From Gary North's site and WorldNetDaily:

"NERC Hides Truth from FEMA, Koskinen, and the Public. Surprise, Surprise!" WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Power companies have purposely kept federal officials in the dark about their Y2K computer bug troubles, and one government official has expressed serious concern upon learning of the deception.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is concerned that federal agencies and private industry are not anxious to admit their Y2K problems. When agency heads and private sector executives report to FEMA at Y2K planning sessions, they most often state that "all is well," according to one FEMA official.

"We've been trying to put together exercises here, and it's been somewhat difficult because you can't get too many federal agencies to admit anything's going to go wrong -- especially (the Department of) Energy," said Jerry Connolly, assistant to the director for FEMA's office of Response and Recovery.

He expressed concern to learn that power companies have purposefully covered up information about their Y2K preparations. FEMA has no oversight of privately owned power companies, which would enable it to shut them down if they are not ready for the Y2K rollover.

WorldNetDaily uncovered plans by the North American Electric Reliability Council to hide the truth about power companies and their true Y2K readiness. A spokesman for that organization confirmed the problems and the plans to hide the truth from the Department of Energy. . . .

A recent memorandum from NERC to the nation's power suppliers was provided to WorldNetDaily by a concerned NERC employee. That memorandum tells power companies to cover up information about their Y2K problems and to keep the facts from the Department of Energy.

"All identified (Y2K) exceptions will be held in strict confidence and will not be reported to DOE or the public. The exceptions will be reviewed by NERC Y2K project staff for reasonableness and reliability impact on operations into the Year 2000," the memo said in part.

"It's perfectly true what it says," NERC spokesman Gene Gorzelnik confirmed to WorldNetDaily in an exclusive recorded phone interview. He defended that plan by saying the information being kept from the public and the government would only complicate rather than help the process.

"When we were working on the January report (required each quarter detailing Y2K progress), one of the things that we realized was that there were a number of utilities that weren't going to be making the June 30 target date we had established (to be Y2K ready)," Gorzelnik explained.

NERC decided to let power companies list themselves as Y2K ready in time for the June 30 deadline, even though they were not. They justified this action by permitting the utilities involved to list certain Y2K "exceptions" on a separate report which was not made public or given to the Department of Energy. . . .

Gorzelnik also admitted that power companies will be permitted to claim Y2K readiness if their mission critical systems are ready even though other systems are not ready. Such exceptions are not considered necessary to report to the Department of Energy or to the public he said.

"We felt that to put out raw data, it could very easily be misunderstood," he explained of the need to keep the details from view. NERC does not believe the Department of Energy can understand the information it is hiding about Y2K exceptions.

"One of the concerns was that if it went in to DOE it would become public knowledge and the whole process that we have been working with is one where we want the utilities to be frank with us to tell us exactly what is going on so we can work back and forth and get the problem solved," said Gorzelnik.

"If information was made public then we and the utilities were concerned that the utility itself would be spending so much time answering questions from reporters and their customers that it would divert from the actual job of getting the facility ready for Y2K. That's all that was behind that. They are taking a statement out of context and blowing it up without looking at all of the factors that went into that statement being there in the first place," he complained.

A copy of the memorandum and the admission by Gorzelnik was requested by the Senate Committee on the Year 2000 and by FEMA. Those officials said they would forward a copy to the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion. All involved say they plan to look into the admitted deception further to determine a course of action. ----------------------------

Did I just read this....is this for real?

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

Answers

If information was made public then we and the utilities were concerned that the utility itself would be spending so much time answering questions from reporters and their customers that it would divert from the actual job of getting the facility ready for Y2K.

Yep. That Gorzelnik really has a handle on things. We can't have all those techies wasting their time on the phone with reporters and customers, when they have real work to do.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

Dina, actually, the exception reporting is rather an old topic on this forum. *wink* Read some of the recent question and answer topics here and you'll find more information about the lack of forthrightness on the part of utilities. I just posted a couple -- "Ooops!.." and "Before the NERC to DOE report comes out.."

