[1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1995-12-10-19953440...
> For years, NSA secretly rigged Crypto AG machines so that U.S. eavesdroppers could easily break their codes, according to former company employees whose story is supported by company documents.
See also the 1992 news stories about the arrest of Hans Buehler [1], further elaborated in a 1998 article in Covert Action Quarterly [2]:
> The cover shielding the NSA-Crypto AG relationship was torn in March 1992, when the Iranian military counterintelligence service arrested Hans Buehler, Crypto AG's marketing representative in Teheran.
[1] https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/03/30/Iran-arrests-Swiss-m...
Every article I'm seeing in the past week refers to documents released in 2015. Why the fuck now? It reeks of public manipulation, especially with the US increasing efforts to convince people not to use Huawei equipment.
That's correct. The documents were reported on by the BBC in 2015 [1], directly linking to the declassified NSA memos [2][3].
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33676028
[2] https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/friedmanDocuments/Cor...
[3] https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/friedmanDocuments/Rep...
> Many details of the arrangements between Crypto and NSA are not known, including when the rigging began, whether it has ended and which machines were involved. The whole story will be told only when secret U.S. documents are declassified, probably well into the next century.
> Crypto rejects the rigging allegations as an invention by disgruntled former employees and denies that its machines were ever designed or altered according to the suggestions of American spies.
They didn't pass it off as news.
It's a long-form journalism story. This form covers more complex stories and aren't limited to new things that just happened. Stories where the facts come out over time or require multiple perspectives can't always be adequately told through a series of "what's new" updates.
But, still, why? The editors of The Washington Post would have to answer that.
The timing is arbitrary. They could have done it months ago or months from now. The author most likely found it, thought it would make a good story and pitched it to his editors (he is likely planning to turn it into a book if it gets some traction). This kind of thing would be a normal part of a journalists job. (Well, most don't get to do deeper stories like this very often, so he's probably pretty senior -- I just checked and he has a couple Pulitzers, so there you go.) I would guess the editors simply agreed with his pitch.
In short: the timing is arbitrary. The people who do this kind of thing just thought it would be an interesting story to tell, in-depth.
[tinfoil alert] Word going around in Germany is that Tagesschau waited for the CIA to sell their shares (which happened in 2018) [0]