Paul Davis On Crime: R. James Woolsey

Saturday, April 27, 2013

The Grid Is Vulnerable To Attack, Warns Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey

Jeff McMahon at Forbes.com offers a piece on former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and the vulnerability of the grid.

The electric power grid in the United States is vulnerable to attacks that have already begun, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey said in Chicago Thursday night, and America needs distributed generation as backup—primarily in the form of natural-gas cogeneration and solar power.

... The problem mainly with the grid is that everything depends on it, and it itself has some very substantial vulnerabilities,” said Woolsey, a co-founder of the U.S. Energy Security Council, at an appearance sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “We need to move as quickly as possible to generating power where the load is.”

The grid is vulnerable because it is controlled via the World Wide Web, said Woolsey, who directed the Central Intelligence Agency under President Bill Clinton from 1993-95.

The grid is under attack already, according to Woolsey, and regularly fending off hacking attempts. To illustrate the possible consequences of a successful attack, Woolsey plugged the NBC series Revolution, which explores “what happened to America when the power went out.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2013/04/26/former-cia-director-the-grid-is-vulnerable/

I met R. James Woolsey briefly and heard him speak on the vulnerability of the grid when I covered the opening of the Weapons of Mass Disruption exhibit at the International Spy Museum for Counterterrorism magazine a few years back.

You can also read my Counterterrorism piece via the below links:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/WeaponsMassDisruption1.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/WeaponsMassDisruption2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/WeaponsMassDisruption3.jpg

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Iran Is Pursuing 'Maniacal' Goal, Says Former CIA Director, R. James Woolsey

Ronald Kessler, the veteran journalist and author of several books on the CIA and the FBI, interviewed former CIA director R. James Woolsey in his latest Newsmax.com column.

“Speak softly and carry a big stick” was Teddy Roosevelt’s credo for America.

Former Director of Central Intelligence Jim Woolsey says President Barack Obama needs to go one step further in dealing with Iran.

“What we need to do is stay calm and reinforce our military,” Woolsey tells Newsmax. “We should send five carrier battle groups to the Indian Ocean with B-1s and B-52s and B-2s to Diego Garcia and go Teddy Roosevelt one better and don’t just speak softly: Don’t say a word, and they’ll get the idea.”

You can read the rest of Ronald Kessler's column via the below link:

http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/Woolsey-Iran-Obama-nuclear/2012/02/29/id/430963

Paul Davis

Paul Davis is a writer who covers crime. He has written extensively about organized crime, cybercrime, street crime, white collar crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, the military, espionage and terrorism. He is a contributor to the Washington Examiner and Counterterrorism magazine, and he writes the magazine's online 'Threatcon' column. His 'Crime Beat' column, which covers crime news, crime issues and crime prevention in South Philadelphia, appears weekly in the South Philly Review, and his 'On Crime' column, which covers crime in the Greater Philadelphia region, appears weekly at Philly Daily and Broad and Liberty. His crime fiction appears in American Crime Magazine. His work has also appeared in the Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Weekly and other publications. As a writer, he has attended police academy training, gone out on patrol with police officers, accompanied detectives as they worked cases, accompanied narcotics officers on drug raids, observed criminal court proceedings, visited jails and prisons, and covered street riots, mob wars and murder investigations. He has interviewed police commissioners and chiefs, FBI, DEA, HSI and other federal special agents, prosecutors, judges, public officials, WWII UDT frogmen, Navy SEALs, Army Delta operators, Israeli commandos, military intelligence officers, Scotland Yard detectives, CIA officers, former KGB officers, film and TV actors, film writers, directors and producers, journalists, novelists and true crime authors, gamblers, outlaw bikers, and Cosa Nostra organized crime bosses. Paul Davis has been a student of crime since he was a 12-year-old aspiring writer growing up in South Philadelphia. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was 17 in 1970. He served aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War and he later served two years aboard the Navy harbor tugboat U.S.S. Saugus at the U.S. floating nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland. He went on to become the civilian administrative officer of a Defense Department command in Philadelphia, where he oversaw security, safety and other programs for the command's military and civilian employees, and served as an investigating officer, while working part-time as a newspaper crime reporter and columnist. He retired in 2007 after more than 37 Navy/DOD years of service and became a full-time writer. From 1991 to 2005 he was a producer and on-air host of "Inside Government," a public affairs interview radio program that aired on Sunday mornings on WPEN AM and WMGK FM in the Philadelphia area. You can read Paul Davis' crime columns, crime fiction, book reviews and news and feature articles on this website. You can read his full bio by clicking on the above photo (by Brittany Davis-Pearson). And you can contact Paul Davis at pauldavisoncrime@aol.com.