Dutch Military Intelligence Service
01 January 1991
Dutch Military Intelligence Service
bacdoc November=1993
Early 1991 the Dutch Internal Security Service (Binnenlandse
Veiligheidsdienst BVD) announced that it was going to destroy a
large number of files. The Association Stop Destruction (of
files) has announced that it will take legal action against this
plan. In June 1991 another service, the Military Intelligence
Service (Militaire Inlichtingendienst MID), announced similar
plans. For this reason the editors of AMOK thought it was time
to take a closer look at the MID.
From 1945 to 1959 Holland had a Naval as well as a War Ministry.
From 1947 the same minister was in charge of both ministries. The
Ministry of War was responsible for a Military Intelligence
Service, from which an independent Air Force Intelligence Service
split off around 1953. In 1972 the tasks of the three military
intelligence services were laid down publicly in a Royal Decree
for the first time. The specific terminology of Marine
Inlichtingendienst (MARID - Naval Intelligence Service),
Landmacht Inlichtingendienst (LAMID Army Intelligence Service)
and Luchtmacht Inlichtingendienst (LUID - Air Force Intelligence
Service) was introduced at this time. There was a separate
organisational hierarchy for each service branch for
communications intelligence. These consisted of the military
units concerned with enemy signals and the securing of one's own
communications (crypto-analysis, decoding).
From about 1979 there is an Intelligence and Security Section
(Afdeling Inlichtingen en Veiligheid - AIV) at the Defence Staff
(the highest level of command in the armed forces): before that
time there was at the very least an office for radio
intelligence.
Until 1988 there was a system of consultation between the three
military intelligence services and the AIV Defence staff. This
was known as "Interservice Comite II". Until 1 August 1980
Colonel of the Artillery Frans van Alkemade was Head of the
Intelligence and Security Section of the Defence Staff. At the
time he worked for the Staff together with General G6 Berkhof,
who was responsible for nuclear planning. Berkhof was later fired
from his position of AFCENT Chief of Staff (a NATO command)
because of unwarranted paranoia and later became columnist for
the daily `Parool' and NATO professor at a Dutch university. Van
Alkemade himself ultimately became major-general (ret.) and
coordinator of the intelligence and security services (the
connecting link between all the intelligence services and the
Prime Minister's office).
Infiltration
Integration has been a subject of discussion within the
intelligence services since the fifties. For a long time the
services themselves have successfully opposed this. During the
lengthy parliamentary debate on the Intelligence and Security
Services Act (finally completed in 1987) the Christian Democrat
party (CDA) was at first a proponent of integration. However.
minister of defence de Ruiter (CDA) did not want to go further
than "far-reaching coordination". At the end of 1985, however,
a "change of mind" had taken place and the "integration model"
was adopted.. It is not known which factors influenced the
minister's deliberations. We do know that in 1985 a project group
led by Commander Alting Siberg (ret.) was established to report
on the possibilities of the "coordination of activities" of the
military intelligence services. The report of this group was,
however, never published.
It is also clear that the services had become embroiled in
controversy in the years before De Ruiter's switch of policy. In
1981, a case involving an infiltration attempt by the Naval
Intelligence Service into an organisation of ex-conscripts just
before a very large demonstration against the cruise missiles,
came into the open. In 1982 an attempt to frame a member of the
executive of the Soldiers' Trade Union, the VVDM (who was also
a member of the radical Conscripts League), b