Siberian pipeline sabotage
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The Siberian pipeline sabotage refers to the alleged 1982 sabotage of the Soviet Urengoy - Surgut - Chelyabinsk natural gas pipeline by the CIA as a part of a policy of interference in Soviet development projects.
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[edit] Background
The pipeline, as planned, would have a level of complexity, that would require advanced automated control software (SCADA). The pipeline utilized plans for a sophisticated control system and its software that had been stolen from a Canadian firm by the KGB. The CIA allegedly had the company insert a logic bomb in the program for sabotage purposes, eventually resulting in an explosion with the power of three kilotons of TNT.
The CIA was tipped off to the Soviet intentions to steal the control system plans in documents in the Farewell Dossier and, seeking to derail their efforts, CIA director William J. Casey followed the counsel of economist Gus Weiss and a disinformation strategy was initiated to sell the Soviets deliberately flawed designs for stealth technology and space defense. The operation proceeded to deny the Soviets the technology they desired to purchase to automate the pipeline management, then, a KGB operation to steal the software from a Canadian company was anticipated, and, in June 1982, flaws in the stolen software led to a massive explosion of part of the pipeline.
National Security Council staffer Thomas C. Reed documented the operation in his book, At The Abyss.[1] As Reed explained, "The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."
The explosion was, in fact, so large that the White House received warning from U.S. infrared satellites of a bizarre event in a remote area of the Soviet Union. NORAD had initially feared that the event was a missile launch from an area previously not known to have rockets.
As the explosion occurred in a remote area, no casualties are known to have resulted.
[edit] Hoax
Some have called Reed's account into question. A report in the Moscow Times quotes a KGB veteran as saying that there was, in fact, a natural gas pipeline explosion in 1982, but it was near Tobolsk on a pipeline connecting the Urengoy gas field to the city of Chelyabinsk, and it was caused by poor construction rather than sabotage. According to him no one was killed in the explosion and the damage was repaired within one day.[2]
Writer Patrick Mackeown claims that when Clay Wilson of the Congressional Research Service updated his computer security treatise "Computer Attack and Cyberterrorism: Vulnerabilities and Policy Issues for Congress" with a repeat of the account of the pipeline sabotage from William Safire's "The Farewell Dossier, it was in fact an April Fool's Day joke[3].
[edit] References
- ^ Thomas Reed, At the Abyss : An Insider's History of the Cold War ISBN 0891418210
- ^ Anatoly Medetsky, KGB Veteran Denies CIA Caused '82 Blast, Moscow Times, 18 March 2004
- ^ http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/computer_hoaxes.php
