(Remember the al-Qaeda Navy ships?)
This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47464
Friday, November 18, 2005
FROM JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN
How terror scuds
pose threat to U.S.
Intelligence sources say seaborne attack could wreak
mayhem, cripple economy
Posted: November 18, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Editor's note: The following story is one adapted from the latest issue
of Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the weekly, online, premium
intelligence newsletter published by the founder of WND. Annual
subscriptions now available for half price and monthly trials have been
slashed to $9.95.
By Yoram East and Joseph Farah
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – Most of the U.S. civilian population, military bases
and nuclear-weapons assembly plants are within range of missile
attacks by terrorists or rogue nations using merchant ships as
launching platforms, warn counter-terror experts.
Both the U.S. military and foreign military forces – including Iran's –
have tested missile launches from non-military vessels.
At the top of the risk list is the Russian-made Scud family of missiles,
all too often found on the weapons' black market, and, according to
counter-terror analysts, undoubtedly on the minds of terror
organizations such as al-Qaida, which is known to have shown interest
in the Scud maritime option.
A bird's eye view of U.S. coastlines reveals more than 75 percent of
the nation’s population, about 290 million people, resides along
thousands of miles of shores and up to 200 miles inland.
According to information from the Pentagon and from independent
sources, three-quarters of U.S. military assets, from naval bases to
nuclear-weapons assembly plants, are within these coastlines, posing
highly tempting targets, not only for possibly enemy rogue nations
such as North Korea and Iran, but also for global jihadi planners, G2
Bulletin reports.
Sources in the maritime industry say there were about 130,000
merchant ships registered in 195 countries at the beginning of 2005.
This huge transport system, crisscrossing the world’s oceans, with
many visiting U.S. ports or sailing close to the U.S. coastline, has
been described by counter-terror analysts as a major concern to
national security.
Undetected merchant vessels have for years been landing thousands
of illegal immigrants on Canadian and U.S. shores, proving time and
again the vulnerability of North America's coastlines.
Terrorists, who by definition do not respect any law or international
agreement, naturally disregard international maritime laws. For them
the sea, or a country’s territorial waters, is an open avenue for
terrorist actions, although so far having been used only in a few
localized instances, such as Palestinian terrorist landings of on the
Israeli coastline and the October 2000 case of the USS Cole in Yemen.
In 2004, the Israeli navy intercepted and seized in the Red Sea the
Karin-A, a weapons-carrying vessel sailing from Iran, purchased by
the Palestine Liberation Organization. This event demonstrates how
terror groups can purchase a cargo ship and how easy it is to load it
with any type of weapons and explosives and possibly be used even as
a huge floating suicide bomb.
However, the option of a Scud-carrying ship seems to pose the more
imminent threat. Scud missiles were sold by the Soviets to many
countries including Sudan and Egypt, and following the disintegration
of the Soviet Union hundreds of these missiles were left unguarded in
dilapidated military junkyards. North Korea developed its own Scud
version and has supplied the missile to several countries, as was
discovered in 2002 when Spanish and U.S. naval units intercepted a
North Korean cargo ship carrying a shipment of Scuds en route to
Yemen. This dangerous load was later released by the U.S. and
apparently reached its initial destination. Some reports indicate the
same vessel may have been involved in other delivery missions to
unspecific purchasers.
The U.S. military has tested Scuds fired from naval platforms as part
of a test for anti-missile systems. Similar tests were conducted by
North Korea and Iran.
According to military analysts, should a 700-kilometer-range Scud-D
be fired from the ocean toward a U.S. target it will not matter much
whether the aiming and guiding mechanisms are of high quality. In
reality a missile launched from a cargo ship, in the correct elevation
and direction, can hit a densely populated urban environment as deep
as 200 miles inland from the coastal strips. It would be irrelevant,
they say, to the terrorists whether such a projectile hits New York City
or Newark, N.J. in the east, or inside the 200-mile land stretch from
the coast of Los Angeles in the west. The effect of such an attack,
even with a conventional warhead, would be enormous, including a
devastating blow to the morale of the population. Should any type of
weapon of mass destruction be used, whether nuclear waste, chemical
or biological substances, total havoc could ensue. Events in the
aftermath of hurricane Katrina were well studied by terrorists who can
now visualize the horrific results in an urban center struck with a Scud,
especially one carrying a weapon of mass destruction, G2 Bulletin
reports.
Another even more terrifying component of the threat from the sea is
the possibility of a rogue nation or terrorist group successfully firing a
Scud armed with a nuclear weapon and timed for detonation above a
U.S. population center.
As G2 Bulletin and WND reported exclusively earlier this year,
government officials are increasingly concerned about the threat of
this kind of an electro-magnetic pulse attack that could cripple cities
and entire regions of the U.S. by knocking out electrical grids and
computer technology.
EMP attacks are generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated at
altitudes above a few dozen kilometers above the Earth's surface. The
explosion, of even a small nuclear warhead, would produce a set of
electromagnetic pulses that interact with the Earth's atmosphere and
the Earth's magnetic field.
G2 Bulletin and WND first reported the shocking findings of the U.S.
EMP commission that rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea,
have the capability of launching an undetected, catastrophic EMP
attack on the U.S. – and are actively developing plans.
"These electromagnetic pulses propagate from the burst point of the
nuclear weapon to the line of sight on the Earth's horizon, potentially
covering a vast geographic region in doing so simultaneously,
moreover, at the speed of light," said Dr. Lowell Wood, acting
chairman of the commission appointed by Congress to study the
threat. "For example, a nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of
400 kilometers over the central United States would cover, with its
primary electromagnetic pulse, the entire continent of the United
States and parts of Canada and Mexico."
