The Times - UK (2020-11-14)

the times | Saturday November 14 2020 1GM 51

Wo r l d

Months after the end of the Second
World War, an American master code-
cracker travelled to the Swiss lakeside
town of Steinhausen to visit a Swedish
cipher-smith whose devices had
rivalled the Nazis’ Enigma machines.
William Friedman and Boris Hagelin
got along famously. “I had [an] almost
tearful farewell with the Hagelins,”
Friedman wrote in his diary. “They are
such charming people.”
This friendship went on to become
the foundation of a global espionage
ring that altered the course of the 20th
century, the full story of which is only
now emerging. Codenamed Operation
Rubicon, it rendered half of the world’s
most secret communications transpar-
ent to the US, West Germany and a
handful of their closest allies.
It has been described as the intelli-
gence coup of the century. It allowed a
Dutch cryptology technician to give
Britain the key to unlocking Argenti-
na’s codes, possibly leading to the sink-
ing of the warship General Belgrano, in
its defence of the Falklands. It turned
West Germany into an intelligence su-
perpower, influenced the 1979 Iran hos-
tage crisis and enabled the US to broker
peace between Egypt and Israel in the
1978 Camp David accords.
It also inadvertently handed the Rus-

sians an invaluable tool for jimmying
open the diplomatic cables of several
European countries.
Initially exposed by a German-led
consortium of journalists, and this
week picked over by an excoriating
Swiss parliamentary report, the story of
Operation Rubicon began by the
shores of Lake Zug in the Swiss Alps.
Friedman, the visitor, was a brilliant
American cryptanalyst who had bro-
ken Purple, the Japanese military’s
most powerful cipher programme, in
the Second World War. Hagelin, his
charming host, was a Swedish inventor
who had supplied the US war effort
with 140,000 cryptography machines.
Over the following years Friedman
and Hagelin gradually arrived at what
became known as the “gentleman’s
agreement”. Hagelin’s cipher device
manufacturer, Crypto AG, was to sup-
ply secretly weakened machines to US
intelligence targets so that the Ameri-
cans could finagle their way in and read
their messages. In 1970 the company

Operation Rubicon helped to foil
Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands

How allies sold

cipher machines

that let them spy

on friend and foe

was bought by the CIA, which split con-

trol of the operation with the West Ger-

man foreign spy agency, the BND.

Within a few years Crypto AG had

come to dominate the cryptography

market, selling its defective machines

to at least 120 countries and suprana-

tional bodies while rival manufacturers

were ruthlessly undermined. As early

as 1962 the UK intelligence organisa-

tion GCHQ, which was on the periph-

ery of the operation, helped to rig the

game by distributing some of its crypto-

graphic technology free.

From Iran to Italy, and Greece to

Brazil, the innermost communications

of non-aligned states and even some

Nato allies were an open book to the

Americans and the Germans. It has

been estimated that Crypto AG

accounted for up to 80 per cent of the

encryption devices bought by states

outside the Soviet bloc.

In 1973 the CIA hijacked Chile’s new

Crypto machines to monitor and guide

Augusto Pinochet’s military coup

against the Allende government. Nine

years later the British were richly re-

warded for their assistance. In the first

months of 1982 its intelligence agencies

were nervous about Argentina’s mili-

tary designs on the Falklands, and ap-

pealed to their partners for help in

cracking the Argentine codes.

Eventually the Netherlands, who

had second-hand access to Rubicon

through an intelligence-sharing deal

with West Germany, sent a technician

to London. He explained to GCHQ

how the HC 500 Crypto AG devices

used by the Argentinians worked.

Richard Aldrich, professor of inter-

national security at Warwick Univers-

ity, believes the resulting naval intelli-

gence is likely to have given Margaret

Thatcher several days’ warning of the

invasion and helped the British navy to

locate and destroy General Belgrano.

Over more than half a century Oper-

ation Rubicon survived at least half a

dozen security breaches without any

outsiders fathoming its true extent. It

was eventually undone by a mix of self-

congratulation and superb investiga-

tive reporting. In 1999 German and

American veterans of the operation

drafted an account of it known as the

Minerva report — which found its way

into the hands of a German journalist.

The contents, first described by a

ZDF documentary in February, were

astonishing even to intelligence ex-

perts. “For me it was probably the most

sensitive document I’ve seen in 35

years,” Professor Aldrich said.

Operation Rubicon’s power began to

wane from the early 1990s as its victims

grew sceptical, but there was a sting in

its tail. By 2001 the Germans had sold

off their stake in Crypto AG but could

still decipher Italy’s diplomatic cables

after decades of spying on the systems,

according to the ZDF documentary.

Months before the 9/11 attacks, a

linguist in the BND’s Bonn office picked

up an Italian message suggesting that a

group of Arab men were planning to

take flying lessons in the US, but were

not particularly interested in landing.

The report was overlooked.

Intelligence, it seems, is not always

the same thing as wisdom.

Germany
Oliver Moody Berlin

F

or two decades

skydivers in

wingsuits have

been defying

gravity to fly like

swooping birds (Charles

Bremner writes).

An Austrian adventurer

has gone one step further

to rise as well as fall

gracefully. Peter

Salzmann, 34, a film

stuntman, jumped from a

helicopter at 10,000ft

over

the

Alps

with a

motor

fitted

to his

chest.

As his

partners fell

away, he rose over

a summit and soared —

until the batteries ran out

and gravity took over.

He glided in a

controlled fall and

opened his parachute in

the usual way. Yesterday

he described the moment

he flipped the switch and

pressed the accelerator.

“I just got a big smile on

my face,” he said,

speaking

from his

base near

Salzburg.

“You feel

like:

‘Wow,

what’s

happening.’

And think that

everything you

worked on for the past

three years has paid off.”

Mr Salzmann worked

with BMW’s Designworks

division in Germany to

develop a wingsuit with

two electric motors on his

chest that drive 5-inch

carbon fibre propellers

with lithium-ion

batteries. The electric

boost that speeds him to

nearly 190mph only lasts

up to five minutes, but

that is enough to improve

the gliding distance. A

person in a wingsuit

usually reaches a

maximum of 65mph.

“The idea is to glide

better and make jumps

possible that normally are

not possible,” he said.

The 26lb suit is

“greener” than winged jet

packs, which make the

din of a jet aircraft and

burn liquid fuel.

Skydiver can

soar upwards

in wingsuit

with motors

Peter Salzmann, 34, soars

over the Austrian Alps at up

to 190mph in the maiden

flight of the electric

wingsuit that he built with

BMW Designworks

RAY DEMSKI

Phone photo links French terror attackers

The Tunisian migrant who killed three

people in a French church last month

had in his phone a photograph of the

Chechen jihadist who had decapitated

a teacher 13 days earlier, it has emerged.

The disclosure has fuelled specula-

tion that Brahim Aouissaoui, 21, who

was shot and injured by police after

carrying out the attack in the basilica in

Nice, had been inspired by the murder

carried out in the Paris region by

Abdoullakh Anzarov, 18.

The selfie taken by Anzarov was

found by French police in Aouissaoui’s

phone, the National Anti-Terror Pros-

ecution Service said in a statement.

Detectives also found a message re-

corded by Anzarov describing France

as a country of “infidels”. There was no

suggestion that the two had been in

contact, a police source said. Both the

photograph and the message had been

circulating on the internet.

Aouissaoui remains in a critical con-

dition and was transferred to a hospital

in the Paris region last week. The police

have not yet been able to question him,

prosecutors said.

French police are seeking to under-

stand when and how Aouissaoui, a

motorcycle mechanic from Thina near

Sfax in Tunisia, became involved in

terrorism. His family say they had no

idea of his intentions when he crossed

the Mediterranean to Italy with other

migrants by boat on September 19,

before arriving in France on October 27.

Anzarov, a refugee of Chechen origin

who had arrived in France with his

family at the age of six, was shot dead by

police after decapitating Samuel Paty,

47, a history and geography teacher, on

October 16. He carried out the attack

after Mr Paty was criticised by parents

of Muslim pupils at his school for show-

ing satirical cartoons of the Prophet

Muhammad to a class of 13 and 14-year-

olds to illustrate freedom of speech.

Yesterday France commemorated

the fifth anniversary of the Islamist

terrorist attacks that left 130 people

dead at the Bataclan concert hall in

Paris, at bars in the capital and outside

the Stade de France football stadium.

France

Adam Sage Paris

s fell

e rose over

it and soared—

sp

fr

b

S

“Y

lik

‘Wo

what

hhhappe

AAAAnd thin

everything yo

worked on for the