Communists in Denmark.
The KGB in Copenhagen As the target of Lars Hedegaard's article "The KGB's Man in Copenhagen" (August 20 / August 27), I am tempted to send a long rebuttal. But reasonable readers have probably by...
...Correction Aquotation in the article "The Ultimate Export Control" (July 23, 2007) from a vice president of the company TRI-Rinse—"One of the ways to make sure that no one will ever use an F-14 again is to cut them into little 2-by-2-foot bits"— should have been credited to Associated Press reporter Sharon Theimer...
...As for the rest of his rebuttal, he is either ill informed, very forgetful, or something worse...
...Obviously, Dragsdahl is supremely confident that the Danish government will once again deny his opponents in the new libel suit the use of relevant documents...
...Danish police did not even attempt to charge me...
...Consequently, there was no trial and no sentence...
...But if Dragsdahl thinks back to his conversation with Danish intelligence in 1986, he will recall that it had managed to confirm Gordievsky's information through its own observations of conspiratorial meetings in Denmark and abroad...
...In 1992, Gordievsky repeated his charges publicly in a Danish newspaper...
...In my campaign for the release of my wife, many officials and politicians participated...
...Dragsdahl must have forgotten that in cases involving sensitive relations with foreign powers, such as espionage, it is always up to the minister of justice to bring charges...
...But reasonable readers have probably by themselves already found it to be ludicrous...
...There can be no doubt that the justice minister was informed of his case, but for reasons that have yet to be explained, the government decided not to make waves...
...Other spouses have been allowed to leave after similar pressure, so my alleged blackmail of the KGB is not as unique as it is claimed...
...As for Dragsdahl, the supposed anti-Communist and possible CIA agent, suffice it to mention that the KGB did not believe the paranoid speculations of the Stasi...
...It is hard to understand why the Danish political establishment should have protected the KGB's no...
...extremely few prosecutions, if any at all, have followed...
...Dragsdahl is keen to smear the reputation of Oleg Gordievsky, who in June of this year was appointed Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG) for "services to the security of the United Kingdom" on the occasion of the Queen's birthday...
...I got a total retraction by the newspaper and the court awarded me what was, by Danish standards, very high compensation...
...1 agent for the KGB...
...Dragsdahl sued for libel, and the paper had to settle out of court because the Social Democratic minister of justice would not permit it to use the relevant documents in the archives of the intelligence service...
...They were investigated for years...
...The "case" was not deemed serious enough to be brought to the attention of what was then a conservative minister of justice...
...There was no "high court" ruling in 1994 following a series of articles in the Copenhagen daily Ekstra Bladet with the same basic conclusion as Prof...
...The basic charges were originally raised by KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky in 1982...
...Neither did the hard core of the Danish Communist party, from which he was able to solicit support for his campaign to get his wife out of the Soviet Union...
...Files from the East German secret police, Stasi, classify me as an "anti-Communist" and as a possible CIA agent...
...It is not for the public prosecutor to decide, as Dragsdahl implies...
...It defies credulity that the Danish center-right political establishment and Danish intelligence would protect the alleged no...
...A high court in 1994 ruled on my behalf...
...Bent Jensen reached many years later...
...It remains to be seen if he has reason to be optimistic...
...1 in Copenhagen...
...Nor has any Danish court awarded Dragsdahl compensation...
...jOERGEN dRAGSDAHL Ballerup, Denmark Lars Hedegaard responds: Joergen Dragsdahl has got one thing right...
...The detailed rebuttal of the charges made in the article will, again, take place in the Danish courts...
...Among the people suing successfully after such accusations are the former UK Labour leader Michael Foot and the former NATO general secretary Lord Robertson...
...Gordievsky has made accusations against a large number of people...
...Contrary to what is claimed in the article, I was an ardent critic of the Danish Communist Party and the Soviet Union...
Vol. 12 • September 2007 • No. 47
