Clinton Backs Milosevic Cyber-Attack.

U.S. President Bill Clinton has approved a top-secret plan to destabilise Yugoslav leader Milosevic, using computer hackers to attack his foreign bank accounts and a sabotage campaign to erode his public support, Newsweek magazine reported on Sunday. The magazine quoted sources as saying 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 gasoline reserves and pilfering food supplies, the magazine said. A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity denied part of the Newsweek report, saying the United States would not be involved in arming, training or equipping ethnic Albanian rebels to conduct sabotage. The CIA also was instructed to wage a cyberwar against Milosevic, using computer hackers to tap into the Yugoslav president_s foreign bank accounts, the magazine said. The Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees were briefed on the decision, Newsweek said. Some lawmakers criticised the idea, questioning the legality and wisdom of launching a risky covert action that could alienate other NATO members, the magazine said. On Saturday the French Foreign Ministry said the European satellite consortium Eutelsat, under intense presure from NATO, had voted to suspend its transmissions of Serbian radio and television broadcasts.