BND Involved in Intelligence Operations Creating the EU
BND and Crypto AG Operations for a federal Europe. Switzerland, the playground for West German and US intelligence services.
BERLIN/BERN/WASHINGTON (Own report) - The investigation into the German BND's criminal activities against dozens of UN member nations and international organizations using Switzerland's Crypto AG, is being held up in Germany. Parliamentary interpellations in Berlin are being drowned in time-consuming procedures. Whereas the Swiss government has appointed a special investigator, German instigators are keeping silent. Together with the CIA, they are responsible for spying on allegedly allied nations with rigged encoding devices. Obviously, the Munich based Siemens AG, with its legendary links to the BND, has been involved in these illegal operations. The investigation is being delayed due to Berlin and Washington's competing strategic interests. The BND and CIA's tactical cooperation dates back to the post-war era. Through its intelligence operations - with Crypto AG - the BND became an instrument used in the creation of the EU.
Criminal Core
Revelations of systematic deception using Crypto AG and "Rubikon"- a German-US-American spy operation covering decades and targeting nearly every UN member nation [1] - had been announced as sensational. However, even one week after German publication, no institutional consequences have been seen. It should be clarified "whether parliamentary controls had been deliberately circumvented for around two-decades," according to a parliamentary interpellation of the opposition in the Bundestag.[2] The media has long since proven that the circumvention had been deliberate, and that it is not the form, but rather the criminal content that is the core of those revelations. Whereas Belgium's military intelligence service SGRS has publicly announced investigations, Germany's instigator, the BND, refuses to comment.[3]
Licensed Production
The BND dissimulates the fact that the 1970 BND/CIA purchase of Crypto AG had not initiated, but merely continued Crypto operations, which the Washington-Bern-Bonn triangle had already been running, since some time. Already in the 1950s, West Germany's espionage service (the "Organisation Gehlen" - the BND since 1956) had had excellent relations with Crypto AG. During that time, approximately 10,000 of that company's encoding devices had been used in West Germany. Crypto AG, based in Switzerland, had issued a license and production had taken place in West Germany, under the supervision of German agents in Munich with Nazi and SS backgrounds. It was the second time that encoding devices invented by Boris Hagelin, the formal owner of Crypto AG, have been refabricated on German territory. The Wanderer Werke in Chemnitz fabricated an encoding device under the serial number C 4. Hagelin's written records provide no indication if it had been illegal.[4]
US Post-War Scenario
During the Nazi period, Hagelin, actually a citizen of Sweden, had provided the US intelligence service with large quantities of his inventions. Hagelin had migrated to the United States where he worked as a technical consultant. Under Hagelin's supervision, more than 140,000 of his M-209 encoding devices were produced for the US Army. By the end of the war, Hagelin had followed his clients back to Europe, where, from Switzerland's capital, the CIA predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was preparing for German capitulation and a political reorganizing of the continent. In an inconspicuous ground-floor apartment (Bern, Herrengasse 23) the US station chief and later CIA Director Allen Dulles had been arranging the clandestine contacts to the resistance movements in Western Europe under German occupation. It was therefore only logical to have the agent supplier Hagelin move to Switzerland to include him in the US post-war scenario.
"Free Europe"
Hagelin's new address - in the Swiss town of Zug - was only a two hour drive from the Herrengasse. While Hagelin was preparing his change of address, to found the Crypto AG, the US station in Berm had launched a Europe campaign culminating in a fireworks of intelligence service-funded congresses for the "United States of Europe," for example in 1946 in Hertenstein (in the close vicinity of Hagelins new address), and in 1947, Montreux. The emerging US Europe organizations "Union of European Federalists" (UEF) were tasked with infiltrating nationally oriented structures in the newly liberated Europe, using staged mass movements.[5] Youth organizations, such as the "European Youth Campaign" were receiving checks on a monthly basis from US agents,[6] to stage spontaneous actions at French border control stations ("Do Away with the Barriers - A Free Europe".)
Under Surveillance
Dulles' aggressive US intelligence campaigns, preparing a greater European economic sphere under US military command, ran up against traditions and the sovereignty aspirations of national ruling circles in Paris, as well as in London. Washington found their misgivings annoying. They too were placed under CIA surveillance, like the dissident sectors of West European trade union movements.[7] This was the moment to fully take advantage of Hagelin's work and maximize covert operations in Europe with the Crypto AG devices from Switzerland's Zug: the infiltration of rigged encoding machines into the diplomatic and military channels of credulous customers, whose encrypted messages - including allied correspondence - could be read. Still missing were operational assistants.
Itinerary "Rubikon"
The national intelligence services in Paris, London, Rome or Brussels could not be trusted beyond a limited extent, since they would be in a conflict of interests with sectors of their own governments - with those conservative ruling circles lacking enthusiasm for "Europe." Dulles, the CIA and their political directors [8] consequently, turned to the assistants, who appeared trustworthy and fully controllable - the "Organization Gehlen," the predecessor of the BND. The agents from top ranks of the Nazi counter-intelligence, accused of innumerable crimes, could be blackmailed and were absolutely dependent on protection provided by the US, as protector nation. Their base of operations in Bavaria's Pullach, close to Munich, with technical links to the Siemens Corp. - also headquartered in Munich - was ideally suited for logistical networking with Crypto AG in Zug, Switzerland. Crypto AG and the BND had established the "Rubikon" itinerary on a weekly or a daily basis.
Dream Objective Greater Europe
Under the watchful eyes of Switzerland's state security, the territory of Switzerland had become a playground for systematic German-American espionage operations.[9] Until around 1956, as a subcontractor of the CIA, then independently, West Germany, with its BND intelligence service and the Crypto AG was illegally investigating, infiltrating and neutralizing political resistance in its neighboring West European countries. This was all for the purpose of a Greater Europe - the dream objective of German geopolitics from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Adolf Hitler.
[1] See also Ausspähen unter Freunden (II).
[2] Crypto AG - Ein Spionagethriller holt Deutschland ein. Süddeutsche Zeitung 12.02.2020.
[3] Belgien war Kunde bei der Crypto AG - war es auch Opfer? Grenzecho 14.02.2020.
[4] Boris Hagelin: The Story of the Hagelin-Cryptos. 3E 720. Hrg. Crypto AG o.J.
[5] See Hans-Rüdiger Minow: Zwei Wege - eine Katastrophe. Flugschrift No. 1. german-foreign-policy.com 2016. S. 23ff.
[6] See Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs. Daily Telegraph 19.09.2000.
[7], [8] Richard J. Aldrich: OSS, CIA and European Unity: The American Committee on United Europe, 1948-60. In: Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol.8 (March 1997). S. 184-227.
[9] "The events being discussed began in 1945 and, today, are difficult to reconstruct and interpret," the Swiss Defense Ministry told the German Press Agency (DPA) in Vienna. (Die Welt Feb. 12, 2020)
