Operation Gladio

[Carsten Wiethoff]

In a recent article the German "Der Spiegel" mentions (here) in talking about the Stasi's codebreaking abilities that among the messages intercepted were Orders from the Bundesnachrichtendienst BND to Gladio.
Of course, the fact is not really surprising, but German mass media were not really advertising anything about Gladio (or the shady history of the BND).

Documents from the Stasi records department indicate that the one of the Stasi cryptologists' achievements was to break Vericrypt and Cryptophon standards that had been used until the 1980s. This meant that they were capable of decoding encrypted radio transmissions by the two main West German intelligence agencies -- the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) -- and the West German border police. The East Germans even managed to decode the BND's orders to members of the clandestine "Gladio" group, which was intended to continue anti-communist operations in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe.