The National Security Action Summit was held in West Columbia on Saturday, March 14. The event was sponsored by Breitbart News, The Center for Security Policy and the High Frontier. Over 250 people attended from as far away as Washington, D.C. and Florida. The numerous speakers included dignitaries such as Ambassador John Bolton, Admiral “Ace” Lyons, former SCGOP Chairman Van Hipp, Ambassador Henry Cooper, and the Honorable Senators Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz. LTG William “Jerry” Boykin spoke via Skype. Recent Senatorial candidate Richard Cash opened with a prayer acknowledging America’s turning away from God and asking Him to protect America.
Topics included the decline of the military, the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid, threats from radical Islam and shariah law, immigration and border security. There was much valuable material in the almost 9-hour conference, which obviously cannot all be covered here, but the event can be found on Youtube by searching for “SC Summit Live.”
Ambassador Bolton opened by saying that “The greatest threat to our national security sits in the Oval Office.” He discussed the current deal the Obama administration is trying to make with Iran, which they have been trying for six years. He said “this deal with Iran will be an unprecedented act of surrender...It’s an act of appeasement that will legitimize this regime of terrorists, that seized power in 1979 and have financed terrorists all around the world, more than any other state sponsor since then. And it will legitimize their nuclear weapons program.” He documented how Iran can’t be trusted. He said, “There really is no deal I would trust Iran with. This is a regime determined to have nuclear weapons and this deal will give it to them...Israel will be the principal target of Iranian nuclear weapons once they get them...But Israel is not the only country threatened, let’s be clear, we are threatened too. Our infrastructure, our borders are porous...they don’t need ballistic missiles...
“When the word of the President of the U.S. doesn’t mean anything, we’re in trouble as a country...It tells you a lot about Barack Obama that his preferred way to get this awful deal with Iran approved is not to go to the American Congress but to go to the U.N. Security Council...The U.N. does not have authority superior to the U.S. Constitution...
“So that in this volatile area in a short period of time you can have a half-dozen nuclear weapon states. I used to think the nuclear arms race would not begin until Iran perhaps actually detonated a nuclear weapon. But Barack Obama, by this negotiation, which has made so clear to all of our friends in the region, that he’s going to allow Iran a free path to nuclear weapons, has already precipitated the nuclear arms race. So that the danger we hoped to avoid is now imminent. And we can attribute it entirely to President Obama...The next two years can’t pass swiftly enough.”
Admiral Lyons, who served 36 years in the Navy, followed and said that “I have to tell you. Never in my lifetime, did I think I would be witness to this great country being taken down, and withdrawn from our world leadership role, by our own administration. Incredible ...You have to ask yourself: If you believe in America’s greatness and exceptionalism, why would you fundamentally want to change it? It makes no sense.”
Admiral Lyons said that Obama required the military to absorb 50% of the sequestration cuts, though the military was only 20% of the budget. Consequently, we will have the smallest army since before WWII. Neither the Army or Air Force is sure they could prevail in a major regional war. “Only 50% of our squadrons and bombers are combat-ready. Individual squadron readiness is at 50-60% when it should be at 85-90%.” He said if we lose a few more ships, we’ll be a regional power. “We now have roughly 270 ships...that’s about as many ships as I had under my command in the Pacific fleet...we could go down as low as 240 ships. This is unbelievable. And the Marine Corps is in the same situation...We really have a national security crisis...”
“Now compounding the problem is the social engineering that has been imposed on our military forces. The removal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Moving women into combat roles. This has all had an impact on our readiness. It has affected morale, unit integrity and cohesiveness, and most importantly, the will to win...
“This administration has great difficulty identifying the enemy. It’s not violent extremists, it’s not radical Islam. Erdogan, when he was prime minister of Turkey, said it best: ‘Islam is Islam. There are no modifiers. Democracy is the train we ride to achieve our ultimate objective.’ Now, Islam hasn’t been reformed in over 1300 years. You know, there are 109 verses in the Koran that sanction violence...
“So here we have a courageous president of Egypt, President al-Sisi, on New Years Day, giving a speech to the leading Sunni clerics, and charging them with the reformation of Islam. Monumental declaration!...But instead, you would have thought such a statement would have been embraced by this administration and our allies. It didn’t even get the tip of a hat. So that tells you where their sympathies lie.”
Admiral Lyons said that we have been at war with Iran for over 35 years. “So here we have this administration trying to negotiate an agreement with the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorists. Does this make sense?” He said that all the leading scientists have concluded that if they get nuclear weapons, deterrents will not work. He said that their nuclear weapon facility will have to be destroyed.
Admiral Lyons reported on an incredible story last year in the New York Times, which got little attention and was quickly removed. Michael Ledeen reported that he was told by Ambassador Michael G. Miller that, after Obama won the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, he negotiated through a back channel with the Iranians. Obama told them not to sign an agreement with President Bush, because he would give them a better deal when he became President. That back channel was Ambassador Miller.
Concluding, Admiral Lyons said, “The war in Libya never had to happen. Gaddafi was ready to abdicate. There was no humanitarian crisis. What we did in Libya was switch sides. We armed the Al Qaeda militia, and the Muslim Brotherhood militia...and it’s those same militia that took down our special mission compound and caused the loss of four brave Americans. And of course, the pathological liar, Hillary, then went on to try and spread false information.
“Now, I’ve got to tell you, while this great country is being taken down, we have a Constitutional crisis. And what I’d ask you to do, is you recognize we have to change the Republican leadership in the House and Senate!
Peter Huessy further elaborated on the decline of the military with some shocking statistics on our aging military equipment. He cited the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who said that there are more terrorist groups active today and more state-sponsors than ever before. He concluded by pointing out that: fraud from earned income tax credit and child tax credit comes to $20 billion annually; the majority of these credits are claimed by illegal aliens; and these returns are filed by the tens of thousands from one post office box, at various places like Atlanta and Houston. All of this fraud could be stopped and the money used to rebuild the military.
After documentation of our national security crisis and military decline, the discussion turned to the vulnerability of our electrical grid from threats such as Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). Dr. Peter Pry, a CIA analyst for over 20 years, said that such threats are not just theoretical, but imminent. Pry said such threats have been occurring over the past two years and that “it is the greatest threat to the U.S. and to Western civilization.” Yet Washington has done little about it. A natural cause of EMP can come from solar flares, the result of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from the sun, when it strikes the magnetosphere and causes a solar storm. Your body won’t even notice it, but electronics are affected. A geomagnetic superstorm occurred in 1859, known as the Carrington Event, which was so severe that if it occurred today it would collapse power grids and infrastructure worldwide. Another less powerful storm occurred in 1921, the Railroad storm, which would have similar results if repeated today.
This phenomenon can be replicated in man-made attacks, e.g. with nuclear weapons. It must explode at a minimum altitude of 30 km, which could be achieved with a mere weather balloon. At 200 km it would impact the entire U.S., yet no one would probably notice, except for the inactivation of electronics and power blackouts. We only have a 30-day food supply in America. Food will start to spoil in 72 hours with no electricity, water supplies disrupted, vehicles won’t start, etc. The Congressional EMP Commission, on which Pry served, estimated that in a one-year nationwide blackout, 9 of 10 Americans could die from starvation, disease and societal collapse. Pry said, “And that is why this is the biggest threat, the greatest threat. The threat from nature is inevitable. Sooner or later we will experience a Carrington-class geomagnetic storm. In fact, one narrowly missed us back in 2012. A CME, a Carrington-class CME, crossed the path of the earth by three days, it missed us by three days back in July 2012. NASA put out a report in July of last year, 2014, that estimated the likelihood of a geomagnetic superstorm is 12% per decade., which means that it is virtually certain that within our lifetimes or that of our children, we will experience a catastrophe of this sort. In 2013 North Korea practiced a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S.”
During this event, North Korea orbited an EMP satellite over the eastern U.S. for ten days. The optimum path test was from the south, where we are vulnerable because there are no early warning defenses from that direction. Seventy-five percent of the nation’s electricity is produced by the electrical grid in the eastern U.S. Pry said, “Even just taking down the eastern grid, would basically destroy us as a society.” On the day of the optimum position of this satellite, there was a highly-professional attack by snipers on an electrical substation in San Jose.
Iran has already practiced delivering such a weapon on a SCUD missile. A few months later, a North Korean freighter was caught smuggling unarmed nuclear missiles back through the Panama Canal, having evidently practiced such a delivery off the American coast.
