Surveillance Under Control?¹

We cannot make do without surveillance, and even political actors must expect to be kept under observation if they espouse extreme positions. But we must keep surveillance under control. This article tells the story of the information about me that had lain in the files of the police security service and to which I gained access in 2001. It also records some reflections that have emerged in my mind about ways to improve legal protection for people who come to the attention of the state security services.²

I stood trial with Owen Wilkes in the Oslo City Court in May 1981 and then in the Norwegian Supreme Court in February 1982. While I have gained access to my (illegally assembled) secret police records up to 1977, I have been refused access to the (presumably more interesting) records for the period 1977-82 – despite the fact that there is no longer any reasonable justification for classifying them. Photo: Arne Pedersen, Dagbladet

As one author summed up the new women’s movement of the 1970s, ‘What was personal became political’.³ This was also the case for me. I had long been interested in security policy and intelligence matters, but not particularly concerned with political or other kinds of surveillance. I thought – perhaps somewhat naively – that a person who is not involved in any kind of subversive activity does not have much to lose by being subjected to a limited amount of surveillance. As regards closed-circuit television cameras in public places, this is still my basic position.

1. I am grateful to a number of people for their information and comments: Jarle Amundsen, Hans Bendiksby, Lene Berg, Ingvild Bruce, Knut Einar Eriksen, Helga Hernes, Morten Holmboe, Ivar Johansen, Theo Koritzinsky, Gunnar Thomassen and Line Ulekleiv. None of these individuals has any responsibility for errors, omissions, or opinions expressed in this article. The Norwegian original of this article was published as Gleditsch (2014). The English translation was supplied by Fidotext, but they should not be held responsible for my substantial editing of the present text. In a few cases, this translation deviates slightly from the original text in order to clarify matters for non-Norwegian readers. I cannot guarantee that I have always used the official name in English of Norwegian institutions. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support of URO/KORO.
2. In Norwegian, an important distinction is drawn between ‘registrering’ (recording of information) and ‘overvåking’ (active surveillance). In the public debate, the latter term is frequently used to cover both.
3. I have borrowed this slogan from an issue of Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning [Norwegian Journal of Gender Research], 4/99.

‘My file’

When the Disclosure Act (Innsynsloven) of 1999 made it possible for me to apply for access to ’my file’, however, I could not resist the opportunity. I had been politically active since my teens, and had held elected positions in political organizations almost from the start. I had participated in many protests, some of them illegal. In April 1961, along with Bertrand Russell (and at least 800 others), I was fined for civil disobedience in London following an illegal sit-down protest against nuclear weapons organized by the Committee of 100. Later in the same year, I took part in a peace march from London to Moscow, which was refused entry into France and got expelled from East Germany.⁴ In 1962, on behalf of the Socialist Student Group (Sosialistisk Studentlag), I organized an illegal sit-down protest outside the US Embassy in Oslo against the resumption of US nuclear testing.⁵ In 1964, together with some friends, I organized a demonstration in support of conscientious objectors in the Soviet Union, timed to coincide with Premier Khrushchev’s visit to Norway.⁶ In 1979, Owen Wilkes and I published a report on US-financed electronic intelligence gathering in Norway. As a result we were both fined and given a suspended prison sentence for breaching the national security provisions of the Norwegian Criminal Code.⁷ Surely there would be some traces of these events in the security archives?

Like many others, I was slightly disappointed as to how little of my anti-establishment activity had been recorded. Nonetheless, on 30 October 2001, I received 22 documents that had been found in the archives and records of the Police Security Service (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste or PST)⁸, the majority of which dated from between 1962 and 1966.⁹ Some the documents were trivial, others were hilarious (especially the suggestion that I had been a student at Oslo’s National Academy of Art), but one thing made me angry: the PST had described me as a former member of the Young Communist League of Norway (Norges Kommunistiske Ungdomsforbund, NKU). I found this offensive, since I had in fact been a supporter of what Norwegian radicals called ‘the Third Way’ (det tredje alternativ) during the Cold War, and had clearly distanced myself from the communists. When I demonstrated against nuclear weapons, I didn’t make an exception for Soviet nuclear weapons. On the peace march from London to Moscow I was protesting against all rearmament, in the East as well as the West. When opposition to the Vietnam War shifted its focus from ’Peace in Vietnam’ to ’Victory for the National Liberation Front’, I stopped taking part. I was not at all sure that a united Vietnam under communist rule would be a better place to live.

