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IN JUNE 1970 the CIA did something audacious. In partnership with the BND, Germany’s spy agency, it secretly bought Crypto AG, a Swiss firm that was then the world’s leading purveyor of cipher machines. The devices were used by over 120 countries to encrypt sensitive diplomatic and military communications. For almost 50 years America, having subtly rigged the machines, could read many of those messages. “It was the intelligence coup of the century,” boasted a CIA report.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The telephone game”
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