Hurricane Sandy ravaged large parts of New York City and New Jersey, flooding streets and homes, washing away piers, cutting down trees and power lines, forcing people to flee their homes, scrounge for food, line up for gas and search for power to charge their cell phones.

While metro New York residents are looking forward to a return to normalcy, some national security analysts are warning that what Americans in the Northeast experienced temporarily could be the merest foretaste of what all Americans can expect if action is not taken to prevent a full-blown assault on vital U.S. infrastructures.

Indeed, while surveys show most Americans thought this week’s U.S. presidential election was all about the economy, these voices are saying the threat from countries like Iran or North Korea may restore foreign and defense policy to voters’ top concerns.

At issue is the danger of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, a plausible nuclear threat that has gotten no attention in the recent campaign.

Whereas military planners used to focus on nuclear weapons deployed against a major U.S. population center, which would take a fair amount of sophistication to target precisely, the new worry concerns a nuclear explosion detonated at high altitude.

A rogue band of terrorists or nuclear rogue state like Iran may be in a position to launch a single nuclear payload into the atmosphere above the United States, and thereby incapacitate every electric system in the U.S. Hospitals would be without power, banks could not transfer funds electronically, people could not use credit cards or cell phones.

The Obama Administration is currently developing an executive order on the issue of cybersecurity.

Concern over an EMP attack prompted the U.S. to set up in 2001 a commission to study the nature of the threat, the vulnerabilities of U.S. military and civilian systems and the capacity of the U.S. to recover from an attack.

Its 2008 official report warned: “An EMP attack potentially could disrupt or collapse the food infrastructure over a large region encompassing many cities for a protracted period of weeks, months or even longer. Widespread damage of the infrastructures would impede the ability of undamaged fringe areas to aid in recovery. Therefore, it is highly possible that the recovery time would be very slow and the amount of human suffering great, including loss of life.”

The commission’s 2004 official report stated that “…some potential sources of EMP threats are difficult to deter—they can be terrorist groups that have no state identity, have only one or a few weapons, and are motivated to attack the U.S. without regard for their own safety. Rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran, may also be developing the capability to pose an EMP threat to the United States, and may also be unpredictable and difficult to deter.”

Indeed, Iran recently announced its intention to project its naval power off the U.S. coastline in the next few years, making vivid the possibility of ship-based EMP assault. A fresh Congressional Research Service report issued last month by a naval analyst warns of a lower-level worry – that the Chinese military is working on electromagnetic systems to disrupt U.S. warfighting capabilities. The purpose of these “low-yield EMP warheads” would be to disable U.S. aircraft carriers in a future conflict over Taiwan.

But the bigger danger that has EMP activists concerned, is of a single, crude nuclear device with a primitive missile device of the kind Iran or Iranian-sponsored terrorists could deliver.

A bipartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to forestalling the danger of the EMP threat called EMPACT America has organized around this issue.

Also, Congress is considering the Shield Act (H.R. 668), which would empower the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to protect the national electric grid by ensuring there are enough extra-high-voltage transformers to survive and recover from an EMP attack. That bill was referred to a subcommittee last year and has yet to receive a full hearing.

It’s official now – Boeing and the US Air Force have successfully demonstrated a working electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) device over a military compound in the Utah desert. A spokesperson for Boeing stated, "Today we turned science fiction into science fact.”

Keith Coleman who serves as Boeing’s CHAMP program manager in their Phantom Works division stated that the tests were conducted on a military compound set up in the Utah desert with cameras to record the very instant the device was deployed. In the video that was recently declassified and made public, one can clearly see the images of numerous desktop computers running, and then suddenly all of them go out quickly followed by the camera going to black.

“We hit every target we wanted to - we prosecuted every one. Today we made science fiction, science fact”, said Coleman. He went on to say that the EMP device not only worked well but he also implied it worked better than expected. Coleman goes on to say, “When that computer went out, when we fired, it actually took out the cameras as well. We took out everything on that. It was fantastic.” Coleman further noted that this new technology would be marked as a new age for modern warfare.

James Dodd who serves as Boeing’s Vice President of Military Aircraft said the device was made with troops in mind. “We know this has some capabilities and some impact”, said Dodd. “So we’re really trying to engage the customer and see if we can find a way to get this filled and implemented sooner than later.”

Now that EMP technology is a reality and not just sci-fi, one has to fear is that it may become more of a danger to those who created it, rather than the enemy. Sure, an EMP weapon may prove useful against an enemy that are just as technologically advanced, but it wil be useless against an enemy that uses fighting tactics that are not affected by an EMP weapon, much like what we see today in Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON – A December 1998 Iranian military journal published an article titled “Electronics to Determine Fate of Future Wars,” and it detailed how an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack on the electronic infrastructure of the United States caused by the detonation of a nuclear bomb over the U.S. would be crippling.

“Once you confuse the enemy communication network you can also disrupt the work of the enemy command- and decision-making center,” the journal said. “Even worse today when you disable a country’s military high command through disruption of communications, you will, in effect, disrupt all the affairs of that country.

“If the world’s industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults then they will disintegrate within a few years,” the Iranian journal added. “American soldiers would not be able to find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot.”

The journal went a step further in telling how an EMP attack on the U.S. electric infrastructure from the detonation of a nuclear bomb high above the U.S. would severely cripple the U.S.

Editor’s note: Michael Maloof, author of “A Nation Forsaken,” will discuss the catastrophic threat posed by an EMP attack for three hours on George Noory’s “Coast-to-Coast” Thursday night, Jan. 3, the day the book is officially released nationwide.

The Iranians, who do not yet have nuclear weapons but are working on it, learned about the effects of electromagnetic pulse attacks from the history of some of the first nuclear weapons tests conducted first by the United States in 1945 and later by the Russians and Chinese, who also are expert on EMP.

Military experts say that Iran has been involved in conducting mid-air detonations which are critical to acquire the EMP effect. The tests were linked in with the launching of the Iranian Shahab III from the deck of a ship and then exploding the warhead in mid-air.

Experts say that there really is no other reason to test for such mid-air explosions except to develop an EMP weapon.

In March 2005, a staff member to the U.S. EMP Commission referred to research that had been done in determining which countries had the knowledge and possible intentions of undertaking an EMP attack.

Here’s the documentation of the danger: “A Nation Forsaken – EMP: The Escalating Threat of an American Catastrophe.”

“The survey found that the physics of EMP phenomenon and the military potential of EMP attack are widely understood in the international community, as reflected in official and unofficial writings and statements,” said Dr. Peter Vincent Pry before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.

He said that in addition to Iran, the following countries have knowledge about EMP and its effects following an attack: Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Egypt, Taiwan, Sweden, Cuba, India, Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea, China and Russia.

“Many foreign analysts – particularly in Iran, North Korea, China and Russia – view the United States as a potential aggressor that would be willing to use its entire panoply of weapons, including nuclear weapons, in a first strike,” Pry said. “They perceive the United States as having contingency plans to make a nuclear EMP attack, and as being willing to execute those plans under a broad range of circumstances.”

 

In early July 2008 testimony, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs James J. Shinn told the House Armed Services Committee that China, which is a threat to Taiwan, was working on exotic electromagnetic pulse weapons that can devastate electronic systems using a burst of energy similar to that produced by a nuclear blast.

“The consequence of EMP is that you destroy the communications network,” Shinn said. “And we are you know, and as the Chinese also know, heavily dependent on sophisticated communications, satellite communications, in the conduct of our forces. And so, whether it’s from an EMP or it’s some kind of a coordinated anti-satellite effort we could be in a very bad place if the Chinese enhanced their capability in this area.”

Now, the Chinese say they are developing EMP warheads on new missiles designed to hit U.S. aircraft carriers that enter into its sphere of influence in the South China Sea.

The U.S. was aware of the prospect for an electromagnetic pulse when it detonated a nuclear device on July 16, 1945, thanks to the expectation of an EMP by Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American nuclear physicist renowned for his development of the first nuclear reactor and development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, among other things. In 1938, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity.

According to reports at the time, all signal lines were shielded and, in many cases doubly shielded. However, many records still were lost. Similarly, a British nuclear test in 1953 resulted in instrumentation failure attributed to “radioflash,” the British term for EMP.

Then in July 1962, there were several high-altitude nuclear tests known as Operation Fishbowl. They significantly advanced the knowledge of EMP effects.

One such test, called Starfish Prime, was conducted at some 400 kilometers, or 250 miles, above the Pacific Ocean.

 

Starfish Prime test showed that the effects of a high-altitude nuclear detonation were much larger than first thought. The effects were so significant that the detonations caused electrical damage in Hawaii almost 900 miles from the site of the detonation.

It knocked out streetlights, set off burglar alarms and damaged the microwave link of the local telephone company, according to a report by Charles N. Vittitoe of Sandia National Laboratories in a June 1989 article titled “Did High-Altitude EMP Cause the Hawaiian Streetlight Incident?”

Starfish Prime then was followed in November 1962 by two other high-altitude tests – Bluegill Triple Prime and Kingfish – which provided enough EMP data for scientists to accurately identify the physical mechanisms producing the EMPs.

While the damage in Hawaii wasn’t very significant, scientists conclude that if that same explosion had occurred over the northern portion of the continental United States, damage would have been more significant due to the greater strength of the Earth’s magnetic field over the U.S. At higher latitudes, there also are other anomalies that intensify the effects of an EMP.

To understand the characteristics of an EMP, scientists have divided EMP pulses into three components: E1, E2 and E3.

E1 is developed from a nuclear explosion. It is considered to be the most intense. The pulse from a nuclear explosion creates a very intense electromagnetic field of electrically charged objects. This component is produced when gamma radiation from a nuclear detonation knocks electrons out of atoms in the upper atmosphere. These electrons then travel in a downward direction at an estimated speed of 90 percent of the speed of light of 186,000 miles/second.

Damage from the E1 component is caused by electrical breakdown voltages such as insulators being overwhelmed, thereby destroying electronic components in computers and communications equipment. The intensity and speed at which the pulse hits is too quick for ordinary lightning protecters to guard the equipment.

The interaction of the Earth’s magnetic field and the downward flow of electrons is what produces a very large, intense but brief electromagnetic pulse which hits within five nanoseconds.

According to experts, the process of the gamma rays knocking electrons out of the atoms at a high altitude causes this region of the atmosphere to become an electrical conductor due to ionization. The strength of the pulse will depend on intensity of the gamma rays produced by the weapon, the rapidity of the gamma ray burst from the weapon and the altitude at which the detonation occurs.

The E2 component is produced by weapon neutrons and is considered to be an intermediate time pulse. It lasts for up to a second after the beginning of the EMP. This E2 component has many similarities to EMPs produced from lightning and can easily be protected since lightning protection readily is available.

If an electronic component is protected only from an E2 pulse, an E1 pulse will destroy it.

E3 pulse is very slow, and has similarities to a geomagnetic storm caused by a solar flare. Like a geomagnetic storm, E3 can produce geomagnetically induced currents in long electrical conductors, which then can damage components such as power line transformers, according to a January 2010 report by Metatech Corporation titled “The Late-Time (E3) High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and its impact on the U.S. Power Grid.” This study was done for Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Above the 250-mile altitude, there will be no EMP effects on earth, since the gamma rays would disperse over the longer distance. Where there is no magnetic field, there would be virtually no EMP.

Up to 250 miles above the earth over Kansas, for example, scientists say that the effects of an EMP pulse would cover virtually the entire continental United States.

“Since it is a geometrical line-of-sight effect, a detonation at a height of a few hundred kilometers would encompass within its line of sight essentially the entire United States, with the effect growing weaker the larger the distance from the burst point,” according to Dr. Michael J. Frankel, who was executive director of the EMP Commission.

“For assessment purposes, a SCUD class missile launched from a nearby offshore location might reach a height of about 100 kilometers, sufficient to encompass within its effects footprint most of the eastern seaboard, with its great density of people and infrastructure,” he said.

In recognizing this threat, especially if such countries as North Korea and Iran acquired nuclear weapons, Congress under Title XIV of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, for Fiscal Year 2001 had established the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, also referred to as the EMP Commission.

The provision originally was sponsored by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md.

Bartlett, who recently lost his bid for re-election, has been a major proponent of preparing the nation against the prospect of an EMP attack.

An EMP attack is “an event we will not avoid,” he told National Public Radio in 2009. He also said that any remediation after the fact would cost upwards of $2 trillion.

“The more sophisticated we become, the more vulnerable we are,” Bartlett said. “There’s a huge concern about cyber-attacks on the grid. Well, a really robust nuclear EMP lay-down means microelectronics across the country would be shut down and you have no power…

“There’s one event that we will not avoid and that is a solar electromagnetic interference – solar storm,” he said. “If we have a big one like the one that occurred back in 1859, that would shut down the whole grid for quite a long while … It would cost us between $1 trillion and $2 trillion in damages, and the loss of life could be horrendous if in fact you were without electricity for months at a time.”

The 1859 solar storm to which Bartlett referred also is referred to as a solar super storm, or Carrington Event. It is said to have been the most powerful solar storm in recorded history.

To a number of critics of an anti-missile defense system, however, the EMP Commission was regarded as the “cornerstone of right-wing advocacy on national defense policy,” according to the leftist-leaning Institute for Policy Studies based in Washington, D.C.

In criticizing the provision, the IPS said that those advocates were “seeking to spread alarm about the purported threat of EMP attacks, which would involve the detonation of nuclear weapons in the upper atmosphere to generate a pulse that would knock out electronics-based infrastructure.”

The IPS said those people “have repeatedly used the findings of this commission to advocate increased funding for costly weapons programs such as missile defense and push alarmist notions that ‘rogue states’ like Iran and North Korea pose an existential threat to the United States.”

Bartlett first raised the alarm after he and former Congressman Curt Weldon, R-Pa., had met in 1999 with their Russian Duma, or parliament, counterparts about assaults by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during the Kosovo crisis occurring at the time.

The two had conferred with Vladimir Lukin, who at the time was chairman of the Duma’s International Affairs Committee and had been a high-level official of the then-Soviet national security apparatus under former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

Lukin told the congressmen that if Moscow really wanted to hurt the United States without fear of retaliation, Russia would launch a missile from a submarine, explode it high over the country and shut down its power grid and communications for six months.

The EMP Commission made its first report to Congress in July 2004 in which it stated that a nuclear-generated EMP is “one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society seriously at risk and might result in the defeat of our military forces.”

Its duties were to assess the nature of a high-altitude EMP threat to the U.S. from potentially hostile states or non-state actors – terrorists – that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles needed to conduct such an attack. The commission was to look at such a threat for the next 15 years.

It also was to determine the vulnerability of the U.S. military and especially the civilian infrastructure in terms of emergency preparedness. It also was to determine just how quickly the U.S. could repair and recover from damages on military and civilian systems from an EMP attack. In addition, the commission was to determine the feasibility and cost of hardening critical military and civilian systems against such an attack.

“EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences,” the executive report said. “EMP will cover the wide geographic region within line of sight to the nuclear weapons. It has the capability to produce a significant damage to critical infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of U.S. society, as well as to the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power.”

The executive report pointed out that the common element that can have such a devastating impact on the critical infrastructure is primarily electronics.

Just what constitutes the critical infrastructure facilities of the United States?

Section 1016 (e) of the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 defines them as “Systems and assets … so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”

These critical infrastructure facilities include electric power, oil refineries, water treatment plants, banking systems, pipelines, transportation systems, and communications. They all depend on electrical and electronic systems to operate. Yet, they can be very vulnerable to the pulse effects of a nuclear weapon or radio-frequency weapons.