I have no idea how the PST came to the conclusion that I was a member of the Young Communists. In the Norwegian Students Association (Det Norske Studentersamfund), we naturally interacted with some of their members (they were not numerous). More significantly, a telephone conversation and some correspondence that I had had with the headquarters of the Young Communists early in 1962 had been recorded in my file, presumably because their phone line was tapped. We communicated about a leaflet against Norwegian membership of the EEC (as the EU was then known), which had been published by the Socialist Student Group. As the group’s chair, I was trying to persuade various organizations to buy part of the print run. The text focused on Norway’s right to self-determination, a key theme in the public debate. The Young Communists were not particularly enthusiastic, since they were convinced that Norway had long been a pawn of the United States. But for this worthy cause they were nevertheless prepared to buy a few copies. My letter was signed ’With comradely greetings’ (med kameratslig hilsen), standard terminology throughout the labor movement at that time. If someone from the PST had asked, I could probably have convinced them that my alleged membership of the Young Communists was a fiction. But they never did. And so this erroneous information persisted for many years.

It was apparent from other papers in my file and from other sources that the PST had had regular contact with the US Embassy. Since communists were routinely refused visas to travel to the United States, I could have been refused entry when I went to study at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1966, without having had any idea of the reason. In fact this did not happen, but I was turned down for a Fulbright Scholarship for which I considered myself well qualified. The Access Reviewing Committee (Innsynsutvalget) let itself be persuaded that there could have been a connection here, and awarded me compensation.

4. For a history of the Peace March, see Wernicke & Wittner (1999). I have also applied for access to my Stasi file, but so far without success.
5. Given the current security precautions, it is touching to remember how the assembled demonstrators sat right up against the wall of the US embassy in Oslo without the police taking any steps to intervene.
6. In fact I was abroad when the demonstration took place, so only my friends were apprehended by the police.
7. The work that caused me to be fined and given a suspended prison sentence is Wilkes & Gleditsch (1979). Regarding the court case, see Gleditsch (1981, 1982).
8. Then called Politiets Overvåkingstjeneste (POT).
9. My file (and those of some other individuals) is described in Gleditsch (2003, 2009). Cross-references in the materials show that some documents were not located by the Access Reviewing Committee, perhaps because they had been destroyed. The most complete Norwegian report on a security file is Michelet (2011). In English, Ash (1997, 2009) remains unsurpassed.

Access to secret files

The final report from the Access Reviewing Committee¹⁰ reproduces a comment from Øystein Gransjøen on what he read in his own file: ’When I read in their papers that I was a teetotaler, I was so taken aback that I had to have a drink.’ Gransjøen and I can hardly be the only people to have thought: ‘Good Lord, is this really what they believed? I could easily have cleared up this misunderstanding if someone had asked!’ The PST carried out its surveillance operations, and the people under surveillance had no opportunity to correct any erroneous observations or unreasonable interpretations. The consequences for Øystein Gransjøen, at least in so far as the mistaken observation about his drinking habits was concerned, were probably not particularly serious. They may have been a little more serious for me. And of course much more so for people who were refused security clearances, who were made ineligible for particular jobs, or who could not obtain visas to enter the United States.¹¹

By their very nature, the security and intelligence services must to a large extent work covertly. Accordingly they cannot inform someone that he or she is being investigated. Nonetheless, we do know that the PST informed some young political activists during the Cold War that they could potentially find themselves in a problematic kind of dependent relationship with Eastern European embassy personnel, who exploited anti-American sentiment during the Greek military junta and the Vietnam War. Some activists contacted the security service themselves when they felt that their relations with these embassy personnel began to be uncomfortable, and some were recruited as double agents. But this was only possible in the early years. When Arne Treholt was arrested on 20 January 1984, he suggested to those interrogating him that he should work with them ’to catch those bastards’. But Ørnulf Tofte of the PST had to inform Treholt that he was at least 10 years too late.¹²

10. Innsynsutvalget (2008: 83).
11. For examples, see the Lund Commission report (e.g. pp 261 et seq) and Bergh & Eriksen (1998) (e.g. vol I: 427, 503, vol II: 485).
12. Cf. Spang (1986: 29). For a review of literature on the Treholt case, see Gleditsch (1995).

Both sides of the argument?

