Part IV: The Yankees Are Coming to All Scandinavia
[See Parts 1, 2 and 3 of veteran journalist and political activist Ron Ridenour’s look into Denmark and its ties to the U.S. empire—Editors]
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen surprised the nation three days after Joe Biden warned Russia it would lose its Nord Stream natural gas connection to Europe if it militarily invaded Ukraine to prevent it from joining NATO.
“Denmark and the USA have a special bond—a strong community of values, and since the end of World War II, the USA has been Denmark’s most important ally, and the guarantor of our security and safety through NATO,” she told a news conference, February 10, 2022.
“That is why we are starting concrete negotiations with the USA on a new defense cooperation agreement (DCA)…with closer Danish-American cooperation.”
“The USA will have even better opportunities to be present in Europe…It will open new cooperation and activities in selected military areas in Denmark, including American soldiers on Danish soil…military material and equipment for a shorter and longer time.”
Frederiksen continued: “This is a new break with many decades of no [foreign] military stationing policy on Danish soil. We are doing this because we are in a new and unpredictable time. We must be ready…to break new ground, in order to ensure [our] safety and to defend our democratic values…”
“The situation around Ukraine is a very, very, very clear underlining that we cannot take either our freedom or peace or security for granted.”
Frederiksen turned to Defense Minister Morten Boedskov to answer a journalist’s question about Denmark’s constitution in connection with sovereignty rights.
Boedskov said: “It is clear that we are making an agreement which, of course, respects the Constitution, Danish sovereignty, and also our international obligations.”
Questions concerning what U.S. weaponry/aircraft/ships will be allowed was skirted.
“We will be in dialogue with the Americans about the concrete projects…but our agreement must contribute to the mobility of the U.S. military in Europe…storage of important materiel…closer cooperation in the maritime and air-military areas.”
“If Americans want to place atomic weapons on Danish ground, we will say no,” Boedskov said.
Politiken published an editorial the following day entitled: “Uncle Sam in Denmark.”
It read: “A strategic bomb in Danish politics. While this daily, and all others, are glad for that, there are a couple of possible drawbacks. The USA will hardly depart from its firm principle of neither confirming nor denying if there are atomic weapons on visiting aircraft and ships. Even if it did, what would Denmark do? Quietly accept atom-weapons on Danish turf?”
That is the way it was in Greenland when the U.S. placed atomic weapons in Greenland in total secrecy. That was discovered because there was an accident, in 1968, and four hydrogen bombs fell into the sea. We cannot know today if they were replaced since then. A 1995 survey found 410 deaths by cancers out of a sample of clean-up workers.
In 1988, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Poul Schlüter called for an early election after Social Democrat’s leader, Sven Auken, petitioned Schlüter to send a message to the captain of a U.S. war ship docked then at Copenhagen’s harbor that the nation forbids atomic weapons on Danish soil, air and waterways.
Schlüter refused to do so, because President Ronald Reagan told his captain not to accept any such message. This was the only time in history that an election was called over foreign policy. The Conservatives and the Yankees won the election anyway, thus ending what had been dubbed the “footnote” period—that is, questioning U.S. foreign policies.
No journalist asked at PM Frederiksen’s news conference about disciplining U.S. military personnel on Danish soil, but a journalist later asked military academy professor Peter Viggo Jakobsen about that constitutional issue. “USA itself will have legal jurisdiction over whatever their soldiers commit here,” no matter the crime, he replied.
Defense Cooperation Agreement
The final Defense Cooperation Agreement was signed on December 19, 2023 for a ten-year period without possibility of adjournment. A similar DCA was signed with Sweden and Finland in the same month. A similar DCA was signed with Sweden and Finland in the same month. Norway already had such an agreement. The DCA will mean 48 US bases either separately or part of already existing national military bases: Sweden 17, Finland 15, Norway 12, Denmark 4, starting with 3).
