If North Korea Can Kill 90% Of Americans In A Year, Why Did DoD Just Defund The Congressional EMP Commission?

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

At a House hearing yesterday, experts warned members of Congress that a North Korean EMP attack could kill 90% of Americans within one year, calling it an “existential threat.”

But despite this looming crisis, the Department of Defense has decided now was the time to defund the Congressional committee that has been studying the threat since 2001.

The Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack has been around for nearly two decades, but their efforts have mostly been restricted to making sure that the U.S. national command authority and U.S. strategic forces could continue to function. Meanwhile “no major efforts were then thought necessary to protect critical national infrastructures.” Apparently, the plan was that our defense would be so effective, no further steps were needed.

This has all changed with recent strides in nuclear weaponry by North Korea. The results of an EMP strike could be apocalyptic.

With the development of small nuclear arsenals and long-range missiles by new, radical U.S. adversaries, beginning with North Korea, the threat of a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S. becomes one of the few ways that such a country could inflict devastating damage to the United States. It is critical, therefore, that the U.S. national leadership address the EMP threat as a critical and existential issue, and give a high priority to assuring the leadership is engaged and the necessary steps are taken to protect the country from EMP. (source)

What a lot of people didn’t know was that just a couple of weeks ago, Sept. 30, 2017, the Department of Defense terminated the funding for the EMP Commission. At the same time, “North Korea detonated an H-Bomb that it plausibly describes as capable of “super-powerful EMP” attack and released a technical report “The EMP Might of Nuclear Weapons” accurately describing what Russia and China call a “Super-EMP” weapon.”  The EMP Commission has been urging EMP preparedness on a national level for 17 years, but no one has been listening, despite alarming strides toward that goal in just the past six months.

Recent events have proven the EMP Commission’s critics wrong about other highly important aspects of the nuclear missile threat from North Korea:

• Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea’s nuclear arsenal was primitive, some academics claiming it had as few as 6 A-Bombs. Now the intelligence community reportedly estimates North Korea has 60 nuclear weapons.


• Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea’s ICBMs were fake, or if real could not strike the U.S. mainland. Now the intelligence community reportedly estimates North Korea’s ICBMs can strike Denver and Chicago, and perhaps the entire United States.


• Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea was many years away from an HBomb. Now it appears North Korea has H-Bombs comparable to sophisticated U.S. two-stage thermonuclear weapons.


• Just six months ago, most experts claimed North Korean ICBMs could not miniaturize an ABomb or design a reentry vehicle for missile delivery. Now the intelligence community reportedly assesses North Korea has miniaturized nuclear weapons, and has developed reentry vehicles for missile delivery, including by ICBMs that can strike the U.S.1

After massive intelligence failures grossly underestimating North Korea’s long-range missile capabilities, number of nuclear weapons, warhead miniaturization, and proximity to an H-Bomb, the biggest North Korean threat to the U.S. remains unacknowledged—nuclear EMP attack.  (source)

So, for 17 years, this group has been ringing the warning bell and no one has been listening. Now that the threat is at our doorstep, their funding has been pulled. Something doesn’t add up.

The technology exists for a North Korean EMP attack

A successful attack doesn’t even require a Super-EMP weapon. The Commission concluded that even a primitive weapon could successfully render our infrastructure obsolete.

“Therefore, terrorists or state actors that possess relatively unsophisticated missiles armed with nuclear weapons may well calculate that, instead of destroying a city or military base, they may obtain the greatest political-military utility from one or a few such weapons by using them—or threatening their use—in an EMP attack.” (source)

But that isn’t the worst of in. In 2004, two Russian generals told the EMP Commission that their design for a Super-EMP weapon was “accidentally transferred to North Korea.”

Let that sink in. Somehow, North Korea has had their hands on the design for an incredibly powerful EMP weapon for more than a decade. The report says:

In 2004, two Russian generals, both EMP experts, warned the EMP Commission that the design for Russia’s Super-EMP warhead, capable of generating high-intensity EMP fields over 100,000 volts per meter, was “accidentally” transferred to North Korea. They also said that due to “brain drain,” Russian scientists were in North Korea, as were Chinese and Pakistani scientists according to the Russians, helping with the North’s missile and nuclear weapon programs.

