Hans folder with monitoring police was 75 centimeters thick, and after his death paid the state the maximum amount of compensation of 350,000 crowns for illegal surveillance.
In 1994, said Justice Minister Grete Faremo that Klassekampen disclosure of surveillance which he was subjected, led to the monitoring instructions were changed. In 2001 asked Justice Minister Odd Einar Dørum whole family to apologize on behalf of the Norwegian state.
Got telefonavlyttet 13 years
Surveillance Police (POT ) romavlyttet his cabin in Bamble, tapped his phone for 13 years and span on him during meetings with KGB officers. But despite that he was monitored both personal and party purposes, got POT never strong enough evidence resistance fighter and party chairman Knut Løfsnes that they could initiate criminal proceedings against him.
Over 20 years after surveillance against him started, he met a representative monitoring service who asked him about contact with Soviet intelligence people over the years.
Class match reports about monitoring of Knut Løfsnes caused a great stir. Photo: Ove Rønning Country / class struggle
POT knew that he had had contact with Gennady Titov, KGB top who ruled UD spy Gunvor Galtung Haavik and later met Arne Treholt abroad after having been declared persona non grata in Norway for life. But exactly what Knut Løfsnes in 1978 told POT about his KGB contacts, remains a locked secret in the archives of the Police Security Service.
So how was his contact with the Soviet intelligence service KGB?
WE RETURN TO March 1992: It’s only a few months ago the newspaper class struggle published verbatim, bugged conversations and notes that built on bugged conversations between the former chairman of the Socialist People’s Party (SF), Knut Løfsnes and key players in SF and CPN. The documents proved according to the newspaper that the monitoring police ran with systematic political surveillance when the Socialist Left Party (SV) was founded in 1972.
A separate committee is on this currently underway with a white paper on monitoring and eavesdropping Løfsnes case is one of the cases that end up in the committee table.
To so Mitrokhin out when he defected. Photo: Private / Churchill Archives Centre
In Moscow rises a 69 year old man into the night train to Riga. He has in the years after he retired as chief archivist at the KGB, the required notes he made from 1972 to 1984, while he had access to 300,000 folders with KGB secrets.
In beginning there were notes hidden in shoes, and eventually became the documents and papers in his jacket pocket, with great danger of being discovered and liquidated. He has decided to defect to the West, and bring the documents he has dug down by country outside Moscow.
When he arrives Riga, seek Vasily Mitrokhin first the US Embassy. But he is rejected by the CIA representative he can talk to, who does not believe in his story.
MI6 got information about Norwegians
Mitrokhin proceeding to the British embassy, where he meeting with MI6 says he joined the KGB in 1948 and 1956 to 1984 was responsible for the archive to the KGB first main directorate, department abroad espionage. MI6 understands that information Mitrokhin sits on can be of invaluable importance and agreements another meeting with him following month.
The headquarters of the British intelligence service MI6, also known as Secret Intelligence Service . Photo: Pa Photos / NTB scanpix
For the next meeting with MI6 in Riga in April 1992 Mitrokhin with over 2,000 typewritten pages, as a kind of “sample” of the British secret services. The documents must undoubtedly have made an impression, for he will be flown to London, where details of the defection being planned.
At the same time blowing it to storm around the Norwegian monitoring police. Aftenposten journalist Harald Stanghelle writes in late April that the Parliamentary Scrutiny has concluded that POT monitoring Løfsnes have been illegal. And just weeks later asking Prosecutions Økokrim scrutinize document leak in Løfsnes case.
The no know, however, while the debate on illegal surveillance races in Norway during summer and autumn 1992, the Mitrokhin documents, as MI6 get shipped home to the UK in several operations, contains names and information on a number of Norwegians who have been in contact with the KGB.
Along with Mitrokhin goes MI6 through the documents, and conducting a comprehensive debriefing before the information is shared with collaborative services. For it is the different countries secret services’ mission to contribute to the identification of who is hiding behind the KGB pseudonym and the sometimes shadowy descriptions Mitrokhin give about the people.
TV 2, together with Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo, Åsmund Egge, undergone Mitrokhin Archive held at Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge. Large parts of the unique material was opened for inspection in July. Photo: Kjell Persen / TV 2
12. May 1992 COMPLETES POT a new note in Case 9153, the three quarters feet thick folder about Knut Løfsnes. This paper is a summary of Løfsnes ‘connections to Soviet embassy personnel, and states that by about 1960 it was the KGB Resident yourself as extensively was Løfsnes’ KGB contact. POT writes thus a report on Løfsnes while criticism surveillance of him and others on the left grows.
Why do they do it? Could it be that Løfsnes are discussed in the documents that MI6 has secretly secured?
Behind a tire names to one of the over 30 Norwegians who Mitrokhin reviews, it is a description that is strikingly similar Løfsnes:
William Colby (later CIA director) and Herbert Helgesen in Trondheim 17th of May parade 1945. Photo: Trondheim byarkiv
“Lan”: Partiløs, participant in the resistance movement, former employee of the Norwegian military intelligence service, inroads in the Norwegian contra espionage.
