Back to your calls on the issue of iran. Can the u. S. Trust the country as we try to hammer out a deal . Tuesday is the deadline. Paul from indiana, good morning. Caller the president of the United States, inept amateurish. He is a liar and a coward. Why should anybody believe anything that comes out of his mouth . He has lied over and over again. I lived on the southside of chicago. I worked for him. I cannot believe what im seeing with him. This is the most unbelievable regime i have ever seen. Host when you say you work for him, what do you mean . Caller i went door to door to get him elected to the senate. He live to our faces. Host how so . Caller he told us he was against gay marriage. He said he was not going to do anything on health care he said he was not going to do a total overtake and he did. Host ok. Measure passed by the house. A significant change in the tone of the health care debate. A photograph of john boehner and nancy pelosi who were able to hammer out a deal. 37 no votes against the medicare docs this. Likely passage on that legislation would long as return in the mid to late april. Still pending is the nomination of Loretta Lynch to serve as the next attorney general. Well go to bob in los angeles. Caller trust is a strong word. Trust iran . Jimmy response jimmy carter is responsible for this for the debacle. Hammer out an agreement. What is the deadline . Why should we have a deadline . Heck no. Have a great day. Host lugo to joe in cleveland, ohio. Republican line. Caller i would like to add perspective. I think we have reached the age of absurdity. When we think of the subject matter about closed border and open border, do we accept marriage between a man and woman, do we trust iran. We are not in practicality anymore. I think there has to be an awakening to what is happening in our world and country. What if we did open the borders . What if we did allow anyone to marry anything they want . You can carry this on and on. I think we have to look at being practical and deal with the truth. Thank you for the time. Host thank you for the call. Inside the New York Times senator cruz making his first swing as a candidate through New Hampshire. Governor Martin Omalley will be in New Hampshire. In early april, senator rand paul will officially announce his candidacy. Live coverage from louisville, kentucky. Senator rubio expected to enter the race on february 13. Should the u. S. Trust iran . Caller thank you very much for cspan. I hope that cspan what stick with the rules and present points of information such as this negotiation is between not the United States and iran but six other nations that are involved. Why dont the republicans invite the president or the Prime Minister of the u. N. To speak to the people . Equal time to all points of views. Host call of you, thank you for your calls and comments. Apologies for some delays because of the technical issue. We are back and running and have more of your calls and comments during the next two hours and 15 minutes of washington journal. Steve reilly will be joining us. He is an Investigative Reporter with usa today to talk about a u. S. Peace to talk about a recent piece he wrote. Later, the ceo of the Wounded Warrior project. You are listening to cspans washington journal. Tonight on q a, eric larson on his new book. The story gets complicated when the question arises as to what ultimately happened to the lusitania . Why was the lusitania allowed to enter the iris c without escort . Without the kind of detailed warning that could have been provided but was not . This has led to interesting speculation about, was the ship set up for attack by churchill or someone in the admiralty. I found no smoking memo. I would have found a smoking memo if it existed. There was nothing from churchill to Jackie Fisher or somebody else, lets let the lusitania go into the iris sea. Nothing like that exists. Tonight at 8 00 eastern and pacific on cspans q and a. On the communicators, more from the International ConsumerElectronics Show is really new technology products. If there is something you want to capture, take it off your wrist and it will be simple. It will expand and be as easy as gesturing. You will toss it and there is no remote required. It is smart enough to know the direction you toss it. If it is a gentle toss, it will stay close. It will compose a photo and come back. Monday at 8 00 eastern on cspan 2. Washington journal continues. Host we want to welcome steve reilly with this headline, bracing for a big power grid attack. Thanks for being with us. Guest thanks for having me. Host you say about once every four days, part of the nations power grid is struck by a cyber attack or physical attack. Once every four days . Guest we looked at the u. S. Department of energy and found 362 over a period of four years. These are reported by Utility Companies to the department of energy under federal law. We looked at the number and types of attacks over that period. Host the attacks were everything from what to what . Guest simple incidents like vandalism, all the way up to individuals firing shots at critical pieces of infrastructure in our nations grid. Host it goes to the core issue of how vulnerable we potentially are and how dependent we are. Guest it is hard to imagine anything more important to our daily lives than the security and reliability of our power grid. There is some concern about the number of these attacks we are seeing. How easy it is for some individuals to gain access to some of these key pieces of infrastructure and whether there is enough security in place to detect intrusions and catch the suspects when there is an intrusion. Host what surprised you the most in looking into this . Guest there seems to be a near constant stream of Security Breaches at the facilities we depend on for the transmission and