In 2009, South Korean military intelligence told their press that Russian scientists are in North Korea helping develop an EMP nuclear weapon. In 2013, a Chinese military commentator stated North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

Super-EMP weapons are low-yield and designed to produce not a big kinetic explosion, but rather a high level of gamma rays, which generates the high-frequency E1 EMP that is most damaging to the broadest range of electronics. North Korean nuclear tests, including the first in 2006, whose occurrence was predicted to the EMP Commission two years in advance by the two Russian EMP experts, mostly have yields consistent with the size of a Super-EMP weapon. The Russian generals’ accurate prediction about when North Korea would perform its first nuclear test, and of a yield consistent with a Super-EMP weapon, indicates their warning about a North Korean Super-EMP weapon should be taken very seriously. (source)

The report says that while everyone is focused on the future, when Pyongyang may develop “highly reliable intercontinental missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles”, a North Korean EMP attack wouldn’t require that level of accuracy.

EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack against an entire nation. (source)

It would be a strategic initial strike to take down the American power grid to disable the maority of the country before undertaking any other form of attack.

How would a North Korean EMP attack be likely to occur?

Potential vehicles of attack are submarines or freighters, which could launch an EMP weapon to the relatively low altitude of 30 kilometers over the United States.  Unsettlingly, “even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Electric Power Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of U.S. electricity.”

A more likely choice would be a satellite.

A Super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, and could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites. These two satellites presently orbit over the United States, and over every other nation on Earth– demonstrating, or posing, a potential EMP threat against the entire world.

North Korea’s KMS-3 and KMS-4 satellites were launched to the south on polar trajectories and passed over the United States on their first orbit. Pyongyang launched KMS-4 on February 7, 2017, shortly after its fourth illegal nuclear test on January 6, that began the present protracted nuclear crisis with North Korea.

The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades U.S. Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States. (source)

The report goes on to explain that our defense systems are completely unready for any of these scenarios.

There’s a lot of misinformation about the threat of EMPs.

The report counters a great deal of misinformation about the threat of EMPs. While no one really wants to consider the devastating effects, many “uninformed persons posturing as experts” completely deny the possibility. However, the Commission says that the empirical basis for an EMP attack is better established than that of a cyber attack.

They offered numerous examples of hard data regarding the effects of EMPs.

• The U.S. STARFISH PRIME high-altitude nuclear test in 1962 over Johnston Island that generated an EMP field over the Hawaiian Islands, over 1,300 kilometers away, causing widespread damage to electronic systems.


• Six Russian EMP tests 1961-1962 over Kazakhstan that with a single weapon destroyed electric grids over an area larger than Western Europe, proving this capability six times.


• 30 years (1962-1992) of U.S. underground nuclear testing that included collecting data on EMP effects.


• Over 50 years of testing by EMP simulators, still ongoing, including by the Congressional EMP Commission (2001-2008) that proved modern electronics are over 1 million times more vulnerable to EMP than the electronics of 1962.


• “Radio Frequency Weapons were used in separate incidents against the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to falsely set off alarms and to induce a fire in a sensitive area.”


• “In Kzlyar, Dagestan, Russia, Chechen rebel commander Salman Raduyev disabled police radio communications using RF transmitters during a raid.”


• “In June 1999 in Bellingham, Washington, RF energy from a radar induced a SCADA malfunction that caused a gas pipeline to rupture and explode.”


• “In 1999, a Robinson R-44 news helicopter nearly crashed when it flew by a high-frequency broadcast antenna.”


• North Korea used a Radio Frequency Weapon, purchased from Russia, to attack airliners and impose an “electromagnetic blockade” on air traffic to Seoul, South Korea’s capital. The repeated attacks by RFW also disrupted communications and the operation of automobiles in several South Korean cities in December 2010; March 9, 2011; and April-May 2012.(source)

The threat is real. So, again, why would the Department of Defense withdraw funding from the Commission that wants to take steps to harden our infrastructure against this possibility?

What would the aftermath of an EMP attack look like?

The Commission cited several examples of real-world electrical grid failures and their catastrophic consequences.

• The Great Northeast Blackout of 2003–that put 50 million people in the dark for a day, contributed to at least 11 deaths, and cost an estimated $6 billion—originated from a single failure point when a powerline contacted a tree branch, damaging less than 0.0000001 (0.00001%) of the system.


• The New York City Blackout of 1977, that resulted in the arrest of 4,500 looters and injury of 550 police officers, was caused by a lightning strike on a substation that tripped two circuit breakers.


• The Great Northeast Blackout of 1965, that effected  (sic) 30 million people, happened because a protective relay on a transmission line was improperly set.


• India’s nationwide blackout of July 30-31, 2012—the largest blackout in history, effecting (sic) 670 million people, 9% of the world population—was caused by overload of a single high-voltage powerline.


• India’s blackout of January 2, 2001—effecting 226 million people—was caused by equipment failure at the Uttar Pradesh substation.


• Indonesia’s blackout of August 18, 2005—effecting 100 million people—was caused by overload of a high-voltage powerline.


• Brazil’s blackout of March 11, 1999—effecting 97 million people—was caused by a lightning strike on an EHV transformer substation.


• Italy’s blackout of September 28, 2003—effecting 55 million people—was caused by overload of two high-voltage powerlines.


• Germany, France, Italy, and Spain experienced partial blackouts on November 4, 2006 effecting (sic)10-15 million people—from accidental shutdown of a high-voltage powerline.


• The San Francisco blackout in April 2017 was caused by the failure of a single high voltage breaker (source)

My mind immediately goes to the down-grid disaster occurring right now in Puerto Rico.

The death toll from such a disaster would be unprecedented:

The result could be to shut down the U.S. electric power grid for an indefinite period, leading to the death within a year of up to 90 percent of all Americans—as the EMP Commission testified over eight years ago.

We’re talking about the deaths of more than 270 million people.

President Trump signed an Executive Order in May called “Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure” which will hopefully harden our country against both cyber attacks and EMPs. The Commission provided a list of actionable suggestions on pages 11-14 of this report, but will the steps be undertaken before it’s too late? Especially now that they’re defunct.

How do you prep for something so massive?

It doesn’t seem as though the government is very interested in taking steps to protect our power grid. We can look at what is happening in Puerto Rico as a glimpse of the apocalyptic future that would follow such an attack. Restoring power after an EMP could take multiple years, and things in America would never be the same after a sustained change in our way of life.

The result of an EMP attack would be a protracted blackout that would put at risk the lives of millions of people. Climate control, a lack of off-grid survival skills, looting, lawlessness, lack of medication, starvation, waterborne disease – all of these threats to our survival cannot be overlooked. If you haven’t read the book One Second After, I recommend you do so for a fictionalized yet nonetheless realistic look at life after the grid. If that doesn’t inspire you to prepare for such an event, nothing will.

The best resource for preparing for an attack like this is Disaster Preparedness for EMP and Solar Storms, by Dr. Arthur T. Bradley. A NASA scientist, Dr. Bradley has spent years studying the aftereffects of such a catastrophe. His book dispels many myths an provides realistic, lifesaving information. My personal plan is a low-tech one – I am not spending a fortune on generators and fancy gadgets I wouldn’t be able to use once the fuel runs out.

Preparing for something this massive is beyond the scope of this article. I strongly encourage you to begin researching and create your own low-tech plan. Don’t put it off until you get your perfect homestead in the boondocks or you talk your family members into it. Disasters like this don’t wait for a convenient time – in fact, strategically speaking, the less convenient it is, the more the attacker benefits.

If World War 3 starts off with an EMP, it renders many of our plans moot. We have been warned in the strongest terms possible, but will it be enough?

