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Huge NSA Encryption Scam Claimed The Swiss firm Crypto AG reportedly designed their widely used encryption devices so that the NSA could decode secrets from many countries. By Covert Action Quarterly Start Date: 2/10/99 A feature article in Covert Action Quarterly (issue 63, January 30, 1999) by Wayne Madsen claims that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) made a deal with a firm in supposedly neutral Switzerland decades ago that has given America's premiere spy agency virtually unlimited access to the most highly sensitive documents of other nations, both friend and foe. The Swiss firm, Crypto AG, allegedly agreed to build into its sophisticated encryption devices a "back door" that allows the NSA to decode any message from that machine. Crypto AG has supplied encryption devices to most of the world's governments. "It may be the greatest intelligence scam of the century," Madsen writes. He says that 120 nations have used Crypto AG's encryption technology. "The purchasing nations, confident that their communications were protected, sent messages from their capitals to embassies, military missions, trade offices, and espionage dens around the world, via telex, radio, teletype, and facsimile. They not only conducted sensitive albeit legal business and diplomacy, but sometimes strayed into criminal matters, issuing orders to assassinate political leaders, bomb commercial buildings, and engage in drug and arms smuggling. "All the while, because of a secret agreement between the National Security Agency and Crypto AG, they might as well have been hand delivering the message to Washington," Madsen says. The scam began to unravel in 1992 when one of Crypto AG's top sales people, Hans Buehler, was detained by the government of Iran. Buehler was accused by the Iranians of being a spy for both Germany and the United States. He was allegedly questioned every day for nine months and often threatened with physical torture, although those threats were not carried out, he says. Apparently Buehler didn't know that the Crypto AG equipment he sold the Iranians was rigged for NSA access. He steadfastly maintained his ignorance and was eventually released when Crypto paid a million dollar ransom. But once home in Switzerland, Buehler was promptly fired by the company and ordered to reimburse the million dollars, Madsen says. In the ensuing years, other present and former Crypto employees have come to Buehler's defense. Some claimed first-hand knowledge that the machines were rigged. If the allegations of an NSA deal with Crypto are true, the implications for global security are mind-boggling. Some governments were suspicious of Crypto even before the Iranians detained Buehler -- the Libyans, for example, stopped using Crypto's equipment in 1986. Following the Buehler revelations, Madsen says, even officials at the Vatican labeled Crypto AG as "bandits." But for those who need high level encryption, the options are few -- and there is the well-founded fear that the NSA may have cut deals with the competition as well. Is Big Brother watching? Looks like it. For the full text, see http://caq.com:80/CAQ/caq63/caq63madsen.html (GSReport thanks Stig Agermose for bringing this story to our attention.)
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