By Joseph
Fitsanakis
February 25, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - 17
February 2020 - Crypto AG, the world’s leading
manufacturer or cryptologic equipment during the
Cold War, whose clients included over 120
governments around the world, was a front company
owned by the United States Central Intelligence
Agency.
The revelation,
published last Tuesday by The Washington
Post and the German public broadcaster ZDF,
confirmed
rumors that had been circulating since the early
1980s, that Crypto AG had made a secret deal with
the US government. It was believed that the
Swiss-based company had allowed the US National
Security Agency to read the classified messages of
dozens of nations that purchased Crypto AG’s
encoding equipment. These rumors were
further-substantiated in 2015, when a BBC
investigation unearthed evidence of a
“gentleman’s agreement”, dating to 1955, between a
leading NSA official and Boris Hagelin, the
Norwegian-born founder and owner of Crypto AG.
But the reality of
this alleged secret pact appears to have been even
more controversial. According to last week’s
revelations, the CIA and West Germany’s Federal
Intelligence Service (BND) secretly purchased the
Swiss company and paid off most of its senior
executives in order to buy their silence. The secret
deal allegedly allowed the US and West Germany to
spy on the classified government communications of
several of their adversaries —and even allies,
including Italy, Spain and Greece, as well as
Austria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates.