Spy who outwitted — and outdrank — the K.G.B.

Press, 12 November 1981, Page 19

Spy who outwitted — and outdrank — the K.G.B.

By

CHRIS MOSEY

from Oslo

An almost comic bid by the K.G.8., the Russian secret service, to recruit a politician from the extreme Right in Norway as a spy for possible use in the United States and China has led to a tightening up of security in a country unused to international intrigue. The vehemently anti-Com-munist politician, Svein Erling Haugan, reported to Norwegian counter-intelli-gence after he was approached by the Russians in 1974. For the next seven years he was a double agent. Norway's spy-catchers supplied him with a jacket into which a tape-recorder had been sewn so that he could record conversations with K.G.B. men. Haugan had asked for a suit but was told the budget would not stretch beyond a bugged jacket. Now, Haugan, aged 38, is a leading member of the rightwing Progress Party and runs a publication called “Norwegian Oil Review.” He was delighted at the chance of working for Norwegian counter-intelligence when a Soviet diplomat set out to "recruit” him at an oil conference in Stavanger. “If we can’t stop Russians at some point, we could eventually be rendered powerless in the hands of a single-minded giant. The

Communist aim is, after all, to conquer the world,” Haughan says. He was wined and dined by Alexander “Sacha” Dementjev, then a member of the trade delegation at the Soviet Embassy in Oslo, at the Cossack, a Russian restaurant. Worried that the K.G.B. would discover his Rightwing background, Haughan told Dementjev he was interested only in the money he would receive as an agent. Whenever Haughan was asked for classified material, he stalled. Nearly all the “secrets” he garnered for the Russians came from specialist publications that would have been freely available to the K.G.B. Instead of criticising him for providing such tame information, Dementjev gave tips on how to squeeze more money out of the K.G.B. bureaucracy. “Never give me copies of articles; type them out so that it looks like original material,” he said. Apart from cash payments of around $12,000 over the seven years, ’ flaughan received bottles of whisky, cognac and vodka, and cartons of cigarettes. Dementjev

took “commission” on all cash payments. “This went straight into his own pocket,” Haugan says. There was a break in Haughan’s relationship with Dementjev in 1977 when the Russian and six of his colleagues were expelled from Norway as a result of another, unconnected, spy case. Then the meetings continued in Vienna. During one of these Haughan was taken to the Russian residential building. He thought his cover as a double agent had been blown and feared he was about to be whisked across the border to Czechoslovakia for interrogation. Instead, Dementjev celebrated their reunion with caviar and several bottles of vodka. As the evening wore on “it was becoming apparent that Dementjev was suffering more from all the drink than I was. Drinking a K.G.B. man under the table, and with vodka at that, was not without its humour.” Haugan’s relationship with Dementjev was so good, and the K.G.B. man showed so much interest in the West, that Norwegian counterintelligence decided he might be ripe for "turning.”

However, in 1979, when the plan to turn Dementjev had been worked out in detail, he was replaced by the higherranking but still more incompetent Arkadij Beloserov. In a conversation with Beloserov, taped on Haugan’s bugged jacket, the Russian suggested that he work for the K.G.B. in the United States. Haugan says: “The K.G.B. must have thought of me as the perfect stepping stone to building up a chain of agents. The “Norwegian Oil Review” dealt precisely with the subjects they were most interested in. It would have been logical to expand and establish branch offices in other countries, for example China, England, the United States, or wherever.” Norwegian counter-intelli-gence finally allowed Haugan to sever relations with the K.G.B. in December, 1980. Soon afterwards three Soviet “diplomats” — K.G.B. men who had arranged his clandestine meetings with Dementjev and Beloserov — were expelled from Norway. Now Haugan’s book on his experiences, “I Was a Double Agent,” is high on the Norwegian best-seller list — published by his own company. —Copyright — London Observer Service.