“The DCA entails that American personnel and material can be stationed at specific Danish military installations…Specifically, the agreement will allow American personnel access to three Danish air bases in Karup, Skrydstrup, and Aalborg.”
Two harbors in west Denmark must be expanded for U.S. gigantic warships. All new construction at harbors and military bases are at Denmark’s cost.
The U.S. State Department wrote about the DCA: “Denmark is a strong NATO Ally and a reliable contributor to multinational stability operations, as well as to international assistance initiatives.
Denmark has forces deployed worldwide to several NATO missions, UN peacekeeping operations, and the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. Denmark led NATO Mission Iraq from November 2020 until May 2022.”
Here are excerpts from the DCA covering criminality and prosecution, where the U.S. can have its policing, right to have “exclusive” areas, which could be bases, and even U.S. corporations can be free from Danish unions, worker-employer contracts, and taxation.
“Article 3.”
7. U.S. forces shall be responsible for the construction and development costs for Agreed Facilities and Areas provided for the exclusive use of U.S. forces. [author’s emphasis]
Article 11 Entry and Exit of Aircraft, Vessels, Vehicles
1. Aircraft, vessels, and vehicles operated by or exclusively for U.S. forces may enter, exit, and move freely within the territory of Denmark with respect for the relevant rules of air, maritime, and land safety, and movement. Such aircraft, vessels, and vehicles shall be free from boarding and inspection without the consent of the United States.
“Article 12 Criminal Jurisdiction”
1. Denmark recognizes the particular importance of U.S. forces authorities’ disciplinary control over members of the U.S. forces and the effect that such control has on operational readiness. Therefore, at the request of the United States and in furtherance of its commitment to mutual defense, Denmark hereby exercises its sovereign discretion to waive its primary right to exercise criminal jurisdiction over members of the U.S. forces as provided by Article VII,
Paragraph 3(c), of the NATO SOFA.”
Apparently, any Danish political party leading the government can—at its “discretion”—negate the nation’s constitution. Denmark imitates U.S. governments’ negation of the constitutional right to freedom of speech and press by allowing the U.S. to override its control of the justice system.
“Article 14 Discipline”
1. Consistent with Article VII, Paragraph 10 of the NATO SOFA, U.S. forces authorities shall be responsible for the maintenance of discipline and order over U.S. forces and may establish military police units in the Agreed Facilities and Areas where U.S. forces are located.
3. …U.S. forces authorities may authorize the use of military police units for the maintenance of discipline and order over U.S. forces in communities near military facilities…”
“Article 26 Status of U.S. Contractors”
U.S. contractors shall be exempt from Danish laws and regulations with respect to the terms and conditions of their employment to perform work under contracts with U.S. forces…Such contractors also shall be exempt from all corporate taxes.
This Agreement shall have an initial term of ten (10) years. After the initial term, it shall continue in force, but may be terminated by either Party upon one (1) year’s written notice.”
Militarization of Danish Society
The media showed only a welcoming face for U.S. occupation. “If I see one of them, I will say Hi,” read DR headline following the DCA agreement.
Yankee troops should arrive permanently sometime this year. Meanwhile material preparations are underway. Soon Yankees docked at Aarhus’ harbor with a 200-meter long transport ship carrying 600 pieces of military hardware to be transported overland into Ukraine through Poland.
The Social Democrat-led coalition government decided to make it obligatory for women’s conscription, and did so at the recommendation of the formerly communist-led Red/Green party. This will begin in 2026. Term of service will be increased from four to 11 months.
“Protecting your country is therefore one of the most honorable things you can do. That is why the government is proposing that we expand conscription, make the responsibility greater and the tasks more numerous…we propose full equality between the sexes,” spoke PM Frederiksen.
Norway has long had conscription for both genders for six months. Sweden recently adopted that procedure by choosing the “most eligible” for 12 months. There is also the right for alternative civilian service. Finland has women volunteers serving between six and twelve months.
