http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/27/1077676960916.html
In 1982, US president Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the Soviet Union's economy through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a gas pipeline, according to a former White House official. Thomas Reed, a former Air Force secretary and member of the National Security Council, describes the episode in a book, At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War, to be published next month. Reed writes that the Siberia pipeline explosion was just one example of "cold-eyed economic warfare" against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under director William Casey during the final years of the Cold War. At the time, the US was attempting 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 CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way 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," Reed writes.
