Michael Reagan says there is nothing new about the Russian government stealing information from the United States as his father President Ronald Reagan discovered when he learned of a Kremlin plot to grab sensitive details about the nation's natural gas pipeline.
"It was during the 1970s and they were hacking, getting information about our natural gas pipeline and trying to figure out how they could use what we had and learn from it to build their own natural gas pipeline," Reagan, a veteran political commentator, told Newsmax TV's "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Tuesday.
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"And my father found it out. So he worked with the CIA, and they put together a logarithm, but within the logarithm was basically a bomb.
"The logarithm . . . [which the Russians stole] said they had to do a heavy pressure test, which the pipeline was incapable of handling. And what happened was it completely blew up and destroyed their natural gas pipeline."
Reagan said his father stayed mum about U.S. counter-plan, not revealing it to the nation at the time.
"My father didn't . . . go on TV and have a press conference to announce that he was going to be doing this to the Russians," Reagan said. "It has a bigger effect when you just do things, not when you announce what you might do."
Reagan is the author of "Lessons My Father Talk Me: The Strength, the Integrity and Faith of Ronald Reagan," written with Jim Denney and published by Humanix.