Editing Crypto AG (section)

==Early Ties to U.S. Intelligence==
(1951–1960s) - Crypto AG’s relationship with U.S. intelligence began in the early 1950s, driven by Hagelin’s friendship with William F. Friedman, a pioneer cryptologist who became the National Security Agency’s (NSA) chief cryptologist in 1952. In 1951, at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., Hagelin and Friedman reached a “gentleman’s agreement” to restrict sales of Crypto’s most advanced encryption machines to U.S.-approved countries, while selling older, less secure models to others. This deal ensured the NSA could decrypt communications from non-allied nations. Correspondence between Hagelin and Friedman, later Friedman’s successors Howard C. Barlow and Lawrence E. Shinn, detailed which countries received weaker systems.

In 1952, Hagelin’s lawyer, Stuart Hedden, became a CIA deputy inspector general, facilitating coordination. By the 1960s, as encryption shifted from mechanical to electronic systems, the NSA began manipulating Crypto’s algorithms to create exploitable vulnerabilities. Crypto produced two versions of its machines: secure models for “friendly” governments (e.g., NATO allies) and rigged systems with backdoors for others, allowing the NSA to decode messages easily.