A Classic Example of Dirty Tactics During the Cold War.
Reagan 'sabotaged Soviet economy'
Booby-trapped software passed on by CIA caused pipeline blast
WASHINGTON - Former US president Ronald Reagan approved a Cold War plan by the CIA to sabotage the Soviet Union's economy with technology that malfunctioned.
The flawed technology included computer software that triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by former Reagan White House official Thomas Reed.
The former Air Force secretary, who was serving with the National Security Council at the time, described the episode in At The Abyss: An Insider's History Of The Cold War, to be published next month by Ballantine Books.
The pipeline explosion, the book says, was just one example of 'cold-eyed economic warfare' against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under director William J. Casey during the final years of the Cold War.
At the time, the US was trying to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology.
Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the Central Intelligence Agency slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in such a way that they would not detect it.
'In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard-currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds,' the book says.
'The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space.'
Mr Reed added that US satellites recorded the 1982 explosion.
'While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy,' he wrote.
Mr Reed said he obtained CIA approval to publish details about the operation.
According to the book, the Soviet authorities in 1970 set up a new KGB section, known as Directorate T, to plumb Western research and development for badly needed technology. Its operating arm to steal the technology was known as Line X.
At a July 1981 economic summit in Ottawa, then president Francois Mitterrand of France told Mr Reagan that French intelligence had obtained the services of a Soviet agent assigned to evaluate the intelligence collected by Directorate T.
In January 1982, Mr Gus Weiss, a CIA expert on technology and intelligence, said he proposed to Mr Casey a programme to slip the Soviets technology that would work for a while, then fail.
'Reagan received the plan enthusiastically,' Mr Reed wrote. He also said the United States and its Nato allies later 'rolled up the entire Line X collection network, both in the US and overseas'.
The Soviet spy involved was discovered by the KGB and executed in 1983. -- Washington Post |
