[Thanks to Boomerang]

Tough week for the AIVD. Every service has to endure the fact that while its successes are hardly ever disclosed to protect the sources, its failures often reach the outside world quite easily. So it was this time. After several reports in the press concerning blunders and questionable work practices at the service, Andre Elissen and Marcial Hernandez of the PVV tabled seven questions to Rutte and Minister of the Interior Ivo Opstelten yesterday. 

The bad news began on Friday 13th (of course), with the news that an AIVD officer had been expelled from their post in Ankara by the Turkish government in 2011. A case of ‘forward defence’ gone wrong. The reasons behind this are unclear and there is an information black-out on the incident from both The Hague and Ankara, but not enough to prevent it from eventually reaching the press. The officer had fulfilled a liaison function with the Turkish service and was tracking muslin extremist groups, among others Hizbollah, which is meant to possess networks in the Netherlands and Germany. They have now been transferred to another embassy in the Middle Eastern. Apparently only around twelve embassies around the world have such an official AIVD liaison position to work with the local services, which indicates how important the position in Turkey was.

Dutch-Turkish relations are not at there best these days. According to Ankara the Netherlands is too easy-going on the PKK, and Dutch financial support for a human rights organisation operating in South-East Turkey was seen as support for the Kurdish cause (as well as the charge that the finance could have found its way to the militants). Another thorn in the bilateral side is the PVV itself. Geert Wilders has not hidden his feelings about the Turkish government of Recep Erdogan and his AK [Justice and Development] party. On 23 December PVV’ers Wilders, Hernandez, and Wim Kortenoeven questioned whether Turkish membership of NATO should be reconsidered due to the unilateral ending of military cooperation with Israel and France earlier in the year, stating that the Turkish government was now “an untrustworthy islamic ally.” Then there is the issue of 380,000 Dutch inhabitants of Turkish origin, a not insignificant fact of Dutch social life. Interesting times for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to celebrate 400 years of Dutch-Turkish diplomatic relations, 1612-2012.

But back to the AIVD. The next report was from Bart Olmer in De Telegraaf  last Saturday and concerned the case of Outman ben Amar, hired by the service to act as an Arabic translator but who in 2007 received four years in prison for leaking information to the ‘Hofstadgroep’ cell. The story painfully illustrates what can happen if a lack of knowledge in a specific sector is too hastily filled. Ben Amar’s application procedure is meant to have included enough suspicious signs – unexplained gaps in his CV, unclear motivation for the job – for the selection committee to give a negative advice to the AIVD. Remarkably these concerns were overruled due to the rapid need for Arabic-speaking personnel. The article was accompanied by another in the Telegraaf that covered the tragic suicide of an AIVD officer five years after the death of Theo van Gogh. This event has apparently caused others in the service to release information to the press about AIVD blunders, among others the den Amar case.

The result of the Telegraaf article(s) was the list of PVV questions, which focused on the trivialities of AIVD routine work (is it true that the staff operating the safes for secret information knock off at 4pm?) and whether the service possessed a sufficient ‘whistle-blower’ mechanism to deal with discontent lower down the ranks.  The PVV to the rescue of a disillusioned service? More like a classic move by the Wilders’ gang – blame the elites for being lax and undermining national security as a result.

Activities                    31%

Infrastructure              12%

AIVD Expenditure 2010: Annual Report

On 29 May 2002 the Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst and the Militaire Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst were both created out of their Cold War forerunners, the BVD and the MID. The AIVD’s task was expanded with the removal of the division between foreign intelligence and dometic security – from then on it would be doing both. The time was right for expansion. Al Qaeda were meant to be everywhere and Pim Fortuyn had been gunned down only 23 days before by someone from the Green radical underground.

From 2002 to 2005 the AIVD grew from around 850 to 1100 employees and its budget mushroomed from 68m to 112m Euro. By 2010 it had expanded further to a staff of around 1400 full time equivalent and a budget of 191m Euro. The early 2010 talk of cutting every government department by 20% obviously led the AIVD to remind everyone that cutting back on national security was a risky business. The Ministry of Defence can lose its tanks, but the Ministry of Home Affairs can’t lose its surveillance and listening gear. The activities of foreign intelligence – particularly for economic espionage – were increasingly a threat. The political capital to be gained from cutting the AIVD’s budget - outside of the consistent criticisms of AIVD phone tapping and dodgy relations with journalists from parliament’s leftist ranks – remained pretty much at nil. And the AIVD instead showed in its annual report for 2009 an ambition to introduce ‘forward defence’ – a greater presence in trouble spots around the world.  With few threats at home, they had to go out and look for them elsewhere.    

