Ex-CIA director: Recent Outages a Taste of Nationwide Threat

Recent regional power outages that left some in the dark for days are a chilling glimpse of a nationwide threat that could lead to the complete shutdown of the country's defenses, a former CIA director says.

Most in the Washington area were without power for at least a few hours following a derecho of historic proportions, and some fell off the grid for almost a week. R. James Woolsey Jr., CIA director under Bill Clinton and board member of the International Spy Museum, says a very real cybersecurity threat could sweep electrical grids throughout the country leaving the military and intelligence communities in a similar quagmire.

A complete absence of organization to combat these threats could take down the entire system for significantly longer than a few days, he says.

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