Compromised encryption machines gave CIA window into major human rights abuses in South America

By Greg Miller and Peter F. Mueller
2/17/2020, 8:00:00 a.m.

South American military dictatorships combined forces in the late 1970s on a continent-wide crackdown they called Operation Condor against perceived threats to their rule. It was part of a broader wave of violence in which nuns and priests were imprisoned, dissidents were tossed out of airplanes and thousands of victims were “disappeared.”

To coordinate this brutal campaign, Argentina, Chile and other countries established a secret communications network using encryption machines from a Swiss company called Crypto AG.

Crypto was secretly owned by the CIA as part of a decades-long operation with West German intelligence. The U.S. spy agency was, in effect, supplying rigged communications gear to some of South America’s most brutal regimes and, as a result, in unique position to know the extent of their atrocities.

The CIA connection to Condor is detailed in documents obtained by The Washington Post as well as additional files unearthed by researchers at the National Security Archive in Washington. What the documents don’t show is any substantial effort by U.S. spy agencies, or senior officials privy to the intelligence, to expose or stop human rights violations unfolding in their view.

-snip-