October 9, 2018—Go: Marsh Commission Do-Over!

“The single most important action that must be taken immediately to advance national strength and survivability is: Establish an Executive Agent, with the authority, accountability, and resources to manage U.S. national infrastructure protection and defense against the existential threat. Current institutional authorities and responsibilities—government, industry, regulatory agencies—are fragmented, incomplete, inexperienced, under-resourced, and unable to protect and defend against foreign hostile EMP threats and solar superstorms.” Dr. William R. Graham, for 17 years Chairman of the former Congressional EMP Commission

(The “EMP Commission” is shorthand for the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack that was established by Congress in the FY2001 National Defense Authorization Act, Title XIV, and most recently continued per the FY2016 National Defense Authorization Act, Section 1089.)

That Commission completed its information-gathering by July 2017, and its reports were submitted for DoD review. The above is Dr. Graham’s most important conclusion, from the abstract of his personal Chairman’s report that was cleared for public release over a year after it was received by Department of Defense (DoD) and after the EMP Commission was unwisely disbanded at the direction of congress. (Not only did Dr. Graham chair the commission of technical experts, but he is one of the world’s preeminent experts on EMP, having worked “hands on” in the field since the 1960s when we first understood the urgent threat it posed.)

Nevertheless, the DoD refused to publish this important chairman’s report (and others from the commission staff) via its distribution methods, and Dr. Graham paid for his own webpage to provide it (and several other important reports) so they would be publically available for the nation’s private sector to profit from their wise conclusions, advice and recommendations in assuring the viability of the critical civil infrastructure. Click here for that webpage. They also can be obtained from a High Frontier webpage link (right column top).

Click here for Dr. Graham’s above full, though redacted, report that was cleared for open publication on July 27, 2018 by The Department of Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review — and after additional delay was approved for public release on August 7, at least via Dr. Graham’s personal webpage. Again, High Frontier also carries a link to those important reports—click on the link atop the column on the right.

While I encourage you to read his entire very important report, my message briefly reflects on implications of a couple of Dr. Graham’s most important conclusions, at least from my perspective.

First, I completely agree with his most important bottom line, quoted above, though I would combine the two sentences as follows:

“The single most important action that must be taken immediately to advance national strength and survivability is: Establish an Executive Agent, with the authority, accountability, and resources to manage U.S. national infrastructure protection and defense against the existential threat, BECAUSE current institutional authorities and responsibilities—government, industry, regulatory agencies—are fragmented, incomplete, inexperienced, under-resourced, and unable to protect and defend against foreign hostile EMP threats and solar superstorms.”

Second, he notes that the current institutions of government have failed miserably to heed the warnings of the previous two Commission reports (in 2004 and 2008), which in large measure the most recent commission report repeats, as Dr. Graham’s summary indicates.

As Dr. Graham makes clear, we have known about this existential threat and how to protect against it for over a half century, but have not systematically addressed it effectively, except for our strategic systems — our intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), strategic bombers and their associated command, control and communications (C3) systems.

These DoD efforts left our critical civil infrastructure vulnerable. In particular, an extended loss of the electric power grid could lead to the death of most Americans due to the starvation, disease and societal collapse — as the EMP Commission has consistently reported since 2004, now over 14 years ago, without any serious response to protect our critical civil infrastructure against EMP.

The once technically competent DoD capability has been largely lost as the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) abandoned its nuclear weapons effects heritage and through its successor organizations morphed into the current Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) which has been focused on other matters.

This failure is perhaps best illustrated by Dr. Graham’s valid criticism of the DoD that, even though it remains the most knowledgeable federal agency in the field of EMP, has:

Failed to transfer much of its technical capabilities and accomplishments to other agencies of the federal government;
Failed to use its knowledge to assist and critique activities of other federal agencies, including the intelligence community;
Failed to declassify EMP environment and effects data and predictions that, while known to U.S. adversaries, are not available to the U.S. public, U.S. infrastructure organizations, and U.S. professional societies that develop specifications and standards for protecting critical national infrastructure;
Failed to obtain the complete archive of Russian nuclear weapons effects data when offered for sale to the U.S. at modest cost in 1996;
Failed to inform the Congress and the public of the present and continuing existential EMP threat to the nation; and
Failed to develop and pursue plans to protect the U.S. from EMP threats.

