(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
In the autumn of 2008, one of the most legendary and secret figures in 20th century Norwegian political history suddenly, and post mortem, stormed into public space. It happened through the eminent biography Jens Chr. Hauge – fully and completely, which Olav Njølstad has performed about the former Milorg leader, Minister of Defense and lawyer Jens Christian Hauge (1915-2006).
Like many others who have tried to penetrate the many shady sides of Hauges life and work, I have also met the wall every time I tried to get him to speak. As a historian, Njølstad must have been in something close to a fortune telling about the material he suddenly got in his hands, both through outstanding written sources and hour after hour in conversation with the old man, when he suddenly realized that he would not go to the grave with all its secrets.
I support Hauge's "invisible hand" in two contexts. One, the Lillehammer case, is dealt with relatively thoroughly in Njølstad's biography, where he extensively references my book Prohibition peace (Cappelen, 1990). At one point he corrects my presentation. With a written statement from former Attorney General LJ Dorenfeldt as source, as he expresses himself to the investigating committee that investigated the Lillehammer case (NOU 2000: 6), Njølstad concludes that I have assigned Hauge a famous statement which in fact stems from another former Minister of Justice, OC Gundersen. These are the following very leading private questions to Dorenfeldt during the trial: "Does it happen with the consent of the Attorney General that the Attorney General is about to destroy one of the best intelligence agencies in the world?"
Whether it is the memory of Attorney General Håkon Wiker (and he was my source) or that of LJ Dorenfeldt that is the most reliable here, one may well argue. It is my impression that Dorenfeldt may have had some interest in diminishing the role played by Jens Chr. Hauge in defending the State of Israel's interests in this matter. Closer to the truth of the fact, it was Jens Chr. Hauge who asked this question, as Wiker perceived it after Hauge was contacted by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (a close personal friend of the headman whom I later identified as Mike Harari), we come well never, since both sources are dead.
The Gerhardsen government wondered
The other case in which Jens Chr. Hauge's name appeared to me was in connection with the so-called Cuba case in 1958/59. His role there was so startling that it amazes me how little weight it is given in Njølstad's biography. His own explanation for this is that he did not find any notes on this matter in the source material he was given access to, and thus had nothing new to add. Then one can ask oneself whether Hauge had any motive to keep this matter away from the cinema's critical gaze. We also never get an answer to that.
I did extensive research on this in connection with another book, co-authored with Dag Hoel: This is Cuba – everything else is a lie (4th edition, Spartacus Forlag, 2005). To make this Hauge autumn a little more complete, it may be of interest to recapitulate some key features of what he did in this context.
This is the story of how Jens Chr. Hauge managed to persuade the Gerhardsen government to export a cargo of ammunition to Cuba while the final battles between Batista and Fidel Castro's revolutionary troops raged, and while our main allies the United States and Britain had put Cuba on their arms embargo list. The dictator Fulgencio Batista (in power 1952-1959) managed to buy and pay for the ammunition just before he was overthrown, but it was Castro's men who had the pleasure of receiving the cargo.
The case led to perhaps the most humiliating self-criticism Einar Gerhardsen ever made to the Storting, despite the fact that it also coined the term "the Hensvald parliamentarism" when the Labor Party's parliamentary leader rejected all calls for distrust. It also became an important backdrop both for the outbreak of the left and for the formation of a governing bourgeois alternative. In this sense, it can be argued that Hauge, through his actions in the Cuba case, made an important contribution to the dissolution of the Labor Party itself, where he himself had been one of the most influential strategists.
One of Jens Chr. Hauge's main tasks after he left government, marriage and the public light in 1955, was to manage what we can call Norway's military-industrial complex, but always behind the scenes as deputy chairman of the strategic boards: Raufoss, Kongsberg, Marinens main yard, NORATOM. In addition, he acted as the lawyer of these state-owned companies and often their international chief salesman.
Norwegian ban
Arms trade was and is an industry with rather special driving rules, which time and again came on a collision course with the high ethical principles of Norway and the Labor Party. Hauge was the man who for years managed this political schizophrenia.
