The pipeline, as planned, would have a level of complexity that would require advanced automated control software (SCADA). The pipeline utilized plans for a sophisticated control system and its software that had been stolen from a Canadian firm by the KGB. The CIA allegedly had the company insert a logic bomb in the program for sabotage purposes, eventually resulting in an explosion with the power of three kilotons of TNT.
The CIA was tipped off to the Soviet intentions to steal the control system plans in documents in the Farewell Dossier and, seeking to derail their efforts, CIA director William J. Casey followed the counsel of economist Gus Weiss and a disinformation strategy was initiated to sell the Soviets deliberately flawed designs for stealth technology and space defense. The operation proceeded to deny the Soviets the technology they desired to purchase to automate the pipeline management, then, a KGB operation to steal the software from a Canadian company was anticipated, and, in June 1982, flaws in the stolen software led to a massive explosion of part of the pipeline.
National Security Council staffer Thomas C. Reed documented the operation in his book, At The Abyss.[1] In 2004, Reed, a former Air Force secretary of the Reagan administration, wrote that they had added a Trojan horse to equipment that the Soviet Union obtained from a company in Canada. When the components were deployed on a Trans-Siberian gas pipeline, the Trojan horse lead to a huge explosion, according to Reed.[2] As Reed explained, "The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."
The explosion was, in fact, so large that the White House received warning from U.S. infrared satellites of a bizarre event in a remote area of the Soviet Union. NORAD had initially feared that the event was a missile launch from an area previously not known to have rockets.
As the explosion occurred in a remote area, no casualties are known to have resulted.