Such military collaboration 'necessarily entails an increase in the exchange of intelligence”, Splidsboel Hansen added. You could say that we are a warring country, and that has been the case for almost 30 years,' Splidsboel Hansen said. 'We fought alongside the Americans in Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. 'The NSA jumped at the opportunity,' Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany's leading center-left newspaper, wrote.Įqually, Denmark has been engaged in a policy of military support for Washington that almost makes the United Kingdom look like a second-class ally. The FE secretly succeeded in tapping into them and went to the US intelligence services to cash in on that access. At that time, Copenhagen realized that it was sitting on an espionage gold mine: the submarine cables that carried electronic communications between the United States and Europe ran through its territorial waters. The connection between the northern European nation and the American superpower dates back to the early 1990s. 'Denmark has become a sort of de facto and unofficial member of the 'Five Eyes' club (the grouping of the intelligence services of the five main English-speaking countries),' wrote the Danish weekly Weekendavisen. If the NSA appears to be able to use Denmark as a base for spying on Europe with impunity, it is thanks to a long tradition of collaboration between the two countries' intelligence services. 'That is probably the only country that can afford to do that on our soil without fearing the consequences,' Splidsboel Hansen added. It took the tenacity of local media to discover that the unidentified spies were the Americans. 'At the time, authorities were rather cryptic, saying only that they regretted that the Defense Intelligence Service had not intervened to prevent 'a foreign power' from spying on Danish soil,' Splidsboel Hansen said. Indeed, the FE has been in the hot seat since the spring of 2020 for having allowed the NSA to wiretap Danish personalities and industrial groups. 'It's not all that surprising, and these new revelations just add more detail to a scandal that broke last year in Denmark,' Flemming Splidsboel Hansen, a specialist in international security issues at the Danish Institute of International Relations, told FRANCE 24. Many were surprised to learn that the US had chosen this small country in northern Europe as its base for spying on its continental allies, and that the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste, or FE) had agreed to collaborate with them.

An unofficial member of the 'Five Eyes' club

Electronic spy network