As the war goes badly for Ukraine, U.S./NATO allows them to use most weapons they send against Russians inside Russia. Despite losing much territory in the Donbass areas, Ukraine pushed into Russia at the Kursk region last August. Now, we are informed that we must prepare for any “crisis situation” for three days on our own if Russia invades Denmark.
What? Does the Danish government really believe that Russia is prepared to invade a NATO land, and thus risk fighting 32 warring nations at once?
“It is timely that we as citizens are now preparing for a crisis situation,” said Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen. He limited the threat, for now, to “cyber-attacks and similar attacks on critical infrastructure from Russia.”
Believing the cold war rhetoric, the rest of Scandinavia is also preparing for such attacks, frightening their citizens to expect a world war. We are supposed to store all the water, food, medicines and other essentials necessary for three days, at least, without any contact with government authorities, and closed markets. Even hand-cranked radios are recommended to obtain from somewhere.
The media reminds us of that “necessity” from time to time. These warnings entail the need for family and neighbor discussions about how to be prepared. An atmosphere à la October 1962 missile crisis is upon us.
During that crisis, it was a Russia submarine captain, Vasili Arkhipov, who probably saved the world from a nuclear war when he turned back his B-29 submarine armed with one nuclear missile, which could have been fired at U.S. warships bombarding his ship with depth charges. The command captains believed that a war had begun and one option was to fire their missile, and those of other submarines on the way to Cuba. Arkhipov convinced the other captains to turn back to Russia. (See my book, The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert, chapter 4, The Cuban Missile Crisis).
Mette Frederiksen had been one of the strongest candidates to lead NATO once her Norwegian colleague Jens Stoltenberg retires. His eight-year terms were up in 2022 but he stayed on to fight the Russians until the time was right for a new leader.
Frederiksen has been the first to give F-16s to Ukraine; first (with the U.S.) to send money ($3 million for starters) so Ukraine can produce their own drones, missiles and artillery, among the first to train Ukrainian soldiers and pilots. She also said that Ukraine could use all the weapons it sends to attack Russians inside Russia, within international law, of course.
Three days after the war began, she announced that Danes could be mercenaries in Ukraine. The Danish veterans website wrote: “Since Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said…there was nothing legally in the way of Danes going to Ukraine to fight, there has been a great deal of interest.”
Frederiksen’s government has made the hardest sanctions against Russia. She demands that most, if not all, Danish companies stop their businesses there. Most have but a few still have some essential sister-company investments in Russia. However, since Denmark was a leader in forbidding the SWIFT banking system for Russia, there is no export from Russia to Denmark.
Carlsberg, Denmark’s largest brewery, just sold its sister company to Russia’s Baltika Breweries. Russia’ company bought it for about $300,000. Carlsberg lost market, however, has cost it $3 billion.
Frederiksen’s government has made the hardest sanctions against Russia. She demands that most, if not all, Danish companies stop their businesses there. Most have but a few still have some essential sister-company investments in Russia. However, since Denmark was a leader in forbidding the SWIFT banking system for Russia, there is no export from Russia to Denmark.
Carlsberg, Denmark’s largest brewery, just sold its sister company to Russia’s Baltika Breweries. Russia’ company bought it for about $300,000. Carlsberg lost market, however, has cost it $3 billion.
So, when she travelled to Washington in June 2023, she was welcomed with gusto, the talk of the town. After meeting with President Joe Biden, she was warmly applauded in Congress and many politicians spoke of her as NATO’s future leader. She even met with CIA Director William Burns.
Nevertheless, Biden later decided on her hard-core partner, Netherlands PM Mark Rutte to head NATO. This decision could have been made, partly, because Denmark had already held that post for eight years with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and Stoltenberg is also Scandinavian.
“Under Rutte, the long-serving Dutch prime minister and one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, the Netherlands has already committed to send Ukraine 24 of its F-16 fighters—the most of any country—and is helping train Ukrainian pilots. The Dutch military has also sent tanks, artillery systems, ammunition and Patriot air defense systems to Kyiv over the past two years. The government has pledged another $2.1 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine over the coming year.”
