November 9, 2020 - Operation Rubicon was one of the largest, longest, and most successful signals intelligence operations of the Cold War. The deal to purchase Swiss cypher machine manufacturer Crypto AG, code named Minerva, was agreed and carried out in utmost secrecy. Enabled through intermediaries the details ...

June 16, 2023 - Dobson, Dymydiuk, & Mainwaring. (2020). Operation Rubicon: the most successful intelligence heist of the 20th Century.

The clients used their Swiss cipher ... knowledge of significant events. Warwick University described Operation Rubicon as “the most successful intelligence heist of the 20th century.”...

June 5, 2023 - The purpose of the operation was ... called the “intelligence coup of the century” and allowed the US and Germany to spy on their allies and adversaries for decades....

Iran purportedly produced some of the “best” intelligence stolen by the CIA and BND. “In 1988, 19,000 Iranian messages were decrypted, which was 80-90% of their total traffic,” according to the Crypto Museum. Operation Rubicon exposed untold Cold War operations including the the Suez Canal Crisis (1956); the 1973 coup in Chile and overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government; negotiations on the Middle East conflict in the course of the 1978 Camp David Accords negotiations; the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and UK; the US invasion of Panama; the Iranian Hostage Crisis (1979); and the Berlin Discotheque bombing (1986).

August 2, 2025 - "Operation Rubicon was a joint covert operation carried out by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) during the Cold War. The operation involved the acquisition and operation of a Swiss company called Crypto AG, which was a leading manufacturer of encryption machines used by governments, militaries, and intelligence agencies around the world."

May 21, 2026 - ), until the late 1980s called Operation Thesaurus, was a secret operation by the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND; Bundesnachrichtendienst · ) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), lasting from 1970 to 1993 and 2018, respectively, to gather communication intelligence ...

January 14, 2026 - The public exposure of Operation Rubicon began on February 11, 2020, with a collaborative investigative report by The Washington Post, German public broadcaster ZDF, and Swiss public broadcaster SRF, titled "The Intelligence Coup of the Century."[1] The report detailed how the CIA and BND had secretly controlled Crypto AG since 1970, rigging its encryption devices to harvest intelligence from over 120 client governments, including allies and adversaries, while the company generated approximately $100 million in annual profits split between the agencies.[1] This revelation stemmed from access t

2 weeks ago - According to CIA documents, it was Friedman who met with Hagelin at Washington’s Cosmos Club in 1951 to propose the initial “handshake deal” that would become the massive Operation Rubicon. Rather than persuade Hagelin merely to design encryption machines for the U.S., Friedman encouraged Hagelin to create a company that could, and would, sell to any nation of the world.

May 27, 2026 - The operation described in the 96‑page document (initially codenamed “Thesaurus” and later “Rubicon,” with the Americans also using the codename “Minerva”) became one of the boldest intelligence plans ever devised—and it worked.

February 1, 2022 - For 50 years, the Central Intelligence Agency and its German counterpart held the keys to a backdoor method of monitoring the secure communications of at least 120 governments all over the world.

May 9, 2026 - Inside Operation Rubicon - the breathtaking intelligence coup where a humble Swiss encryption company became the ultimate Trojan horse for Western spies.

June 4, 2020 - ... From 1970 to, at least, mid-1990, ... Operation Rubicon, a SIGINT operation to gather encrypted government communications of other countries by manipulating Crypto AG devices before they were sold....

July 2, 2021 - Operation Rubicon, originally known as Thesaurus, is considered to be one of the most successful operations in the history of espionage. It lasted over 50 years and was conducted by American (CIA) and German (BND) intelligence services. Details on the operation released in recent years provided ...

February 11, 2020 - The operation, known first by the code name “Thesaurus” and later “Rubicon,” ranks among the most audacious in CIA history. “It was the intelligence coup of the century,” the CIA report concludes.

July 2, 2021 - Operation Rubicon, originally known as Thesaurus, is considered to be one of the most successful operations in the history of espionage. It lasted over 50 years and was conducted by American (CIA) and German (BND) intelligence services. Details on the operation released in recent years provided ...

Operation Rubicon was probably one of the most successful intelligence operations of our time.