August
19, 2003, 9:00 a.m. Al
Qaeda Done It?
Terrorists claim credit for the 2003 Blackout.
ast fall some of my associates and I undertook a Red Cell terrorist exercise;
that is, we assumed the role of the enemy and discussed ways they might
bring the war to the United States. We devised a campaign plan comprised
of a series of attacks designed to spread the maximum amount of chaos
at the minimum cost, and taking into account limited personnel and a heightened
security environment. The opening salvo was to mount a series of attacks
on the utility lines near Buffalo, N.Y., a critical nexus in the electrical
grid, to start a chain reaction that would ultimately cause blackout conditions
in New York City. The attack would come on a hot summer day just prior
to rush hour. The combination of bottled-up commuters, intense heat, and
darkness would set the stage for a night of 1977-style looting and chaos.
So when I learned about the magnitude of the power outage on Thursday
afternoon I flashed back to our Red Cell exercise and feared the worst.
In our scheme the blackout was only the first phase of the attack, which
created the conditions for the follow-on strikes later. (I'll leave out
the details for obvious reasons — no need to give the bad guys ideas.)
Yet it soon became
clear that Thursday's blackout was not an obvious act of terrorism —
no detonated transmission lines, no burning power plants, no apparent
exploitation of the crisis — but neither was it clear what caused
it. It was only a matter of time before al Qaeda sought to exploit the
ambiguity and take credit, which they did Monday in the London daily Al-Quds
al-Arabi and on various radical
websites. The terrorists claim that a group called the Abu Hafs al-Misri
Brigades hit two electrical generators on the East Coast, inflicting $10
billion in economic losses for the mere cost of $7,000. They chose not
to explain how they accomplished the attack, "in case the mujahids
might need to use the same innovative method again soon." But they
declared a significant victory. "The Americans lived one black day
that they will never forget. The lived a day of terror, alarm, and fear…Cities
endured a state of chaos and tumult. There was looting and theft. Cities
were robbed just as Baghdad, the capital of the Caliphs, was robbed."
(The reference is apparently to the Abbasid Caliphate, destroyed in Baghdad
in 1258 by the Mongols, a comparison al Qaeda has made before.) Nevertheless
this was not the "big one" they keep promising — "the
gift of the Shaykh of the Mujahids, Osama bin Ladin, is on its way to
the White House.…when and where will it come?? Wait to see the answer!!"
Claiming credit for
what appears to have been the product of a fluke equipment failure in
Ohio is a sensible move for al Qaeda. The communiqué is a psyop,
aimed at the United States to some extent, but more importantly, at the
faithful abroad. Al Qaeda needs to show that it is still relevant and
can mount significant attacks on the Crusaders, and claiming credit for
the largest power outage in U.S. history is as good a way to demonstrate
puissance as any. The claim can be counted on to resonate with Iraqis
who have been missing their own electricity recently, a pointless parallel
the U.S. media picked up on long before the al Qaeda announcement. Iraq
is the center of al Qaeda's attentions these days, the place in the world
where it is most feasible to mount attacks against Western military forces,
and where the struggle for hearts and minds is most pronounced. The announcement
is an easy way to attempt to sow doubt and fear in this country as well,
especially with the promise of greater attacks in the future, a threat
al Qaeda has consistently made for more than a year and a half.
But suppose terrorists
had managed to bring down the power grid — what were the effects?
It was not a day of terror, alarm, and fear, as al Qaeda claimed. New
Yorkers dealt with the outage with a degree of aplomb. Some journalists
offered stranded commuters the opportunity to lose their tempers on national
TV, but I didn't see anyone seriously complaining. The most critical people
seemed to be politicians and newsmen seeking to render blame or push policy
agendas. The contrast with the expected chaos was notable — though
as The Daily Show's Jon Stewart observed, New Yorkers should not
get a gold star simply for resisting the urge to kill each other during
a brief power outage. In 1977, there were 4,000 arrests in New York for
looting and other crimes during the blackout. This time there were just
over three hundred arrests, a below average rate for a summer night. There
were only six break-ins that evening in Detroit, despite media hype to
the contrary. The most serious looting was reported in Ottawa, and
even it was only serious by Canadian standards, which is to say a few
places were robbed. I was driving through New Jersey just across the George
Washington Bridge when the power went out, and experienced spontaneous
order that would warm an anarchist's heart. There were no signs of panic,
drivers were taking turns at intersections, and traffic was flowing fairly
smoothly. Even had the outage been the achievement of the Abu Hafs al-Misri
Brigades (not to digress, but why are these platoon-sized terror subgroups
always called "brigades"?), it did not result in anything like
the harm they claimed in the announcement. What it shows us is that the
terrorists have failed at their most basic objective, namely to terrorize.
This is not a country on a knife-edge of tension, ready to dissolve at
the first disruption of daily life. If there is a lesson al Qaeda can
draw from this event, it is that they will have to do something a lot
more spectacular than even this massive power outage to get the country's
attention. 9/11 is a hard act to follow.
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ast fall some of my associates and I undertook a Red Cell terrorist exercise;
that is, we assumed the role of the enemy and discussed ways they might
bring the war to the United States. We devised a campaign plan comprised
of a series of attacks designed to spread the maximum amount of chaos
at the minimum cost, and taking into account limited personnel and a heightened
security environment. The opening salvo was to mount a series of attacks
on the utility lines near Buffalo, N.Y., a critical nexus in the electrical
grid, to start a chain reaction that would ultimately cause blackout conditions
in New York City. The attack would come on a hot summer day just prior
to rush hour. The combination of bottled-up commuters, intense heat, and
darkness would set the stage for a night of 1977-style looting and chaos.
So when I learned about the magnitude of the power outage on Thursday
afternoon I flashed back to our Red Cell exercise and feared the worst.
In our scheme the blackout was only the first phase of the attack, which
created the conditions for the follow-on strikes later. (I'll leave out
the details for obvious reasons — no need to give the bad guys ideas.)
