Ex SUPO-chief denies Dumell espionage investigation was ordered by President Koivisto

Seppo Tiitinen

print this

Seppo Tiitinen, the former head of the Finnish Security Police (SUPO), denies that journalist Matts Dumell, who was convicted of espionage in 1983, would have been deliberately made a scapegoat. Dumell was convicted when he was seen to have crossed a line of propriety in his contacts with Soviet diplomats.
      Helsingin Sanomat published an article on Sunday that indicated Dumell was under the impression that he was made a scapegoat as a way of cleaning out the system of personal contacts between Soviet diplomats and key figures in Finnish society, and that President Mauno Koivisto was active in initiating the official investigation at the time.
     
“Dumell spoke from his own point of view. The official angle is somewhat different”, says Seppo Tiitinen, currently the Secretary General of the Finnish Parliament, who had been the head of SUPO at the time of the events.
      “It is quite a strange claim that there had been an order to turn him into a scapegoat. Officials do not organise criminal investigations to order. The role of President Koivisto was no more active in it than in any other similar cases. This was not commissioned by Koivisto.”
     
According to Tiitinen, all questions with some bearing on foreign policy were subject to the consideration of the President. “It was normal. It was a routine, not something that was commissioned.”
      According to Tiitinen, the President’s consideration mainly meant the confirmation of a timetable - that the matter would not hit an inconvenient seam and damage foreign policy.
      On the Dumell case, Tiitinen no longer remembers exactly what Koivisto was asked.
      According to the recent book on SUPO by historian Kimmo Rentola, Koivisto had said that the Dumell case should be taken under investigation, which meant that the investigation became official. Rentola’s sources were mainly Tiitinen’s own notes from the time.
     
When the SUPO interviews turned into interrogations, the Dumell case received considerable attention in the Finnish media.
      “It was claimed that Dumell was made a test-case, as a warning to other journalists. This was not the case. The matter was then already with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). I had no possibilities of wielding any influence.”
      Tiitinen emphasises that it would have been a case of official misconduct if he had not taken the matter to prosecutors. “The acts were such that under established court practice, a punishment was needed, and officials had no discretion in the matter.”
      Tiitinen also says that public attention had nothing to do with the investigation.
      So why were the reasons given for the sentence declared confidential?
      “We did not want to make the names of foreign countries public. We wanted to avoid foreign policy damage. The court decided on the matter.”

More on this subject:
 Dumell: “My case was a bullseye for SUPO”

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Security Police history: President decided whom to prosecute for espionage (28.8.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat