  The absence of the expected GZK cutoff strongly challenges the notion that
the highest-energy cosmic rays are of distant extragalactic origin. We discuss
the possibility that these ultra-high-energy events originate in our Galaxy and
propose that they may be due to iron nuclei accelerated from young, strongly
magnetic neutron stars. Newly formed pulsars accelerate ions from their surface
through relativistic MHD winds. We find that pulsars whose initial spin periods
are shorter than $\sim 4 (B_S/10^{13}{\rm G})$ ms, where $B_S$ is the surface
magnetic field, can accelerate iron ions to greater than $10^{20} eV$. These
ions can pass through the remnant of the supernova explosion that produced the
pulsar without suffering significant spallation reactions. Depending on the
structure of the galactic magnetic field, the trajectories of the iron ions
from galactic sources can be consistent with the observed arrival directions of
the highest energy events.
