21 January 2000. Thanks to PS.

Regarding the Norwegian "Lanze" spy - read the following. The Norwegian security police has not given comments. It is believed that they have received information from the HVA files in Langley.


Norwegian reporter charged as spy for E Germany

    OSLO, Jan 21 (Reuters) - A Norwegian reporter has been charged with spying for the former East Germany in a hangover from the Cold War, a Norwegian newspaper said on Friday.

    "Stein Viksveen, Aftenbladet's correspondent in Brussels, has been charged with spying for the former East German intelligence service Stasi," the newspaper said in its Internet edition.

    It said Viksveen denied the charges and was trying to get access to police documentation of the allegations.

    It said he was accused in October of delivering secret NATO documents to East Germany from 1962 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

    His flat in Brussels was searched by representatives of the Norwegian secret police and the Belgian anti-terrorism police in November, it said. The newspaper protested against the search of the flat, which doubles as an office for the newspaper.

    Norwegian media have speculated for months that Norwegian police were searching for a Stasi spy in Norway, with the codenames Lanze or Hein. Norway's most famous Cold War-era spy was Arne Treholt, a former Foreign Ministry official freed from jail in the mid-1990s after serving almost a decade for spying for the former Soviet Union.

REUTERS