The problem with undercover surveillance is the absence of what a Norwegian lawyer would call ‘contradiction’ (kontradiksjon) – or the principle that in decision-making, and in particular in court cases, both sides of a case must be heard. Basically this means that citizens must have the right to express their views about matters that are important to them and, if necessary, put forward the opposing arguments.¹³ Hearing both sides of a case is considered essential for the quality of judicial decision-making. Judicial control of decisions regarding telephone tapping was introduced as early as 1960,¹⁴ but in the early years it was unusual for the court to turn down an application from the police.¹⁵ When I was interviewed for this project I came up with the idea, which I believed to be original, that perhaps one could allocate the person under surveillance a secret ‘defense counsel’, who could advance counter-arguments when necessary.

The idea was a good one, but it was not particularly original.¹⁶ University of Oslo law professor Anders Bratholm had put forward the same idea as early as 1968, and following a long-lasting debate between lawyers and politicians, an arrangement of this kind was adopted in 1999. Court decisions on the monitoring of telephone conversations (i.e., telephone tapping) and other use of ’covert coercive measures’ now require a secret counsel for the defense to be appointed on behalf of the person or institution to be placed under surveillance. This counsel cannot make contact with the subject of the surveillance, but must present to the court any arguments to suggest that the surveillance should not be implemented. In 2009, however, a report from the Methods Control Committee (Metodekontrollutvalget – a panel of experts established by the Ministry of Justice to consider changes in the legislation regulating means and methods of police investigations) found that the arrangement did not function completely satisfactorily. Among the reasons for this was the failure of some courts to facilitate the participation of the secret defense lawyers, and the fact that their role terminated immediately after the court hearing.¹⁷ The committee suggested the adoption of a regulation to the effect that the same lawyers should ordinarily follow the whole case from beginning to end, including any subsequent proposal to prolong or extend the surveillance that might be heard by the court, and that in addition the lawyer should have a better opportunity to familiarize him or herself with the documents of the case. The committee proposed several amendments to the Criminal Procedures Act. Some amendments concerning the protection of information in criminal cases have been implemented. The Ministry of Justice decided however to divide into two parts its consideration of the committee’s report. A legislative proposal concerning the use by the police of covert coercive measures is in preparation, but no date has been set for when it might be put forward.¹⁸

The introduction of a secret counsel for the defense and the committee’s excellent suggestion for improving the system would not however have lessened the chances of my being classified as a former communist. I was not the object of surveillance: the information about me stemmed from surveillance of the Young Communists, and possibly from surveillance of other people or organizations that has left no trace in my file. The committee however proposed that the secret defense counsel should take care not only of the interests of the person or entity under surveillance, but also of any third party’s interests in connection with the court proceedings. This proposal raises the possibility that an active and critically minded counsel could put the brakes on the recording of information gathered on the basis of inadequate sources, even if this would be 50 years too late for me.

13. Cf. Bruce & Haugland (2014: 32). For a somewhat narrower definition, applying particularly to the contradiction principle in court cases, see snl.no and regjeringen.no. The Norwegian Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee (usually known as the EOS Committee) also raised the issue of the right to contradiction with the Norwegian National Security Authority (NSM) in 2008 in relation to the security clearance of personnel. The NSM considered that the legal rights of such personnel were adequately protected because the NSM was obliged to give reasons for its decisions, which were subject to appeal. The Joint Committee considered that the right to contradiction required that the person in question should have the opportunity to see the documents relevant to the case before a decision was taken (Hernes, 2010) 315).
14. But initially this only applied to Norwegian citizens (Lund Commission, 1996): 301). In the case of foreigners, it was only in 1970 that telephone tapping became subject to judicial control ((Bergh & Eriksen, vol I: pp 397 et seq) Covert audio surveillance continued to be illegal and punishable as a criminal offence after 1960, unless it could be justified on the grounds of necessity (nødrett) (Bergh & Eriksen, 1998, vol II: 364).
15. According to the Lund Commission (1996: 19) the decisions by the court of examination and summary judgment (Forhørsretten) regarding telephone tapping appeared to be generic in nature with little in the way of factual justification.
16. Cf. Bruce & Haugland (201: 176) and NOU 2009: 15: 165 et seq.
17. Investigations have shown that lawyers raise few objections to requests from the police and that few make use of the right to appeal. However, the courts do adopt a somewhat more critical attitude to requests from the police in cases where the secret counsel for the defence has raised objections. Cf. Skonnord (2008) and Bruce & Haugland (2014: 124 et seq).
18. Cf. Ministry of Justice (2013)

