Thanks, Jim. This is a really interesting story. I guess there are two
ways to think about it.
One way is "Hooray for the good guys!" I am very glad, and the world is
fortunate indeed, that the USA, Britain, and Germany were smart enough to
secretly accomplish this for so many years. Let's wish future success to the
people figuring out how we can stay ahead of the terrorist governments of
the world!
The second way, of course, is to curse this successful operation and to say
we hope soon the terrorists of the world will achieve complete privacy so
they can plan and carry out their murders and destruction more secretly and
successfully.
So no one misunderstands my take on it. I am 1000% on our government doing
whatever it takes around the world to make our countrymen and our friends
safer. How about you?
Sincerely,
Greg Scott
M.G. Scott, President
Scott & Associates Investigations, Inc. (Est. 1983)
P.O. Box 29593
Greensboro, NC 27429 USA
< invest..._at_pobox.com >
< www.USDetective.com >
Member: WAD, IKD, IASIR, NCISS, ACFE, ACIP, NCAPI
Specializing in Investigations and Counter-Intelligence Services for
Individuals, Attorneys, and Corporations.
NOTE: THIS OUTGOING EMAIL SCANNED BY NORTON SYSTEMWORKS 2007 VIRUS
PROTECTION.
-----Original Message-----
From: TSCM-..._at_googlegroups.com [mailto:TSCM-..._at_googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of James M. Atkinson
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 12:22 AM
To: TSCM-L
Subject: [TSCM-L] {2235} The NSA-Crypto AG Sting
The NSA-Crypto AG Sting
For years US eavesdroppers could read encrypted messages without the least
difficulty Ludwig De Braeckeleer (ludwig)
For decades, the US National Security Agency
(NSA) has been reading effortlessly ultra sensitive messages intercepted
from all parts of the world. This extraordinary feat was not the consequence
of the work of some genius cyber mathematician. Nor was it the result of the
agency dominance in the field of super computers, which allegedly have
outpaced their most direct rivals by orders of magnitude. The truth is far
simpler and quite troubling. The game was rigged.
For half a century, Crypto AG, a Swiss company located in Zug, has sold to
more than 100 countries the encryption machines their officials rely upon to
exchange their most sensitive economic, diplomatic and military messages.
Crypto AG was founded in 1952 by the legendary (Russian born) Swedish
cryptographer Boris Hagelin. During World War II, Hagelin sold 140,000 of
his machine to the US Army.
"In the meantime, the Crypto AG has built up long standing cooperative
relations with customers in 130 countries," states a prospectus of the
company. The home page of the company Web site says, "Crypto AG is the
preferred top-security partner for civilian and military authorities
worldwide. Security is our business and will always remain our business."
And for all those years, US eavesdroppers could read these messages without
the least difficulty.
A decade after the end of WWII, the NSA, also known as No Such Agency, had
rigged the Crypto AG machines in various ways according to the targeted
countries. It is probably no exaggeration to state that this 20th century
version of the "Trojan horse" is quite likely the greatest sting in modern
history.
In effect, US intelligence had spies in the government and military command
of all these countries working around the clock without ever risking the
possibility of being unmasked.
An Old and Venerable Company
In the aftermath of the Islamic revolution, Iran, quite understandably,
would no longer trust encryption equipment provided by companies of NATO
countries.
The Swiss reputation for secrecy and neutrality lured Iranians to Crypto AG,
an old and venerable company. They never imagined for a moment that,
attached to the encrypted message, their Crypto machines were transmitting
the key allowing the description of messages they were sending. The scheme
was perfect, undetectable to all but those who knew where to look.
Crypto AG, of course, denied the allegations as "pure invention." In 1994,
the company issued a message in the Swiss press, stating that "manipulation
of Crypto AG equipment is absolutely excluded."
On the Wikipedia page of Crypto AG, one can read:
"Crypto AG rejected these accusations as pure invention, asserting in a
press release that in March 1994, the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office
initiated a wide-ranging preliminary investigation against Crypto AG, which
was completed in 1997. The accusations regarding influence by third parties
or manipulations, which had been repeatedly raised in the media, proved to
be without foundation."
However, meetings between a NSA cryptographer and Crypto AG personnel to
discuss the design of new machines have been factually established. The
story was also confirmed by former employees and is supported by company
documents. Boris Hagelin is said to have acted out of idealism. What is
certain is that the deal for Crypto AG was quite juicy. In return for
rigging their machines, Crypto AG is understood to have been granted export
licenses to all entities controlled by the NSA.
Early Hints
A book published in 1977 by Ronald Clark (The Man Who Broke Purple: The Life
of Colonel William F.
Friedman) revealed that William F. Friedman, another Russian-born genius in
the field of cryptography (he deciphered the Japanese code in World War II)
and onetime special assistant to the NSA director, had visited Boris Hagelin
in 1957. Friedman and Hagelin met at least on two other occasions. Clark was
urged by the NSA not to reveal the existence of these meetings for national
security reasons. In 1982, James Bamford confirmed the story in his book on
the NSA: The Puzzle Palace. The operation was codenamed the "Boris project."
In effect, Friedman and Hagelin had reached an agreement that was going to
pave the way to cooperation of Crypto AG with the NSA.
Despite these very obvious hints, countries such as Iran, Iraq and Libya
continued using the Crypto AG machines for encrypting their messages.
And so did the Vatican, among many other entities.
Persian Suspicions
In 1987, ABC News Beirut correspondent Charles Glass was taken hostage for
62 days in Lebanon by Hezbollah, the Shi'ite Muslim group widely believed to
have been founded by Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, when he was Iranian ambassador to
Syria in the early 1980s.
Washington claimed that NSA had intercepted coded Iranian diplomatic cables
between Iran's embassies in Beirut and the Hezbollah group.
Iranians began to wonder how the US intelligence could have broken their
code.
After the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf on
July 3, 1988, "Iran vowed that the skies would rain with American blood." A
few months later, on Dec. 21, a terrorist bomb brought down Pan Am Flight
103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Once more, NSA intercepted and decoded a communication of Iranian Interior
Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi linking Iran to the bombing of Pan Am 103.
One intelligence summary, prepared by the US Air Force Intelligence Agency,
was requested by lawyers for the bankrupt Pan American Airlines through the
Freedom of Information Act.
"Mohtashemi is closely connected with the Al Abas and Abu Nidal terrorist
groups. He is actually a long-time friend of Abu Nidal. He has recently paid
10 million dollars in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out
terrorist activities and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am
Flight 103 in retaliation for the US shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus."
Moreover, Israeli intelligence intercepted a coded transmission between
Mohtashemi in Teheran and the Iranian Embassy in Beirut concerning the
transfer of a large sum of money to the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command, headed by Ahmed Jibril, as payment for the
downing of Pan Am 103.
The Iranians were now at a loss to explain how Western and Israeli
intelligence agencies could so easily defeat the security of their
diplomatic traffic. The ease with which the West was reading Iranian coded
transactions strongly suggested that some may have possessed the decryption
keys.
The Bakhtiar Murder
In April 1979, Shahpour Bakhtiar was forced to leave Iran as the last prime
minister of the Shah. He returned to France where he lived in the west Paris
suburb of Suresnes. In July 1980, he nearly escaped an assassination
attempt. On Aug.
6, 1991, Bakhtiar and his personal secretary Katibeh Fallouch were murdered
by three assassins.
Two of them fled to Iran, but the third, Ali Vakili Rad, was apprehended in
Switzerland. One of the six alleged accomplices, Zeyal Sarhadi was an
employee of the Iranian Embassy in Berne and a great-nephew of former
president of Iran Hasemi Rafsanjani. Both men were extradited to France for
trial.
On the day of his assassination and one day before his body was found with
his throat slit, the Teheran headquarters of the Iranian Intelligence
Service, the VEVAK, transmitted a coded message to Iranian diplomatic
missions in London, Paris, Bonn and Geneva. "Is Bakhtiar dead?" the message
asked.
Switzerland's Neue Zurcher Zeitung reported that the U.S. had provided the
contents of encrypted Iranian messages to France to assist Investigating
Magistrate Jean Louis Bruguiere in the conviction of Ali Vakili Rad and one
of his alleged accomplices Massoud Hendi. This information was confirmed by
L' Express.
The NSA interception and decoding of the message led to the identification
of the murderers before the murder was discovered. From the Swiss and French
press reports, Iranians now knew that British and American SIGINT operators
had intercepted and decoded the crucially embarrassing message. Something
was definitely wrong with their encryption machines.
The Buehler Arrest
Hans Buehler was a top Crypto AG salesman who had worked at the Zug company
for 13 years. In March 1992, Buehler, a strongly built cheerful man in his
50s, was on his 25th trip to Iran on behalf of Crypto AG.
Then, on March 18, he was arrested. Iranian intelligence agents accused him
of spying for the United States as well as Germany. Buehler was held in
solitary confinement in the Evin prison located in the north of Tehran. He
was interrogated everyday for five hours for more than nine months.
"I was never beaten, but I was strapped to wooden benches and told I would
be beaten. I was told Crypto was a spy center that worked with foreign
intelligence services."
Buehler never confessed any wrongdoing on his part or on the part of Crypto
AG. It appeared that he had acted in good faith and the Iranians came to
believe him. "I didn't know that the equipment was bugged, otherwise the
Iranians would have gotten it out of me by their many methods."
Back to Switzerland
In January 1993, after nine months of detention, Crypto AG [or was it
Siemens?] paid US$1 million to secure Buehler's freedom. During the first
weeks after his return to Switzerland, Buehler's life was once again
beautiful. The euphoria did not last long. Once more, his life came to an
abrupt change. Crypto fired him and demanded repayment of the $1 million
provided to Tehran for his liberation.
Back to Zug, Buehler began to ask some
embarrassing questions about the Iranian allegations. And the answers tended
to back up Iranian suspicions. Soon, reports began to appear on Swiss
television and radio. Major Swiss newspapers and German magazines such as
Der Spiegel picked up the story. Most, if not all, came to the conclusion
that Crypto AG's equipment had been rigged by one or several Western
intelligence services.
Buehler was bitterly disappointed. He felt nothing short of having been
betrayed by his former employer. During all these years, Buehler never
thought for a second that he had been unknowingly working for spies. Now, he
was sure that he had done so.
Buehler contacted several former Crypto AG employees. All admitted to him,
and eventually to various media, that they believed that the company had
long cooperated with US and German intelligence agencies.
The Truth Emerges
One of these former engineers told Buehler that he had learned about the
cooperation from Boris Hagelin Jr., the son of the company's founder and
sales manager for North and South America. In the 1970s, while stranded in
Buenos Aires, Boris Hagelin Jr. confided that he thought his father had been
wrong to accept rigging the Crypto AG machines.
Stunned by the revelation, the engineer decided to take this matter directly
to the head of Crypto AG. Boris Hagelin confirmed that the encryption
methods were unsafe.
"Different countries need different levels of security. The United States
and other leading Western countries required completely secure
communications. Such security would not be appropriate for the Third World
countries that were Crypto's customers," Boris Hagelin explained to the
baffled engineer. "We have to do it."
The NSA-Crypto AG Collaboration
A Crypto AG official document describes an August
1975 meeting set up to demonstrate the capacity of a new prototype. The
memorandum lists among the participants Nora L. Mackebee, who, like her
husband, was an NSA employee. Asked about the meeting, she merely replied:
"I cannot say anything about it."
During the '70s, Motorola helped Crypto AG in making the transition from
mechanical to electronic machines. Bob Newman was among the Motorola
engineers working with Crypto AG. Newman remembers very well Mackebee but
says that he ignored that she was working for the NSA.
Juerg Spoerndli left Crypto AG in 1994. He helped design the machines in the
late '70s. "I was ordered to change algorithms under mysterious
circumstances" to weaker machines," says Spoerndli who concluded that NSA
was ordering the design change through German intermediaries.
