Iraq whistleblower speaks
[Denmark]

14 April 2004

A former intelligence officer who leaked documents on Iraqi WMD says he was appalled by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's distortion of truth

Maj. Frank Søholm Grevil of the Defence Intelligence Service (FE) says the nation was duped by its most powerful elected officials on the case for war in Iraq. Søholm Grevil, a former military intelligence analyst, spoke with daily newspaper Information about how Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen manipulated FE intelligence to argue that Iraq had WMD prior to the US-led invasion.

"It can't be right for an intelligence service to be abused politically. Anders Fogh Rasmussen continued to cite us for his contention that Iraq was 'probably' holding WMD, even though we issued at least 10 threat assessments that were absolutely unequivocal on that point," Frank Søholm Grevil told the newspaper.

Infuriated by what he perceived as the PM's manipulation of military intelligence, Frank Søholm Grevil leaked the confidential memos to daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende. He was subsequently fired, and now faces up to two years imprisonment for breach of confidentiality.

Frank Søholm Grevil was acutely familiar with the content of the threat assessments that FE drafted in the months leading up to the Iraq war: he wrote them himself.

Today, Maj. Søholm Grevil still believes the premier's manipulation of FE's Iraq intelligence is problematic for several reasons.

"We have an elected official here who's blatantly lying: a minister who publicly says things that are at complete odds with the truth. When Anders Fogh Rasmussen says, in reference to the Iraq war, that he 'knows' Iraq has WMD, there are at least ten reports sitting on his desk with information indicating quite the contrary. Things got off track at some point between my desk and Fogh's," Søholm Grevil told daily newspaper Information.

 http://www.cphpost.dk/get/77495.html