“The primary avenues for catastrophic damage to the nation are through our electric power infrastructure and thence into our telecommunications, energy and other infrastructures,” the report said. “These in turn can seriously impact other important aspects of our nation’s life, including the financial system; means of getting food, water, and medical care to the citizenry; trade; and production of goods and services.”

The report pointed out that certain types of low-yield nuclear weapons can be used to generate “potentially catastrophic EMP effects” over a wide geographic area and “designs for variants of such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter-century.”

Here’s the documentation of the danger: “A Nation Forsaken – EMP: The Escalating Threat of an American Catastrophe.”

The concern to the commissioners in their preliminary 2004 report was that the U.S. had developed more than most other nations as a modern society heavily dependent on electronics, telecommunications, energy, information networks and financial and transportation systems that use modern technology.

“This asymmetry is a source of substantial economic, industrial, and societal advantages, but it creates vulnerabilities and critical interdependencies that are potentially disastrous to the United States,” the report added.

“The current vulnerability of our critical infrastructures can both invite and reward attack if not corrected,” the executive report said. “Correction is feasible and well within the nation’s means and resources to accomplish.”

It went on to say that an EMP attack had the capability to produce “significant damage to critical infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of U.S. society.”

The preliminary report made a strong point on the interdependence of elements of the infrastructure that could show a cascading effect if subject to an EMP attack.

“All of the critical functions of U.S. society and related infrastructures – electric power, telecommunications, energy, financial, transportation, emergency services, water, food, etc – have electronic devices embedded in most aspects of their systems, often providing critical controls,” the report said.

“Electric power has thus emerged as an essential service underlying U.S. society and all of its other critical infrastructures,” the report said. “Telecommunications has grown to a critical level but may not rise to the same level as electrical power in terms of risk to the nation’s survival.”

All other infrastructures and their critical functions, the report said, are dependent on the support of electric power and telecommunications, suggesting that emphasis be placed on protecting these two high-leverage systems.

At the time, the 2004 executive report recommended that the U.S. government spend up to $200 billion over 20 years to “harden” U.S. critical infrastructure.

Among other things, it also recommended that the U.S. ensure that it had “vigorous interdiction and interception efforts to thwart delivery” – namely, an anti-ballistic missile defense system – of a nuclear weapon.

At this point, however, none of the monies has been expended to harden the nation’s vulnerable electrical grid system. Nor has the Obama administration implemented a full anti-ballistic missile system, especially in the Northeast, leaving the most populated portion of the United States very vulnerable to any missile attack.

 

http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/understand-emp-threat-u-s-enemies-do/

WASHINGTON – America’s critical national infrastructures all are linked together – and to the power grid – and that opens the door for a variety of different scenarios in which an electromagnetic pulse event would create a catastrophe, analysts have warned.

The danger was recognized years ago already, when the 2008 report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack said the threat from “highly interlocked critical infrastructures may be greater than the sum of the vulnerability of its parts.”

In presenting what was the EMP commission’s final report to Congress in July 2008, William R. Graham, chairman of the commission, told the House Armed Services Committee that the risk of an EMP attack may be greater today than it was at the height of the Cold War.

He pointed out that not only can relatively low-yield nuclear weapons be used to create potentially catastrophic EMP effects over wide geographic areas, but the number of countries developing or already possessing such a capability is increasing.

He was referring to the fact that there has been an increased number of “adversaries” who are seeking nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and “asymmetric,” or unconventional, ways of overcoming U.S. conventional superiority using one or a small number of nuclear weapons.

In this context, he was implying Iran and North Korea.

But a nuclear exchange involving any of the nations such as India, Israel and Pakistan whose leaders have nuclear weaponry also would have serious electromagnetic pulse effects on the United States, its assets abroad and its allies.

Even more alarming, any number of regional terror organizations might acquire the weaponry to create such a catastrophe.

And there are multiple open doors for such problems, not just willful nuclear aggression, such as the natural results of electromagnetic solar storms that scientists from National Aerospace and Space Administration and the National Academy of Sciences expect during the 2012-2014 time frame.

