Denmark rubs its eyes: The state has put the acting head of the secret service, Lars Findsen, behind bars for allegedly betraying secrets. You have to pinch your arm hard, writes the conservative newspaper Jyllands-Postento make sure that this is all Danish reality “and not a bad spy thriller that is presented here in several chapters”.
“For the first time in modern history, a western country arrests its intelligence chief,” wrote the liberal newspaper Politics. “It used to only happen in countries like Kazakhstan or Venezuela.”
Lars Findsen is probably Denmark’s best known spy. The 57-year-old headed both the domestic service PET and most recently the Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste, FE for short: Denmark’s military intelligence service, also responsible for foreign intelligence.
Findsen was allowed to keep Denmark’s deepest secrets for two decades. He sat in the closest security circles of six governments. Then he was arrested at Copenhagen Airport. The arrest took place on December 9th, but did not become public until Monday. The public prosecutor’s office accuses Findsen of violating Section 109 of the Criminal Code, which deals with the disclosure of top secret information to the detriment of Denmark’s security. They are imprisoned for up to twelve years.
“This is completely crazy, you are welcome to quote me on that.”
Findsen was brought before the examining magistrate in Copenhagen on Monday. He pleaded not guilty and said in the direction of the press bench: “This is completely crazy, you are welcome to quote me on that.” Which then was one of the few quotes and details of the affair that actually made its way into the media. Otherwise, little is known about the background to the arrest, also because journalists who publish confidential information face imprisonment themselves.
In fact, the relationship between the secret services and the press is at the center of the case: spy chief Findsen is not brought to trial because he has betrayed his secrets to foreign powers. Rather, he is said to have passed on secret information to the Danish media.
If the press speculations are correct, then the leaks in question are all cases that have led to exposure stories that put the Danish government in a bad light. One story revolved around the Dane Ahmed Samsam, who was convicted in Spain as an alleged Islamist terrorist. In fact, Samsam was apparently a paid informant and was sent to Syria by Denmark’s secret services as a spy – information that the Danish government withheld from the Spanish authorities.
Probably the most important revelations of the last two years concerned Lars Findsen’s foreign secret service FE, which led to his temporary suspension. In 2019 it became known that the FE had apparently illegally overheard Danish citizens abroad. A secret collaboration between FE and the American surveillance service NSA later became known. Denmark apparently allowed the NSA to tap data from submarine cables that ran through Danish waters, among other things, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, at that time German Foreign Minister, is said to have been wiretapped. The fact that this cooperation became known made waves – many Danes feared less the outrage of the bugged German neighbors than that of the US services. The great fear: the NSA and CIA could subsequently withdraw their trust in the country.
Were any internals actually disclosed? Or is this a power game with a scapegoat?
It is an irony of the case that Lars Findsen, both as PET and FE chief, initiated reforms in favor of more transparency in the secret services. He was a welcome interlocutor at editorial offices. Did he actually reveal secret internals, out of frustration with the government, as some now suspect? Or will he just become a scapegoat in a “power game”, as Findsen’s secret service expert and former employee Hans Jørgen Bonnichsen believes? He says that “sparrows are shot at with cannons”.
Even if the outcome of the process is not yet known, the newspaper writes Politics In an editorial, it was already clear that there could only be losers: Either the country had a chief of espionage who undermined the security of their own country. “Or the state destroys its own secret services with an unfounded charge.”