Former Trump Insiders Predict Paul Manafort Close To Being Indicted For Financial Crimes, Report

It has become increasingly clear in recent weeks that Special Counsel Mueller is intent upon either flipping Paul Manafort against Trump in his "Russian collusion" investigation or filing charges against him for crimes unrelated to the 2016 presidential campaign.  Either way, Manafort"s future looks to be dimming.

As the Daily Caller has just revealed in an exclusive report, former Trump campaign aides are now saying that Manafort could be indicted for financial crimes, allegedly including money laundering and/or tax evasion, in the very near future.

Former Trump campaign aides are telling The Daily Caller that they increasingly believe former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort will be indicted for crimes such as money laundering or tax evasion.

One of the former campaign advisers has knowledge of the ongoing investigations into Manafort, a longtime Republican operative who joined the Trump campaign last March. Another former aide said his own knowledge of Manafort’s past history working with despots, coupled with news reports about Mueller’s investigation, led him to believe that an indictment of Manafort is becoming more likely.

The former Trump advisers told TheDC they have no knowledge of any collusion with the Russian government on the presidential campaign. One aide stressed that any financial crimes by Manafort are his own problem and not that of the White House.

“Ill-informed speculation has become the new Washington parlor game. Despite breathless headlines, it is increasingly clear the Russia Collusion story is eroding,” Manafort’s spokesman Jason Maloni told TheDC. Maloni declined to comment when asked specifically about financial crimes.

One of the former aides was interviewed by a Congressional committee investigating Russian interference and told TheDC that many of the questions were about Manafort’s finances.

“Investigators appeared focused on finances and business relationships of the Trump family and top associates such as Paul Manafort and General Michael Flynn,” the former Trump campaign adviser told TheDC.

Of course, back in July WaPo reported that FBI agents "raided the Alexandria home of President Trump’s former campaign chairman, using a search warrant to seize documents and other materials."  Federal agents reportedly appeared at Manafort’s home without advance warning in the predawn hours on Wednesday, July 26, the day after he met voluntarily with the staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The WaPo reported that the served search warrant was "wide-ranging and FBI agents working with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III departed the home with various records."

The raid came as Manafort has been voluntarily producing documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The search warrant indicates investigators may have argued to a federal judge they had reason to believe Manafort could not be trusted to turn over all records in response to a grand jury subpoena.

It could also have been intended to send a message to President Trump’s former campaign chairman that he should not expect gentle treatment or legal courtesies from Mueller’s team.

Then again, other rumors would suggest that Manafort could luck out on a technicality as Law Newz reported earlier today that FBI agents may have overstepped their bounds during their raid and collected evidence from Manafort"s home that was subject to attorney-client privilege.  If true, such a blatant abuse of power could result in all evidence from Manafort"s home being dismissed by the courts.

As the Robert Mueller investigation intensifies, new details are being leaked about the direction the probe is going. Buried in a story about the intensifying relationship between Mueller and Congress, CNN revealed some very interesting information. According to the report, Mueller’s team may have obtained evidence in the raid of Paul Manafort’s home that was not covered by the search warrant.

As the article points out, this certainly brings up concerns as to what exactly was seized, what investigators saw, and who handled the material. You can’t “unsee” evidence once you saw it.

“If they (investigators) had any kind of heads up, and they went beyond the scope of the warrant, that could be a problem,” Henry Hockeimer, a former federal prosecutor, told LawNewz.com.

Meanwhile, just one day after we found out about the FBI"s raid, we learned that Special Counsel Mueller had also been going after Manafort"s family in order gather dirt.  According to Politico"s anonymous sources, Manafort"s son-in-law, Jeffrey Yohai, was approached earlier this summer regarding his "business deals" with Manafort.

Federal investigators sought cooperation from Paul Manafort’s son-in-law in an effort to increase pressure on President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, according to three people familiar with the probe.

Investigators approached Jeffrey Yohai, who has partnered in business deals with Manafort, earlier this summer, setting off “real waves” in Manafort’s orbit, one of these people said. Another of these people said investigators are trying to get “into Manafort’s head.”

Manafort, who is a focus of the broad federal and congressional investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, is also under investigation for his business and real estate transactions, including some that involve Yohai.

As Politico noted at the time, Mueller’s targeting of both Manafort and his son-in-law over potential criminal wrongdoing is a common tactic employed in white-collar cases, commonly called “climbing the ladder.”  The strategy, more or less, entails digging up whatever dirt can be found on those in Trump"s orbit and then using that dirt to coerce potential witnesses into cooperation.

“Manafort is — on many levels — a key subject of the investigation and someone who might be leveraged to share information about others,” said one Washington-based white-collar attorney with a client involved in the Russia probe.

The approach involves finding a suspected crime — false statements on tax returns or loan applications, for example — and then offering leniency on prosecution in exchange for cooperation. “They always start with the people on the low end of the ladder and try to get information on someone high up on the ladder,” said William Jeffress, a white-collar attorney who represented Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in the President George W. Bush-era Valerie Plame leak investigation.

Mueller would clearly have jurisdiction over any real estate dealings between Yohai, Manafort and Russians, Jeffress said. In addition, he could press Yohai for details on what he knows about Manafort’s role in the campaign.

In summary, when your "Russian collusion" narrative fails miserably...keep digging until you find something on someone...Paul Manafort appears to be that "someone."

Chaffetz Seeks Charges Against Former Hillary IT Aide Bryan Pagliano

Back in September, at the height of the Hillary emailgate investigation, Clinton"s IT aid who helped setup her private email server, Bryan Pagliano, apparently decided that Congressional subpoenas, like federal record retention laws, were merely optional suggestions that did not require compliance.  As such, Pagliano elected to skip not one, but two, Congressional hearings in front of Jason Chaffetz" (R-Utah) House Oversight Committee despite his direct involvement in setting up he private servers.

The move did not sit well with Chaffetz, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, who blasted Pagliano"s move saying that "subpoenas are not optional” and subsequently voted to hold Pagliano in contempt of Congress. 

As it turns out, after all these months, Chaffetz is still not over Pagliano"s aloof response to his committee"s subpoena and has sent a letter to Trump"s new Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking him to convene a grand jury or bring charges against Pagliano for his failure to appear before Congress.  According to Fox News, Chaffetz said in a statement that allowing Pagliano"s conduct "to go unaddressed would gravely harm Congress" ability to conduct oversight."

To our complete shock, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, blasted Chaffetz" call for charges saying that pursuing charges against Pagliano would be a waste of time and money.

"Apparently, Chairman Chaffetz and President Trump are the only two people in Washington today who think we should still be investigating Secretary Clinton," Cumming said in a statement. He added: "The Oversight Committee can"t afford to be distracted by political vendettas against Hillary Clinton while our constituents are begging us to conduct responsible oversight of President Trump."

Of course, Pagliano"s attorneys defended his actions back in September saying that he had already "asserted his Fifth Amendment rights" and refused to answer any questions.  Therefore, they argued that additional appearances before Congress served no "valid legislative purpose."

“You and the committee have been told from the beginning that Mr. Pagliano will continue to assert his Fifth Amendment rights and will decline to answer any questions put to him by your committee,” according to the letter.

“A subpoena issued by a Congressional committee is required by law to serve a valid legislative purpose and there is none here,” reads the letter, which refers to the committee’s efforts to force Pagliano to testify as a “naked political agenda” with “no valid legislative aim.”

Of course, as our readers are already aware, Pagliano, like Paul Combetta (the infamous "Oh Shit" guy) and a host of other Clinton aides, was granted an immunity deal by the Department of Justice in return for his FBI testimony regarding the Clinton private email servers.  Unfortunately, that immunity deal won"t help him with these new charges.

Finally, we"ll end with the same warning that we offered Pagliano back in September:

"We would caution Pagliano that, as suggested by the pic above, he would probably be well served to tread lightly...not many people share the Clintons" particular talent for escaping scandal after scandal without repercussions."