Talking “Lights Out” with Ted Koppel (Pt.1)

In a special edition of Secure Freedom Radio, Frank Gaffney sits down with acclaimed correspondent and former “Nightline” host Ted Koppel, who recently released a new book entitled “Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath”. Here is a transcript of part one of the interview. Click here for the audio version of part one.

FG: Those of you who have been listening to this program know that one of the things that is of abiding concern to me in the war for the free world is the vulnerability of our electric grid. I consider it really a kill shot for our enemies and have for quite sometime now been trying to use such tools as I have and persuasive powers as I can muster and others with whom I’ve been able to work, to try to raise awareness about this vulnerability and to effect the kind of corrective action that I believe is imminently doable, but has yet not done. No one, no one, I believe has done more in a shorter period of time to raise awareness and to engage the political leadership of this country on this very serious problem then our guest. I am absolutely delighted to have him, he is Ted Koppel, a man whose renown as a journalist precedes him, he is an award-winning journalist many many many times over, in fact the list of awards is too many to mention in the time we have available, but suffice it to say he’s received 37 Emmys for his journalism, but I think he’s really deserving of the Medal of Freedom for this particular work, which is a new book entitled “Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath”. Ted Koppel you do us great honor to join us, thank you for this real public service and for the chance to talk with you a little bit about it.

TK: Well Frank you and I have known each other for a very long time. Usually we were on other sides of the microphone but I’m pleased to be here with you today.

FG: Well as am I, let me talk first and foremost about this threat as you’ve come to understand it. How did you get into this in the first place and how serious do you consider this threat to be?

TK: Well the fact of the matter Frank is I am anything but a techno geek and what drew my attention to it was really a bunch of our political leaders who raised the issue, not the least of them the President – twice in the State of the Union Address’s – made reference to the danger to our infrastructure and singling out the power grid, and the danger of a cyber attack on the power grid. Leon Panetta, who at the time was Secretary of Defense, when he spoke of the danger of a cyber attack being the equivalent of a Cyber Peal Harbor. Janet Napolitano, who just before she stepped down as Secretary of Homeland Security, gave a speech at the National Press Club in which she warned about it, and my attention Frank was drawn by the fact that despite these alarms being raised by very senior officials in the government, we knew very little was being written about it and there was almost no political reaction to it, so having been a reporter for a very long time, my nose started to twitch a little and I thought that there may be a story here.

FG: There is indeed a story here and you can add to that list of things that are peculiar the fact that with that level of interest at the highest levels of the government, very little is being done about it as well. You of course focus expressly on the threat of cyber attack to the grid Ted Koppel, and yet you do make reference to some of the other ways to which adversaries of this country could seek to do us harm. Let’s just tick those off in addition to cyber then we’ll come back to the use of computer weapons against us. What other concerns do you heave in terms of vulnerabilities to the grid to other kinds of attack?

TK: Well I mean lets go to the other end of the technology scale. The simplest way of taking out at least part of the power grid is to go after the large power transformers, which tend to sit out in the open usually behind a chain link fence, but easily accessible and vulnerable to gunfire and there was a case where I believe it was seventeen or nineteen power transformers were taken out in the middle of the night by a group still unknown. It has to be more than one person because there were heavy lids that had to be lifted to enable these people to get access to communication gears; they cut the wires of that communications gear. A SEAL team that came in after the fact to examine what had been done came to the conclusion that this was a highly trained team of professionals using AK-47 fire and knocking out these 17 transformers. As it turned out, that particular substation belonging to PG&E out in California was only off line for a little more than a couple of weeks and during that time there were other substations able to take up the load, but the fear of some of the investigators was that this was nearly a dry run and that if you had more than one of these teams going after more than one of the substations at the same time they could have caused incalculable damage.

FG: And as you’ve observed Ted, in this instance had they not missed that one communications link that enabled the off site control center to power down those transformers we might have lost them and with them, power for Silicon Valley for perhaps years. It takes that long to replace these things. So you’re absolutely right, this is a very, very clear and present danger. You also talk in the book about the threat of electromagnetic pulse.

TK: Just one more point Frank. When you talk about the difficulty of replacing these, I think your listeners need to understand these are enormous transformers. They weigh between twelve and six hundred-thousand pounds, they are not interchangeable, they’re custom made, and very, very few of them were made in the United States. Most were made overseas, if you order one, from the time you order it, or the company orders, until delivery the time it can take: anywhere from one to two years.

FG: Yeah, they’re essentially hand built and I think again very few of us appreciate how much is riding on those very very vulnerable assets. Let me just ask you about electromagnetic pulse. I know that you’ve sort of suggested that this may be a low probability but a very serious threat. You describe very well in you book “Lights Out” a scenario that has been validated I think by a congressional commission among others. Talk a little bit about that and why that’s also of concern.

TK: Well an electromagnetic pulse is probably best known to readers of a novel, the book was called, “One Second After” and William Forstchen who wrote that book I think drew rather heavily on the findings of this congressional commission, which was formed in 2004, and I think kept up its study and its work until 2008. What we’re talking about here is an alien power. I don’t mean aliens as in Martian, I mean someone meaning harm to the United States. Setting off a nuclear device twenty or thirty thousand feet above the United States. The resulting electro magnetic pulse would effectively knock out all electronic devices pretty much across the country. The reason I believe that to be among the less likely dangers of the case is because it would take very little time for the United States to establish who had done this act, and therefore to be able to respond and to respond rather dramatically. The difference between that and a cyber attack on the United States, and what is the greatest danger of all is with a cyber attack, is likely to be launched and it could be weeks or months before we have the slightest clue to who was behind it.

FG: Yeah, those are very interesting, I think perhaps somewhat debatable points, but the truth of the matter is we may – if we were crippled in the kind of way that you’ve described in “Lights Out” – may not be in a position to do that forensic work let alone take the kind of retributory action that might be in order. Ted Koppel is our guest he has graciously agreed to allow us to have another segment with him and we’re going to talk a little bit more about what can be done about this vulnerability arising from an electric grid that never was designed to be resilient and certainly isn’t at the moment. That and more with the author of “Lights Out: A Cyber attack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath”, Ted Koppel straight ahead.