American Espionage against Norway … a Tempest in a Teacup!

Recently, a story was brought up in the Norwegian media about the United States of America seeking to activate espionage activities in Norway. They did so by way of identifying, tracking and conducting surveillance on many political activists, cultural figures and prominent critics of American policy on the matter of the war on terrorism, undertaken by the “Administration for the Analysis of Security Threats to the United States,”* which resorted to the hiring the services of former Norwegian police officers and intelligence officers.

They were operating in this way from an apartment in the vicinity of the old American embassy that faces the Royal Palace in the heart of the Norwegian capital, Oslo. Norwegian television’s TV 2 announced this matter, stirring up great political sensation after Norway’s minister of justice, who is responsible for the activities of security, police and intelligence institutions, said that he did not know of any espionage activities that members of the Norwegian security establishment may have performed against Norwegian citizens.

The plain truth is that Norway has been one of the closest allies of the United States on an official basis since the year 1945, which saw the liberation of Norway from Nazi occupation. The United States has a great number of citizens who have Norwegian roots. More than five million Americans are the descendants of Norwegians who immigrated at the beginning of the last century and established a powerful Norwegian lobby. It has an effective and vital presence. Indeed, the greatest Norwegian investors and capitalists consider the United States to be a kind of “investors’ paradise” for them.

Moreover, Norway was an important northern wing of the NATO alliance during the Cold War. Its northern borders are very long and wide along territory that belonged to the former Soviet Union and belongs today to the Russian Federation. This places Norway in an important tactical position in terms of the ends of U.S. strategy and policy. Indeed, strategic cooperation with the United States has an importance that overrides all other differences of opinion — in spite of the fact that the governments that have ruled Norway since the end of World War II have by and large had social-democratic orientations. The current coalition government, made up of the Labor Party, the Socialist Left and the Center Party, is no different. Norway was one of the most important venues for espionage between the West and the East in decades past, at the same time that American military bases in western and northern Norway would have been of tremendous tactical significance in the event that the Cold War went hot. The stories of Arne Treholt, a Norwegian who spied for the Soviet Union and Iraq, are well known in the media and from spy novels based on his experiences. [Though he is no longer a spy,] developments in his personal life are still covered by the Norwegian media even today.

The Norwegian state and its security institutions have very special strategic security relationships with United States and Israel. As Norwegians themselves say, they are the “northern arm” of NATO, embracing the commitments and duties that come along with such a position. In the same way, Norway plays a strategic role in arms manufacturing and especially in defensive and offensive missile systems. Thus it has the utmost importance in the security field, in addition to its well-known historic role in establishing Israel’s nuclear program by providing Israel with the heavy water necessary to make a nuclear bomb!

It is true that by the end of the 1950s, Norway developed an independent foreign policy and tried to play a positive role in the affairs of the Third World in order to further the work of international peace. Norway did so in the Middle East more recently at the beginning of the 1990s by way of the Oslo Accords of 1993, although they faced heavy stumbling blocks. Still, Norway’s policies of peaceful mediation in heated disputes have led to big changes in the Middle East, the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and on some African issues. Norway is among the largest contributors of aid to the Third World, giving it great weight in the context of the United Nations.

Despite Norway’s engagement with the Third World, the strategic alliance with the United States will remain an exceedingly important national security issue for Norway, unless there will be some sort of radical change in Norwegian policy. The Norwegian security apparatus that is closed to authorities and above serious parliamentary supervision actively coordinates with American, Western and Israeli security agencies. Norway’s growing regional and international role has forced its intelligence and military agencies to widen their activities, while at the same time it has forced their public relations arms to vary the grammar of their press releases. Norway has a vital military and combat presence among the forces of ISAF and NATO in Afghanistan, while in Norway Islamic fundamentalist organizations have tried to disrupt Norwegian interests in the Islamic world especially.

The question of the media’s focus on American espionage activities spying on residents and citizens of Norway is ultimately a moot one. Security institutions have means of cooperating with different branches of Norwegian security in the American espionage effort, but they do so in ways that fall within the obligations of the Norwegian-American strategic alliance. The issue has been inflated in the media, but interest in it quickly fizzled out because the issue is greater than the work of one or two journalists. The existence and presence of secret issues, the subject of public announcements, distract the media’s focus and mislead the public. Norway is an important and effective part of the NATO alliance and the tale of American espionage is nothing but a tempest in a teacup.

*Translator’s Note: This is most likely in reference to the CIA.