One of the most amazing personalities in international arms trade at this time was the former CIA agent Samuel Cummings. He had absolutely no qualms or political principles, and he had repeatedly sold weapons to both sides of the front lines. As a personal friend of several Latin American dictators, it was natural for him to visit President Batista in the autumn of 1958. Given the critical military situation and the American and British arms embargo, Cummings came as manna from heaven with his promise of 500 AR-10 machine guns and associated 7,62 mm ammunition, as well as slightly coarser machine-gun ammunition and a few thousand hand grenades.
He managed to obtain the machine guns from a surplus warehouse in the Netherlands, while the ammunition order went to Raufoss and Norway. The preparation of this trade took place in London, where Cummings used to deal with official and unofficial sales representatives for the Norwegian arms industry who had in common that they, like Hauge, had been active resistance fighters during the war. The fight against world communism combined very well with good profits from the arms trade, especially if one could also argue with saving jobs at Raufoss.
When Jens Chr. Hauge and his close ally, manager Daasnes at Raufoss and Kongsberg's Oslo office, formulated the application to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an arms export license, at least Hauge as former Minister of Defense (from 1945 to 1952) could not be a moment in doubt that such trade to Cuba in the prevailing situation was in stark contrast to one of the first decisions of principle Prime Minister Nygaardsvold had passed in the Storting in 1935: a ban on arms exports to countries in war or civil war.
The occasion was precisely an old Raufoss adventure in an obscure war in Latin America, when Norway defied the League of Nations embargo decision and exported weapons to Paraguay during the so-called Chaco war against Bolivia (1932-35). The outgoing bourgeois government also had an argument with the jobs at Raufoss, to the Labor Party's loud moral protest. This did not impress Jens Chr. Hauge 23 years later, in 1958.
The Foreign Ministry's officials responsible for granting such a license, however, were in no doubt. They opted for rejection. But Mr. Hauge was not a man who took no for an answer. Threats to put 250 Raufoss workers on the streets just before Christmas also had the desired effect on the government members who took part in the decision. Both Prime Minister Gerhardsen and Foreign Minister Lange were pleasantly far away from Oslo when the decision was to be made at an intergovernmental conference on 4 December 1958: They were visiting India. It was therefore Minister of Finance Trygve Bratteli who chaired the government meeting, after Hauge, through the person responsible for employment, Minister of Industry Sjåstad, had put strong pressure on Minister of Trade and acting Foreign Minister Skaug.
The whole decision was based on one bluff after another, served by Hauge and his staff. The workplace argument was vicarious. Batista's need for ammunition was immediate, and there was no time to produce it first. It simply had to be "borrowed" from American pre-warehouses in Norway. When the United States was consulted on whether they objected to Norway supplying ammunition to Batista, the relevant question was not asked as to whether it objected to American ammunition being supplied.
Raufoss bluff
Given the arms embargo, the answer to that would necessarily be negative, as Cummings was actually told on the exact same day when he applied to supply machine guns from US pre-warehouses in the UK. And contrary to the facts, and to the best of our knowledge, Raufoss claimed in his application that the British were at the same time "in the process of" supplying tanks and artillery ammunition to Cuba, at a time when the British also had a ban on arms exports to Cuba .
It is impossible to say how active Hauge was in producing this serial bluff, but there is little doubt that it happened with his knowledge and will. At least he was so involved that he received numbered copies of the Foreign Ministry's top secret communication with the embassies. He was obviously fully aware that his own former government colleagues were being completely led astray.
With all this very strange prehistory, the cargo ship "Sporonia" sailed from Drammen on Christmas Eve 1958 with its warlike cargo to Cuba, on the same day as President Eisenhower gathered the US National Security Council for a crisis meeting on the impending revolution in Cuba. The Raufossers prepared Christmas ribs without having produced a single ball for Cuba. One week later, on New Year's Eve, Batista left Havana. The revolution was a fact.
When "Sporonia" was to be unloaded in Havana on January 21, 1959, it was the officers of the revolution who could take over the ammunition. But their surprise at this cargo from Norway was not lessened by the fact that the ammunition boxes were marked with American flags.
Samuel Cummings had been in Havana in September to sell weapons to Batista. Now he traveled back to demonstrate the AR-10 rifles and Raufoss ammunition in person to Fidel, Raúl and Che. "Had we had these weapons in the Sierra Maestra, we would have taken Havana two years before," Fidel commented to Cummings. "I am ordering 75.000 more AR-10s, with the necessary ammunition."
