Mr. Roy. We did not look at EMP in much detail, but my general understanding is the wave front that is caused by the EMP is different from that long, slow wave from a solar disturbance.

Chairman GLENN. Back to our equipment and whether we have adequate spares for just a moment. Do we have the domestic manufacturing base for transformers and for the consumables-the ceramics and the circuit breakers-to deal with the unexpected demand which terrorist attacks or natural disasters could bring on?

Mr. CRANE. At the moment we do for most of it. Some of the equipment for instance, the porcelain insulators-are almost entirely imported. But we still can make the big transformers here. Only about 20 percent of the total electrical equipment is imported at this point.

Chairman GLENN. Do the companies or does the Government stockpile critical items such as the insulators?

Mr. CRANE. The Government certainly does not. Normally a utility will maintain sufficient spares for routine problems that it knows it will need. A few companies maintain spares for the large transformers, but not very many. They hope to be able to borrow it from somebody else. They maintain a spare for maintenance purposes. You have to shut a transformer down from time to time for maintenance, and you need a spare for that.

Chairman GLENN. Does anyone keep an inventory of what is needed in that area and have at least a general feel for whether there is an adequate supply of that particular piece of equipment in the industry? I understand that every company cannot stockpile everything for every possible contingency. But where you are talking about big natural disasters or terrorist attacks that might occur, there should be enough major replacement transformers and particular equipment available in the industry so that within a reasonable time you could ship it back and forth and one company can borrow from another. Does anyone keep an inventory of the key items? Does NERC do that, or do the companies do that?

Mr. CRANE. NERC has initiated an inventory of the key equipment. We have not seen that. We understand they have a number of different entries on it.

Chairman GLENN. For the industry as a whole?

Mr. CRANE. That is right, so that they can share in case of a big emergency. But it is difficult for us to tell how easy it is to get a particular piece of equipment, even if it is listed on the inventory, because it may be in service at the time; it may not fit.

Chairman GLENN. We brought that up before at our hearing, and we urged that it be done. I remember that. And I didn't follow up before this hearing to find out whether it had actually been done. Do we have the capability in this country to make the transformers of the size we are talking about that are particularly vulnerable? Are those all imported now?

Mr. CRANE. No. They are still for the most part made in this country. We are down to just a couple of facilities in this country to produce them, but they certainly have quite adequate capacity. Dr. Roy. Apparently they operate at about 50 percent of their capacity. There are two or three facilities manufacturing the largest extra high voltage transformers in the U.S. One is foreign-owned.

Chairman GLENN. What do these transformers weigh?

Dr. Roy. The really large transformers can weigh up to 500 tons. They are quite big.

Chairman GLENN. What can a railroad normally transport across normal railroad bridges?

Mr. CRANE. They have to do a special study when they are going to transport one of these. That is part of the contingency planning that should be taking place, to make sure you know how to get it there once you suddenly need it.

Chairman GLENN. That is what I recall. There was a very limited routing on things of that

Mr. CRANE. Yes, you may have to buttress your bridges or raise overpasses. The reason for those special cars isn't because of the weight, though. It is because of the height of the transformers. They are enormous in volume as well as in weight.

Chairman GLENN. Back to the terrorist approach, what level of technical proficiency would be necessary to make such an attack? Would you really have to have a lot of very special weapons training, or could the level of training be gained rather easily?

Mr. Roy. The weapons training I think would be fairly minimal. A more challenging obstacle for a sophisticated terrorist attack is identifying the key facilities to attack. That could be gatheredthere are many that have that type of capability. An engineer could look through power system engineering books and get a general idea of the general principles and could go to public sources to understand how power flows through a particular utility's area or a particular region or area to identify its facilities. That is the most challenging step.

Chairman GLENN. Senator Lieberman.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding the hearing, a continuation of the investigation we had done earlier, and thank you both.

I have an opening statement which I will not read but ask that it be included in the record.

[The statement referred to follows:]

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN

Mr. Chairman, I congratulate you on conducting these important hearings on the vulnerability of our Nation's energy systems to terrorist attack.

Terrorism has become a growing threat and an increasingly important part of our country's foreign policy and national security planning. Over the past year, for example, this Committee has received testimony on several occasions concerning the likelihood of domestic terrorist attacks by drug cartels as a result of our antidrug efforts in South America.

Terrorist groups in other countries have already targetted critical energy and communications facilities, causing major disruptions and economic harm. It would not be terribly difficult to target those facilities in this country. Today's report by the Office of Technology Assessment concludes that two or three individual terrorists using only off-the-shelf supplies, could cause a short-term blackout in a metropolitan area that would be followed by months power outages and reliability problems. A more sophisticated terrorist attack on our electric systems could cause devastating economic damage. The OTA Report notes that the overall cost of the New York City blackout in 1977 was close to $300 million, and that was 13 years ago and lasted only 25 hours.

These are difficult and uncomfortable issues to address, but it is vital that we improve our ability to prevent and respond to disruptions in electric service from sabotage. Reducing our vulnerability requires cooperation between private utilities and

government, as well as extensive coordination between the many federal agencies that play a role in emergency management.

Improved coordination between the federal government and state and local governments is also needed. For example, in the aftermath of Hurricane Gloria in 1985, Connecticut enacted a law requiring utilities to file plans for restoring service in an emergency and to file the plans with state authorities and every municipality served by the utility. There should be a central federal repository for this type of state and local information and an effective way of retrieving the information in an emergency.

This is a topic of vital concern, and I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses today.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Coming from my previous position as attorney general of Connecticut, I wanted to ask whether you think there is an adequate structure in place to coordinate State and local efforts in this area with Federal efforts? I know in Connecticut, after one of the hurricanes, we passed a law requiring each utility to file a plan for restoring service after a crisis. I wonder whether other States have similar laws, whether the Federal Government is aware of where such crisis plans are located, and whether there are similar plans anywhere in a Federal depository. Basically, what is the structure for cooperation between the different levels of Government that might help us respond to the kind of crisis that we are considering here?

Mr. CRANE. I think the cooperation is latent. Many States have energy offices. They have plans.

Senator LIEBERMAN. I'm sorry. The cooperation is?

Mr. CRANE. Latent.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Latent. Okay.

Mr. CRANE. They are prepared to cooperate, but there has been no great initiatives. The Department of Energy has been running some simulation tests. They have relations with many of the State agencies. But it has not been a terribly active area to improve the planning, and many of the States do not have extensive plans either. Most of the emergency planning was for oil shortages, which is totally irrelevant to this kind of problem. So there is a great deal more that could be done in this area to have a general idea of the kind of things that could happen and how do you go about fixing it, or preventing it in the first place.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Perhaps we ought to be taking the lead by requiring it nationally?

Mr. CRANE. I think things are getting better in that sense, but if you want to accelerate the process, the incentive I think would have to come from the Federal Government, in particular with Congress advising DOE to redirect their priorities. I think there could be quite a bit more activity.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Let me go more into the guts of the kind of nightmare situation we are thinking about here. How difficult is it for a terrorist organization to get information about critical points within an electric generation and transmission system; in other words, to know which targets might cause the most harm to the system?

Dr. Roy. There is no book that is available, that is publicly available that lists the types of facilities, particular facilities. Certainly in that sense, it is difficult to get the direct information. It would require analysis on the parts of the terrorists based on publicly

available information on the location of power plants, general locations of transmission lines, and then some physical observation, to go out into the field and spend some time understanding where the power lines are, getting a sense of what the flows are on circuits. That type of information on which sites is not presented anywhere, but it can be arrived at through careful analysis by somebody who understands the basic entineering concepts.

Senator LIEBERMAN. In other words, it wouldn't be that hard to figure it out?

Dr. Roy. Well, for somebody who has some understanding of engineering and can understand engineering concepts, it should be feasible.

