB). Click here for the 1997 report of what was then the largest ever DSB summer study in which I participated, which dealt with transnational threats including the possible use of WMD.

I subsequently served on a 1999 congressional commission to evaluate the federal government’s programs to deal with weapons of mass destruction. Click here for our final report, which among other things found that the U.S. Government was not effectively organized to combat proliferation. I’m not sure much has improved in the 20 years since then — especially when considering the existential threats from electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, along with cyber operations and other means to shut down the electric power grid for an indefinite period.

Concerns about growing major terrorist attacks also led to special preparations for major events involving large crowds, such as for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. But we were unprepared for and surprised by the 9/11 attack, even though we had warning that terrorists might use aircraft for terrorist attacks by flying them into their targets.

For example, the 9/11 Commission learned afterward that, because of bureaucratic dysfunctionalities associated with the disparate organizations of the intelligence community, we missed the fact that the 9/11 terrorists, who had entered the country under student, business or tourist visas, trained in Florida to pilot aircraft with little interest in landing them. Although this fact was reported to some within the intelligence community, it was not shared widely enough to prepare for an attack that seemed farfetched to many.

And note that Tom Clancy wrote fiction about a terrorist flying a Boeing 747 into the Capitol during a special Joint Session of Congress killing most of Washington’s political leaders. His 1994 Debt of Honor ended with that attack and his 1996 Executive Orders sequel built a fictional legacy. Perhaps, you think, an intended model for United Airlines 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11?

We are living through similar conditions of unpreparedness, when it comes to possible ballistic missile attacks on the United States. Many argue that our adversaries would never dare, because our retaliation would be so swift and devastating that such an attack would never happen. And besides, we have spent well over a hundred billion dollars on ballistic missile defenses that are supposed to protect us.

But such claims are no more phony than Tom Clancy’s assumed scenario in Debt of Honor nor no more unlikely than the Islamic terrorists 17 years ago, who bypassed our immigration screening to hijack and pilot those transcontinental airliners and commit suicide while killing as many Americans as possible.

And how about Iran’s mullahs who have led the chants of “Death to Israel” (the little Satan) and “Death to America” (the Great Satan), once they are persuaded that their attack will work to kill most Americans? They might believe this would hasten the return of the Mahdi.

Remember that Iran is a longstanding ally of North Korea, which already has about 40 nuclear weapons, according to the Intelligence Community, a demonstrated capability to deliver them over the United States and an announced “strategic goal” of developing the capability of executing an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

A possible plot for a Tom Clancy like novel, you think? And there are others I can imagine with consequences that would be far worse than the potential of any of Tom Clancy’s novels.

Bottom Lines.

The expert EMP Commission has pointed out for a decade that up to 90-percent of all Americans could perish within a year after the electric power grid is taken down by such an EMP attack. Cyber, physical and other operations would likely be included as a precursor to such an attack to deceive, confuse and disrupt a timely response.

The U.S. “powers that be” appear to remain as blind to this all too real possibility as was the case before 9/11. Moreover, congressional legislation has been very counterproductive by ending the Commission that has served for 17-18 years and essentially starting over.

Click here for recent reports from that EMP Commission that were unduly delayed because of lethargic support from the Department of Defense which has been more of an obstructionist influence than a source of key information that it obtained and employed for a half century to harden key national security systems, but not our critical civil infrastructure.

Truly, it is up to President Trump and his White House leadership to right this threatening situation — by assigning knowledgeable technical officials with authority and resources to knock heads among the disparate organizations of government that have to date not worked together to counter this truly existential threat.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

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