As he stated, “Overall, for more than a decade, the DoD has been derelict in its duties to lead the country in providing for national defense and security from EMP attack. This dereliction of duty should not be allowed by the leadership of the Administration and the Congress to continue. “

And because of their past demonstrated failures, I would argue against giving the DoD responsibility to lead future efforts to deal with the existential EMP threat, as was directed by the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 (NDAA 2019).

I would next skip to Dr. Graham’s very important conclusion and recommendation on his final page:

“That the 2014 Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) report on EMP is factually erroneous and analytically unsound;” [emphasis added] and

That “the Director of National Intelligence [should] withdraw the JAEIC EMP Report and direct that the [last] EMP Commission critique of the JAEIC EMP Report be circulated to all the recipients of the 2014 JAEIC EMP Report, which is a threat to national security by impeding progress on EMP understanding and protection.”

Since the JAEIC is strongly influenced by the Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Laboratories, I would argue they have demonstrated by their irresponsible failure that they at a minimum do not understand the threat (nor do they have a background in protecting against that threat); and therefore the DOE should not be trusted to lead future government efforts to deal with the EMP threat to our critical civil infrastructure.

These past failures of the Departments of Defense and Energy lead me to argue that the President must look elsewhere for Dr. Graham’s “Executive Agent, with the authority, accountability, and resources to manage U.S. national infrastructure protection and defense against the existential threat . . .”

And I agree with Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, that such a task should not be given to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as he stated in a conference at the Heritage Foundation on September 27, 2018. It has far too much on its plate already and is only beginning to address the congressional directives to deal with the EMP threat. Click here for the full Heritage conference, beginning with his keynote address.

Thus, I believe this situation demands that the needed “Executive Agent” should be in the White House “with the “authority, accountability, and resources to manage U.S. national infrastructure protection and defense against the existential threat. . .”

My recommendation is that the President should follow the “Marsh Commission” model embodied in a 1996 Presidential Executive Order to recommend an integrated approach to counter the Cyber threat. Click here for several of my previous messages that elaborated on this recommendation. Click here for the complete 1996 Executive Order, which led to the so-called Marsh Commission, after Retired USAF General Robert T. Marsh who chaired the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection — as a salaried position in the White House.

I recommend that such a critically important staff position be under the President’s National Security Advisor with authority to lead the pertinent government agencies in developing a coherent plan to deal with all threats to the nation’s critical civil infrastructure, including EMP.

Click here for their October 1997 report, Critical Foundations: Protecting America’s Infrastructures, which set the stage of much innovation over the past two decades, particularly by highlighting the need to prepare for and counter the threat of cyberattacks on our critical infrastructures.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attack focused the American mind on our vulnerability to a new framework of threats, though in that case not particularly high technology threats. But the subsequent seemingly unending conflicts have increasingly involved high-technology components.

In any case, neither the Marsh Commission nor related post-9/11 efforts related to 16 critical infrastructure areas addressed by DHS considered the threat of EMP attacks among the threats of “electronic” and “radio frequency” attacks that were included — no doubt because the EMP was then still a highly classified subject.

Finally, we are beyond that point, and it is long past time for a Marsh Commission do-over, this time including all threats to our critical infrastructure, including EMP. Thanks to the EMP Commission during the past 18 years, technical information on protecting against EMP can now be shared throughout the private sector.

Bottom Lines.

My primary conclusion from Dr. Graham’s Chairman’s Report is that the federal government is dysfunctional when it comes to dealing with the EMP threat — and so I agree that we need to put an Executive Agent in charge as he concludes.

But I do not agree with my close friend and professional colleague since the 1960s that the President should give that job to any of the Departments one might expect could/would do a commendable job because their past performance indicates they should not be trusted with such an important responsibility.

Rather, I urge President Trump to keep that Executive Authority in the White House, assigned to serve under the National Security Advisor. That authority could chair a new Critical Infrastructure Protection Commission that should rapidly form and assess progress and shortfalls since the Marsh Commission and, as soon as possible, recommend to the President plans to expedite fully funded initiatives to assure viable critical infrastructures to support the American people.

President Trump can, with the stroke of his pen in an appropriate Executive Order, accomplish this objective much faster than a new EMP Commission can be formed and most likely with more consequential effectiveness.

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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