I was going to post this today anyway, and since it's appropriate to your question, I'll put in here. It is true that NERC is a voluntary industry organization with no power to force any utility to provide information. If you go back to the System Protection Teleconference Minutes of a year ago (Aug. 5, 1998) to be found at:

http://www.nerc.com/y2k/conferencecalls.html

you'll get a good idea of the difficulties of getting status reports from utilities. (You'll need an Adobe Acrobat Reader) Here are some excerpts:

From the "Overview of July [1998] Readiness Assessment Response and Lesson Learned" -- "Gerry considers the response a modest success. About 60 responses were received as of this morning.."

"What we learned from the July effort was that we asked for too much detail. The August Assessment document will ask for only about half as much information."

Under the General Discussion section, "the question of litigation kept popping up". "Gerry stated that he has a copy of the proposed legislation which is before Congress." [my comment - this Y2K protective legislation was passed and is likely the only reason there are not even more difficulties in acquiring status reports than there are now. You'll see it on every status report anywhere -- "This is a Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure..." ]

Continuing in the litigation commentary, "He [Gerry] observed that one company submitted their response after the lawyers got done with it. All it contained for responses were the date and the name of the company! About five of the responses had a header edited into every page of the document which served as a disclaimer."

Basically, considering the lawsuit-happy state of our legal system, the fact of the matter is that NO business is going to voluntarily report anything of any negativity to anybody. Period. There really shouldn't be any surprises about this situation, although the Y2K issue has brought about increased awareness of why not being able to get a full disclosure ( even to government agencies, known for leaking information to the press) can be dangerous.

It's not just a coincidence that there is a bit more openness among some businesses in countries outside the U.S., where litigation is not as prevalent as it is here. Unfortunately, they are gradually being overtaken by legal cautions, too.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

Dina, I forgot to comment on one part of the above article, "Gorzelnik also admitted that power companies will be permitted to claim Y2K readiness if their mission critical systems are ready even though other systems are not ready."

This is no big surprise either! From the very beginning of Y2K status reporting, in almost all cases everywhere (not just utilities) ONLY Mission Critical Systems are being talked about! That goes for all the *government agencies*, too. As for FEMA's concerns, isn't this the same agency which last year, when asked about responses to any Y2K failures, stated that their mandate was only to respond to disasters after the fact, and not to be involved with potential future problems? *wry smile*

I must sound a little jaded to you, Dina, but the World Net Daily article is only focusing on information that has been known for quite awhile, although they are slanting it in a more provocative way. The problem is that Jane and Joe Public are not aware of all the ramifications involved in the status reports they might hear on the nightly news. In fairness, I will say that even good news reports of status are also hampered by legal considerations. It's been posted here that some utilities would like to state publicly that they are "Ready" but won't for fear of repercussions later if they missed any little thing.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

I agree with Bonnie somewhat regarding the Worldnet Daily article, however at this point I am thoroughly convinced that the President has quashed any REAL mainstream reporting on Y2K and utilities through coercive tactics with the media. My guess is that the media have been told that in the interest of national security, they must maintain a "balanced" outlook on Y2K. Unfortunately this has been extremely biased toward softball reporting on the issues. I just got done watching the talking head on CNN tell America that the "Utilities today reported to the government that they are all Y2K compliant." These are the words she used.

Don't you think that's just a tad misleading? And we wonder why Joe Sixpack has no idea what's comming his way?

Also, I have been a party to information from department of emergency services planning meetings in my home state. At these meetings which took place with officials from key private industry infrastructure providers from our state, the governors office and the local department of emergency management, the contingency planning is quite disturbing. I have NO DOUBTS about the estimation of the extent of the problem based on these meetings. I also have NO DOUBTS that Joe Sixpack won't know until it's way late in the game for him to do anything about it.

Have you folks on this forum considered a media campaign to begin hounding the press into some action? Perhaps it's time for people to confront the inconsistencies in NERC reporting at the national level. This stuff with Bennet cancelling his hearing is truly frightening. How much juice does it take to get a congressional hearing quashed? A whole lot, that's how much. Enough to require your own private RAS.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

NERC,Clinton,Kosky Brrrrrrr..As I've said before, I know I'm paranoid...but am I paranoid enough????

