The spy chief, the politician and the high-stakes legal case that rocked Denmark
Claus Hjort Frederiksen, the former defence secretary, and ex-intelligence agency chief Lars Findsen were arrested and charged with allegedly leaking state secrets that had been in the public domain for years. Last month the case was dropped, but it is still leaving its mark. Jakob Illeborg talks to them both
It is a saga that sounds like a John le Carré spy thriller, but played out at the top end of Danish politics.
The former defence secretary, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, is emotional as he recalls when his ordeal started.
"I parked my car in front of my house, and as I turned off the engine, two police officers jumped out of their car, came up to me and informed me that I was being charged with a very serious crime that could lead to 12 years in prison".
It was December of 2021. Frederiksen, defence secretary from 2016 to 2019, was still an MP but now in opposition.
"It felt like the carpet was being pulled under my feet. I really didn't know what to do. My wife, who was inside our house has Alzheimer's, and I couldn't really talk to her about it," says 76-year-old Frederiksen.
On that day, Danish Police arrested four individuals in total, starting a legal drama that would put Denmark in an unwanted spotlight worldwide.
At the Defence Intelligence Headquarters in Copenhagen, a civil servant was led out of the office in handcuffs in front of colleagues. At Copenhagen Airport, events got even more tense.
"As I was walking through customs returning from a trip to Northern Macedonia having helped with security sector reforms, two police officers came up to me and asked me to follow them into the adjourning room. Here lots of Police were waiting. I was informed that I was under arrest and told that I would learn more later," says Lars Findsen, the former Chief of Danish Defence Intelligence Services (DDIS), which is overseen by the defence minister.
Findsen, a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog for his contribution to Danish life who served in the Secret Service world for more than twenty years, was taken to a police station north of Copenhagen escorted by armed officers.
The charges that Frederiksen and Findsen would eventually find themselves facing? The leaking of state secrets, amounting to treason.
"I got hold of my lawyer, and we were presented with their material against me. We were shocked, this was plainly insane," Mr Findsen says. "The Danish Security Service (DSIS) had been in charge of the investigation, and they now hinted that if I would confess now and at the same time give them the names of sources used by the press in their service, they would look kindlier on my case.
I was the chief of the other secret service branch DDIS, which is our foreign intelligence service and apart from the absurdity of the charges against me, I was not familiar with the sources in the security branch used by the press. There had been a range of leaks that had apparently been politically inconvenient to the then government" says Findsen.
Today, we know that the charges were about disclosing information about data collection from a cable-sharing partnership between the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Denmark. However, this deal has been public knowledge since Edward Snowden revealed thousands of classified NSA documents in 2013. The Danish press has covered the secret cable-sharing extensively for years.
Findsen was jailed. His home was searched. The computers and telephones belonging to him, his wife and his children were confiscated.
We were shocked, this was plainly insane
"I was treated as if I was dangerous. There would always be an officer present at the prison when I spoke to other people; even going to the bathroom at the police station, I had to do it with an open door," Findsen says.
From the information Findsen got through the interrogations he faced, it became clear that he had been under surveillance for a long time. His home and summer house had been bugged.
"An operation of this scale is no small matter. Permission to carry it out would have had to come from very high up. After all, we had a scenario where the chief of one secret service branch [the domestic one] was bugging the chief of the other branch.
This accusation has been denied by Peter Hummelgaard, the current Danish defence secretary, who said in a statement to The Independent: “Denmark is a state governed by the rule of law, where the Prosecution Service is subject to a statutory principle of objectivity, which in Denmark is a fundamental principle in criminal justice. This is considered one of the most important guarantees for the processing of criminal cases, and a similar principle applies to the police”.
Findsen was imprisoned for 70 days by a Town Court judge until the High Court ordered his release. But the charges against him remained. The former Spy Chief was accused of conveying top-secret information partly in conversations with two senior journalists, partly in conversations in his home with his close family, including his 86-year-old mother and in a private conversation with an old colleague, the former national commissioner of police, something Findsen has always denied.
In 2020, he was among a group of leading employees at DDIS sent home after a report from an independent watchdog raised concerns about how the DDIS was operating. It said there were “risks in the central part of DDIS’s intelligence gathering capabilities that unauthorised intelligence has been gathered on Danish citizens”. Half a year later, Findsen and the others were cleared of any wrongdoing by a special commission.
"Everything refers to what happened back then. The government handled this badly. It was like throwing a hand grenade into the secret service. It was really damaging and completely unnecessary. It is true that I maintained contact with my press network through this ordeal. The reason for this was damage limitation to the service and the mishandling of our important work," says Findsen.
