TERRORISM

By DOUGLAS WALLER

Terrorists wreaked havoc on the World Trade Center in 1993. Could larger targets--the Wall Street financial network, Midwestern water supplies, California power grids--prove as susceptible? For almost a year, a presidential COMMISSION ON CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION has been quietly collecting intelligence reports and interviewing business executives and local officials to determine how vulnerable banks, telecommunications systems, utilities and transportation networks are to attacks from terrorists or cyberbandits.

The preliminary assessment: very vulnerable. "The only question is when," says Arizona Republican SENATOR JON KYL, who pushed for the formation of the commission, which will deliver a secret report to the President in October. The panel's chairman, Robert Marsh, says radical groups like the Irish Republican Army are looking at ways to wage "economic terrorism," and computer assaults are already rampant. A hacker shut down computers at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia last winter by sending in 30,000 E-mail messages. The Langley machines were paralyzed for six hours.

--By Douglas Waller