Newsmax readers won't be surprised to learn that The Washington Post is doing its best to aid and abet the defeat of Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, Md., because he is a true hero for conservatives and continues to lead the fight on important national security matters.
The Post's blatant bias was on full display in a scurrilous and misleading Aug. 17, 2012, article headlined, "The Survivalist Roscoe Bartlett prepares for a threatened future."
The article ridiculed his work for limited civil defense issues and efforts to defend the nation against new weaponry.
Today, Rep. Bartlett is in a tough re-election battle. Maryland and the nation cannot afford to lose an American hero like Roscoe Bartlett from the ranks of Congress.
Among the complaints of liberals is that Bartlett has recently introduced H. Res. 762, a bill to promote community-based civil defense. The bill would also encourage distributed generation of 20 percent of electricity needs by individuals, organizations, and local communities.
Protection of the electrical grid — especially post 9/11 — should be a priority for the nation.
And the Post barely mentioned that Bartlett was motivated to introduce the bill because of five separate high impact low frequency (HILF) events, including natural ones, that could cause extended outages of our electric grid, potentially continent wide.
These events include naturally-occurring electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from solar geomagnetic storms, nuclear EMP, cyberattacks, physical attacks, and pandemics.
Omitted from the Post's article were favorable comments about the bill and Bartlett's leadership in the House to protect the grid by an impressive group of experts who joined him at a news conference to announce its introduction. Also MIA from the Post story was support for the bill by the Reserve Officers Association (ROA) and the Reserve Enlisted Association.
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| Rep. Roscoe Bartlett |
In 1995 Bartlett, who is a scientist, engineer, and inventor with 20 patents, was one of the few members of Congress who understood, and who wanted to educate policymakers and the public, the threat from EMPs. A nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude will generate an EMP, like a superenergetic radio wave, that would damage electronics on the ground within line of sight and cause the collapse of the critical infrastructures — electric power, communications, transportation, business and finance, food and water — that sustain modern civilization and the lives of 300 million Americans.
The sun can also generate an EMP catastrophe on earth by causing a great geomagnetic storm that could destroy the high voltage transformers on electric grids similar to the high-altitude detonation of a powerful nuclear weapon.
Between 1995 and 1999, Bartlett held a series of congressional hearings on the EMP threat, including the first unclassified hearings ever held on this subject. The hearings proved that in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, America's defense and intelligence communities stopped paying attention to EMP threats.
Russia was considered the only nation sophisticated enough to understand and make an EMP attack. And Russia was no longer considered a threat.
But the Russians don’t think the threat of an EMP attack on the U.S. has abated.
In the late ’90s, during the U.S.-backed and NATO-led bombing campaign of Serbia, Russians leaders who were backing Serbia, threw an EMP threat in the face of U.S. congressional delegation.
Vladimir Lukin, former ambassador to the United States and a Duma member, warned that if Russia really wanted to hurt the United States in retaliation for NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, Russia could fire a submarine-launched ballistic missile and detonate a single nuclear warhead at high altitude over the United States.
The resulting electromagnetic pulse would massively disrupt communications and computer systems, effectively shutting down the U.S economy. Alexander Shabonov, another Duma member, added that if one missile wouldn't do the job, the Russians had more on hand.
After hearing this EMP threat, Rep. Bartlett introduced a bill signed into law by President George W. Bush that established the Congressional EMP Commission in 2001. When the Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, they re-authorized the EMP Commission that continued its work until 2008.
The Congressional EMP Commission in a report issued in 2004 and updated in 2008 warned that terrorists, rogue states, and nations like China and Russia could make a catastrophic EMP attack on the United States.
In fact, the report found that many of these actors are actively planning to conduct an EMP attack on America.
For example, the EMP Commission found that Iranian military writings openly describe making an EMP attack on the United States to eliminate us a superpower.
Iran has actually practiced missile launches, including from a vessel at sea, so it could launch an attack off the U.S. coast. The EMP Commission also made low cost recommendations for protecting U.S. critical infrastructures and the lives of the American people from an EMP attack.
Subsequent major studies by the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Energy, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission independently confirm that nuclear and natural EMP from the sun poses an existential threat to American civilization.
Recently, the Obama administration's Strategic National Risk Assessment included EMP as among the greatest threats against which the United States must prepare.
Thanks to Bartlett's work, there is an official U.S. government consensus on the EMP threat. R. James Woolsey, director of the CIA under President Bill Clinton, calls Bartlett an authentic American hero for leading the nation toward safety from an EMP catastrophe. Woolsey likens Bartlett to the far-sighted Rep. Carl Vinson, who in the 1930s persuaded a reluctant U.S. Navy to build aircraft carriers, which became the means for U.S. victory in World War II, and in wars today.
Bud McFarlane says that Bartlett is "virtually alone in Congress in understanding the complex family of natural and man-made risks. He has made it his business to focus on what could go horribly wrong and to propose measures designed to prevent them or to prepare for and cope with the results.”
What has been Bartlett's reward for being right about EMP?
Maryland Democrats have gerrymandered Bartlett's district in an effort to unseat him and elect a liberal Democrat, a person who was a financial “bundler” for Hillary Clinton.
Conservatives across America need to rally now to return Congressman Bartlett as a member of the 113th Congress.
Bartlett's response?
He has introduced H. Res. 762, a bill to promote community-based civil defense and to encourage small government solutions to the EMP threat.
Bartlett, a true Cincinnatus, is not worried about losing his seat, and will be happy to return to his farm. But the nation cannot afford to lose from the ranks of Congress men such as Roscoe Bartlett.
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He formerly was with the CIA, the House Armed Services Committee, and the EMP Commission.
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