distribution of electricity. Host lets go through the keep points the key points of your piece. Our guest is steve reilly. He pointed out that once every four days the nations power grid is struck. Often protected by nothing more than a chainlink fence and a few security cameras. Since 2011, suspects have never been identified in connection with many of the attack. An Organization Funded by the Power Industry rights in and forces the industrys own guidelines for security. This group has decreased penalties by 30 . Explain that last point. Guest the north American Electric reliability corporation. A Nonprofit Organization that has that is empowered to enforce the industrys regulations for the reliability of the Power Industry. A system that was set up under the Energy Policy act of 2005. Merck nerk is tied to the industry nerc is tied to the industry. It is empowered to write the standards that the industry follows. Host our phone lines are open. 202 7488000, our line for democrats. 202 7488001 four republicans. 202 7488002 if you are an independent. Our guest is steve reilly. We are focusing on the safety and security of the American Power grid. You point to a game changer in your piece. Guest the attack on the metcalf substation in california. This believed to be a highly coordinated attack by multiple attackers. Severed fiberoptic communication cables before firing more than 100 rounds of ammunition at a key transmission substation. They damaged the transformers there. More than 15 million in damages and escape into the night and have never been apprehended. No one knows exactly who these people were or what their motives were. It sparked a realization by officials in the industry of the vulnerability of some of these pieces of infrastructure. Host your piece points out recent incidents and how vulnerable we potentially are. In 2011, an intruder gaining access through a chainlink fence. In 2013, 4 bullets firing from a highway stretching a power station. Guest they illustrate the openness of some of these facilities. We have driven past them on the highway. They are often sitting pretty much in plain view. We have seen copper thieves able to breach the security of these facilities. Obviously they are less sophisticated actors. It has raised concerns about the ability of someone with morning various intentions to breach security. Host why is the copper so valuable . Guest it has value on the open market. It is something you see copper thefts at other places that are open. Abandoned homes in that type of thing. Criminals who are trying to exploit the value of the copper. Host what is your worst fear . Guest the worst fear is an attack on multiple substations or pieces of infrastructure at the same time. The concern is that we might see some type of largescale outage possibly along the lines of what we saw in 2003 in the northeast corridor or. Host separate but also related are the power lines on these telephone poles around the country. There has been talk in some parts of the country to try to prevent that. How expensive is that to have these moved underground . How likely is it in the next 20 or 30 years . Guest we did not look specifically at the cost of protecting that part of the grid in our we did look at the more critical pieces of infrastructure. The substations, in particular, are the off ramps where energy is doing transported on the transmission lines gets often comes to your community. If we look at try to get a sense of the cost, pgts utility whose substation was affected, proposed a 1 Million Program in order to fix some of the problems that came to light. They have about 5. 4 million customers. You can kind of see. It would get pretty expensive pretty quickly. Host after spending time in upstate new york, our guest is steve riley, a data specialist for usa today. We are focusing energy breaches. First is joining us jason. Good morning. Caller good morning. Mr. Riley, my question is about the use of emps, the natural kind and man mankind, used to disrupt electricity and shut it down. I do question about what is the u. S. Doing to resist these things. Thank you. Guest thank you. Is a good question. That is kind of a tangential issue to the attacks that we talked about in our piece. There has been discussion about standards to protect substations and other facilities from emps. It has been discussion about possibly placing gauges around pieces of infrastructure to protect them from these electromagnetic pulses that could affect multiple book facilities at the same time. That has been ongoing. Host diana from new jersey. Good morning. Caller i would like to ask about the Cyber Security bill that has failed to pass for now it is carrying on years and years because they cant agree, and republicans blocked the fact that corporations dont want to be made to share data and share their strategies. Put a United Defense against the attacks. They want to socalled protect proprietary information. They are not patriots. They dissolve band together against these threats. I live in new jersey and im major concern to me is all of these chemical plants. That was made voluntary during the bush administration. They havent made steps is anyone making sure they are taking steps to protect our Critical Infrastructure . Is it because these businessmen who are really global, these corporations they really have no patriotism to our country. They dont want to pay taxes to protect our country. I want to know the status of the Cyber Security bill and who supports and who doesnt. Guest the Cyber Security bill is a little separate from what we looked at. There are, in the systems of regulation and oversight, a mandatory cyber attack reporting system. We havent been able to access those files. Were still working to access those through the freedom of information act. We will get that information when it becomes