By Anthony O. Miller
U.S. PRESIDENT Bill Clinton, unwilling to use ground troops in Yugoslavia, has authorised the CIA to hack into foreign banks’ computer systems and steal or otherwise tamper with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s bank accounts, Newsweekreported this week.
Cyprus, Greece and Russia are among the countries where the CIA believes Milosevic has salted away millions of dollars in personal accounts.
The White House declined to comment on the reports, which have raised some eyebrows in Congress and in intelligence and diplomatic circles, the news magazine said.
A major concern is the prospect that a CIA ‘cyber-war’ against Milosevic could backfire on the American banking system. Not only would it let the genie out of the bottle and open US banks to computer attacks, but it would also hurt US banks by damaging confidence in the world’s international banking system. It would also violate the national sovereignty of friendly countries.
“I can believe that someone in the CIA believes that they have the ability to do this, and I can believe that they might have persuaded the White House to let them have a go,” an unidentified Nato diplomat told Newsweek.
“But I can’t believe it will really happen. The American banking system would be the one most likely to panic if the overall security of banking systems around the world was compromised like this,” the Nato source said.
While theoretically possible, hacking into a foreign bank would require intelligence agents to visit the bank, set up new accounts and then monitor the bank’s computer activity to see how it operates, looking all the while for security weaknesses.
Hackers at the US National Security Agency (NSA), the super-secret, computer-
driven code-breaking shop, would then have to use that data to try to crack the bank’s sophisticated encryption and ‘firewall’ computer software to gain access to the accounts.
Once inside, NSA hackers could indeed steal Milosevic’s cash, move it to dummy accounts or slowly drain it away, Newsweeknoted.
“If they pull it off, it will be great,” one US cyberwar expert said, adding: “If they screw it up, they are going to be in a world of trouble.” Newsweekdid not identify its source.
Clinton’s presidential ‘finding’ authorising the covert action quickly provoked congressional criticism of its wisdom and legality, as well as its timing.
Before being leaked, the ‘finding’ was secret, and was to have been kept from America’s Nato allies, the magazine said.
Capitol Hill critics wondered why, as progress appeared to be dawning on a Yugoslav peace settlement, Clinton would authorise an operation that, besides blowing back on US banks and spy agencies, could prolong the war and alienate Nato allies.
But Congress can do little more than criticise the Clinton covert cyberwar plan, since it has no legal authority to stop it. Clinton needs no congressional funding to pull it off; he can use presidential emergency funds to pay for it.
In this light, the plan’s leak to Newsweekmay have been done by those in Congress or the intelligence community in an attempt to embarrass the White House into quietly killing it and pretending it never existed.
