Swiss investigate report that firm helped CIA break codes - Reuters
The company, called Crypto AG, sold code-making equipment to Iran, Latin American nations, India, Pakistan and dozens of other countries. The technology was modified to let the CIA and Germany's BND break codes, the Washington Post reported along with German and Swiss broadcasters ZDF and SRF.
The reports cite a classified CIA history to underpin the allegations, some of which date back at least to 1992, when one of Crypto's employees was arrested and held in Iran for nine months as a suspected spy.
At the time, the company called reports that it was a secret asset of Western intelligence agencies "an unbelievable conspiracy theory," according to a report in German magazine Focus detailing a 1994 book on the subject.
