Operation Keystroke

MacCaulay

Banned
This was something I wrote down while I was working on a story. I figured I'd post it here. I was thinking of turning it into a story.

1975: Soviet economists and mathemeticians pitch "Coldstone Project": where the Soviets will buy almost a billion dollars in Western stocks through front companies. This will allow them to launch an economic attack on the economies of the West by selling the stocks off in a rush.

1989: Coldstone Project is pulled because of funding cuts in the Soviet state.

1992: A Russian walk-in to the US embassy in Malaysia reveals intitial information about Soviet Coldstone Project in exchange for immunity from corruption charages. He reports he was ordered to feed false information on the state of the dollar to the PM and the Minister of Finance.

1993: An ex-Gazprom accountant at a CIA safehouse comments on finding financial irregularies in company profits. Upon investigation he found that a small percentage was being syphoned off to an account in the Isle of Man under the name "Coldstone."

A search for other Coldstone Program members and materials finds that the probably head is a mafia boss. Most/all of the funds have disappeared.

A public German release of Stasi documents reveals information on a Coldstone ring operations in Bonn in the 1980s. The CIA and GSG9 arrest Johann Schroeder, a former econ advisor to Helmut Kohl. When they arrest him, they find the operations plans for Coldstone in West Germany.

1994: Agent John Sims arrives with an uncovered original briefing to Brezhnev about Coldstone. It is checked against Schroeder and the Malay's debrieftings and found to be genuine.

1995: A feasibility study into updating Coldstone is authorized by the DDOafter several CIA and NSA analysts sign a paper stating it's possible utilization in the future for the use of computer algorythms to replace Soviet manual analysis.

The group is named Project Keystroke, after the computer program.

Study finds Keystroke 1.0 results are deivers and as desired, but hard to predict. The team is allowed to bring in an outside economist to assist with results predictions and refinements.

Gary Tapert, a U of Iowa economis with past ties to the NSA, is tapped to become part of the group.

1996: CIA Director Bill Casey orders the team to modifty Keystroke 1.0 and make a tracking version to assist in the capture of Bosnian war criminals in hiding.

Keystroke Mod 1 begins tracking 3 Serbian officers, by their use of credit cards and checks. The team informs Casey it has the ability to freeze the accounts of the officers, limiting their movement. He says "no" to the idea and tells the team to concentrate on observation.

1997: During Operation Desert Fox, the team is approached by the Middle East desk about shutting down the Irqi black market oil trade. The team has contingency plans and present them. During the cruise missile and air strikes, several dummy Swiss accounts used to pay Irqi crews on the tankers are hacked and emptied by the team using Keystroke 2.0.

CENTCOM is briefed into the program, as the Keystroke team begins working on a financial attack to cripple the Hussein regime. This plan is integrated into various US warplans.


This is all I wrote, but I had stuff in my mind all the way to 2011.
 
This does sound interesting, but I'm a little confused. Is "Coldstone" a computer program or an investment portfolio?
 

Thande

Donor
Interesting idea, but IMO it would make a better technothriller if Coldstone was discovered by some terrorist baddies and used to attack America...admittedly this would have been better back in the 90s when economic collapse was still theoretical...
 
This was partly the plot of Robert Ludlum's The Company - redacted to avoid spoiling the book - that came out about ten years or so back. I can definitely recommend it to people.


Interesting idea, but IMO it would make a better technothriller if Coldstone was discovered by some terrorist baddies and used to attack America...admittedly this would have been better back in the 90s when economic collapse was still theoretical...
Well the hardliners in the armed forced and security services were more than willing to launch a military coup to keep things as they wanted. Perhaps they decide to initiate it to keep the US/western Europe occupied to rule out any intervention, they use it to try and discredit the western capitalism that people were calling for, a final fuck you to the principal enemy as they called the US - as the line from Moby Dick goes '... to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee'. If you want it a bit later another idea might be that the Russians decide that much like nukes they should hold onto and maintain it just in case they ever need to strike at the US. One of the people tasked with overseeing it though has some form of mental break and initiates it off of their own bat.
 
This does sound interesting, but I'm a little confused. Is "Coldstone" a computer program or an investment portfolio?

The way I understand it is as a modern version of Operation Bernhard, only involving stocks not currency used in destabilizing the economy.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
This does sound interesting, but I'm a little confused. Is "Coldstone" a computer program or an investment portfolio?

Coldstone is more of the portfolio.

The thing would only be turned into a computer program after the CIA gets ahold of it and decides to put 1990s tech into the Soviet idea.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Here's some more:

1998: The Keystroke team is ordered, in the wake of the African embassy bombings, to begin construction of a program to shut down the assets of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
A pair of team members goes to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on a brief fact finding trip to collect data regarding the Bin Laden family's finances.

1999: Keystroke 1.0 is seconded to the ATF for use in tracking narcotics traffickers. It is the first time any of the Keystroke team operates in the United States.

The Keystroke team is joined by Yuri Grishin, the original defector from the Malaysia. He was an economist in Coldstone, and is an advisor on further refinements to the program.

2001: The September 11th attacks move the Keystroke team into CENTCOM's radar. Old plans are updated, and before the year is out the team is told to begin concentrating on possible economic attacks on Iraq.

2001-2002: The Keystroke team updates contingency plans regarding an attack not only on the economy of the country, but of the wallets of the leadership. They identify bank accounts, hack numbers, and generally prepare to financially paralyze the Iraqi leadership and state if they are ordered.

2003: The team, with the blessing of the CIA director, goes to Condi Rice with the pitch that they will make an attack on the finances of the Iraqi leadership as soon as possible, before they have a chance to withdraw their money from the accounts. Rice gets them an audience with President Bush.

Bush decides to not use the Keystroke team in the Iraq War, but gives them permission to enter Iraq on the heels of the invasion and scour the country for any information that would be able to tell them whether or not their battleplan would've worked.

In April, a half-dozen person team arrives in Kuwait ready to move to Baghdad along with the 3rd ID and infiltrate the Ministry of Finance.
 
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