Knut Løfsnes participated in the resistance movement during World War II, and led moreover intelligence organization XUS work in Trøndelag and in the Middle Norway area. After the war he got a job in what later became the Police Monitoring Service (POT), but that autumn he was summoned to police inspector Asbjørn Bryhn. He was told to quit on the day, Løfsnes written in her biography “Resistance Male and politician: from XU to SF and Kings Bay”:
“There are way and get out immediately. I have no time for more talk, “said Bryhn and pointed at the door. “You must understand the reason.”
Facsimile one of the Swedish security police surveillance reports Knut Løfsnes.
Was he considered a security risk? One of those who disliked his Communist contacts was Herbert Helgesen, the Trøndelag sausage maker who was a CIA agent.
Was enlisted in 1943
In the further description of the resistance fighter “Lan” reads Mitrokhin typed notes, which was opened for inspection at Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge in July this year, he was recruited by Soviet intelligence in Stockholm in 1943.
During the war escaped Løfsnes to Sweden during a breakneck escape when he realized that Rinnan-gang had disclosed the local intelligence organization in Namdalen. In Sweden he was attached to the Military Office at the Stockholm legation, including charge of Norwegian military intelligence missions.
Could it be correct that he had contact with Soviet intelligence there?
According to SAPO had Løfsnes contact with a Soviet intelligence officer in Stockholm.
Autobiography his says nothing about it, but in the Swedish security police SAPO archives TV 2 found “folder” to Løfsnes, stating that he was in Sapo spotlight in 1944 and 1945.
The day after Independence Day, 9 May 1945, authored SÄPO a report on Løfsnes, which starts as follows:
” Thursday 20th April 1944 at 21 o’clock observed correctional officer Sjöstedt the Soviet officer Fedor Tjernov Gamla Drottningsholmsvägen near Gubbkärrsvägen in company with one for Sjöstedt unknown man. “
Asbjørn Sunde passed away after sentencing in spy case in 1954. He is among the Norwegian Communists featured in the top-secret Venona material with deck name “Oswald”. Photo: NTB scanpix
Report printer continues with to describe how the Swedish investigators followed the Russian intelligence man and the unknown, which eventually disappeared in a taxi. Investigators lost contact with the unknown man, but later managed to track down the taxi driver, who could tell that the passenger was speaking Norwegian. He got the address, and it turned out that it was Knut Løfsnes who lived there.
Fedor Tjernov was after the war identified by US intelligence in the highly sensitive kodeknekkingsprosjektet Venona as intelligence officer with the alias “Valentin “. Venona material contributed during the Cold War to reveal several Soviet spies, but was so secret that it was not used in trials as evidence. Also POT sits on a substantial Venona material.
TV 2 in the archives of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in general found decrypted Stockholm messages from 1943 and 1944 where the assumed name “Lan” is mentioned, but not identified. A message sent to Moscow in November 1943 highlights three Norwegian NKVD partisans who have arrived Sweden and will meet the Soviet legation. “I await your instructions,” printed on “Lan” and partisans in the message to spy boss Pavel Fitin.
pseudonym” NORMAN “: According to Mitrokhin Archive created KGB contact Johan Strand Johansen in late 1945. He was a member of Einar Gerhardsen coalition government as Minister of Labour. Photo: NTB scanpix
– KGB gave support to law education
In Mitrokhin notes of “Lan” states that after the war graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo, and that the KGB resident flight in Oslo gave him “material tsjekiststøtte “to education. Again information to conform Løfsnes, which took jurist education in Oslo after the war.
Mitrokhin documents also claim that the Norwegian man with the alias “Lan” contributed to the KGB had “roof of Norway’s defense plan (1947), reports from the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow and diplomatic documents from UD. ” “Lan” shall moreover through its “bridging” ensured the recruitment of a Norwegian Foreign Ministry employee referred to as “North” and the Secretary “Kari” by the US embassy in Oslo.
Secretary “Kari” is in Mitrokhin documents featured along with other members of Asbjørn Sunde group. Resistance man and saboteur Asbjørn Sunde was arrested in 1954 and convicted of espionage.
According to KGB defector Vasily Mitrokhin was “Lan”, Asbjørn Sunde and Gerhardsen Minister Johan Strand Johansen part of a Norwegian KGB agent network, which mainly consisted of communists.
Lund Commission, which investigated allegations of illegal surveillance of Norwegian citizens, came to the conclusion that central representatives in SF, and especially party chairman Knut Løfsnes had extensive contacts with representatives of Soviet Union and countries in Eastern Europe, also intelligence agents. Monitoring Service believed that the KGB Resident in several meetings appeared “very conspiratorial.”
In 1996, Parliament passed Lund Commission Report: Photo: NTB scanpix
Was bugged “for reasons of national security”
Lund Commission points out that during telephone bugging of Løfsnes came forward information to indicate that he was classified NATO information through its contact with the secretary of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Erik Nord, which was loaned Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
But telephone bugging strengthened not suspicion against Løfsnes.
When POT wanted to continue telephone bugging of Løfsnes in 1974 came it appears in the petition that POT considered still phone control as “required for reasons of national security”: He was suspected of illegal intelligence activities and violations of the law on defense secrets. Consult court gave consent to continue the telephone control in six months.
Then ceased telephone bugging, having spanned almost 13 years.
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