Editor’s note: Michael Maloof, author of “A Nation Forsaken,” will discuss the catastrophic threat posed by an EMP attack for three hours on George Noory’s “Coast-to-Coast” Thursday night, Jan. 3, the day the book is officially released nationwide.

These scientists say that their models are showing an intensity that could at least equal magnetic solar storms of 1859 and 1958. Indeed, the sun already is showing signs of emerging from what is referred to as a solar minimum in which the solar flares on the surface of the sun are predominantly dormant. The flares have recently begun to show increased activity, a cycle that occurs every 11 years.

Graham’s focus, however, was on the effects of an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion.

Third World countries with existing nuclear weapons or those developing such a capability have been testing conventional weapons by exploding them in midflight to approximate the effects of an electromagnetic pulse. Such testing has been going on for years. Even the Russians and Chinese continue to talk about having such a capability and using it against the United States as a way to overwhelm its strategic weapons superiority.

Graham said that the electromagnetic fields produced by weapons deployed with the intent of producing an electromagnetic pulse have a high likelihood of damaging U.S. electrical power systems, electronics and information systems upon which the American society depends.

“Their effects on critical infrastructures could be sufficient to qualify as catastrophic to the nation,” Graham told the committee.

He pointed out that just one or a few high-altitude nuclear detonations could produce electromagnetic pulse effects that would potentially disrupt or damage electronic systems over much of the United States, virtually simultaneously, at a time determined by an adversary.

“EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences,” Graham said.

He pointed out that an electromagnetic pulse will cover a wide geographic area within line of sight to the nuclear weapon and produce significant damage to critical infrastructures that support “the fabric of U.S. society and the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power.”

Left unsaid in his testimony is that the “adversaries” know this vulnerability all too well, given the extent of reliance of the U.S. on infrastructures that have electronics and electrical power as their base.

In effect, an electromagnetic pulse attack becomes a weapon in the hands of a David against a Goliath.

“Our vulnerability is increasing daily as our use of and dependence on electronics continues to grow in both our civil and military sectors,” Graham said. “The impact of EMP is asymmetric in relation to the potential antagonists who are not as dependent on advanced electronic technologies” as the U.S. is.

In this connection, a Third World adversary would have the capability of attacking the U.S. with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse without having a high level of sophistication.

Graham said the adversary would not need a long-range ballistic missile to undertake an electromagnetic attack against the United States, since it could be launched from a freighter off the U.S. coast using a short-or medium-range missile. The nuclear warhead would be sent to a high altitude where it would explode, creating the electromagnetic pulse.

And it would not necessarily have to be a country which would or could launch such a missile off of America’s shores. It also could be a terrorist proxy that would undertake an attack without revealing the identity of the perpetrators.

While Graham was referring at the time of his testimony to Iran, a few other countries have similar existing nuclear capabilities and could use terrorist proxies to launch conventional attacks on the U.S. that would include exploding a high-altitude nuclear device using just a short-range ballistic missile.

Those two countries would be North Korea and Pakistan. Ironically, Iran as yet doesn’t have a nuclear weapon it could put on a missile and launch.

Pakistan in particular has created a number of what the U.S. would regard as terrorist groups to act as its proxy against India.

At least one, the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, attempted in May 2010 to explode a car bomb in New York’s Time Square. While the attempt was unsuccessful, evidence has shown that it was the TTP that trained the bomber, Faisal Shahzad.