There are more low-tech methods as well: in November 2013 a Mexican drug cartel took down the electrical power for a half-million people; on June 9, 2014 terrorists used explosives to take down the grid for the entire country of Yemen; and on January 25, 2015 terrorists took down the power for 80% of Pakistan. Dr. Pry thinks these events are merely practice by the terrorists for a larger event, such as how the Nazis experimented with the Blitzkrieg before WWII.
Cyber attacks on the grid can also be used. Dr. Pry calls this a “blackout war” using any means. Admiral Mike Rogers of the NSA said in November of 2014 that China and other countries could probably blackout the US electrical grid for 18 months using cyber warfare alone.
The good news is that we know how to protect the grid and it isn’t expensive. The EMP Commission estimated this would cost about $2 billion, or the amount we give Pakistan each year. Yet Congress and the President won’t do it. He said this is because it highlights their failures with North Korea and Iran, because the main reason they want a nuclear weapon is because it can be used to threaten an EMP attack.
Ambassador Henry Cooper, Chairman of High Frontier, stated that nuclear reactors supply 60% of the power in S.C., and 20% of the nation’s power supply. They have to be shut down in an EMP event, and can’t be restarted without diesel fuel to power generators. He feels that if these could be protected, it would help recover from such an attack.
Ambassador Cooper thinks an attack will consist of a combination of methods, not simply one. Regarding the previously mentioned substation attack, he quoted the Federal Energy Regulatory Chairman who said that if only nine critical substations of the nation’s 55,000 total were brought down, the nation would lose power for 18 months. NSA Director Rogers said that he expects a catastrophic cyber attack on the nation’s power grid within a decade. He cited examples of tests of EMP attacks such as the Starfish test in 1962 which turned out the lights in Hawaii from 900 miles away, and killed satellites
The solution is not that difficult, which is to protect the national grid from electromagnetic emissions, however the utilities don’t want the government telling them what to do and won’t pay for it themselves. Most of the nuclear reactors are in the eastern U.S.
Ambassador Cooper thinks it’s especially critical that nuclear reactors are protected. Radiation equal to 100 Fukushima disasters could be carried across America by the wind. Since the solution is not that expensive, citizens should demand that the government pass legislation requiring protection. Costs would be passed on to the consumer and not hurt the utility companies, so they would be responsive to citizens’ demands.
Dr. George Baker said that LTOs, or Long-Term Outages of the power grid on a large scale that could last for months or years. He said the power grid is more vulnerable than telecommunications. The challenges of a “Black Start,” i.e. bringing a plant back to operation after such an event, are: avoiding social unrest; avoiding long-term cascading failure; and avoiding lock-up of the plant machinery. The black start plants are those crucial to bringing back the electrical infrastructure. The trend has been to use gas plants, but they may be vulnerable to gas supplies. Nuclear plants, however, shut down to avoid the meltdown of the reactor core and can be restarted. But they have to be immediately isolated from the grid to avoid overload. One plant in Ohio is designed for black start in that it shuts down initially but has onsite resources to restart. Also, new modular reactor technology looks promising to avoid many of the above problems. More power is generated by nuclear in S.C. than any other area in the country, and the first new reactor construction in 30 years is here, giving us the opportunity to consider EMP concerns.
Regarding Islamic terrorism, Dr. Frank Gaffney said that a global Islamic supremacist movement is using jihad to impose shariah law. Completely by accident, the FBI stumbled upon the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) when they arrested a Muslim and found over 80 banker boxes of documents hidden in his apartment in a suburb of Washington, D.C. The MB has been in America for 50 years. Millions of Muslims don’t practice shariah law and are considered apostates by clerics. Terror is the technique used by Mohammed and now modern Muslim authorities to achieve submission.
Unfortunately, the government is now infiltrated with Muslims. Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s aide, has close ties to the MB. Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) is on the House Intelligence Committee despite his extensive ties to the MB. He also cited Grover Norquist, famous for his anti-tax efforts, as being associated with Muslims.
Dr. Gaffney said we have to adopt a strategy for victory. He said we need legislation such as Rep. Michelle Bachman introduced to classify the MB as a terrorist organization. He also said that we have to stop the advance of shariah law in U.S. courts or to adjudicate disputes.
LTC Jerry Boykin spoke briefly by Skype and stated that Islam “is an evil that will destroy us if we allow it to.” Europe said it can never happen here but now there are shariah courts in Britain. Boykin said that neither Bush nor Obama would tell Americans who the real enemy is. He said Muslims view the situation as if the jihadists are winning. He said that Europe will certainly be Muslim by the middle of this century.
