Our secret services — and a bit about Norway's path to NATO





(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

By Svein Blindheim (1974)

Orientering no. 18 brought an interview with Vilhelm Evang which is skewed and flawed because the reader will perceive it as if the interview brings the truth about the E-service in Norway. But because the starting questions are wrong, as the attention is concentrated around the US and the CIA's role instead of the UK and the UK's E-service, the result is the same. If we want to get to the heart of the matter, we must start at the beginning, that is to say with the cooperation with the British in the E sector. The question should therefore be: When and how was Norwegian E-service, through bilateral agreements, linked together with the UK's corresponding bodies in binding cooperation?

If Vilhelm Evang would lift that veil, the question would finally, so many years later, be answered. The connection to Great Britain is actually older than the collaboration with the Americans and the CIA. Through the association with the British, as far as I can understand, the way into NATO also lay as the only passable one.

It is misleading for the pre-history of NATO that we have placed so much emphasis on cooperation with the Americans, namely that it developed and came to dominate more and more only after NATO was established. It was the British who profited most from the defense organization at first, in the attempt to continue to play a leading role in international politics. The Americans were probably quite lukewarm at first.

When I only now dare to record the interview with Evang, there are several reasons, not the least of which is that this is still hush-hush, 25-30 years later. Since I'm talking about things that are labeled top-class/quiet, I can best point to the Nuremberg judgment where it is said that following orders
- in this case it means to be silent – does not apologize for the consequences of committed actions. The Court clearly states that we have the right to oppose the government's attempts to undermine our human integrity. Secrecy, as we do in this and many other cases, is a violation of the Nuremberg verdict.

As long as we do not get the facts on the table regarding defense policy – including on the intelligence side – we are partly left to guessing and hypothesizing. Our bi-lateral agreement on the intelligence sector in the broadest sense with the British fit perfectly as a piece in Secretary of State Bevin's master game. Through the back door – via the involvement in Turkey and Greece (the Trump Doctrine) he actively re-engaged the USA in European politics, after first tying France to Great Britain. But then the Labor politician Ernest Bevin was as good an imperialist foreign policy as any Tory. In the Labor Party he had a high star, as he certainly had with the aging socialist Leon Blum. Bevin got Blum involved in the Dunkirk Agreement while Blum was briefly Prime Minister of France after the war. The Dunkirk agreement in the next round became the Western Union — with a sting against the Soviet Union — another forerunner and parallel to NATO, with the USA and Canada as participants.

That the Labor Party government during and after the war had exaggerated notions of Britain's power and role in the victory over Germany is perhaps not to be wondered at. This is part of the explanation for why we invested so heavily in cooperation after the war. And the fact that Labor came to power in 1945 only reinforced the will to co-operate. Signs of a servile attachment to Great Britain — and the United States, even before the United States was involved in the war — also had anti-Soviet manifestations right from Trygve Lie's appearance in the foreign policy arena in the autumn of 1940. (Cf. Olav Ristes' "London-regjeringa", vol. 1. ) Trygve Lie actually laid the groundwork for what later became NATO, when he invited Great Britain and the United States to have bases in Norway after the war. He was no tighter than that he also wanted to occupy the Faroe Islands! It is not particularly difficult to agree with Dean Acheson when he characterized Trygve Lie as "more eager than vigilant" (Bjøl in Grimberg no. 23, p. 205).

The idea of ​​NATO was decidedly British, with Bevin as its originator and mastermind. Thus, Norway was also caught in the net; not least thanks to our already existing contractual cooperation on the intelligence side. Vilhelm Evang's view on this could be interesting; he who knows the content of (the secret) agreements knows what the collaboration entailed.

Like me, he probably sees the 1948/49 negotiations on a Nordic defense arrangement as a comedy that had to be played for the sake of public opinion, which did not know that we were already cooperating with the British. It is well known that the Swedes could not accept such cooperation – whether they now knew that such a thing had long been underway or not.

Otherwise, Evang's first answer in the interview is with Orientering hardly quite right, when he answers that he was asked "to continue in the service", as the answer implicitly says that he had been a commander during the war. And why doesn't he refuse to answer the question of whether Norway engages in espionage, instead of answering incorrectly?

When Norway joined NATO, it was perhaps necessary not to inform people about the cooperation with the British in the E sector, otherwise it would probably have gone as in the EC case, the majority of people would have said no. At the same time, one must ask whether democracy is really given any chance to work, when we are systematically misinformed by our own government. For the purpose of clarification, I would like to make this proposal to Evang: If he could now, so long afterwards, be willing to cooperate, I for my part would be more than happy to undertake the task of finding out Norway's real path to NATO, for the still lies in the dark.



(You can also read and follow Cinepolitical, our editor Truls Lie's comments on X.)


Subscription NOK 195 quarter