President Clinton has approved a top-secret plan to destabilise President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia using computer hackers to attack his foreign bank accounts and a sabotage campaign to erode his public support, Newsweek magazine reported yesterday.
The magazine, in its May 23rd edition, quoted sources saying Mr Clinton issued an intelligence "finding" allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to find "ways to get at Milosevic".
The finding would permit the CIA to train ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo in the art of sabotage, including such tricks as cutting telephone lines, fouling petrol reserves and pilfering food supplies, according to the Newsweek report.
The CIA also was instructed to wage a cyberwar against Mr Milo sevic, using computer hackers to tap into the Yugoslav President's foreign bank accounts, the magazine said.
Newsweek said other NATO allies were not to be told about the secret war.
The US Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees were briefed on the decision, Newsweek said. Some senior politicians in Washington criticised the finding, questioning the legality and wisdom of launching a risky covert action, the magazine said.
"If they pull it off, it will be great," Newsweek quoted one government cyberwar expert as saying. "If they screw it up, they are going to be in a world of trouble."
A leading Democrat, Senator Joseph Lieberman from Connecticut, speaking on the television programme Fox News Sunday, said yesterday he thought a cyberspace war against the Yugoslav leader was "totally acceptable".
"I wouldn't be surprised if we were using it here as part of an effort to bring the war in Kosovo home to the people, the civilians in Belgrade, so that they pressure Milosevic to break and make an agreement with NATO," Senator Lieberman told the programme.