"I was idealistic. But I adapted quickly . the new aim was to help Big
Brother USA look over these countries' shoulders. We'd say 'It's better to
let the USA see what these dictators are doing,'" Spoerndli says.
"It's still an imperialistic approach to the world. I do not think it's the
way business should be done," Spoerndli adds.
Ruedi Hug, another former Crypto AG technician, also believes that the
machines were rigged.
"I feel betrayed. They always told me that we were the best. Our equipment
is not breakable, blah, blah, blah. Switzerland is a neutral country."
Crypto AG vs. Buehler
Crypto AG called these allegations "old hearsay and pure invention." When
Buehler began to suggest openly that there may be some truth to them, Crypto
AG not only dismissed him on the spot, but also filed a legal case against
him.
Yet Crypto AG settled the case out of court, in November 1996, before other
former Crypto AG employees could provide evidence in court that was likely
to have brought embarrassing details to light.
No one has heard from Buehler since the settlement. "He made his fortune
financially," whispers an insider.
A Fuzzy Ownership
The ownership of Crypto AG has been to a company in Liechtenstein, and from
there back to a trust company in Munich. Crypto AG has been described as the
secret daughter of Siemens but many believe that the real owner is the
German government.
Several members of Crypto AG's management had worked at Siemens. At one
point in time, 99.99 percent of the Crypto AG shares belonged to Eugen
Freiberger, the head of the Crypto AG managing board in 1982. Josef Bauer
was elected to the managing board in 1970. Bauer, as well as other members
of Crypto AG management, stated that his mandate had come from the German
company Siemens.
The German secret service, the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), is believed to have established the Siemens'
connection. In October 1970, a secret meeting of the BND had discussed how
the Swiss company Graettner could merge with it. "The Swedish company
Ericsson could be influenced through Siemens to terminate its own
cryptographic business," reads the memo of the meeting.
A former employee of Crypto AG reported that he had to coordinate his
developments with the "central office for encryption affairs" of the BND,
also known as the "people from Bad Godesberg."
American "watchers" demanded the use of certain encryption codes and the
"central office for encryption affairs" instructed Crypto AG what algorithms
to use to create these codes.
Bakhtiar Murder Trial
"In the industry everybody knows how such affairs will be dealt with," says
a former Crypto engineer. "Of course such devices protect against
interception by unauthorized third parties, as stated in the prospectus. But
the interesting question is: Who is the authorized fourth?"
On Dec. 6, 1994, a special French terrorism court convicted two Iranians of
murdering Bakhtiar.
Vakili Rad was sentenced to life in prison. But, to the dismay of all
observers, Sarhadi was acquitted.
"Justice has not been entirely served for reasons of state," complained
Bakhtiar's widow.
It appears indeed that France, Switzerland, the German BND and the NSA
decided to let Sarhadi go free in order to preserve the "secrecy" of the
Crypto AG cooperation with the NSA.
In 1991, the US and the U.K. indicted two Libyans for the bombing of Pan Am
103. To the surprise of many observers, the indictment did not mention those
believed to have contracted the act of terror in spite of the fact that
their guilt had been established by the interception of official
communications by several intelligence agencies.
To many observers, justice was not served at the Lockerbie trial. Could it
be that the US and U.K.
governments decided to sacrifice the truth in order to preserve the
(in)efficiency of their intelligence apparatus?
Ludwig De Braeckeleer has a Ph.D. in nuclear sciences. He teaches physics
and international humanitarian law. He blogs on "The GaiaPost."
2007/12/29 ?? 4:40
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=----------------------
------------------------
World Class, Professional, Ethical, and Competent Bug Sweeps, and Wiretap
Detection using Sophisticated Laboratory Grade Test Equipment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=----------------------
------------------------
James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803
Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467
127 Eastern Avenue #291 Web:
http://www.tscm.com/
Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 E-mail: mailto:jm..._at_tscm.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=----------------------
------------------------
We perform bug sweeps like it's a full contact sport, we take no
prisoners, and we give no quarter. Our goal is to simply, and completely
stop the spy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=----------------------
------------------------
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:16 CST