The commission, in its work over a period of several years, found that
EMP is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold
American society seriously at risk and that might also result in the
defeat of U.S. military forces.
"The electromagnetic field pulses produced by weapons designed and
deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of
damaging electrical power systems, electronics and information
systems upon which any reasonably advanced society, most
specifically including our own, depend vitally," Wood said. "Their
effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and
electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to
the American nation."
The commission concluded in its report to Congress earlier this year:
"EMP is one of a small number of threats that may hold at risk the
continued existence of today's U.S. civil society.''
"The number of U.S. adversaries capable of EMP attack is
greater than during the Cold War," said Rep. Roscoe
Bartlett. "We may look back with some fondness on the
Cold War. We then had only one potential adversary. We
knew him quite well."
Bartlett pointed out that Iran has tested launching of a
Scud missile from a surface vessel, "a launch mode that
could support a national or transnational EMP attack against the
United States."
"Iran has conducted tests with its Shahab-3 missile that have been
described as failures by the Western media because the missiles did
not complete their ballistic trajectories, but were deliberately
exploded at high altitude," he said. "This, of course, would be exactly
what you would want to do if you were going to use an EMP weapon.
Iran described these tests as successful. We said they were a failure
because they blew up in flight. They described them as successful. Of
course, they would be, if Iran's intent was practicing for an EMP
attack."
Bartlett added: "Potential adversaries are aware of the EMP's strategic
attack option. Ninety-nine percent of Americans may not know very
much about EMP, but I will assure you ... that 100 percent of our
potential enemies know all about EMP. I think that the American
people need to know about EMP because they need to demand that
their government do the prudent thing so that we will be less and less
susceptible, less and less at risk to an EMP attack year by year. The
threat is not adequately addressed in U.S. national and homeland
security programs. Not only is it not adequately addressed; it is
usually ignored, not even mentioned, and it certainly needs to be
considered."
"Terrorists could steal, purchase, or be provided a nuclear weapon
and perform an EMP attack against the United States simply by
launching a primitive Scud missile off a freighter near our shores," he
said. "We do not need to be thinking about missiles coming over the
pole. There are thousands of ships out there, particularly in the North
Atlantic shipping lanes, and any one of them could have a Scud missile
on board. If you put a canvas over it, we cannot see through the
thinnest canvas. We would not know whether it was bailed hay or
bananas or a Scud launcher. You cannot see through any cover on
ship. Scud missiles can be purchased on the world market today for
less than $100,000. Al-Qaida is estimated to own about 80 freighters,
so all they need, ... is $100,000, which I am sure they can get, for the
missile and a crude nuclear weapon."
Bartlett revealed Russian, Chinese, and Pakistani scientists are
working in North Korea and could enable that country to develop an
EMP weapon in the near future.
The congressman also raised the question of retaliation – and how an
EMP sneak attack could not only go undetected, but that it might be
impossible to find out who was responsible after the fact.
"If it were launched from the ocean, we would not know who launched
it," he said. "So against whom would we retaliate? Even if we knew
who launched it ...if all they have done is to disable our computers, do
we respond in kind, or do you incinerate their grandmothers and their
babies? This would be a really tough call. Responding in kind might do
very little good. There is no other country in the world that has
anything like our sophistication in electronic equipment, and no other
country in the world is so dependent as we are on our national
infrastructure."
Though an EMP attack would not kill people with a blast or with
radiation, over time it would likely result in much more death than a
nuclear attack on a major city, he said.
A candid, recently declassified Justice Department report explained
that terrorism represents a greater threat to the U.S. than any other
the nation has faced in its history.
While the deterrence of mutually assured destruction kept an uneasy
peace with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, policymakers
have recognized that a MAD doctrine is futile against a terrorist whose
greatest weapon is the suicide attacker and the fact that he has no
traceable address for retaliation.
Some answers to this acute problem are in the making through
research and development in the U.S. and Israel. Lockheed-Martin is
in the process of developing counter-measures and warning systems
to find and detect nuclear-armed Scuds, which can be launched from a
ship.
David Kier, vice president of Lockheed-Martin’s Protection Division,
told UPI earlier this month: "They don’t need international ballistic
missiles to attack us. An enemy could put a Scud on a tramp steamer
and launch it off the coast."
Lockheed-Martin has already received the first part of a Pentagon
budget for a five-year development plan. Some analysts say a
detection system is important although it should not be limited to
nuclear warheads only and that for the time being the U.S. and other
nations under terror threat will have to develop an improved maritime
reconnaissance system from the air and from the sea. They also
suggest a new strategy to deploy more Coast Guard and naval units
on "sentry duties" off the U.S. coast should also be undertaken
without delay.
Get the complete report by subscribing to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin
for $99 a year or $9.95 per month
Related offer:
Get WND Books' blockbuster – "Atomic Iran" – by No. 1 best-selling
"Unfit for Command" author Jerome Corsi, who exposes the threat of
nuclear terror.
Previous stories:
Iran jubilant about Katrina
Ex-CIA chief warns of EMP nuke threat
Ayatollah warns U.S. needs punch in mouth
Iran military journal eyes nuclear Emp attack on U.S.
Iran plans to knock out U.S. with 1 nuclear bomb
Biden accused of double-talk on Iran
Part 1: Sleeper cells in America
Part 2: Terrorists' weapon of choice
Part 3: Horrific scenario: NYC hit by terrorist nuke