This could now be changing. There were rumblings within the CDA’s 2010 election manifesto to merge the AIVD and MIVD, although no reason was given other than the need to ‘harmonise’ the security apparatus. In the CITVD’s report on the February Sirte mission released on 1 November, the principal accusation was that the AIVD and MIVD failed to work together in any coherent way and that if the mission told anything is was that better coordination was needed. The need for better coordination has been a repetitive complaint for several years. Last week a new chief of the AIVD was appointed, and to everyone’s surprise it was a military man: Lieutenant-General Robert Bertholee, the former commandant of the army and someone with no particular experience in the world of intelligence. As former MIVD boss Pieter Cobelens stated to the NRC yesterday, Bertholee had even opposed making intelligence a separate professional unit within the army.

With incredulity from his military colleagues marking his appointment, it could be that Bertholee’s arrival is no more than a move to ensure smoother relations between the two services. But with extra government cuts of around 5bn Euro looming, it could genuinely be a move to keep options open on the AIVD-MIVD front after a decade of intelligence-and-security growth. And both Defence and Internal Affairs are in the hands of CDA ministers. 

How would the PVV react to any such move? Tomorrow night part two of the documentary series on ‘The Wilders Process’, tracking the story of how Wilders ended up in court, will make the claim that in 2007 Maxime Verhagen (then Minister of Foreign Affairs) wanted the AIVD to find out more about the content and release date of the film Fitna. Both his ministerial colleague Guusje ter Horst (Internal Affairs) and the National Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism chief Tjibbe Joustra confirm that they rejected this move. Wilders has so far not responded. One wonders if it will have any impact on his opposition to further spending cuts.

Last Sunday and Monday Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal visited Tripoli, making some positive noises about releasing $2bn of frozen Libyan funds (earlier declarations of releasing $3.5bn have so far produced nothing). Dutch involvement in Operation Unified Protector was limited to enforcing the no-fly zone, leaving the serious stuff to others. But last week the most intriguing event in the whole Libyan escapade – the failed Sirte evacuation mission of Sunday 27 February – once more saw the light of day.

A short recap. A representative (who we know as ‘NN’) of infrastructure/engineering giant Royal Haskoning needed to be evacuated. The frigate Hr.Ms.Tromp, stationed just off the coast, sent a helicopter to rescue him. The location chosen was, remarkably, Sirte - home town of Gaddafi himself. The helicopter, which entered Libyan airspace without authorisation, and its three crew were held by pro-Gaddafi forces soon after landing. After plenty of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the crew were released after a week and a half.

On 1 November the Advisory Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services (CTIVD) made public its report on the role of the MIVD and AIVD in the evacuation mission. The results were not very startling. Coordination between the two intelligence services was lacking. The MIVD only informed the AIVD of the situation on 3 March. The AIVD then approached foreign intelligence services without informing the Foreign Ministry. Back in March the big joke had been that Military Intelligence didn’t work on Sunday and so failed to respond to the Tromp’s request for information that afternoon – an accusation that drew a furious response from the MIVD’s supporters. The CTIVD now largely exonerates the MIVD from any failure to respond.

But the CTIVD’s mandate for this report was very narrow – only look at the intelligence services. The decision to go ahead with the mission came from the very top - the Ministerial Core Group for Special Operations (MKSO), consisting of the Minister-President (Mark Rutte), Vice Minister-President (Maxime Verhagen), Minister of Defence (Hans Hillen), and Minister of Foreign Affairs (Uri Rosenthal). Under the MKSO’s responsibility lay “the evacuation of citizens from life-threatening situations.” As former MIVD boss Joop van Reijn said, the service had been unable to respond properly at the time because it had been deliberately excluded from the planning of the operation.

For the whole month of March both media and opposition MPs went after Defence Minister Hans Hillen and the MIVD. 124 parliamentary questions were tabled. Hillen survived, but many remained unconvinced.

Inevitably, the more interesting rumours circulated for a while in the outer reaches of the Dutch blogcloud. The origin seems to have been Klokkenluider.nl, who posted a remarkable alternate version of events already on 5 March. Other sites picked it up, but the mainstream media, as far as I am aware, never went near it apart from one or two passing references. Which is a pity – and in itself also says a lot.

It goes something like this. The official story is that the helicopter was sent to pick up a Dutch engineer and a woman with a Swedish passport who had somehow heard about the evacuation. Even though this ’Swedish woman’ was actually interviewed by the Dutch media in late March, this was a put-up job. The woman in Libya was in fact Princess Mabel of Oranje Nassau, Mabel Wisse Smit, wife of Prince Friso, who was in Libya to arrange a mutually acceptable solution for Gaddafi’s economic interests in the Netherlands. Gaddafi held a substantial stake in Fortis-ABN and this needed to be taken care of. The helicopter was not on a rescue mission but a hostage mission – the crew were to remain in Libya until the transaction was secure and Wisse Smit was out of the country – official reports state that the two ‘evacuees’ left the country on 2 March. Why Wisse Smit? A long-time executive in George Soros’s Open Society Institute and closely involved in Balkans affairs, she knew prominent son Saif Gaddafi through the World Economic Forum’s Global Young Leaders network, and was well-connected with both financial and governmental leaders on both sides. The Gaddafi assets were apparently transferred to Ageas, a successor enterprise to Fortis. Gaddafi’s economic interests in the Netherlands went far beyond the $3.5bn of frozen financial assets. There was plenty of private equity interest in the substantial funds available from the Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund. Tamoil, the Libyan national oil company, has a base in Riddekerk from where it runs around 160 filling stations in the Netherlands. Verenex Energy, the Libyan oil and gas prospector, is based in the same location. From GeenNieuws came the nice extra detail: Wisse Smit’s Twitter timeline stopped on 24 February and restarted on 2 March, when she claimed to be in Ethiopia.

Elite / Conspiracy nonsense? Or simply a cover-up for a business transaction that almost cost the Defence Minister his job? Nothing more has come out on this that I know of. But the bottom line is that its just about believable. And its a great story.

[17 February 2011 - The good people of Ghent celebrate the world record for the time taken to form a government. Its now June and they are still waiting. Compared to the current government in the Netherlands, I think the Belgians could be on to something....] 

At a book presentation yesterday (more on this later) the Belgian military was described as a “glorified pension plan” and one of the worst examples of the downgrading of defence that is occuring across the board in Europe these days. Yet recently Belgium has come out ahead the Netherlands in unexpected ways.

Firstly there is Libya. Robert Gates’ visit last week to lay down the law on the looming insignificance of NATO as a military apparatus involved some outspoken criticism of certain allies who are not doing very much (Netherlands, Spain, Turkey) or doing nothing at all (Germany, Poland) in Operation Unified Protector. Belgium was not among his list of shame, it being – to quite some surprise – among the hard-core nations (US, UK, France, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Italy) prepared to use force to implement UN Security Resolution 1973. It used to be the Netherlands that was vying for a place at the NATO top table, but now Brussels – officially without a government for more than a year this week – has gone one better. The Dutch have slightly more personnel active in the Mediterranean than their southern neighbours, but there’s been no willingness to allow them to do any more than enforce the no-fly zone. The six F-16s have had their mission extended to September, but this isn’t enough to satisfy Gates. In the circumstances, one does wonder why The Hague is so against bombing Libya…..

[See the full graphic on The Guardian's Libya dossier]

On the intelligence front the Belgians haven’t been doing so bad either. The latest report of Comité I, the oversight body, may well put the Algemene Dienst Inlichtingen en Veiligheid (ADIV: military intelligence) in a bad light according to De Standaard (different sections still not cooperating despite this being pointed out already five years ago) but De Tijd reports that Staatsveiligheid comes out looking pretty good. Despite lack of personnel they are able to keep a hold on potentially dodgy Belgian weapons exports,and keep an eye on “religious sects” while staying within the bounds of the law.

Its grimmer up north, with the Telegraaf breaking a story (and everyone else piling in afterwards) of long-time AIVD and Regionale Inlichtingen Dienst informant Paul Kraaijer who infiltrated first the Antifascistische Actie (AFA) where he set up a branch that was no more than a security service front, then the Kurdistan Informatie Centrum, then the Anti Dierproeven Coalitie (against animal testing) during a 25-year clandestine career from 1986-2011. Kraaijer’s story has caused a lot of unrest because of the strong implications of borderline ethics – the violence that broke out at the protest against far-right CP’86 councillor Henk Ruitenberg in Zwolle in April 1994 now looks like the work of a BVD (AIVD) agent. The Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten have understandably reacted at the suggestion that Kraaijer posed as a journalist to facilitate his infiltration work, but interestingly enough the AFA has itself taken the whole story with a large chunk of salt.

If this wasn’t enough for the Zoetermeer crew, Argos ran a radio broadcast on the strong suggestions that the service were cooperating with Arab counterparts just a little too closely – counterparts who have been the target of much popular unrest and anger over the past few months. Special attention was given to former AIVD chief Gerald Bouman’s obvious admiration for the Egyptian security boss Omar Suleiman, and the case of Saddik Sbaa, one of four Moroccans from The Hague who were picked up on the Kenyan coast not far from the Somali border in July 2009. Lack of evidence of any wrongdoing caused the four to be released without charge, but the AIVD then informed the Immigration and Naturalisation Service that Sbaa – who lacked a Dutch passport – was a potential threat to the nation and should be deported. Sbaa eventually agreed to go voluntarily in November 2010 to escape the seemingly endless incarceration in detention centres, whereupon he disappeared into the murky and violent world of Moroccan interrogation centres. The implication is that the AIVD, unable to resolve the case to their satisfaction via normal procedures, found a way to have Sbaa put away somewhere else where ‘normal procedures’ don’t apply. Argos rammed the point home that whichever way you look at it, it doesn’t look good.

Bravo for the Belgians? Maybe its even 3-0, if we add the recent sudden departure of Michel Preud’homme from FC Twente for the megabucks of Al-Shabab…..

In 2010 the post-9/11 counter-terrorism apparatus in the US came under scrutiny from the Washington Post, when a team of journalists set out to calculate and locate all the institutions involved. The resulting report, Top Secret America, indicated that the apparatus included at least 1271 government units and 1931 private organisations, with around 845,000 people – 0.7% of the total population – working in the intelligence and security field. The Post‘s image of a world out of control – where government and business have merged to form a security-industry-complex – was palpable.

Today the Dutch security and intelligence service, the AIVD, issued its annual report for 2010. In some ways it was a tough year for the service. The Post‘s revelations did trigger a critical assessment of the apparatus in the Netherlands, in particular from Bob de Graaff, who severely questioned counter-terrorist working methods that effectively made every citizen suspect before proven otherwise and required the collection and storage of more and more personal details. Two cases exemplified the AIVD’s presence in Dutch public life in 2010. One was the dropped case against Telegraaf journalist Jolande van der Graaf and two AIVD officers for leaking classified information. The other was the disastrous arrest of twelve Somaliers on 24 December under the assumption that they were about to launch a rocket attack against Apache helicopters at Gilze-Rijen air base.

The Somali incident gets a paragraph in the report, on page 8, which states that the service had indications that the Al Shabaab network were planning an imminent attack, and took the threat seriously enough to issue a direct warning that led to the arrests. This is hardly a fair assessment of the facts. While initial media reports went along with the official account, it soon emerged that the AIVD based their assessment on only one unreliable source, another Somali, who was apparently blackmailing the others by spreading false information. The result was a series of strong-arm night-time raids (Operation Achilles) on 24 December by the DSI (Special Intervention Service), including coming through the ceiling (shades of the movie Brazil here, in more ways than one) of a cellphone shop in Rotterdam. Nine of the arrested twelve were soon released without charge, complete with sizeable financial compensation (how much was never disclosed). By 20 February the remaining three were also free. The picture that emerges from this is of a very jittery AIVD that is unable to separate circumstantial evidence and petty criminality from international terrorist subterfuge. 

Not good. Neither is the Telegraaf incident, which has been revived now that one of the accused, former AIVD’er Heleen ‘de Waal’ (known as ‘Heleen S.’ up till now), will publish her book Halve Lucht tomorrow about her 12 years of working in the service and her experience of 2010. One issue in its pages that has immediately been taken up by the press is ‘de Waal’s’ account of how the AIVD made a serious mistake in misjudging the threat to Theo van Gogh’s life in 2004. The AIVD officer responsible for the van Gogh dossier was inexperienced and unable to judge the situation correctly, even though there were enough facts available that pointed to an acute danger. ’De Waal’ is embittered enough to suggest in an interview with the NRC today that incriminating documents were planted in her home by the AIVD to undermine her credibility and strengthen the accusation that she was the source of the leaked material to the Telegraaf.

In January the Home Affairs Minister Piet Hein Donner presented the AIVD’s outlook for 2011 to parliament. The two principal interlocking concerns it focused on were the highly dynamic and unforeseeable internationalisation of (terrorist) threats and the rapid development of digital technologies and services by both friend and foe. The result was that “the AIVD must be innovative, it must strengthen its intelligence-gathering capabilities (both internationally and technologically), and it must develop its (international, technological) counter-strategies….Therefore I conclude that it is necessary for the service to strengthen its (technological and IT) capacity and effectiveness.” Things may occasionally get rough, but it looks like there will be one corner of government thats going to escape the public spending cuts.

Espionage is thought to thrive in organisations steeped in secrecy. The modus operandi of secret agents has since long captured popular imagination, resulting in countless novels and Hollywood movies. Nonetheless, spy craft is at best a minor share of the information intake of the intelligence agency. Turning raw data into a legitimate intelligence product requires several stages of analysis, and the end result still remains likely to be comfortably ignored or misjudged by policy makers. Ironically, the politicians in the Dutch Cabinet Office have now moved to put down standards for information security in the business sector and public administration against foreign espionage.

Leaving aside these reports and standards for the moment, the work of countering espionage and surveillance is where the profession becomes a complex configuration of smokescreens and mirrors. Part of the job for any intelligence agency is to keep its nation’s secrets secret, while at the same time gaining advantages by uncovering their opponent’s classified information. Enter a world where reality is stranger than fiction. A world in which any document may be designed to deceive. A world in which code and cryptography aren’t for fun, but a realistic survival strategy somewhere in between peace and war. 

The former paragraph is what a text on espionage could have said during the Cold War. At that time, clandestine intelligence operations were at the forefront of a geopolitical struggle for world hegemony, and would often turn hostile. Surely, regional animosity will still have its covert component nowadays, potentially even leading to explosive situations, such as between Israel and its regional rivals like Hamas and Iran. Also, It could be argued that drone attacks conducted by the CIA are an extension of Cold War tactics, meaning, targeted killings authorized by the U.S. President. Explosive, yes, but no longer a direct threat of escalation. The break with the past is then that the game has shifted its focus, and that a creeping demand for vital information comes from all sides, even from your allies. The increased digitalization of key resources, command and control functions, or communication flows allows for a distant, intangible threat to information security. Many of the threat assessments publicised by western intelligence agencies and alike now concentrate on cyber infrastructure and its vulnerabilities.

Simultaneously, observers estimate that 80% of any agency’s intake of information comes from open-source intelligence (OSINT), such as newspapers, journals and otherwise publicly available resources. No hacking skills or secret agents necessary there, save one perhaps, to get a fully functioning translation tool. Indeed, the capabilities of any given intelligence outfit are generally overrated. The existence of an information overload within such bureaus does not come from frantic shadowing of possible perpetrators, but stems from difficulties in separating facts from fodder. An informed audience would not be led into the illusionary belief that any secret service can be either all-knowing, or free from failure.

Intelligence agencies themselves have become more active participants in the public debate during the 1990s. The Dutch intelligence- and security agency (AIVD) has made a remarkable shift to increasing openness, publishing its first yearly report in 1992, although in some respects still leaving opportunities for informing the public unheeded. Nevertheless, in contrast to the past and to its foreign counterparts, the AIVD has proved to be a frontrunner in its public communications. We can trust its attempts to be genuine, but does it reap any benefits for its public standing? Unfortunately, no opinion polls have been done on this topic thus far.   

Seemingly in contrast to this progression towards greater openness are the joint publications by the AIVD with the Ministry of Internal Affair’s Directorate for Security:  Kwetsbaarheidsanalyse Spionage and Handleiding Kwetsbaarheidsonderzoek Spionage. Both review information security vulnerabilities while urging organisations and private businesses to increase information security. The fact that foreign intelligence is actively gathering information within the Netherlands, in sectors related to finance,  research & technology and public administration, is very commonsensical, to the point that it would be strange if  they didn’t make any such attempts. Innovation never really is fully indigenous. Coupled with the stresses of economic downturns and growing domestic unemployment rates, industrial espionage is steadily gaining ground. The response that the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and, as of now, the entire Dutch Cabinet, are requesting does point in interesting directions.

For one, the admittance that its research has found that intricacy and interconnectivity of databases make the sensitive fragments more vulnerable  to unwanted clientele (“maakt deze data bestanden ook kwetsbaarder voor inzage door onbevoegden” p. 33) is a boon to privacy activists, such as Bits of  Freedom. In reality the whole report is an attempt to further security awareness in the private sector, but reads in effect like a preventive measure to cover various backsides should things go pear-shaped, like before. Much of the provided information is superfluous, overshadowing the essential criteria that are brought forward. Moreover, when intelligence agencies get into bed with private businesses, liberal democracies shouldn’t refrain from asking a two-fold question: who profits? And who’s accountable?

To their credit, the AIVD report offers methods for corporate security to be improved outside of direct involvement from the agency itself. The ten-step manual has all the qualitative input to analyse and operationalise a robust walling of informational leaks, red teaming included. Will companies invest in these practices, to the extent of hiring outside experts to vet its processes? Or will the typical company trust in the loyalty of their employees and perceive ‘going that extra mile’ to be applicable only for companies closer to the line of fire than themselves? That question, and how far this report and the ‘awareness presentations for a targeted audience’ by the AIVD influences a change in daily operations with regard to security practices, must be left open for now, but ought to be reviewed periodically. A trade-off between allocated budget and full-fledged information security seems inevitable. In a competitive business environment, overseen by the agencies’ undisclosed monitors, and, if possible, an informed public, a proper balance between security and openness can be struck.

Stadsmuseum Zoetermeer displays a collection of AIVD artefacts in an exhibition  titled ‘In Service of Democracy’ until March 6^th

An interesting court case related to Dutch intelligence matters reached its conclusion today, picking up quite some media coverage, such as from Steven Derix in NRC Next. The high-profile case in Haarlem was against an AIVD officer and her ex-AIVD partner concerning their alleged leaking of classified documents on Iraq to the Telegraaf, resulted in victory for the defendants. The court ruled that journalists have a right to protect the identity of the sources of their information. As lawyer Van den Elzen emphasised, ”this is a good day for press freedom,” not just for journalists but also for their potential sources.

This judgement was more or less a confirmation of an Amsterdam court ruling and the views of the Advisory Committee on Intelligence and Security Services (CTIVD) at the end of 2009. The reaction of the AIVD to the Telegraaf‘s publication of a criticial article based on leaked material, which involved tapping the phones of Telegraaf journalists in order to find the source of the leak, was then ruled to be illegal and ”disproportional”.

By upholding these previous judgements, the Haarlem court effectively ruled that the evidence against the two defendants – entirely based on material obtained from the telephone taps – was also inadmissable. The court therefore stated that while it could not address the work of the AIVD per se, it could – and would – address whether the AIVD obtained its information in a legal manner. This was not so. As a result, the case would not proceed any further.

The immediate sense is that this could be an important signal for potential whistle-blowers in the future. Sources are protected – the investigative journalist is a trustworthy channel through which information can be leaked. It is true that the state prosecutors declared immediately that they will appeal and take the case to a higher level. But as lawyer Inez Weski retorted, that means returning to the Amsterdam court that delivered the original critical ruling last year, so the judges would have to overturn their previous judgement.

The question is whether the AIVD is still able to successfully push the case under the heading of national security. The prosecution tried to do so at the opening of the case in Haarlem by claiming the necessary right of the state to set an example against those who leak classified information, and also the damage that this can do to an intelligence service if it is deemed untrustworthy by partners in other services or potential partners in civil society. The court accepted that there will sometimes be cases where the rights of journalists to protect their sources will have to weighed against the demands of national security. What is interesting so far is that the law iss insisting on addressing the needs of national security on a case by case basis – there will be no blanket ruling that any material leaked will automatically allow the state to throw the book at the alleged offender(s). This particular case has not been deemed important enough for the prosecutors to use it in order to prevent future embarrassments. But if I get this right, neither are the courts saying ’we protect the freedom of the press in every single case.’ So the ‘victory for the whistle-blower’ headlines going around are true, but only until the next battle.

Lawyer Inez Weski: The Davids Report II? 

Not much to say on the coalition talks.

After the end of the first round, the signals are that Job Cohen is trying to block a right-leaning cabinet by refusing to share power with the Christian Democrats, as a result forcing the VVD to either go for broke with Wilders and the PVV or take a centre-left coalition seriously. The CDA almost unconsciously seems to go along with this by insisting that their heavy defeat at the polls means they can’t take a leading role in any discussions. “Ons past bescheidenheid” – we need to be humble – is their new, attractive party slogan.

Cohen has also suggested that another attempt should be made to form a right-wing dream cabinet VVD-CDA-PVV. While this might be awfully decent of him in terms of democratic principle, one wonders if he’s not playing games with CDA and VVD supporters and their willingness to support such a move. Cohen is after all pretty good with some sharp moves – just take a look at this.

But with the regular media already searching for something new to say on the negotiations, there is little point in this blog doing the same. So lets switch topic and go back to one of the more interesting curiosity items of news in 2009, the Telegraaf-AIVD case [An Intelligence Affair, 31 January 2010, and subsequent reports]. The reason that the case has re-appeared on the media radar screen is that the court case against AIVD officer Heleen S. and her partner, for allegedly leaking an internal report and other information to Telegraaf reporter Jolande van der Graaf, begins in Haarlem next Monday. Van de Graaf, who made good capital out of being bugged and harrassed by the Dutch state last year, has since fallen totally from any position of respect thanks to her highly inappropriate move to gain an interview with the 9 year old survivor of the Tripoli plane crash last month. But the case has since moved way beyond the ethics (or not) of journalism.

In an interview with Vrij Nederland, S.’s lawyer Inez Weski has stated that she intends to call Jan Peter Balkenende as a witness for the defence. The reason is that she suspects the leaked information – which was critical of the AIVD’s role in assessing intelligence on the Iraqi threat in 2003 – came not from the AIVD itself but from the Ministry of General Affairs, the administrative apparatus behind the Minister President. Why? As the Davids report showed, Balkenende, via the Secretary General of the Ministry R.K. Visser, in late 2002 received two British intelligence reports which were not to be circulated elsewhere. The usual channel for this exchange of information would be via the AIVD itself to allow the Dutch service to assess the material. Both the AIVD and MIVD leadership were offended at being bypassed in this way. In the interview Weski referred to Balkenende running a “private secret service”.

The relevance of this is that the coming court case could take an interesting turn. The Telegraaf article exactly claimed that the AIVD had failed to correctly assess Iraqi possession of WMD. Weski is suggesting that the Ministry of General Affairs is the source of the article because it was exactly the Ministry that swallowed the faulty British intelligence whole, not the Dutch intelligence services. Weski: “That Telegraaf article therefore looks like it served as a lightning rod to attract attention away from the failure of the private secret service of Balkenende.”

This is no small matter. In an article on the Davids report back in April, intelligence expert Bob de Graaff pointed out that up till now the Ministry for General Affairs had largely been ignored in the whole Iraq story, with most attention going to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Foreign Affairs. The for-your-eyes-only documents were not the only ones that passed from London via Visser to Balkenende, and all these items – which were not disclosed to the Davids committee – were of crucial importance for setting out Dutch policy. De Graaff’s conclusion is that “a small club of civil servants without legal justification played intelligence analysts under the protection of the Minister President.” Not good.

The possibility now is that even if Balkenende doesn’t testify, the case will break open this aspect of the Iraq story a little more. Weski’s move could bring some late justice for the misused and abused intelligence services. But what looks certain is that Balkenende began his first premiership back in 2002 with the Iraq storm-clouds looming, and he’s going to end his last premiership with those same clouds still chasing him.

Cüneyt Ciftci and the German Taliban

Recently growing attention has been given to US citizens who have joined the jihad in Pakistan. But the phenomenon is not limited to Americans. The story of the men from The Hague who turned up as ‘tourists’ on the Kenya-Somalia border in July 2009 is well known. Now stories are emerging of Dutch involvement in military action against NATO forces in Afghanistan.

 The Telegraaf today includes an article on a 21-year-old Dutch-German citizen, Danny R., who has recently been killed in Pakistan. The paper is quoting Der Spiegel, which itself received the information from the German BVD. Danny had chosen the path of radical Islam in Berlin and together with a group from the city travelled to Pakistan last September. So far six known Germans have been killed in fighting in the region, and there has been a lot of attention given to the online exploits of (presumed killed) Eric Breininger / Abdulgaffar El Almani. As the Telegraaf notes, Westerners are ideal not just as reinforcements but as propaganda material for online video clips, proof that the holy war is supported by the very same nationalities as the enemy NATO forces themselves. As yet, no Dutch citizens have appeared, but it may only be a matter of time.

The Telegraaf quotes an AIVD source that there are around 15 known Dutch jihadis in the region. Alongside this and the Kenya-Somalia case, there have been two Dutch killed in fighting in Kashmir and the arrest of Wesam al-D by US forces for his involvement in IED operations. In total, several tens of Dutch citizens are involved in jihadi activities in various locations. The chosen route for going abroad appears to be via Morocco, and from their to Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, or Pakistan. Others go to attend a madrassa in Egypt.

The concern of the security services is often not just related to what these individuals do in Afghanistan-Pakistan. Following training, they can as Dutch citizens return to the Netherlands, ready to answer the call for further action. However, the AIVD source claims that these Dutch jihadis cannot easily return to the Netherlands because “they have been away too long and on return will be immediately arrested or put under permanent surveillance.”

This last comment is of course the most interesting, because it suggests an all-knowing intelligence and security service that has already identified the right suspects. It is above all a good confidence-building measure to show that the threat is completely covered and will be dealt with should that be necessary. The recent declarations that the AIVD needs to expand its operations abroad to track developments that may affect Dutch national security is not entirely at odds with this comment, but it does come close. For if the service is already so effective in tracking the main threats, it does raise a question why there is a need to expand its operations.

In this context it is interesting to read the AIVD’s report for 2009 next to the equivalent report from the Military Intelligence and Security Service, the MIVD. As well as support for Dutch military operations abroad, the MIVD also produces threat analyses and “investigates potential threats and the military forces from nations that could form a threat to the security of the Netherlands and the NATO area” (p. 11). In terms of the kind of war that is going on in South Asia, where the distinction between military and civilian forces ranged against NATO is not very clear, and the international range of these forces (from training camp to terrorist) is proven, it looks as if the MIVD already presents itself as the best prepared for tracking these developments. Whereas the AIVD report talks of cooperation with around 180 other services abroad, and close cooperation with around 30 of them, the MIVD report chronicles the activities of the service across all regions of the world, including Yemen and Somalia. In his recent critique of the AIVD’s intention to expand its presence abroad, Bob de Graaff commented that competition between services can be useful for keeping each “sharp” and “services don’t always have a monopoly in knowledge.” Of course, the resources of the AIVD outstrip the MIVD. But one does end up wondering where one service might end and the other might begin.

Villa Maarheeze, the former home of the Inlichtingen Dienst Buitenland (1946-94) [Photo from here]

The 2009 annual report of the Dutch Intelligence and Security Service has caused quite some reaction in the press [see 'AIVD: Go forth and discover', 21 April, below]. The general response was positive, mixed with cynicism from some quarters. Liaison with other intelligence services abroad is vital, says Edwin Bakker of Clingendael. But you can’t liaise unless you’ve got info to trade, said Beatrice de Graaf of Leiden University, so get the agents out there. But there are limits. Liaison is one thing, running secret operations something else entirely. But even the the CIA is moving in the same direction.

Meanwhile one area of the AIVD’s domestic activities has come under increasing scrutiny. Under pressure from parliamentary questions, the Ministry for Home Affairs sent a letter to parliament on 19 April outlining that the AIVD conducted 1078 taps (telephones, internet, and hidden microphones) in 2009. The military intelligence MIVD conducted only 53. Considering the previously released figures of tapping undertaken by the police, these figures seem low. And they also involve fewer people than the figures suggest, because some people are obviously using more than one number and being surveilled in more than one way.

All the more reason to send the intelligence boys overseas to find out whats going on abroad, since the Netherlands is relatively quiet these days. But its not so simple. Bob de Graaff, Prof. in Intelligence and National Security in Utrecht, has pointed out a major flaw. The AIVD is intelligence (foreign) and security (domestic) merged into one organisation. The two parts of the service operate according to different codes: domestic security according to the rules of the democratic state, foreign intelligence according to….well, according to whatever may be necessary, says de Graaff. The two don’t necessarily fit.

The AIVD was formed in 2002 with an emphasis on domestic security. The threat of islamic radicalism at the time seemed to justify this. The Inlichtingen Diesnt Buitenland, the forerunner for foreign intelligence, had been dissolved in 1994 and was hardly resuscitated in the AIVD structure. Until last month.

De Graaff is not happy with the AIVD’s new turn. The term ‘forward defense’ used by AIVD chief Gerard Bouman to describe the greater activity of the AIVD abroad suggests to de Graaff that no thought is being given to the difference in the codes  of behaviour for domestic and intelligence operations. They are just being collapsed into one, and its offensive, not defensive. Its also way too ambitious. 

De Graaff wonders why the AIVD comes with this shift in emphasis now, and speculates that it might well have to do with concerns over government cutbacks. I agree. Producing reports that say the AIVD has contributed to the neutralising of domestic threats also raises questions as to why the service, which has greatly expanded in personnel in recent years, should hang on to that position. Re-directing its attention to the great boundless abroad is a good solution, and all in the name of national security. The 9/11 Commission said that the world is a US domestic security issue. It looks like the AIVD is trying to play that game too. But as de Graaff concludes – this isn’t for the service to decide alone, its for the politicians. Yet in a time when The Hague seems to be going provincial, the AIVD is going global.