Danish whistleblower Grevil gets Sam Adams Award

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Sunday February 08, 2009 18:00

by Coilín ÓhAiseadha

McGovern and Gun honour their courageous colleague

At a ceremony held in Copenhagen on 26 January, 2009, former Danish military intelligence officer Frank Grevil was given the Sam Adams award for integrity in intelligence, in recognition of the role he played in exposing the falsehoods that led to Denmark's invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In early 2004, Major Frank Grevil provided journalists with classified documents of the Danish Defence Intelligence Agency, which had expressed doubts about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, before the invasion of Iraq. The doubts expressed in these intelligence documents exposed the spurious certainty of remarks made by prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in March 2003: “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something we just believe. We know.”

Grevil was subsequently dismissed from the intelligence service and sentenced to four months' imprisonment, which he served in Horseroed Prison in June-September 2008.

The Sam Adams Associates' Corner-Brightener Candlestick was awarded at a ceremony attended by former CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern and two international whistleblower colleagues: former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, and former translator at the British Government Communications Headquarters, Katharine Gun.

Please read McGovern's speech and the citation for the award, read by Gun at the ceremony:
Honoring an Iraq War Whistleblower
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/013009a.html

Please see picture from award ceremony here:
http://www.berlingske.dk/article/20090126/danmark/70126...0096/

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Comments (3 of 3)

And where were his Irish Counterparts?

by Tim Hourigan - .

Sun Feb 08, 2009 19:13

Months AFTER the invasion of Iraq, when the body count was already well into tens of thousands, someone pointed me to a small paragraph in a British Newspaper.

The following was in the middle of an article printed in the (London) Independent on Sunday, Sep 14, 2003
Article Title : BLAIR'S WAR: How one man deed logic and intelligence to take us to war.

relevant excerpt. =
That was the headline-grabber, the stark image that stuck in the mind
- that fearful weapons could be unleashed suddenly, without warning,
on any of Iraq's neighbours. It was spotted almost immediately by an
expert in the Irish Republic's Department of Foreign Affairs, when a
British diplomat arrived in Iveagh House with a copy of the dossier,
hoping it would secure Ireland's vital vote on the UN Security
Council. Their specialist instantly dismissed it as utterly
unbelievable, for technical and political reasons.

Politically, it was unthinkable that Saddam would allow the Iraqi
army, which he deeply mistrusted, to hold weapons that they could use
for a sudden strike against a presidential palace, he said. And
technically, it defied belief that they could store these materials
permanently in battle-ready conditions out in the heat of the Iraqi
desert. [end of excerpt]

Full article is available online at :
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_2003091...;col1

John Gormley (then in opposition) was then tipped off to this, and raised it with a very evasive Minister Brian Cowen, but it went nowhere and wasn't reported in the media.
If those same anonymous experts at Iveagh House had broken their silence before the war, when there was a strong anti-war movement to support them, and which would have had a hell of a lot more momentum if such whistleblowers had come forward.

no counterpart yet

by Mary Kelly

Mon Feb 09, 2009 19:39

thanks for the link to that astounding article. Who was that diplomat in Iveagh Hse? Giving such information to the Green Party has proved a waste of time. A new approach is needed.
Well done and well deserved honour for Frank Grevil.

Congratulations to Mr Grevil.

by iosaf

Tue Feb 10, 2009 03:13

His personal sacrifice so clearly hinged on his daughter's fate. He was one of the less than ten former or acting secret service personel who had the moral courage to "whistle blow" the illegality of the US/UK invasion of Iraq.

special no?

Mary Kelly might be pleased to know he has responded to her on his support website. Coilin deserves all respect and acknowledgement for champoining his cause.

"man hvisker stundom een noget i öret og hörer det over den hele By."
= (that's a Danish proverb which means "you whisper in one ear and your village will hear it".) we make our villages.

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Danish whistleblower Grevil gets Sam Adams Award

Comments (3 of 3)