Denmark Did Not Learn from its Worst Historical Scandal
What Denmark is doing to please its Big Daddy with the proxy war against Russia shows that all of its parliamentary political parties have not learned anything from what even the Danish media called the largest scandal ever, one that aborted its own constitution that forbids blanket spying on its own people, and especially delivering its surveillance to another country.
Four leading Defense Intelligence Service personnel were suspended on Monday, August 24, 2020, pending an independent investigation into serious charges of illegalities—amounting to what the Danish daily Politiken called the greatest “life scandal in its history.”
Lars Findsen, Denmark’s Defense Intelligence Service (FE) chief—the equivalent of the U.S.’s CIA director—was one of them. When he walked into court three large police escorts pressed against the country’s leading spy charged with treason. Findsen was forbidden to speak to reporters, but they understood his opinion about his arrest when they saw the paperback in his hand: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
The whistleblowers first reported on illegal espionage to the military leadership in 2015. The report was ignored. Four years later, they revealed illegal spying to the Danish Intelligence Oversight Committee (TET). The whistleblower(s) probably provided information related to Edward Snowden’s 2013 XKEYSCORE revelations that Denmark spies on all its citizens, and neighboring political leaders, all of which is automatically sent to NSA.
“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.
The Danish Intelligence Oversight Committee took the unprecedented step of going to the media, on August 24, with charges based upon the whistleblowers’ information. Immediately thereafter, the four FE personnel were arrested.
TET’s report condemning Denmark’s intelligence agency includes:
- Withholding “key and crucial information to government authorities” and the oversight committee between 2014 and today;
- Illegal activities even before 2014;
- Telling “lies” to policymakers;
- Illegal surveillance on Danish citizens, including a member of the oversight committee. (Some of this illegal spying had been shared with unnamed sources [perhaps the U.S.?]);
- Unauthorized activities have been shelved and;
- The FE failed to follow up on indications of espionage within the Ministry of Defense.
TET was created in 2014 with five civilian members, experts in the rule of law, chief judges and professors. It has eight employees and a budget of only $1.3 million. Committee members told the media that, in November 2019, it received from unnamed whistleblowers four thick ring binders of classified material showing FE illegalities. When TET delivered its report to the government recently, it asked Parliament to create a whistleblower scheme for the FE, since ignored.
When Findsen walked into court following the news conference, three large police escorts were pressed against the country’s leading spy charged with treason. Findsen was, and still is, forbidden to speak to reporters about the case, but they understood his opinion about his arrest when they saw the paperback in his hand: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
Copenhagen City Judge Merete Engholm allowed his name to be released in a subsequent court hearing, January 10, 2022, at his request. Findsen told reporters from a distance: “I want the preliminary charge brought forward, and I plead not guilty. This is completely insane.”
The other three persons’ charge were unnamed and their whereabouts were unknown to the media and public. It was not even known if they are formally charged and awaiting trial.
At the end of the 10-hour court hearing, the judge continued Findsen’s remand detention until March 3. He was finally released from prison after 71 days.
This case can well be associated with the U.S.’s Espionage Act, Britain’s Official Secrets Act, and what the U.S./Sweden/UK have done to Julian Assange.
When the media was kept in the dark and not allowed to attend court hearings, they speculated that the matter most likely had to do with Denmark’s cable spying for which FE is responsible, the results of which NSA and the CIA receive. Some legal experts and journalists raise the possibility that such activity may be against Denmark’s constitution; https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/statens-stoerste-hemmeligheder.
Another issue could have been that Ahmedd Samsam was arrested in Spain for aiding the Islamic State there. He was deported to Denmark, and received eight years in prison. Danish intelligence personnel are upset that their government has not aided him, as some media speculate, believing that Samsam was an FE agent, and perhaps a PET agent as well
Samsam, a Danish citizen with Syrian family roots, did assert that he collected information about the IS for Denmark’s intelligence services. Nevertheless, they refused to come to his aid, and he served six years.
