The New York Times, June 26, 1996, p. B7. Head of C.I.A. Plans Center To Protect Federal Computers By Tim Weiner Washington, June 25 -- Alarmed at the growing threat that computer hackers pose to national security, the Director of Central Intelligence today announced plans to create a "cyberwar" center to protect the bits and bytes that weave the nation together. The United States cannot be brought to its knees by a madman with a modem. But the Director, John M. Deutch, said the nation's intelligence agencies were alert to the threat of "very, very large" attacks on the computers that run Defense Department war rooms, power plants, telephone systems, air traffic control centers and international financial transfers. "The electron," Mr. Deutch warned, "is the ultimate precision-guided weapon." Mr. Deutch said he was seeking to create a cyberwar center at the National Security Agency, the giant electronic eavesdropping branch of American intelligence. He said the center could focus the Government's previously scattershot efforts to understand and combat the threats posed by governments, terrorist groups and mischievous teen-agers. Mr. Deutch's first public statement about information warfare came in testimony before Senator Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat who called a hearing of a Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee to discuss the little-understood, highly classified problem. "There are some who believe we are going to have to have an electronic Pearl Harbor, so to speak, before we really make this the kind of priority that many of us believe it deserves to be made," Mr. Nunn said. "Do you think we're going to need that kind of real awakening, or are we fully alerted to this danger now?" Mr. Deutch replied: "I think that we are fully alerted to it now. I don't know whether we will face an electronic Pearl Harbor, but we will have, I'm sure, some very unpleasant circumstances." He added, "I'm certainly prepared to predict some very, very large and uncomfortable incidents." Mr. Deutch said cyberwar could become a 21st-century national security threat second only to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Potential attackers may already possess the sophisticated techniques they would need to bring off a cataclysmic crash, many experts believe, but they still lack the deep knowledge of their targets and direct access to the computer systems they would seek to disable. Military and civilian organizations are increasingly dependent on evermore complicated and interlinked systems. They run the risk of understanding the threat less and less as it becomes more and more complex Mr. Nunn and Mr. Deutch suggested. Senator Nunn also said intelligence agencies have communications problems with banks, telecommunications companies and other business ventures vulnerable to cyber attacks. "There's a great reluctance by the private sector to discuss the threat that they've faced or even the attacks that have already occurred," he said, "because they fear that the word would go out they're vulnerable, and therefore could destroy or damage consumer confidence and thereby cost them business." "At some point," the Senator added, "there's got to be communication here." [End]