Cummings undertook the mission on the spot. But Jens Chr. Hauge and his government friends were not ready for more Cuban adventures. In September 1959, the body of the Castro government left Revolution out and accused Norway of bowing to American pressure and refusing to supply weapons, as we had done to Batista. The Norwegian embassy in Havana was closed, and Ambassador Bredal Lødrup – one of the few in Havana who, according to the Foreign Ministry's archives, had not noticed the impending revolution – had to take that heavy road home to a colder climate. Regardless of Hauge's and others' workplace motives: During 1959, between 600 and 700 men lost their jobs at the ammunition factory, without Jens Chr. Hauge being able to do anything to prevent it.
Ended in Dominican Republic
Meanwhile, Norwegian ammunition had been used in another revolutionary attempt, when Castro-friendly rebels landed in the Dominican Republic in an attempt to overthrow dictator Trujillo. And who else was in the country when this happened, other than Samuel Cummings? His errand was to sell 25.000 AR-10 rifles to Trujillo. The rebel forces were repulsed by Vampire fighters that the same Cummings had procured from Sweden a couple of years before. Thus, we got a small demonstration under warmer skies on the Swedish-Norwegian war that we avoided in 1905. And Cummings did not give up: In 1961 he delivered large parts of the handguns to the US-backed invasion troops in the Bay of Pigs.
When the Cuba case had its political aftermath in the press and in the Storting, and Gerhardsen lay flatter than any Labor government had ever done, the political damaging effects were impossible to hide. Among other things, the previously very strained relationship between Gerhardsen and his Crown Prince Trygve Bratteli, who had been acting prime minister at the fateful intergovernmental conference, was further soured.
"For several years I could not hear the word Cuba without it hurting," Bratteli confided afterwards. But while the opposition from both the right and the left bombed the government, and the members of the government blamed each other internally, the unfaithful spider Jens Chr. Hauge, who had led everyone behind the light to get an export license, remained untouched. His name was kept out of all investigations, and in excess he was appointed chairman of the party committee which in the light of the Cuba case was appointed to make new arms export rules. It may seem that Gerhardsen would rather take all the world's political burden, he would rather endure the most humiliating canoeing and internal conflicts, than take the corpse out of the closet and uncover the principal of the Norwegian Cuba case.
The arms dealer Hauge
I do not find a good explanation in Olav Njølstad's excellent biography of why Gerhardsen in a similar way repeatedly protected Jens Chr. Hauge. Was Gerhardsen simply afraid of him – did he have anything on him? Or is this the explanation: Jens Chr. Hauge was the man who through his leadership of the resistance during the war, and through his later position in the Labor Party, had saved the party from the 1940 syndrome – the impression of the party as unreliable in a national crisis situation. He was the savior who laid the foundation for APS 'widely accepted hegemonic position in post-war Norway.
Furthermore, he was apparently the main Norwegian contact to American, Israeli and all the world secret intelligence that the NATO country Norway had to keep up with, but which it suited Gerhardsen's political profile very poorly to take responsibility for. Jens Chr. Hauge was in that sense a political lightning rod on which the Labor Party had become completely dependent. This, together with all the secrets he carried and which we now know much more about, made it perhaps more important to protect him from the scandalous behavior during the Cuba case, than to protect the government itself.
And Hauge continued for another 20 years as the consistent protector of the Norwegian arms dealers, whether it was a dispute over weapons for the United States during the Vietnam War, missiles for India during the Kashmir conflict, or parts for F-16 fighter jets for the Shah's Iran two years before it became overthrown. In the Iran case, he meant to know, as Njølstad documents, that there was no threatening war situation at all.
Whether it concerns Cuba in 1958 or Iran in 1977, one must ask whether Jens Chr. Hauge read the foreign pages of the newspapers at all, or whether he simply displaced all information that spoke against his international weapons projects. The second hypothesis is probably the most probable.
In my opinion, the Cuba case is the one that best illustrates Jens Chr. Hauge's unique role as the Labor Party's indispensable military-industrial and intelligence torpedo through a lifetime.
