Switzerland said it is investigating a report that the CIA and Germany’s intelligence agency used a Swiss firm’s encryption technology to spy on more than 100 nations.
The company, Crypto AG, was the dominant maker of encryption devices for decades. None of the countries that bought the equipment knew it was run by the CIA in a secret partnership with West German intelligence. The spy agencies rigged the devices so they could easily read the encrypted messages.
The Washington Post detailed the partnership and the company’s history in a lengthy piece published Tuesday. The Swiss Defense Ministry then said it is scrutinizing Crypto’s activities “to investigate and clarify the facts of the matter,” according to Reuters.
“The events under discussion date back to 1945 and are difficult to reconstruct and interpret in the present day context,” the ministry said in a statement.
A classified CIA report on the decadeslong operation refers to it as “the intelligence coup of the century” because it allowed the intelligence services to read top-secret messages of dozens of countries, including during times of crisis.
The German intelligence agency left the partnership in the early 1990s, after years of tension over money and the Americans’ willingness to spy on some of their allies. The CIA sold off the company’s assets in 2018, creating two successor companies: Crypto International and CyOne Security AG.
If Swiss authorities allowed the operation, Crypto may not have violated the country’s laws that limit “unwelcome” espionage activities by foreign agents. However, Swiss politician Balthasar Glaettli said that if the country knew about Crypto’s activities, “it would undermine the foundations of our political identity.”
Crypto International owner Andreas Linde called the report “distressing” and said his company has no connections to the CIA or German intelligence. CyOne Security said it also has nothing to do with the spy services.
Swiss Economy Minister Guy Parmelin suspended the general export licenses of both companies until “the situation and open questions have been clarified.”
