“Norwegian Politician Recounts Experience with KGB and Their Last Offensive”

The first time he was contacted by a KGB officer, Morten Wetland was a fresh young man in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (UD).

There he primarily worked with the northern regions, and was invited to dinner by a very friendly third secretary from the Soviet embassy.

A check by the ministry’s security department confirmed the suspicion.

– We had a chat about it, and agreed that I should meet him and report. I thought I was doing this to train myself on KGB people, says Wetland to Dagbladet.

He first spoke to TV 2 about the intelligence activity against him.

In the KGB dinner after the Treholt shock

And trained by KGB people, the long-time politician says that he has had to do throughout his career.

First on the young third secretary. Today, he only remembers his surname, Ivliev, and a series of “pleasant conversations without any special content”.

He always reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs both before and after the meetings, he says, who in turn reported to POT, which today is called PST.

The most special experience, he recalls, happened on 20 January 1984.

Then Norway woke up to the news that the top foreign minister, Arne Treholt, had been arrested for having shared secret information with the Russian intelligence service.

That same evening, Wetland had a dinner appointment with his KGB contact.

– It was agreed a long time in advance, and after a quick conversation in the hallways, I decided to go to the dinner. There were two policemen in blue shirts sitting on the table next to us. They hadn’t even changed. I thought it was an advantage that they report the same as me, and pretended I didn’t notice, he says.

The KGB agent is said to have tried on several occasions to get him to share publicly available documents, particularly parliamentary bills.

– I said yes, but I never gave him anything, and he didn’t purr either. I didn’t want to tell him that it’s easy to get me to send things, says Wetland.

Contact with KGB chief

The next KGB man reported when the Labor Party politician had risen through the ranks and entered the Prime Minister’s office under Gro Harlem Brundtland.

Wetland says that he came away during a meeting with the Soviet embassy.

– I saw in two seconds that he was a high-ranking KGB man, he says.

– How do you see it?

– They have their own self-confidence, higher than ordinary diplomats, he replies.

The Russian approached with a conversation about environmental protection. The politician rushed along. A second check by the security department again confirmed the suspicion. This time it was Lev Koshliakov, head of the KGB in Norway.

– For me it was a matter of course to check them up, says Wetland.

– You must always assume that a Russian diplomat is an intelligence officer, or that they are both. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when they claim otherwise.

He states that the two had contact for a year, also this time “without exciting conversations”, according to Wetland.

The contact between them is referred to as “the KGB’s last offensive” in the book “Stalin’s scourge” by Alf R. Jacobsen. In the final phase of the Soviet Union, the KGB top was required to carry out a new offensive against young politicians and civil servants who were considered to have a great career ahead of them: Jens Stoltenberg, Jonas Gahr Støre and Morten Wetland.

One of the agents, Mikhail Butkov, was a double agent in Norwegian and British service during the mission. This is how the then POT chief notified the three promising politicians.

In 1991 Butkov defected and joined British intelligence and Koshlyakov stopped reporting for Wetland. In July of the same year, Aftenposten reported that the KGB top was one of nine employees at the Soviet embassy who had been sent back to Russia.

Learned about the working method

The long-standing state secretary says that in meetings between the administration and the PST, it was decided that they should use the KGB agents’ advances to note how they worked.

He does not know if others received the same messages.

– What did you learn from it?

– I learned how they approach, how they try to build trust over time, replies Wetland.

After “the KGB’s last offensive”, approaches towards him must have stopped. Later he also left the government apparatus. Since then, he has been director of Statkraft, UN ambassador and lobbyist at PR agency First House.

On Thursday, 15 Russian diplomats were declared undesirable in Norway. PST believe that they are in reality intelligence officers.

Wetland does not believe that the 15 have necessarily committed any major blunders, but rather that they have had some “bad luck” by being stationed during Russia’s warfare in Ukraine.