Book, Villa Maarheeze. The Netherlands Foreign Intelligence Service, by Dr. Bob de Graaff and Dr. Cees Wiebes. Details from an e-mail to Ralph McGehee -- apparently authentic. The material is quite detailed, interesting and covers many intelligence-related issues, primarily during the Cold War. Ralph McGehee http://come.to/CIABASE The authors, succeeded, by using the Dutch Freedom of Information Act, in obtaining a large number of secret documents, reports and internal publications and more than 150 off-the-record interviews that enabled them to reconstruct the history the Netherlands Foreign Intelligence Service (Inlichtingendienst Buitenland, IDB) and its forerunner. The Service, which was dissolved in 1994, always operated in complete secrecy. IDB had both successful and unsuccessful operations. The Service was established in 1946 and received, like the internal security service, the BVD, support from CIA and MI6. In the fifties IDB focused on German chancellor Adenauer. The IDB also received info from French parliamentarians, the French cardinal Eugene Tisserant in the Vatican and members of the British House of Commons. Operations behind the Iron Curtain were mostly overland with CIA and MI6 by travelers and businessman; and, from Dutch merchant ships, visiting Soviet, East bloc and Chinese ports. During 60's the attention of the media was on a botched affair that led to the arrest in the USSR of two Dutch `tourists.' During the 1940's and 1950's the IDB recruited important sources and broke codes. The IDB [ran operations] at the Chinese and Soviet embassies in The Hague and the information was shared with CIA. IDB also received information from the foreign intelligence community and was closely cooperating with other services like the CIA, the German BND, the Israeli Mossad and MI6. One of the most spectacular successes of the IDB was no doubt the recruitment of its Indonesian sources. Due to its agent known as 'Virgil' the Service recruited several very influential Indonesian diplomats but also a confidant of the Indonesian President Sukarno -- Ruslan Abdulgani. He from 1946 was an influential advisor of Sukarno and foreign minister in 1956-1957. Abdulgani and other Indonesian agents passed on vital information which helped the IDB to break secret diplomatic and military communications. One of these agents in the late fifties also passed on the Indonesian military plan for the attack on the Dutch island of New Guinea. The disclosures about this particular operation does shed new light on the attitude of the Dutch Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Luns, during his negotiations with the Indonesians. It seems that during the New Guinea affair not only nationalism and stubbornness drove him. The attitude of Luns, later to become secretary-general of NATO, must also be explained because he was well aware of most of the secret plans of the Indonesian government. In the light of all this it is striking how stubborn and little gratifying the Dutch authorities were towards the man who had been the mastermind behind this brilliant covert operation. Vigils allowance and reimbursement for expenses was so low, even with financial support from the CIA, that in the end it was almost impossible for him to continue his work. This did lead to a fouled up (?) attempt by MI6 to recruit Virgil. After finishing his work, the authorities were again not very willing to help Virgil who was dropped. Virgil's subsequent political and legal fight against the authorities left a trail of documents which enabled De Graaff and Wiebes to reconstruct Virgil's clandestine work. In the late 1960's there was a growing opposition in and mounting criticism by the Cabinet Office towards the IDB. Villa Maarheeze gives a detailed account of the controversial role of Prime Minister Piet de Jong in 1969 and 1970 and his decision to discontinue the IDB as an independent Service, subordinated under the Cabinet Office. The IDB was relocated to the Ministry of Defence. A drastic step which caused vehement opposition from the leaders of the main political parties and the Council of State who were not consulted about this decision. De Jong's general attitude is an example of the views most Dutch prime ministers had with respect to the IDB: disinterest, neglect and hardly any recognition of the vital role intelligence can play in governmental decisionmaking. The IDB itself was partly to blame for these problems. On the whole, the quality of its intelligence output was meager, as was confirmed to the authors by officials from the CIA and MI6. There was a continuous competition with other Netherlands intelligence and security services, like the stay-behind-organization SAZ (Dutch Gladio), that was located in the same building. There were also internal battles with the BVD, which often maneuvered the IDB in a corner as far as contact with other foreign intelligence services was concerned. This happened for example with the cooperation between the BVD and the CIA station in The Hague during the hijackings and seizures in the 1970's. During that period there was also a joint covert BVD/CIA operation mounted against the Chinese embassy and Maoist groups, among them what would later become the Socialist Party. Apart from this, there were problems with cover-companies, that led to suspicions of fraud and deceit. Nevertheless, in 1972, partly because of political pressure, the IDB `returned' to the