TheHill.com - Protect everyone, not just president, from EMP attack

TheHill.com - Protect everyone, not just president, from EMP attack: "By Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.)
Posted: 07/23/09 03:12 PM [ET]
Americans remain outraged by our federal government’s actions before and after Hurricane Katrina that inflicted $300 billion in damage to the Gulf Coast. Did you know that the federal government is acting to protect the president, but doing little or nothing to prevent $1 trillion to $2 trillion in damage from a known threat with the largest geographic footprint of any natural disaster according to the National Academies of Science? Sadly, that is the current reality.

As the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces, I’m pleased that the House National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2010, H.R. 2647, allocates monies to implement a Presidential Directive to protect senior leadership communications from a nuclear Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. However, a July 21, 2009 hearing by the House Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity and Science and Technology documented that there is no similar effort under way to protect other Americans."