The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [404]
Reflecting the extremely close relationship between SIS and the Norwegians during the war, SIS’s postwar situation in Norway differed slightly from the other Scandinavian countries. The primary focus for the SIS representative, posted to Oslo in June 1945 and head of station from March the following year, was to build on the wartime legacy. In April 1946 the station was enjoined to exploit liaison with the Norwegian intelligence service ‘to the utmost advantage’. Although (as was now the case elsewhere) he was told he ‘should not work against the country in which you are stationed’, this evidently did not rule out keeping a watch on Communist and hostile intelligence activities in Norway, let alone running agents from Norway against other targets. In July 1946 London specifically encouraged Oslo to recruit agents in Norwegian ‘Cultural, Labour and Party Organisations’ which had relations with the USSR, with a view to their being able to visit the Soviet Union in due course and gather intelligence there. ‘Such penetration’, they thought, ‘offers one of the best chances of getting behind the formidable barriers of Russia.’22
Reporting on FOII (the Norwegian intelligence service) in January 1947, the head of station said that its policy, born of the nation’s experience, was ‘Norway for the Norwegians’, and the activities of any potentially hostile power would be the target of its intelligence operations. Since the United Kingdom did not pose a threat to Norwegian sovereignty or security, active co-operation with SIS was natural and extended even to discussions about the joint running of agents. Although in the head of station’s opinion this ‘far exceeds official governmental policy’, he felt that members of the Norwegian government knew of and approved the liaison. By contrast, Colonel Wilhelm Evang, the acting head of FOII, told SIS of his irritation when the Americans were discovered in late 1947 trying to bribe a Norwegian policeman and one of them was expelled. By January 1948 Evang had become increasingly ill-disposed towards the Soviets, who were regularly caught out spying against Norway.
In March 1947 SIS agreed to pay the Norwegians £1,000 a year to help finance the establishment in north Norway of an intercept operation against the USSR, the results of which were found to be ‘most valuable’. Other proposed joint operations included the penetration of the Murmansk region across the Norway-Soviet frontier and the placing of an agent in Spitzbergen to report on Soviet activities in the area. But there were also instructions to pursue other targets independently of the Norwegians. These included placing or recruiting agents in Norwegian merchant ships and in Norwegian firms trading with the Soviet bloc, and in the Norwegian airline service to Poland, as well as targeting the Norwegian Communist Party. The Oslo station was charged with penetrating Soviet and satellite missions in Norway and with recording, collating and periodically reporting information which came to light about local counter-espionage cases. Early in 1949 Norwegian officers travelled to London for detailed discussions about war planning (which also involved United States participation), stay-behind schemes and SIS provision of training and technical support.23
21
A worldwide Service
SIS’s postwar deployment after 1945 was increasingly concentrated in countries where the threat of Communism was seen as most immediate, and also in those places where it was thought that threat might effectively be challenged. In practice this meant that resources were focused on countries bordering the Soviet bloc in both Europe and the Middle East, and, after 1949, in Asian countries on the fringes of Communist China. But the Service retained a worldwide reach, even though budgetary considerations compelled it to reduce its representation to the bare minimum where the perceived threat was not so great. This was undoubtedly the case in Latin America. At the end of the war there were ten, usually one-man, stations. Within a few years only those