available. Host in terms of security precautions, and the color from new jersey, is it different from a major interpol to an area like new york, washington dc philadelphia, versus google areas . Guest that is one thing that we found surprising. These cyberattacks are not in metropolitan areas. In fact, one of the ones that we discussed in the piece was in ruleral texas. There was an attack in 2011. In fact, the executives there were surprised that they had been attacked. They werent sure if it was a test on a smaller utility or what the motivation was behind it. We are seeing these attacks across the span of different communities. Host what about the potential for cyberattacks against the nations power grid . Guest that is another piece that we explored. Out of the 362 attacks that we discussed in the piece, 14 were cyberattacks. The is a much smaller piece of the whole reporting data that we looked at. If you look at different reporting systems, as the government collects data, we looked at reports of instances that affected power service. If you look at any cyberattack whether or not it affected power service, there are hundreds of thousands every year. Host a comment from one of our viewers saying, our nations power grid is in such sad state, the only that only series every structure funding on a National Level can remedy. Did you look into that aspect . Guest we did a little bit. That is an interesting point. A lot of experts i spoke to for the article mentioned the power grid wasnt built with modern security concerns in mind. It was built preinternet, before these concerns of security of facilities. I dont know that theres a comprehensive program to Fund Security improvements. Host this comment, is Congress Taking any action . Guest there was the great act. The grade reliability infrastructure act introduced by then Congress Members waxman and marquis in 2010. It did not pass in the senate. What it would have done was allow a Government Entity involved in regulating the industry to have more over oversight over security protections. That didnt move forward at the time. Other than that, thats been the most focused effort to look at this. Host our guest is steve riley of usa today. Go this tweet, the u. S. Looking forward to our 19thcentury power grid updating argh guest we did speak to our chairman who suggested that it needs an update. He discussed some essential fixes in micro grants, which are smaller, more localized grid systems that wouldnt be as updated to outages. That would depend on if we move toward Renewable Energy sources. It would require better storage as well. Host from clinton, indiana. Matthew is next. Good morning. Caller i am a power Grid Construction specialist. I travel the Country Building substations. I happen to know a lot about the subject. My question is actually for steve in reference to security. Recently, i learned that all of the targets are specifically the pentagon has the ability to shut down specific areas of the grade to blackouts out there in cities. Is that true . Guest that is something we didnt explore an article. That is an interesting question. Host hold on. You think there is truth to the question . Caller yes i do. Host y . Caller because of the professionals i have been speaking about with this subject. It has become apparent that the government now has the ability to shut down an entire cities in the event of terrorist attacks to black them out at nighttime. Host let me ask you the same question what is your biggest fear . Caller my biggest fear is that if this technology is available to the government, maybe it is available to hackers and they could shut down entire sections of the grid. Host what should the u. S. Be doing that we are not . Caller i dont know. I have some suggestions. Maybe an electrifying fences with highvoltage for starters. Host where you live in indiana how secure are the substations. . Caller they are very insecure all across the country. Host thank you very much for the call. You want to respond to anything else he said . Guest he brought up the department of defense. One thing the military is moving toward is smaller localized grades on their bases in order to insulate them from potential cascading outages. That is one thing we did look at. Host john is next from huntsville, alabama. Good morning. Caller good morning. Im a department of defense contractor and an electrical engineer. I have a little experience here. In my opinion, your average substation is a very easy target. They are usually in isolated areas. Very portable two attacks. The damage is ultimately going to be localized. I think where the Serious Problems that we will have in the nation are going to be in older, larger Nuclear Power plants that only have small arms security and things like cyberattacks. Terminal attacks that have plausible deniability from such other remote locations, from other nations. Host thanks, john. By the way, if you get through turn the volume down and we will hear you much better. Guest power plants themselves are a concern to. Many of the attacks that we looked at where on power plants. Like the substations, they are visible from the outside often and in one case in missouri, we saw shots fired at an important power plant. It just civil, florida, we saw an intruder who tried to climb over a fence and take under a fence to get access to a power plant and was able to get away before authorities apprehended him. Security concerns are widespread across the energy facilities. Host this is a story, Available Online at usaidtoday. Com, bracing for a big power grid attack one is too many. Daniel is joining us. Caller good morning. I read an article years ago. I dont know what this item is used for but it is a green glass item that is on all the substations. What i read was that if one of them is broken, and seeing that the Electric