Clare Lopez is a former CIA employee who pointed out that the 20th century was an aberration in the history of jihad. She said that the strength of the West kept the lid on. After the first two World Wars and then Cold War, now she said “the lid has come off.” The West, and America in particular, has receded because we “lost the appreciation of what we brought to the world.” This has resulted in a resurgence of the global jihadist movement. She said there have been 1300 years of constant strife between the Shiites and Sunnis which is now increasing because of our withdrawal from the Middle East. By our very existence, we blocked Islam’s objective of global shariah law. She cited public documents where jihadists revealed their plan to overthrow secular leaders and replace them with radicals.
She said part of the reason America is losing its power is because of the penetration of the MB. She said that Obama’s policy of dealing with Islam is to deny, collaborate and capitulate. He pretends that Islamic jihad doesn’t exist. She cited as an example when the Egyptian president Mubarak said in 2009 that “there’s going to be a new relationship with the U.S.” So now we’re working with the Iranians as partners for stabilization in the Middle East.
John Guandola, former FBI Special Agent and counterterrorism expert, said that the MB is stronger in the U.S. than in some Muslim countries and is an insurgency. He said there are 2100 mosques in America, and many MB organizations in America that support jihad. He ended with the solution being at the local level, getting your local sheriffs and pastors educated. He said the problem is “we’re hearing silence despite the fact that our brothers and sisters in Christ are being slaughtered by the tens of thousands across the globe. And that’s appalling...we need to start Sunday morning at the pulpit, in my opinion.”
Native South Carolinian Van Hipp spoke and discussed his new book “The New Terrorism: How to Fight It and Defeat It.” Hipp said that 90% of intelligence is obtained by open source. He related how he was the first to discover that Iran was collaborating with North Korea through documents he found in a library. Hipp feels that America is most unprepared for cyber warfare and that we need 20-30,000 computer security experts to thwart any future attacks.
Hipp cited Edward Gibbon on the ancient Athenians’ demise when their first priority was comfort, and to take from, not give to society. He closed by emphasizing that “when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free. Will history one day say the same for us?...Now is the time for America to come together again, and do whatever it takes to keep America safe, because make no mistake, this country is the last best hope for freedom for mankind.”
Senator Ted Cruz spoke and said that radical Islamic terrorism is the biggest threat to America today, and that Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism with no reason to change. He cited examples from around the globe. He said that “Obama’s approach to Iran has been a profound failure,” thinking they could solve the problem through negotiation, while even EU officials have questioned his approach. Iran has refused to offer even one concession.
Regarding the White House’s recent ill treatment and attacks on Netanyahu, Sen. Cruz detailed how Obama is spending taxpayer dollars trying to unseat him. Cruz asked, “what does it say about the President of the U.S., when he’s more concerned about undermining and attacking the Prime Minister of Israel, than he is standing up to the mortal threat a nuclear Iran poses?”
Sen. Cruz said that the next President must undo the actions of Obama, who has repeatedly demonstrated “his willingness to circumvent Congress, to circumvent Federal law, to circumvent the Constitution.” He said “President Obama may indeed have a pen and a phone, but the next President is going to have an eraser.”
Sen. Cruz said that, because of Obama’s appeasement and capitulation, the only tool available to the next President may be a military action against Iran. He has introduced legislation to re-impose sanctions against Iran, with a clear path of how to lift them, by disassembling their nuclear program, etc. He said the next President must undo the damage done by Obama.
The conference was rounded out by a speech by Sen. Rick Santorum, who basically reiterated what previous speakers had said. He made a very interesting point that the government should be shut down and hearings be held over the unconstitutional actions of Obama. He pointed out how dangerous this is because he has established illegal precedents for future Presidents.
The symposium was extremely informative and well-documented. Unfortunately, it did not paint a pleasant picture for the future of America. It should be abundantly clear by now to any Christian that America is being punished by God with these wicked, treasonous politicians. Modern, politically-correct Christianity can’t see the threat of radical Islam. The world situation has been so destabilized that it now seems impossible for America to return to our former position of global leadership. Certainly this did not happen by accident. If America does not repent from our sins, we should not expect the situation to improve. The only hope is to heed the admonition of II Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”