Mr. CRANE. There is a wide range of expertise and resources available to saboteurs and in the damage that would result. It is relatively easy to cause some disruption. If you want to cause maximum disruption, that calls for a great deal of expertise.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Would terrorists intent on disrupting an electric system need to gain cooperation from somegody within the system, to get information or help in carrying out that kind of mission?

Dr. Roy. A successful attack could be undertaken with no cooperation whatsoever.

Senator LIEBERMAN. How about the kind of equipment that might be necessary to knock out a substation or a transformer? Is this complicated equipment, or is it relatively available?

Dr. Roy. It is readily available, off-the-shelf type of equipment. You can buy it in the metropolitan area here in many places. Senator LIEBERMAN. What kind of stuff?

Dr. Roy. Rifles.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Really? Not explosives, but a rifle with which you take a shot at part of a system?

Dr. Roy. That is right. If an attacker knew what to shoot at, what parts to shoot. There is some information required there, one would have to do some analysis and determine which sites to shoot in which way.

Senator LIEBERMAN. So in that sense, it could be done without gaining immediate access to the property. In other words, you could do it from some distance.

Dr. Roy. That should be possible.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Did you want to add to that, Mr. Crane?

Mr. CRANE. This is one kind of attack. There are several different attacks. Again, if you have a lot of different people with rifles shooting simultaneously, then you can do a huge amount of damage. It it is just one person, he is limited to the number of sites he can hit before the police are called out to guard the rest of them. There are other ways to cause much worse damage, but rifles would be quite adequate to do a great deal.

Senator LIEBERMAN. And the other kinds of attack would be with use of explosives or something like that?

Mr. CRANE. Yes. Obviously, those aren't off the shelf.

Senator LIEBERMAN. But as we have seen from experience, it is not that difficult to obtain them if somebody is intent on this kind of destruction.

In New England, we have become accustomed to thinking of a power grid; you know, the utilities are hooked up in more ways than I used to understand and now have some sense that they share power, particularly in peak times. How difficult would it be to knock out power to a whole region as compared to a more local area? In other words, are there fail-safes in the system if there is an outage in one area?

Dr. Roy. If there is a severe stress on part of the system; for example, if several key facilities are simultaneously taken out of operation. There are mechanisms in place to try to limit the propagation of this type of failure, called a cascading outage, across very large parts of the system. They are not tested very often.

There are mechanisms in place to try to limit the extent of an outage once one begins to occur. Depending on how severe the stresses are, though, that initiated the outage-like how many facilities and where were thay and how much power was flowing through them-it may be difficult to-it is not always the case that the outages can be limited to a particular geographic area. Utilities, fortunately, do not have the opportunity to test their plans on how the system will break up into islands of powered areas and unpowered areas.

Senator LIEBERMAN. So you would say that it is conceivable that a region could be knocked out?

Dr. Roy. At some level of attack, it is possible to take out any defined region. It is difficult to be precise in knowing what parts of that region will be left as islands of power and what parts will be black. It may be a substantial attack to get a very large region. It may be a fairly small attack, limited attack, just a small group of attackers, to get one metropolitan area.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Have any of the utilities in the country taken the lead in trying to harden their facilities or protect critical points in their facilities against the potential for this kind of action?

Mr. CRANE. To date, none have taken steps to harden their facilities. The threat is seen as extremely low, and, in fact, the trends are still down. We do not have a major terrorist threat at this point in this country. So nobody has seen it worthwhile to try to defend against it. Our concern was that the threat can turn around much faster than defenses can be built up. We did not do a threat assessment, but there are enough ominous trends out there in the world that things could change very rapidly in this country.

Senator LIEBERMAN. Well, let's talk about that. I don't want to speak for others we will hear from today, but my sense is that the people at DOE and in the industry feel that the threat is extremely low, and that, therefore, spending a lot of money to protect against it is unwarranted. Do you agree with that?

Mr. CRANE. I guess I would have to say that spending a lot of money-depending on what you mean by "a lot"-is hard to justify right now. We don't think that enormous sums of money are necessary to provide some significant defense against the kind of attacks that are most likely to occur in this country, the relatively low level, unsophisticated groups that want to make a major impact somewhere.