Cabinet Office and a little later a period began in which the service was a smooth running organization which produced excellent finished intelligence reports. More and more analysis was done and less and less raw intelligence was delivered to the various departments and the foreign intelligence community. As the years went by the internal quarreling increased again which was caused by the internal controversies between the military and civilian staff. Most of the management and operational workers had a military background in contrast to the civilians who were primarily academics responsible for analysis. The internal disagreements mounted because of the dubious support to the Mossad which enabled amongst other things the Israeli airforce to attack the nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq. Also the intelligence about the national liberation movement of Namibia, Swapo, which was handed over to the South African apartheid regime, caused internal turmoil. The tensions increased and failing supervision by the Cabinet Office led to an explosion in the early 1980's when most of the academics left the IDB. The status of the IDB also received a severe blow when in December 1983 an Israeli `mole' inside the IDB was arrested. It turned out that the Dutch had their own Jonathan Pollard. It was Major IJsbrand Smit who originally came from the Dutch Airforce Intel Service. He was probably recruited during a tenure as UN Observer in Lebanon. Smit later worked at the Organization Section of the Staff Office of the Plans and Intelligence Division of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE) in Mons/Bergen. This department is responsible for the coordination and dissemination of all NATO-intelligence within the Allied Command Europe, including intelligence policy and basic intelligence documents. The Mossad could not have wished a better mole. Smit was later promoted to head of the Analysis Branch of the IDB which gave him direct access to sources, top secret reports and operations, documents from the foreign intelligence community and, what is more important, to Dutch intercepts. This last issue i.e. the crown jewels of every intelligence organization, could tell his Israeli Mossad handlers what the Netherlands codebreaking capabilities and successes were. The arrest of Smit caused a row because Smit gave Israel probably also NATO and other foreign documents. It is claimed that even Israeli prime mister Shamir intervened with Queen Beatrix in order to arrange for the release of this Dutch Pollard. Israel succeeded and Smit, without a trial, was allowed to emigrate to Israel where he started a new life. After this turmoil a new start was made and an important target became drugs and the former Dutch colony Suriname. In this country, its leader Desi Bouterse, was accused of being involved in heroine trafficking and of being responsible of the murder in December 1982 of opponents of his regime. American-Dutch cooperation intensified and a joint CIA-IDB operation in the former Dutch colony Surinam in Latin America was planned. It was a covert operation aimed at toppling Desi Bouterse. American Delta Force units and Navy Seals made reconnaissance missions to Surinam. Plans for a joint American-Dutch invasion were drawn up in 1983, 1985 and 1986 and came to the critical point of `go or no-go'. However, every time the government in The Hague balked down in the final stage because no political alternative in Suriname was available. The IDB thereupon is said to have unsuccessfully tried twice to bribe Bouterse out of the country into Brazil but these attempts failed. These operations could not hide the fact that in 1989/1990 the tensions between the military managers and the new civilian staff grew again. The director of the IDB was accused of mismanagement, fraud, eavesdropping on his staff, etc. This internal unrest came this time completely at the wrong time and moment because Prime Minister Lubbers held an hostile attitude towards the IDB. However, according to the authors it is not only the top of the Cabinet Office that are to blame for the lack of guidance of the IDB. The permanent select committee for Intelligence and Security Services of the Parliament, consisting of the leaders of the four largest political parties, has mainly focused on the internal security service BVD and has neglected the IDB almost completely. Nevertheless, Lubbers was fed up with the IDB and this all unexpectedly resulted in the definitive discontinuance of the Service in 1994. A dismantling of the IDB, which was definite despite several successes during the Gulf War and an increased output as regards the developments in Surinam during the period. The CIA advised the Dutch government not to tear down the IDB but to no avail. On 1 January 1994 the IDB would no longer exist. The last letter which was received was from MI6 with a request: please destroy all MI6-related documents. The irony of the whole history of the IDB is that the present government recently decided to erect a new foreign intelligence service but this time under the auspices of the BVD. Whether this new IDB will be successful future will tell. Dr. Bob de Graaff is historian. Dr. Cees Wiebes is senior lecturer at the department of political science of the University of Amsterdam and a free-lance author. Villa Maarheeze is published by the Dutch Government Printing Office, The Hague, Netherlands. C.Wiebes 7/20/99.