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

<.. the World Net Daily article is only focusing on information that has been known for quite awhile ..>

bonnie,

does the fact that the information is, at most, a few months old change the facts at all? i think not ..

could u be more specific as to how they are 'slanting it'? if anyone should be accused of slanting the truth to the public .. its NERC.

it seems to me that you are rationalizing their statements just a tad. the fact is, they are misleading everyone about the actual readiness of utilities whom, may i remind you, NERC represents. NERC is nothing more than a trade organization in essence.

lou

-- Anonymous, August 04, 1999

Jim Smith wrote:

> however at this point I am > thoroughly convinced that the President has quashed any REAL > mainstream reporting on Y2K and utilities through coercive > tactics with the media.

This should go a ways towards increasing your paranioa... (and Rick, I think this is directly impacting Y2K and the media's reporting of utilities, among others).

http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/DSA/VP/vp9911.htm

On March 10, some two hundred journalists assembled at a two-hour breakfast meeting in Manhattan hosted by The Media Studies Center. The reason? To hear John Koskinen, Chair of the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion, Edward Kelley, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and a panel of print and broadcast journalists address the issue of "The Press and Preventing Panic."

- Jon

-- Anonymous, August 04, 1999

"If information was made public then we and the utilities were concerned that the utility itself would be spending so much time answering questions from reporters and their customers that it would divert from the actual job of getting the facility ready for Y2K..."

This statement is ludicrous! If electric utilities were REALLY concerned about Y2K, they wouldn't be spending half their time and resources on deregulation and the sale of generating plants - both of which could have been put off until after 1/1/2000.

(Sorry for the anonimity Rick, but I work for an electric utility and need my job...for now).

-- Anonymous, August 04, 1999

Lou, the slant WorldNetDaily uses is in not providing the reader with information you just pointed out yourself: NERC has NO enforcement authority to get information from utilities. The only way it can get any details at all is to promise some measure of anonymity. Plus, it's the DOE *itself* which handed over the responsibility of Y2K oversight to NERC! And I think the DOE knew exactly what it was doing when it did that. I don't like it anymore than you do, but the fact of the matter remains that without some anonymity provided by NERC, all anybody would see on utility questionnaire statements would be the words "Privileged Information". When it comes to getting voluntary information out of any company, there are always political compromises. For better or worse, it's what happens in a free enterprise system.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 1999

Jim (Smith), your comments put me in mind of a recent notice which had quite an impact on me, and which tends to support skepticism about the quashing of Y2K reporting. When I read that the Y2K movie was cancelled, after production had already begun, I couldn't believe it. There's no way of knowing, of course, the exact reasons for the cancellation, but taking all other things into account -- good box office stars signed, a profitable theatre trend toward tech-action films, and the likelihood of a big $ viewer curiosity response, the initial conclusion is that either bankers (very important to production) or some government officials put the "we don't like this" word out.

After the banking industrys' near-panic response to a couple of TV ads with a Y2K theme, I don't think it's paranoid to postulate that outside pressure got that movie canned. In other areas, I'm not so sure the government is the active ingredient, if, indeed, there is pressure being placed as some postulate. I hold this opinion mainly because I believe the power to put that type of pressure on rests more largely with big business/banking than it does with politicians.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 1999

I agree Bonnie,

Seven or eight months ago we had a "town meeting" here in Charlotte, NC. Present were reps from Duke Power, Bank Of America, some IT professionals, and a city manager. Everyone was nonchalant about the whole Y2K affair. There was a very definite forced coolness about the presentation. At one point the city manager expressed utter disbelief that the Y2K movie would be coming out this summer. It was plain to see the thought of it overwhelmed her. (my dad would've said she was shaking like a puppy pooping peach pits in the snow) The mere thought of that Y2K movie coming out in the summer had the strongest affect on her out of all else in the entire meeting.

The meeting had a very short Q&A session at the end. My questions to the Duke Power representative, based on info gained from this forum, was the only question to receive applause. I thank the forum for the insight to be able to ask intelligent questions.

I've said several times on this forum that I understood the reasoning behind avoiding panic. But this is spooky. It's gotten beyond avoiding panic and into downright dis-in

-- Anonymous, August 04, 1999

dis-information!

Sorry, don't know what happened.

steve

-- Anonymous, August 04, 1999

Bonnie, I read that it was in fact the UN actively objecting to the y2k movie. This isn't just national gov't...this is a world wide coverup.

-- Anonymous, August 05, 1999