Frank Grevil

former major at the Danish Military Intelligence Service, FET

When he heard Danish primeminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen from the TALERSTOL of the Danish Parliament, declaring that intelligence proved that Saddam Hussein possesed weapons of mass destruction, Frank Grevil had had it. He had taken part in gathering and communicating that intelligence, to which the primeminister refered. And it didn’t support, what the primeminister was claiming.

The classified information that major Frank Søholm Grevil leaked in 2004, came from the very stronghold of secrets, The Military Intelligence Service, FET. But this was only one of the reasons why his case created the stir that it did. Another contributing factor was that his revelations of the contents of a number of classified reports concerning the foundation for the Danish part in the war in Iraq, was in fact a frontal attack on primeminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Grevil felt that the primeminister had misled both the parliament and the Danish people in claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And to make matters worse, he had done so, when he did in fact know better. His declaration was the most important reason for the Dansih participation in the coalition of the invasion of Iraq.

But Grevil had taken part in writing the reports, which the primeminister used as documentation to make his point. And the reports said nothing certain about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Furthermore Grevil was offended that the reports, which FET presented to the primeminister and to the Parliament’s Committee of Foreign Affairs as their own findings, were allegedly just translations of reports from the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA.

Grevil got a rough deal. Not only did things from his past suddenly surface in the newspapers. He was also charged and convicted to six months in prison for having leaked the classified information. Frank Grevil was, by the way, an active member of the primeminister’s own political party, Venstre.