Conquer Club

For decades, US and German intelligence used Swiss company Crypto AG's encoding devices to spy on other countries, and the revelations this week have provoked outrage.

From the Cold War into the 2000s, Crypto AG sold the devices to more than 120 governments worldwide. The machines were encrypted but it emerged this week that the CIA and Germany's BND had rigged the devices so they could crack the codes and intercept thousands of messages.

This is a country whose neutrality has allowed it to represent US interests in Iran for 30 years, and Tehran's interests in Washington. Switzerland negotiated hard behind the scenes with the US to allow deliveries of humanitarian aid to Iran to ease the worst effects of sanctions.

It is also a country that sold flawed encryption machines, bearing that Made in Switzerland label, to Iran, so that Washington could eavesdrop.

Swiss government minister Kaspar Villiger now stands accused, while serving as defence minister in the 1990s, of knowing that the CIA controlled Crypto AG, and was selling flawed encryption machines around the world in order to spy on foreign governments.

Crypto AG was, in fact, entirely controlled by the CIA ... from the end of the Second World War until 2018.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... espionage/

The Contingency Fund for Foreign Intercourse was a United States government "black budget" program established in 1790 to fund covert operations primarily directed against Europe. Three years later it was consuming 12% of the government's budget.

According to a public statement made by president John Tyler, Duff Green was paid $1,000 from the fund to finance an operation in the United Kingdom in 1841 that influenced the appointment of the Lord Ashburton as the British negotiator in the Maine-New Brunswick border dispute. The ultimate settlement of that dispute resulted in the net transfer of about 2,000 square miles (5,200 km2) of territory to the United States by the United Kingdom, to the consternation of many in Canada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingen ... ntercourse