Based on a compilation by the South Asia Intelligence Review, which provides weekly assessments and briefings on terrorism in the region, there are some 12 domestic and some 32 transnational terrorist and four extremist organizations in Pakistan. They are:

Domestic organizations

1. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
2. Lashkar-e-Omar (LeO)
3. Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP)
4. Tehreek-e-Jaferia Pakistan (TJP)
5. Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM)
6. Lashkar-eJhangvi (LeJ)
7. Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistan (SMP)
8. Jamaat-ul-Fuqra
9. Nadeem Commando
10. Popular Front for Armed Resistance
11. Muslim United Army
12. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Al-alami(HuMA)

Trans-national organizations

1. Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM)
2. Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA, presently known as Harkat-ul Mujahideen)
3. Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)
4. Jaish-e-Mohammad Mujahideen E-Tanzeem (JeM)
5. Harkat-ul Mujahideen (HuM, previously known as Harkat-ul-Ansar)
6. Al Badr
7. Jamait-ul-Mujahideen (JuM)
8. Lashkar-e-Jabbar (LeJ)
9. Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami(HUJI)
10. Muttahida Jehad Council (MJC)
11. Al Barq
12. Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen
13. Al Jehad
14. Jammu & Kashir National Liberation Army
15. People’s League
16. Muslim Janbaz Force
17. Kashmir Jehad Force
18. Al Jehad Force (combines Muslim Janbaz Force and Kashmir Jehad Force)
19. Al Umar Mujahideen
20. Mahaz-e-Azadi
21. Islami Jamaat-e-Tulba
22. Jammu & Kashmir Students Liberation Front
23. Ikhwan-ul-Mujahideen
24. Islamic Students League
25. Tehrik-e-Hurriat-e-Kashmir
26. Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqar Jafaria
27. Al Mustafa Liberation Fighters
28. Tehrik-e-Jehad-e-Islami
29. Muslim Mujahideen
30. Al Mujahid Force
31. Tehrik-e-Jehad
32. Islami Inquilabi Mahaz

Extremist groups

1. Al-Rashid Trust
2. Al-Akhtar Trust
3. Rabita Trust
4. Ummah Tamir-e-Nau

As the South Asia Intelligence Review pointed out, many of these terrorist organizations continue to operate with a high degree of freedom in and from Pakistan.

Given the increasingly rocky relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. however, Pakistani terrorist groups could act as a proxy for the Pakistani government to launch a similar attack.

As it now stands, Pakistan is also close to Iran, and with the spotlight on Iran, either Pakistan or North Korea could either use terrorist entities of its own creation, in the case of Pakistan, or hire out proxies.

A 2007 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, or CRS, has said that North Korea may have given arms to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers, which Washington regards as terrorist groups.

Given the on-again, off-again discussions to get North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program, Washington refused to remove Pyongyang from the terrorist list unless it agreed to allow inspectors into its nuclear sites. In October 2008, the Bush administration removed North Korea from the terrorist list.

Despite the removal from the list, North Korea could re-establish a relationship with terrorist groups if it suited its purposes. In fact, the removal now gives Pyongyang plausible deniability should it decide to enlist the help of proxies to carry out an electromagnetic pulse attack using a nuclear weapon mounted on one of its missiles.

Adding concern to all this is the launch by North Korea in recent weeks of a multi-stage ballistic missile that experts say could reach the western portion of the United States.

Critics might say that these countries with a nuclear weapon or with plans to develop one don’t have the capability of mounting a miniaturized nuclear warhead on a missile and shoot it.

However, that may not necessarily be the case.

In his testimony before the July 10, 2008, House Armed Services Committee, Graham revealed that United Nations investigators had found the design for a miniaturized advanced nuclear weapon that would fit on ballistic missiles “currently in the inventory of Iran, North Korea and other potentially hostile states” in the possession of Swiss businessmen.

The U.N. said that the Swiss businessmen were affiliated with the Pakistani nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, more commonly known as A.Q. Khan, and his nuclear smuggling network. The Swiss businessmen were identified as members of the Tinner family. They were brothers Marco and Urs, and their father, Friedrich.

Just a month prior to Graham’s testimony, a U.N. report had revealed that the Khan international smuggling ring that had sold nuclear bomb-related parts to Iran, Libya and North Korea also had acquired blueprints to miniaturize an advanced nuclear weapon. The U.N. report suggested that the plans also were secretly shared with a number of countries and possibly with unidentified rogue groups.

In investigating the smuggling of A.Q. Khan’s operations, the U.N. uncovered computer contents said to include more than 1,000 gigabytes of seized data that Swiss police had found on computers of Swiss businessmen in 2006. Although unconfirmed, U.S. intelligence had directed Swiss authorities to the Tinner family members.

The drawings found on their heavily encrypted computers provided details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on the type of ballistic missiles used by Iran and what the report said were more than a dozen other developing countries.

The U.N. report was authored by David Albright, who is a prominent nuclear weapons expert with the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security and very knowledgeable of the A.Q. Khan network.

“These advanced nuclear weapons designs may have long ago been sold off to some of the most treacherous regimes in the world,” Albright’s U.N. report said. “To many of these countries, it’s all about size and weight,” Albright said, adding that the countries need to be able to fit the nuclear device on the missiles in their possession.

“These would have [been] ideal for two of Khan’s other major customers, Iran and North Korea,” Albright said. “They both faced struggles in building a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop their ballistic missiles, and these designs were for a warhead that would fit.”

At the time, Albright said that he could not be certain that the design for miniaturizing a nuclear weapon to fit on the ballistic missiles of Iran and North Korea actually had been delivered.

However, the tenor of testimony by Graham of the EMP commission – who had access to the nation’s highest level of security clearances to prepare the commission report – strongly suggested that Iran and North Korea may have acquired those plans from Khan’s smuggling network.

“This fact suggests that other advanced nuclear weapon designs may already be in the possession of hostile states and of states that sponsor terrorism,” Graham said. “This fact also suggests that it would be a mistake to judge the status and sophistication of rogue nuclear weapon programs, based solely on their indigenous national capabilities, since outside assistance may well have been provided.”

Here’s the documentation of the danger: “A Nation Forsaken – EMP: The Escalating Threat of an American Catastrophe.”

The notion of a weapon exploding and crippling everything electronic for miles around doesn't just live in old black and white military film for Faisel Kaleem.

For the Florida International University engineering professor, the threat is real.

“Somebody comes over to your country and destroys your infrastructure without even bombing,” he said.

Kaleem is referring to an event called an “electromagnetic pulse attack,” which he and others warn could wreak havoc on entire regions for long periods of time. It’s called EMP for short, and it’s a release of energy, an explosion in the sky, that’s so strong everything electronic in its path would burn up.

The giant globes in downtown Miami that help run the Internet for South America would be out of commission. So would phones, computers, and all of the electric components in your car.

Information stored electronically, like bank and retirement accounts, would vanish.

EMP may not be widely known by the masses.

But Hollywood is familiar with it. One was featured in “The Matrix,” and in “Ocean’s Eleven” an EMP paralyzed Sin City, knocking out power to the famous Las Vegas Strip.

Chris Petrovich, an urban survivalist who is prepared for anything, compares the aftermath of an EMP attack to that of South Florida’s infamous hurricane.

“Ask the people who were in Homestead after Hurricane Andrew when everything was off, except that this time there wouldn’t be any generators, there wouldn’t be any radios,” Petrovich said.

The Northeast blackout of 2003 brought entire cities to a standstill, leaving some 50 million people in the U.S. and Canada without power.

And in 1962 the U.S. government’s “Star Prime” experiment detonated a powerful bomb 240 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Electronics in Hawaii, 800 miles away, went haywire.

A government report on EMP covers everything from telecommunications and finance failures to the effects on the nation’s food and water supply.

The report spells out a worst-case scenario with results likely to be catastrophic, and it also says that many people might ultimately die in such a disaster for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life.

Petrovich, the survivalist, envisions chaos.

“By the time the sun started to go down and people had no information, had no idea what was going on, people would start to get pretty scared,” he said.

If an EMP were to happen, Kaleem said, the damage would be widespread.

“Now we are talking about destruction of infrastructure, our financial institutions, our food supply chain, communication systems, in other words we are talking about the destruction of (the) modern U.S.,” he said.

An item called the Shield Act has been introduced in Washington. The legislation would better protect the national electric grid as well as other critical infrastructure, but it never made it out of committee.