Lars Kjeldsen, one of Findsen’s two lawyers, said the 57-year-old career intelligence officer is “sad and shocked.” “He has cooperated fully…I remain baffled that it should not be possible to make public the charges and the basis for his detention.” “I think there would be a considerable debate if we actually [understood] what is going on here,” Kieldsen told reporters.
Five days after Findsen and the other three were arrested, a three-judge government commission delivered its year-long report on the FE whistleblower case: “Acquitted: There is no basis for criticism of either FE or its employees in this case.” Nevertheless, the state did not drop its nefarious case and the judge(s) refused to drop it as well.
To confound matters all the more, the Ministry of Justice also charged Claus Hjort Frederiksen, a leading member of Parliament and former Defense minister (2016-19), with the same law leveled against Findsen. Hjort revealed this in mid-January; the Justice ministry has been silent.
Hjort had simply stated public information that Denmark is part of the U.S.’s 9 Eyes: UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand—5 Eyes—plus the Netherlands, Norway and France. They share secrets but to what extent is secret. There is also “14 Eyes,” Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Italy and Spain. The U.S. and UK started the first Eyes just after WWII to exchange “security secrets.” The first 2 eyes, U.S.-UK, signed an agreement on March 5, 1946, to spy upon the Soviet Union.
The government dropped charges against their chief spy Lars Findsen, and Claus Hjort, war hawk from the liberal bourgeois party leader, November 1, 2023. Findsen received an unknown sum of economic “compensation”. He wrote a book without revealing what the case was all about upon pain of years in prison.
A Denmark Radio November 26, 2023 report about the case headlined: “Headache for Denmark: USA Used Danish Access to Spy Against Our Neighbors.” Sub-head: “It is a real losing cause to set foot against Denmark’s most important partner in the intelligence world, experts assess.”
That “headache” includes allowing FE to spy on the nation’s Finance and Foreign ministry, and its largest weapons corporation Terma. Information that the NSA acquired from Denmark’s Defense Intelligence Service, under the command of the Defense Department, was used to convince the government to buy Lockheed-Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter F-35 capable of carrying nuclear weapons, albeit Denmark forbids the possession of nuclear weapons on its territory.
Such favoritism for both the U.S. government and the country’s private weapons industry knocked out European competition from the Eurofighter GmbH Typhoon and Sweden’s Saab Gripen-fighter. Boeing’s Superhornet was also a competitor.
In 2016, the government decided to buy 27 F-35s to replace F-16s. Only 10 have arrived but the government is buying nine more.
Conclusion: No consequences! Regardless of the conspiracy in commission of crimes between Denmark’s military intelligence and the United States intelligence agencies, the Danish government, parliament and will do absolutely nothing to correct these constitutional illegalities, and illegal business will continue as usual. That is, in my words, the essence of what the DR news analysis program “Deadline” concluded in its report.
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About the Author
Ron Ridenour is a U.S.-born author and journalist, anti-war and civil rights activist since 1961. After joining the U.S. Air Force at 17, he saw the inner workings of U.S. imperialism first hand and resigned. In the 1980s and 1990’s he worked with the Nicaraguan government and on Cuban national media.
He now lives in Denmark and, in addition to writing a dozen books, has served as a special correspondent and freelance investigative journalist for many publications in the U.S. and several Latin American and European countries—among them: The Morning Star, New Statesman, The Guardian (U.S. and England), Playboy, Liberation News Service, Pacific News Service, Coast Magazine, Qui, Skeptic, Seven Days, and Pacifica Radio.
CAM co-founder Philip Agee wrote commentaries to two of his dozen books: Yankee Sandinistas: Interviews with North Americans Living and Working in the New Nicaragua, and Backfire: CIA’s Biggest Burn. See also: The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert and Winding Brook Stories at Amazon and Lulu. Other work can be found at ronridenour.com.
Ron can be reached at ronrorama@gmail.com.