Retrospective control

Other elements of contradiction are also built into surveillance operations, but are largely retrospective. Both the Norwegian Data Protection Authority (Datatilsynet) and the Parliamentary Ombudsman (Sivilombudsmannen) have powers to investigate the use of covert coercive measures.¹⁹ Of greater significance, however, is no doubt the Norwegian Intelligence Oversight Committee (Kontrollutvalget for de hemmelige tjenester). This had its fragile beginning in 1963, when even the committee’s existence and composition were secret!²⁰ An officially acknowledged committee was first established in 1972. During the course of public debate, a demand was raised for the committee to include representatives from opponents of government security policy, but this was not implemented.²¹ The committee was seen by many simply as an extension of the security and intelligence services, and it failed to instill general confidence that surveillance was satisfactorily controlled. Moreover, the committee’s remit was confined to the police and military security services. The Norwegian military intelligence service was exempted from its supervision. Following a series of revelations about the involvement of military intelligence officials in political surveillance, the exemption for that service was not particularly reassuring. Nonetheless, a comprehensive reform of supervisory functions did not come about until 1996. The new EOS Committee, which was made subordinate to the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) (to prevent a situation arising whereby the executive arm of government was responsible for supervising its own operations), was given access to all areas of the security and intelligence services and included opponents of the government’s security policy.²² The EOS Committee is subject to fewer restraints and has wider rights of access than is the case in most other countries.²³ It conducts inspections of the security and intelligence services, including some that occur without prior warning, and also handles complaints from members of the general public. On several occasions the committee’s annual reports to Parliament have contained criticisms of the security and intelligence services. For example, the annual report for 2010 found that the PST had acted contrary to orders in recording information about persons in two Muslim milieus based only on information about their religious convictions.²⁴ In 2013, the committee investigated to what extent the PST had changed its procedures as a result of this criticism.²⁵

The most dramatic testing of the rights of persons under surveillance occurred through the Lund Commission, which presented its report in 1996. Approximately at the same time, historians were allowed access to the archives of the PST²⁶ and the military intelligence service.²⁷ The Lund Commission’s report also led to the establishment of a temporary system, including an Access Reviewing Committee (Innsynsutvalget), whereby one could apply for access to the PST’s archives and registers and, if relevant, obtain financial compensation. When the Access Reviewing Committee was wound up at the end of 2007, it had processed a total of 12,764 applications for access to these materials and had authorized payments totaling at least NOK 11 million. All this must be understood in the light of enduring opposition within the security and intelligence services, and also in political circles, to access to those parts of the services’ work that might be controversial politically. This opposition was particularly strong in the Labour Party, and ultimately it was a highly unusual coalition of all the opposition parties, coupled with pressure from the mass media, that forced through this increased openness. The authorities could no longer rely on the ’loyalty of the press’ to maintain secrecy, including as a last resort making a phone call to a newspaper editors in order to suppress a story.²⁸ But most importantly of all: the Cold War had ended, and it was no longer meaningful to suspect left-wing opponents of constituting a threat to society. When the opponents of national security policy’ were finally represented on the EOS Committee, it was a bit like scoring a goal in a match that had already ended.

19. Bruce & Haugland (2014: 137 et seq).Telephone conversation with Lise Lehrmann, Ministry of Justice, 10 October 2014.
20. Bergh & Eriksen (1998, vol II: 57). The same authors point out (vol I: 416) that the strong liberal traditions present in Norwegian politics (actually they refer to ‘liberalistic’ traditions) made it difficult to curtail legal safeguards to the extent required by political surveillance. The solution was more secretiveness and more informal arrangements than in countries where intrusions into the rights of individuals were more accepted. They also confirm that the security and intelligence services themselves often had a more positive view of official supervision of their activities than did the politicians responsible for performing it (vol II: 31).
21. Bergh & Eriksen (1998, vol II: 67).
22. Bergh & Eriksen (1998, vol II: 530 et seq).
23. Cf. an article by the then chair of the committee, Helga Hernes (2010).
24. The committee’s annual reports since 1996 are available on its website at eos-utvalget.no.
25. Since 1999, a separate committee (‘the KK Committee’) has monitored police use of telephone tapping and similar measures in cases other than those concerning national security. In 2013, there were 487 such cases involving the tapping of 1,186 telephones. 70 per cent of these cases related to illegal drugs. Cf. regjeringen.no. See also Haugen (2010).
26. Cf. Bergh & Eriksen (1998).
27. Cf. Riste & Moland (1997).
28. I provide some examples in Gleditsch (1989). Cf. also Gleditsch (1986).

Both worse and better

Now that the dust has finally settled, we can see that the extent of surveillance and recording of information was greater than the authorities have been willing to admit, but also less than many critics had feared. The many years of secrecy, coupled with the routine denials that the security and intelligence services had overstepped their remits, had led to a certain amount of paranoia amongst their critics and the public at large. Many people of no particular political significance believed that, for example, their telephones had been tapped because they had heard mysterious clicking sounds on the line. The Lund Commission found that election as a local officer in the Socialist People’s Party (Sosialistisk Folkeparti or SF) would cause one’s name to be recorded in the first half the 1960s and that, as late as 1984, membership of the Norwegian section of the pacifist organization War Resisters’ International was sufficient grounds for having one’s name recorded.²⁹ At the same time, however, a number of fears concerning surveillance have been put to rest. For example, some people suspected that there was a mysterious ’fourth service’; that military intelligence for several decades had spied on members of the government and other politicians; and that the security and intelligence services had been involved in the Lillehammer murder case in 1973³⁰. The Lund Commission pointed out that such claims had ‘gained credence among a number of critically-minded, level-headed people’ and had poisoned the political and parliamentary milieu. The culture of secrecy had become the state security and intelligence services’ own worst enemy.³¹

However, the temporary right for members of the public to access their security files that applied between 1999 and 2007 was restricted. For the period after the adoption of the new Police Surveillance Order (Overvåkingsinstruksen) of 25 November 1977, access was only possible if the collection, recording, or use of the information had no legitimate grounds in any applicable statute, regulation, or order. But even though there were legal grounds to record information about my activities when I was collecting material in the 1970s about electronic intelligence stations in Norway, I could not be certain that the information gathered had not been misinterpreted, as had been the case regarding my supposed former membership in the Young Communists. And why was it necessary for the right to access information to end in 2007? Theoretically one may still apply for access under the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act or the Public Administration Act, but exemptions apply to the PST not only under these statutes, but also under the National Security Act, the Police Act, the Criminal Procedure Act, the Personal Data Act, and the Police Records Act. In addition there are several other barriers to access, such as considerations to do with cooperation with other countries’ security services, the need to protect working methods and sources etc.³² No individuals have been granted access to documents by the PST since the Access Reviewing Committee ceased to operate. In addition, the PST views information concerning even the existence of such documents as classified, and accordingly will neither confirm nor deny their existence. On the other hand, the PST has approved applications for access from qualified researchers.³³ The requirement for the PST to consider granting declassification and public access to its records has, however, been reinforced by the revised Freedom of Information Act. So I applied anyway – and got turned down with a reference to the Police Records Act § 66, which exempts the PST from the duty to inform a person who is in its records (§ 48) and to provide access to the records (§ 49).³⁴ The rejection letter states that ‘PST cannot comment whether or not there are records about you that you have not already had access to. Here, ‘cannot’ should obviously be interprested as ‘will not’. But I’m not giving up. More to follow in the fullness of time.

The need to keep the surveillance system under control has not diminished. Quite to the contrary, the technical possibilities for surveillance have become greater, and there are fewer legal restrictions, because the police are now permitted to use telephone tapping in all cases where there are reasonable grounds to suspect criminal activity carrying a prison sentence of more than 10 years, and also because, since 2005, audio surveillance (e.g., ’bugging’) has become legal in certain circumstances.³⁵ The effectiveness of such surveillance is controversial, but two of my friends who are former judges have told me that information gained from telephone surveillance was decisive in most of the drugs cases that came before them in court. A survey conducted in 2009 among persons working in the justice sector found that a third of those who responded considered that communications surveillance had been of crucial importance in clearing up cases.³⁶ The need for a system to lodge objections has accordingly also become greater. But where national security is concerned, the most important conflicts are of a different nature than was the case during the period covered by the file released to me in 2001. Although countries such as Russia and China continue to conduct espionage operations in Norway,³⁷ the ideological appeal of these regimes for Norwegian political idealists is long gone. This is probably not the case with regard to conflicts in Muslim countries, and conflicts between these countries and their neighbors. Such conflicts may spread to Western Europe, including Norway.

It was not unreasonable that the leaders of organizations that defended the Soviet Union through thick and thin, and that received covert financial support for their operations,³⁸ were investigated to see what kinds of means they were using to promote the achievement of their political ends. It was also not unreasonable that the young revolutionaries of the 1970s who preached the necessity for armed uprisings were at one time suspected of having serious intentions. The problem is that too many people were affected by overly intrusive surveillance that was conducted partially with illegal methods such as audio surveillance³⁹ and that it went on for too long, even after it had become clear that many of the people in the security services’ records were nothing more than ’paper tigers’.⁴⁰ Even though the majority of the Norwegians who were convicted before 1955 of espionage were communists,⁴¹ this did not mean that the majority of communists were spies.

It is not unreasonable to keep track of people travelling to Syria and of their activities when they return to Norway. And ultimately there is no reason to complain if someone keeps an eye on people who are so obsessed with the ethnic and religious ‘contamination’ of the Norwegian nation that they believe us already to be engaged in civil war. But there must be limits to our vigilance. Perhaps we could have avoided the events of 22 July 2011 if PST had followed up information from the Directorate of Customs and Excise about Anders Behring Breivik’s purchases of chemicals from Poland (NOU 2012:14, ch 16), information captured by the international Global Shield program. But there must be limits to our vigilance. An even more stringent surveillance of people involved in extreme right-wing activities and chauvinist online anti-immigration campaigns, who also had a firearms license and who purchased large quantities of artificial fertilizer, might have produced some results.⁴² But this type of surveillance would also undoubtedly have cast suspicion on a number of farmers and elk hunters with strong political opinions – but without any plans to make bombs. Not to mention all the other combinations of opinions and activities that one would have had to have kept under surveillance in order take adequate precautions. We can only hope that the institutionalized system counterbalancing the surveillance apparatus that were introduced after the end of the Cold War make it unnecessary to wait for a new Lund Commission – or a new Edward Snowden – in order to sort everything out again, many decades too late.

29. Lund Commission p 121, p 237. However, simply being a member of the Socialist People’s Party did not cause one’s name to be recorded (p 238).
30. Cf. NOU 2000: 6, ch 5.
31. Lund Commission pp 464 et seq, p 590.
32. The Norwegian Freedom of Information Act was formerly known in Norwegian as Offentlighetsloven, but is now known as Offentleglova. The new law, which was passed in 2006, came into force in 2009. Section 6 of the regulations adopted pursuant to the act (2012) exempt the security services from having to grant access to their electronic records, section 9 makes available a general exemption concerning access to the security services’ documents, and section 10 enables public entities to avoid having to consider whether to downgrade the level classification of a document if access to it shall not be granted regardless of the level of classification, cf. lovdata.no. A comprehensive discussion of possibilities for access to the PST’s archives and records is contained in Ot.prp. 6 (1998–1999), which proposed the enactment of a separate statute concerning the establishment of the Access Reviewing Committee. Cf. also a blog entry on the PST’s website (Bernsen, 2012).
33. Telephone conversation with Martin Bernsen, head of information at the PST, 24 June 2014.
34. Letter from PST, 23 September 2014.
35. NOU 2009: 15): ch 17.
36. Cf. Thomassen (2010). The Metodekontrollutvalget based its findings on a somewhat higher figure (45%), cf. NOU (2009: 15, pp 141 et seq) and Bruce & Haugland (2014: 32).
37. And presumably also the United States, if in slightly different forms.
38. Bergh & Eriksen (1998, vol II: 83).
39. Cf. Lund Commission (p 125).
40. An ancient Chinese expression that Mao Tse Tung used regarding ‘imperialists and other reactionaries’ at least as early as 1946, cf. Mao (1958).
41. Bergh & Eriksen (1998, vol II: 18). Things changed after 1955. For example, two of the most well-known Norwegians to have spied for the Soviet Union, Gunvor Galtung Haavik and Arne Treholt, were hardly motivated primarily by ideology.
42. The 22 July commission report concludes that with better methods and a broader focus, PST could have caught the trail of the terrorist before 22 July. However, the commission does not have a basis for saying that PST could and should have presented the attacks (NOU 2012:15, p 12).

Nils Petter Gleditsch is a research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and is also professor emeritus of political science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He received compensation from the Access Reviewing Committee in 2003 after lodging a complaint about the information held about him by the security services. In 1982 the Supreme Court found him guilty of violating the Criminal Code’s provisions on national security because, together with Owen Wilkes, he had made public their research into US intelligence stations in Norway. In 2009 he was awarded the Research Council of Norway’s prize for outstanding research. The citation included a reference to his work on the intelligence services.

References

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