ISLAMABAD – Pakistan was among several countries which bought Swissencryption equipment from Crypto AG, unaware that it was secretly owned bythe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a highly classified partnershipwith West German intelligence.
More than 120 countries including India, Iran and Vatican trusted Crypto AGto keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret, *TheWashington Post *reported. However, these countries were oblivious to thefact that the CIA and Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) spy agenciesrigged the company’s devices so they could easily break the codes thatcountries used to send encrypted messages.
Crypto AG which was liquidated in 2018, made millions of dollars in profitsthat went to the CIA and BND.The decades-long arrangement is written in acomprehensive document of CIA history of the operation obtained by *TheWashington Post* and *ZDF*, a German public broadcaster, in a jointreporting project.
The reports said that at least four countries Israel, Britain, Sweden andSwitzerland knew of the operation, called ‘Operation Rubicon’, or wereallowed access to some of the secrets it unearthed.
“It was the intelligence coup of the century. Foreign governments werepaying good money to the US and West Germany for the privilege of havingtheir most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as manyas five or six) foreign countries,” the CIA report says.
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The report gives specifics about how the spy agencies fed intelligenceabout Argentina’s military to Britain during the Falklands War or how theymonitored Iran’s mullahs during the 1979 hostage crisis. The reporthowever, does not give specifics about spying operations targeting Pakistan.
However, US’s main adversaries, the Soviet Union and China, were neverCrypto customers. “Their well-founded suspicions of the company’s ties tothe West shielded them from exposure, although the CIA history suggeststhat U.S. spies learned a great deal by monitoring other countries’interactions with Moscow and Beijing,” the report read.
On Tuesday, the Swiss government announced that it was launching aninvestigation of Crypto AG’s ties to the CIA and BND. Swiss officials havealready revoked Crypto International’s export license.