Responding to the coverage, Frederiksen defended Findsen and the other employees (he had left the defence ministry the previous year), entering the saga. He would go on to mention the NSA deal in future interviews.
Fast-forward to the end of 2021 and In a court appearance after being arrested, Findsen showed up carrying the novel 'The Light We Cannot See', deliberately showing it to the press to get them to ponder the circumstances of his arrest.
Both Findsen and Frederiksen agree that it isn't possible to establish the cause of their arrest and accurately, many observers of the case have pointed to clashes between Findsen and the prime minister's office. Findsen was charged in September 2022, Frederiksen in February 2023.
For Frederiksen, things don't add up. "This whole thing is so mysterious. If the government really cared about keeping the cable-sharing with the NSA a secret, this was the last thing you would do. Now the whole world knows about it, and details about Denmark's Secret Service are widely available," says the former defence secretary.
The charges were dropped against both men last month, after the Danish Supreme Court decided that the prosecution would have to make their sources and evidence public if they wanted to proceed with a trial. "The classified information is central to the court cases. Not being able to present this leaves the prosecution no way of lifting the burden of proof, the state prosecutor, Jakob Berger Nielsen said in a statement.
The state prosecution service and the justice ministry maintain that the arrests and charges were justifiable. Justice Secretary Peter Hummelgaard and the Danish government also deny any wrongdoing or interference in the process.
“Taking steps to investigate or charge for political or other improper reasons would clearly be conflicting with these principles. I would therefore also like to emphasize that the Danish authorities do not initiate criminal cases for political or personal reasons. Additionally, investigative actions such as bugging must be authorised by a judge,” Hummelgaard said in a statement.
Legal experts suggest that the whole saga is unprecedented. "This is the century's biggest security own goal. There is no precedent for what has happened in Denmark over the last two years. It is straight up bizarre," says Lasse Lund Madsen, a professor at Aarhus University.
"When you charge people through the legal system, as a state prosecutor, you need to be pretty sure you have a strong case - this is, of course, even more true if it is a potentially explosive and very important case, and the case in question is, without doubt, the biggest of its kind in Danish history," he adds. "The fact is that you are arresting and charging the spy chief and the former defence minister... These are normally actions associated with states we don't like to compare ourselves with."
During a special parliamentary session later in November, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen defended the actions taken, also accusing criticism of the collapsed trial as reckless conspiracy theories. Asked several times about her knowledge of involvement in the process, she bluntly refused any wrongdoing.
"I categorically deny any special considerations and, of course, also any political interference. This should be self-evident," the prime minister said.
But Claus Hjort Frederiksen doesn't buy that assurance.
I am happy that it is all over now, but too many unanswered questions are still hanging in the air
"The procedures in and around the Danish government make it impossible for the very top not to know. Decisions would have been made at the Government Security Committee along the way. We need to find out by whom," says Frederiksen.
"For me, what hurts are the violations of our rights. In a sense, I am happy that it is all over now, but too many unanswered questions are still hanging in the air,"
The justice minister, Hummelgaard, told The Independent: “I have noticed that there are several conspiracy theories in circulation, but I can emphatically rebut that the cases against Claus Hjort Frederiksen and Lars Findsen have in any way been driven by political or personal motives”.
A commission is due to be set up to look into the handling of the cases. On Thursday, the Danish government secured backing from the centre-left SF party, to allow that commission to be run by the Justice Department and not by parliament, as other opposition parties have demanded
“We shouldn’t have high hopes that this political agreement will shed new light on what happened. I think very little will be publicised from the commission's work,” Frederik Waage, a professor in constitutional law at the University of Southern Denmark, told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in the wake of the news..
Such a commission will do little to appease those who believe there has been a miscarriage of justice with wide-ranging consequences.
Hans Jørgen Bonnichsen is one of them. He is the former operational Chief of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (DSIS) and has worked with Findsen for years.
"Accusing Lars Findsen of something resembling treason is just absurd. I am happy that the cases have been dropped, but their names have not been cleared, and now probably won't be. Lars Findsen has been through hell," he told The Independent.
"I am not very optimistic about getting to the bottom of this. Unfortunately, I think closing this case now suits the government. The last two years have been disastrous for our security standing internationally, but both Mr Findsen and Mr Hjort Frederiksen deserve to be completely cleared".
At least the two will not have to spend the coming years in and out of courtrooms, and they both tell The Independent that they are both taking the verdict of The Supreme Court as the end of the matter.
"Remember that I am 76 years old. This is not how I wanted to spend my retirement," Frederiksen says.
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