US, German spies plundered global secrets

WASHINGTON: US and German intelligence services raked in the top secret communications of governments around the world for decades through their hidden control of a top encryption company Crypto AG, US, German and Swiss media reported on Tuesday.

The Swiss company was a top supplier of devices for encoding communications to some 120 countries from after World War II to the beginning of this century, including Iran, South American governments, and India and Pakistan, the Washington Post, German television ZTE and Swiss state media SRF reported.

Unknown to those governments, Crypto was secretly owned by the US Central Intelligence Agency together with Germany’s BND Federal Intelligence Service, who rigged Crypto’s equipment to be able to easily break the codes and read the government’s messages.

The Washington Post said a classified internal CIA history of the top-secret programme identifies the CIA officers who oversaw the operation and the Crypto executives who enabled it.

"It was the intelligence coup of the century," the history says, according to the Washington Post.

"Foreign governments were paying good money to the US and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries."