The KGB's Man in Copenhagen

Denmark's Cold War files are finally being opened, to widespread dismay.
by Lars Hedegaard, Copenhagen
Vjateslav Katerinkin, an employee at the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen, was a true professional. In 1982 it became clear to Danish intelligence--the PET--that he was conducting secret meetings at regular intervals with somebody outside the capital, but on each occasion the Soviet operative managed to shake off his Danish followers. However, from Katerinkin's secretive behavior, the PET people surmised that whoever the Russian was contacting must be an agent. Katerinkin's unlucky day came on March 7, 1983, when he was unable to shake his tail and was followed to the train station at Farum, a suburb of Copenhagen.
As it turned out, his contact was Jørgen Dragsdahl, a well-known journalist with the left-leaning Copenhagen daily Information who specialized in security policy. Not that Dragsdahl's contact with the KGB came as any great surprise to Danish intelligence. For years the PET had been keeping an eye on this highly committed critic of Western and especially American security policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. In 1979, according to Danish military intelligence, Dragsdahl had based a series of newspaper articles on forged documents intended to throw suspicion on the United States. [...]
- Dragsdahl's political importance is also underlined in a remarkable piece written by former Communist hard-liner Jannich Kofoed and published in the Copenhagen daily Politiken on February 17, 2007. The party's hard core had nothing but contempt for the "peace blubberers," the useful idiots who spent their time marching in favor of slogans like "The Baltic--sea of peace" or "The North as a nuclear-free zone." In the inner sanctums of Denmark's Communist party, the comrades were well aware that there were good missiles (the Soviet arsenal) and bad ones, and that the whole point of the "peace" offensive that took off around 1980 was to strengthen the Soviet Union and weaken the "imperialist camp."
Jørgen Dragsdahl, however, was a different matter. He was no useful idiot, only useful. "We were amazed to be handed so much pro-Soviet and anti-American ammunition," wrote Kofoed. It "was far more incendiary being fired in Information than [it would have been] in Land og Folk [the Communist paper]. . . . As a propagandist and provider of arguments, [Dragsdahl] acquired a status and influence that no Communist could have obtained.
- "Nobody accuses Dragsdahl of having been a spy. As Danish intelligence saw it, the KGB considered him a far more useful asset as an agent of influence--someone who was well placed to disseminate Soviet propaganda and influence public as well as elite opinion. Not only was he an exceptionally well-informed journalist with unique access to Soviet sources, he was even appointed a member of the official Commission on Security and Disarmament (SNU).
- As former KGB general Oleg Kalugin explained to Jyllands-Posten's then-correspondent Flemming Rose some years ago: During the latter phase of the Cold War in the 1970s and '80s, Soviet intelligence was well aware that it could not defeat the West by means of war. For that reason agents of influence assumed an important role in the continued conflict. "Disinformation, mendacious propaganda and ideological undermining of the West . . . [became] the decisive front in the struggle for communism's global victory."
- There can be no doubt that Jørgen Dragsdahl is politically well protected. The question is why. As Jensen hinted in a February 4 interview with the daily Politiken, it is hard to explain the PET's almost panicked reaction unless one assumes that powerful political forces have been active behind the scenes.
As Jyllands-Posten asked in a June 1 article: "What are they so afraid of? Why is it so important to demonize the good professor to the extent that he is deprived of his last shred of credibility? . . . In short, what do they have to hide?"
Good questions. An even better question is: Who are "they"--and why are they still so powerful 16 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Lars Hedegaard is a commentator with the Copenhagen daily Berlingske Tidende and editor of the webzine Sappho.dk. (foto Uriasposten & Snaphanen)
Weekly Standard08/20/2007, Volume 012, Issue 46 Audio: prof. Bent Jensen om Dragsdahl sagen, fra Cepos møde.
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