[iwar] Information warfare and Yugoslavia

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-08-29 19:53:28
Next message: e.r.: "Re: [iwar] How good is missile defense system?"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] Hacktivism - interesting read..."
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Message-Id: <200108300253.TAA00640@big.all.net>
To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List)
Organization: I'm not allowed to say
From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 19:53:28 -0700 (PDT)
Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [iwar] Information warfare and Yugoslavia
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

MSNBC: Information warfare and Yugoslavia

http://www.msnbc.com/news/607032.asp

The other Kosovo war

Baby steps - and
missteps - for
information warfare

A policeman shows damaged
electric power utilities in Smederevo
on May 16, 1999, after an attack
that NATO info warfare experts had
telegraphed -- literally.

By William Arkin
and Robert Windrem
  SPECIAL TO MSNBC

On the night of May 15, 1999 - day 53 of the Kosovo War - a flight of
American B-2 bombers attacked two industrial facilities in eastern
Serbia.  Before the raid, under a covert operation dubbed ?Matrix,? U.S. 
and British information warfare specialists used e-mail, faxes and cell
phones to forewarn the plant owners of the attack.  The warnings had
nothing to do with limiting casualties, nor were the targets of great
military value.  Rather, the operation was designed to send a message to
cronies of President Slobodan Milosevic?s enriching themselves through
these factories: Prevail upon the Yugoslav leader to withdraw his forces
from Kosovo or face further attacks on your sources of income.  THE
ATTACKS on Bor and Smederevo were only the most dramatic examples of a
joint U.S.-British effort designed to put pressure on the Yugoslav
President through "crony targeting."

"It's a powerful tonic to tell them when it's going to happen and then
for them to watch it happen," says an officer involved in the operation. 

During the 78-day conflict, the Yugoslav president and his inner circle
were treated to a small taste of what future wars may hold for American
foes.  Coupling computer technology with the power of the military, the
United States waged information warfare on Milosevic's closest political
associates in an effort to frighten them into abandoning their leader. 

This new mode of combat combines cyber-war tactics, espionage,
psychological warfare and propaganda under one umbrella and seeks to
coordinate it with the planes, tanks and ships of the traditional
military.  Like most new endeavors, the Kosovo information war got off
to a bumpy start, encountered fierce opposition from traditional
soldiers and was dogged by planning problems.  Yet even its fiercest
critics acknowledge that in the future, information warfare will be a
real factor in winning the battles of the 21st century. 

PRESSURE POINTS

The steel plant at Smederevo and the copper smelter at Bor were
painstakingly monitored by U.S.  intelligence agencies, which concluded
that the two enterprises were being used to directly enrich the
governing clique. 

At Bor, for instance, Nikola Sainovic, a former deputy prime minister in
charge of Kosovo affairs and an indicted war criminal, used his
management position to siphon gold from the plant - gold that eventually
found its way out of Yugoslavia and into the bank accounts of the elite. 

A similar kickback scheme was uncovered at Smederevo, where Dusan
Matkovic, the head of the plant and ex-deputy leader of Milosevic's
political party, found ways of turning steel making into a major money
maker for Milosevic's cronies. 

The full story of operation Matrix and crony targeting remains locked up
in top-secret files, only whispered about by information warfare
specialists.  In months of interviews with senior military officers and
government officials, MSNBC.com was able to piece together the untold
story of this first information war. 

As NATO moved toward armed conflict in 1999, a "full spectrum"
information warfare plan took shape, fondly referred to as "Elephant
Blanket," so-called because the operation's intricacies were laid out in
a series of diagrams on an enormous 5-foot square piece of paper, all
meticulously printed in six-point type. 

 By the time bombing began on March 24, the Special Technical Operations
cell at U.S.  European Command headquarters had mapped out an exquisite
information warfare campaign against Milosevic.  Special Technical
Operations cells, or "STOs," are the super-secret covert efforts by the
U.S.  military and government to coordinate traditional warfare with
newer modes of combat - from information warfare to espionage,
psychological warfare, sabotage and other special weapons.  An STO cell
nowexists in each major combat command, coordinated by a high-levelpanel
of the U.S.  Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The contents ranged from troop movements to public affairs strategies to
covert action.  At the helm of all of these interlocking operations and
scenarios was U.S.  Gen.  Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied commander of
the war. 

MAJOR HEADACHES After the first few weeks of bombing, it became clear
that the scenario Clark had predicted - that Milosevic would fold within
48 hours - was far too optimistic.  At the same time, tremendous
problems developed with the Elephant Blanket approach.  The most serious
issue: putting the details of sensitive operations on one document meant
that only a small number of very senior officers had the required
security clearance to see the whole plan.  In fact, not a single
European officer in the NATO command had such clearance.  Information
warfare officers didn't even arrive in Vicenza, Italy, to brief Gen. 
Michael Short, who was running the air war, until late April - more than
a month into the bombing campaign. 

One official U.S.  Air Force report on this super-secret effort tersely
concluded: "Special Access Programs were of little value; no one was
`special' enough to have access."

A KICK FROM UPSTAIRS

Frustrated by the bureaucratic roadblocks, information warfare officers
managed to win support from the White House, which quickly set in motion
a plan to streamline Elephant Blanket.  What emerged was the "Day 54
plan," an amalgam of top-secret projects developed independently by a
variety of agencies. 

"I want to see the rapid economic death of Serbia," Deputy National
Security Adviser James Steinberg told covert operators, according to an
account he later gave reporters. 

At a top secret facility near Washington, an "influence net"-
essentially a model of Milosevic's inner circle - was quickly prepared. 
It showed who owed what, who talked to whom and where influence flowed
inside Milosevic's Yugoslavia.  The model served as the blueprint for
targeting the right people.  CIA, NSA and military intelligence
operators broke into Yugoslav communications and computer networks,
inserting messages that repeated NATO's surrender terms. 

Separately, broader efforts to support the Day 54 plan came into play. 
Diplomatically, the United States and European Union began pressuring
neighboring states to freeze bank accounts and deny transit to certain
members of the Yugoslav elite. 

"In one case of a Milosevic crony," Berger says, "the family in tow,
suitcase bulging, found themselves denied entry to a nearby country."

The Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control set up
shop in Cyprus, which one senior U.S.  government official calls the
"money-laundering center for the region."

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Despite this major information warfare initiative, high ranking U.S. 
officers remained deeply skeptical, most notably, Gen.  Clark. 

"It's a joke," Clark told MSNBC.com, referring to tactics that included
calling and faxing Milosevic insiders.  "That's not anything but
harassment."

The multinational war operated under such political constraints that
many of the plan's information warfare efforts were never fully
implemented.  Most urban targets continued to be restricted, for
instance.  Internal alliance politics also presented a problem.  For
instance, Yugoslav cell phone and telephone networks couldn't be bombed
because Italian and Greek telecommunications companies had a financial
stake in them. 

There also were legal concerns expressed inside the U.S.  government
regarding proposals to do things like insert viruses in Serb computer
systems or hack into bank accounts thought to contain plundered funds. 

"Crony targeting" and Operation Matrix dirty tricks sound exciting, but
"all we did was `spam' the Serbs," says one officer skeptical of the
operation.  "We `spammed' their e-mail.  We `spammed' their faxes.  We
`spammed' their phone lines."

In the end, no computer viruses were planted, and there was no effort to
penetrate networks and subtlety change data. 

"Someone wants to put a virus into a Yugoslav system, sure maybe it will
work," says Clark.  "But is this what I would base success or failure
on?"

Moreover, Milosevic played the information warfare game himself - in
some ways better than NATO.  "Milosevic was far more skilled in the
manipulation of the media than we were in getting our message out,"
Secretary of Defense William Cohen told Congress in October 1999. 
Yugoslav propaganda dominated Western media coverage, and there are
hints that Belgrade's own covert psychological warfare had an impact on
NATO.  Though the National Security Agency won't confirm the rumor, more
than one source told MSNBC.com that Serbian linguists working for U.S. 
intelligence quit their jobs during the war for fear of personal attack
after being contacted by the Serbian diaspora and possible Serb
government agents. 

Whatever the shortcomings of NATO's information war in Kosovo - from
Elephant Blanket to the Matrix operation - important lessons were
learned. 

"We cannot ignore this set of tools," said a retired officer steeped in
information warfare. 

Military strategists believe that information warfare may someday be
accorded the same stature as air and ground warfare.  The ultimate goal
is an integrated information strike against potential enemies, with
information and electrons joining traditional weapons in the American
strategic arsenal. 

William Arkin is an independent military analyst and a frequent
contributor to MSNBC.com.  Robert Windrem is an investigative producer
at NBC News. 

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Secure your servers with 128-bit SSL encryption! Grab your copy of VeriSign's FREE Guide: "Securing Your Web Site for Business." Get it Now!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/n7RbFC/zhwCAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

------------------
http://all.net/ 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Next message: e.r.: "Re: [iwar] How good is missile defense system?"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] Hacktivism - interesting read..."
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-09-29 21:08:40 PDT