i came across this statement which i think you will agree is quite remarkable given all the upbeat statements from the power co.'s lately, does anyone know if this is the real deal or just a sham?

As the chairman of the state of Georgia's Y2K task force for the State House, I have studied the possibilities and contingencies closely. I have had many conversations with national leaders such as Congressman Steven Horn, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, to name a few. There are facts that the Government doesn't want you to know. John Koskinen, the nation's Y2K czar, has instructed each state to prepare their contingency plans to include 18 cities without power for 3 weeks. The Department of Defense is quite concerned about our power grid on that New Year's Eve. The chances are good that there will be attempts made by outside sources to shut our grid down. This system was never encrypted, nor designed to keep experts out. - George Grindley [State Representative, District 35, Marietta, Georgia]

-- Anonymous, August 09, 1999

Answers

Where did you find this statement? I would very much like to read the rest of the article.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 1999

That is an old rumor which has not been verified by news people. I personally checked about 2 months ago with Mr. Grindley who said that it was a fact.

The problem is, no one will confirm who heard it directly from Koskinen. Koskinen denies saying it.

Also, do not confuse being prepared for 3 weeks as being equal to there will be 3 week outages.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 1999

Remember that governor of, was it South or North Dakota?, who was going into coniption fits over Y2K? (he got religion about six months after I did. ;-)

I'd like to know what Grindley and that governor think about it all today. I know I've calmed down a lot, (apathy?), since I first got a clue about it all. But those guys... You'd think they might be privy to a bit more data than the average citizen.

Each of us has our domain. FF, Malcom, Rick, all of us. We only have access to so much data. Wouldn't it be nice to know what Grindley and Koskinen know?

-- Anonymous, August 09, 1999

This summer a number of people have individually contacted Georgia State Rep. George Grindley (R-43rd district, Marietta), who is also head of that state's Y2K Task Force. To each of these people Grindley has basically confirmed what was originally reported; this was all thrashed out some time ago on a number of threads in the TB 2000 forum. I understand, though, that the original warning came from somebody on a conference call to an aide of the Georgia state CIO; the CIO then passed the info along to Rep. Grindley. I emailed Rep. Grindley about this matter on July 10th and received his responding email on July 11th. In his reply to me, Rep. Grindley stated, "the actual source of the three week comment was not koskinen [sic] himself, but another. The identity of that person will be hard for me to track." I found that statement unfortunate, because I at least wanted to know if the original informant was a member of Koskinen's staff.

There then followed this paragraph in Rep. Grindley's email:

"As far as the power grid, my information centers around possible cyber terrorism attacks that would be the most effective in conjunction with Y2K. The answers here are across the board, but a high ranking member of a power company did explain to me the relative ease of shutting down portions of the grid. Keep in mind these are not my areas of expertise, I am simply repeating explanations conveyed to me."

I suspect that Rep. Grindley's fears are at least partly justified. In 1997, a joint NSA/DoD/FBI exercise involving 10 cells of highly trained hackers (five cells at home, five abroad) demonstrated that it was indeed possible, among other unpleasant things, to take down U.S. power grids with cyber terrorism. In fact, the mainstream news article (AP or Reuters, as I recall) that I read last summer said this exercise had determined it was possible to take down the entire North American Grid. I don't know if that's really true or not (I myself have great trouble conceptualizing just how that could be done--and if it were possible, why would the govt. let that fact be known?), but apparently there is some cause for concern, at least at local/regional levels. Incidentally, the FBI was able in this exercise to track down only two of the hacker cells--both here at home, naturally. This joint exercise also reportedly revealed that it was possible for cyber terrorists to take down the command of the Pacific Fleet.

Somewhat OT, Grindley's final paragraph voiced concern about SMEs generally in Georgia:

"Another alarming statistic was related to me recently. A high level remediation expert here in Georgia tells me that there is little remediation going on at all in small to medium companies here. Most seem to be falling back to the fix on failure option. The possible consequences of this on a widespread basis, could be devestating [sic]. I would like to confirm this with others across the country."

It would seem that Rep. Grindley fears that Y2K is going to march through Georgia like Gen. Sherman. Again, his fears are probably at least somewhat justified: general reports continue to suggest that many small and medium-sized businesses worldwide are doing less than they should be doing about Y2K.

Rep. Grindley's email address is grindley@mindspring.com

-- Anonymous, August 17, 1999