The Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) (Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

: Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste, short FE (often but incorrectly: FET)), is a Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 intelligence agency, responsible for Denmark’s foreign intelligence, as well as being the Danish military intelligence service. DDIS is a department under the Ministry of Defence

Ministry of Defence (Denmark)

The Ministry of Defence of Denmark is a ministry in the Danish government. It is charged with overall planning, development, and strategic guidance of the entire area of responsibility of the Danish Defence minister, including the armed forces and the emergency management sector...

 and works under the responsibility of the Defence Minister of Denmark

Defence Minister of Denmark

The Defence Minister of Denmark is the Danish political minister as the head of the Danish Ministry of Defence, and is responsible for the Danish military, keeping Denmark defended against external threats, waging war on behalf of Denmark , and the surveillance of the Danish sea and airspace.The...

. It is housed at Kastellet

Kastellet, Copenhagen

Kastellet, located in Copenhagen, Denmark is one of the best preserved fortifications in Northern Europe. It is constructed in the form of a pentagram with bastions at its corners...

 in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

.

The DDIS gathers, analyses, and disseminates information concerning conditions of importance to Denmark’s security, and to the security of Danish military units deployed on international missions. Intelligence activities include collection of information of political, financial, scientific and military interest.

DDIS works closely with the Danish Security Intelligence Service

Politiets Efterretningstjeneste

Politiets Efterretningstjeneste is the national security intelligence agency of Denmark...

, which is the intelligence arm of the Danish police, and the signals intelligence unit of the Danish signal regiment

Telegrafregimentet

Telegrafregimentet is a regiment of the Royal Danish Army. It was established in 1951 with the purpose to train and equip units to support the Danish army with war-time Command, Control and Communications...

.

History

The current name and basic organization dates from October 1, 1967, when Forsvarsstabens Efterretningsafdeling, the Intelligence Section or the Intelligence Department of the General Staff, was detached from Forsvarsstaben by decree of the Ministry of Defence, as a separate authority of its own, located directly under the Ministry of Defence.

The origin can be traced back to Generalstabens Efterretningssektion (created 1911) and Marinestabens Efterretningssektion (created 1920s). During the reconstruction of the Danish military following Denmark’s joining of NATO, these two intelligence services were merged October 1, 1950 as Forsvarsstabens Efterretningsafdeling as a department under the newly erected combined military staff, the Forsvarsstab.

The origins of the Danish military intelligence is uncertain. The year 1911 appears in one of the few histories of the Danish military intelligence: William Christmas-Møller's Obersten og Kommandøren: Efterretningstjeneste, sikkerhedspolitik og socialdemokrati 1945-55. Gyldendal, 1995 p. 25. and p. 29.

However in Underbilag A. til bilag 247 in: Dokumentfortegnelse og særlige Bilag. Kommissionen til Undersøgelse og Overvejelse af Hæren og Flaadens fremtidige Ordning / the report from the Danish Defence Commission of 1922. Copenhagen, . J. H. Schultz, 1922. - 306 pp. ; p. 299 suggests the year of the establishing the military intelligence to be 1903.

During the cold war the military intelligence as well as the intelligence section of the police spied against and recorded the activities of the Danish left wing, communists and pacifists, among the later organisations and personalieties in the Danish chapter of the War Resisters' International / Aldrig mere Krig, the Danish Campaign against Nuclear Weapons / Kampagnen mod Atomvåben and the Conscentious Objecters' Union

Conscientious objector

A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....

 / Militærnægterforeningen. This is documented in: Forsvarets Auditørkorks / The Danish Judge Advocate General's Corps: Rapport i anledning af undersøgelsen ved auditør af visse forhold vedrørende Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste og Militærnægterforeningen mv. i perioden 1970-1978, 1999.

Supervision and oversight

Four organizations, independent of each other, does various auditing of FE for unauthorised conduct.

The service is directly responsible to the Defence Minister, which on behalf of the Government of Denmark

Government of Denmark

Denmark is a constitutional monarchy with a representative democracy based on a unicameral parliamentary system. The affairs of Government are decided by a Cabinet of Ministers, which is led by a Prime Minister...

 supervises the overall actives and conduct of the service. The DDIS is, as Danish Security Intelligence Service is, subject to regularly control by the Wamberg committee

Wamberg committee

The Wamberg Committee , is the popular name for Oversight committee regarding the police and military intelligence agencies, in Denmark. The name is derived from the name of the first chairman of the committee A. M. Wamberg...

 (Wamberg-udvalget), established in 1964, which is controlled by the Ministry of Justice. It is also subject to Folketingets control committee, which was established by law no. 378 of July 6, 1988. And finally, as all Danish government agencies, FE is subject to control by Rigsrevisionen

Rigsrevisionen

Rigsrevisionen is the national audit agency of Denmark and an independent institution of the Folketinget.It is responsible for auditing the expenditure of Danish central government, and also public-sector bodies in which the government has an economic interest, such as hospitals and the Danish...

(Government audit committee), to ensure that the money granted to the institution is really spent as Folketinget has decided.