Latest / The Shadow Dossier / The Shadow Dossier — The Diplomat Who Sold Norway's Secrets

Transcript

The Shadow Dossier — The Diplomat Who Sold Norway's Secrets · The Shadow Dossier

• 0:00
  The Shadow Dossier. Act I, A Rising Star. Arne
• 0:09
  Treyholt was, by most measures, one of the more
• 0:12
  promising young men in Norwegian politics. A
• 0:16
  journalist turned civil servant. He worked his
• 0:18
  way into the Norwegian foreign ministry and by
• 0:21
  the late 1970s and early 1980s held sensitive
• 0:25
  posts, including a position on the delegation
• 0:27
  to the Law of the Sea Conference and, later,
• 0:31
  a role at the Norwegian embassy in Vienna alongside
• 0:35
  a deputy position at the Ministry of Defense.
• 0:38
  He had access to NATO planning documents, Norwegian
• 0:42
  military assessments, and diplomatic cable traffic.
• 0:49
  He was also unknown to his government for years,
• 0:52
  providing large amounts of that material to Soviet
• 0:56
  and, separately, Iraqi intelligence. Act II.
• 1:02
  A Relationship That Started With Lunches. Treeholt's
• 1:09
  relationship with Soviet intelligence began in
• 1:12
  the early 1970s and developed gradually. The
• 1:16
  way these relationships often did through friendly
• 1:19
  contact with Soviet diplomats who were, in reality,
• 1:23
  KGB officers cultivating him as a source. Norwegian
• 1:28
  counterintelligence, the police security service,
• 1:31
  had actually flagged Trey Holt as a possible
• 1:33
  security risk as early as 1974 after observing
• 1:39
  his contacts with Soviet officials. But no formal
• 1:42
  action was taken for years, and his career...
• 1:46
  continued to advance. Over roughly a decade,
• 1:52
  Treholt met repeatedly with his Soviet handlers
• 1:55
  in Vienna, Helsinki, and elsewhere, handing over
• 2:00
  what investigators later described as an extraordinary
• 2:03
  volume of classified material, believed to include
• 2:06
  NATO defense plans for Norway's north, assessments
• 2:10
  of Norwegian and Allied military capability in
• 2:14
  the Arctic region. A subject of intense Soviet
• 2:17
  strategic interest given Norway's border with
• 2:20
  the Soviet Union and internal Norwegian policy
• 2:23
  deliberations. Act 3. Caught with the evidence
• 2:30
  in his briefcase. The case broke open in January
• 2:36
  1984 when Norwegian security police arrested
• 2:41
  Treholt at Oslo's Fornebu Airport. as he was
• 2:44
  about to board a flight to Vienna. He was carrying
• 2:47
  a briefcase containing classified documents,
• 2:51
  and the arrest followed an extended surveillance
• 2:54
  operation that had finally produced the direct
• 2:57
  evidence prosecutors needed. His trial captured
• 3:03
  Norway's attention through 1985. Trault maintained
• 3:07
  that some of his contact with Soviet officials
• 3:10
  had been for legitimate diplomatic and intelligence
• 3:13
  gathering purposes of his own, a defense that
• 3:16
  did not persuade the court. In June 1985, he
• 3:20
  was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 20
• 3:24
  years in prison, the longest sentence in modern
• 3:27
  Norwegian history at the time. Act 4. A conviction
• 3:33
  that never fully settled. Trey Holt served a
• 3:40
  little more than eight years before receiving
• 3:42
  early release in 1992 on health grounds, though
• 3:46
  it was reported that Soviet and later Russian
• 3:49
  back -channel pressure may have played some part
• 3:52
  in the timing. He moved to Russia and then to
• 3:55
  Cyprus, and for the rest of his life, he disputed
• 3:59
  aspects of his conviction, arguing that some
• 4:02
  of the evidence used against him, including a
• 4:05
  set of recorded and later disputed conversations.
• 4:08
  had been mishandled. Norwegian authorities and
• 4:11
  most historians who have examined the case have
• 4:14
  maintained that the core finding that he passed
• 4:17
  extensive classified material to Soviet and Iraqi
• 4:20
  intelligence over many years was solidly established.
• 4:25
  Trey Holt died in 2019, having spent the second
• 4:29
  half of his life protesting a verdict that Norway,
• 4:33
  on the whole, never seriously reconsidered. This
• 4:39
  concludes Declassified File No. 066 of the Shadow
• 4:44
  Dossier, the diplomat who sold Norway's secrets.
• 4:50
  What dangerous secrets await in our next file?
• 4:56
  Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RSS .com,
• 5:02
  and YouTube so you never miss an official declassification.
• 5:09
  This is the shadow dossier. Thank you for listening.