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BND operations on this website
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History
Organisation Gehlen
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The predecessor of the current German Federal Intelligence Service BND,
was established shortly after WWII, in 1946, by the US occupation authorities.
It was known as Organisation Gehlen (OG),
after its head – former Wehrmacht generalmajor Reinhard Gehlen – who was
head of the German Military Intelligence Service
Fremde Heere Ost (FHO) during WWII.
Being specialised in intelligence gathering in Eastern Block countries,
Gehlen recruited many former FHO
and Abwehr personnel and their agents.
As such, the OG played an important role during the
early years of the Cold War.
After much critisism from the public
for hiring former Nazis, the US handed over control
of the agency to the German Government on 1 April 1956, after which its
name was changed to Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). Nevertheless, Gehlen
stayed on as president of the organisation until his retirement in 1968.
The diagram below shows the history of the BND from WWI to the present.
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In June 1970, BND entered into a secret joint venture with the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — internally known as
Operation Thesaurus (later: Rubicon) —
in which they covertly purchased the Swiss manufacturer of cryptographic
equipment Crypto AG, with the intention of
controlling its cryptographic algorithms and – indirectly – Crypto AG's
worldwide customer base. In 1994, BND left the program, but CIA continued it
for several more decades, until it was sold in 2018.
➤ Operation RUBICON
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© Crypto Museum. Created: Thursday 29 September 2016. Last changed: Thursday, 16 April 2020 - 15:51 CET.
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