Next Security Police Director faces demanding job

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By Unto Hämäläinen
     
      The atmosphere might be somewhat tense and reserved when President Tarja Halonen, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, and Interior Minister Anne Holmlund discuss the appointment of a new Director for the Security Police (SUPO). The director is appointed by the government, but the President will be heard before the appointment, and Halonen can - if she so desires - influence the choice.
      The position is now open, and the time for applications will be over in a couple of weeks. If this were a question of an ordinary appointment, the matter would be quite straightforward. Under the rules of the game, the candidate of the minister responsible for putting the matter forward is usually chosen. In this case, the candidate would be Interior Minister Holmlund's own special aide Ilkka Salmi, who is on leave of absence from his former job as SUPO Chief of Staff.
      The National Coalition Party would like to have the high position, now that the opportunity exists for the first time. Directors of SUPO have included Seppo Tiitinen of the Centre Party, the politically non-aligned Eero Kekomäki, and Social Democrat Seppo Nevala.
      However, the appointment is not that easy. Vanhanen has not said anything about the issue, but at least some of the ministers of the Centre Party are opposed to Salmi. Critics say that Salmi is not quite up to such a demanding task.
     
Some in the Centre Party would like a politically non-aligned civil servant. This would prevent access by a National Coalition Party member. There is concern within the Centre Party over the strong position of the National Coalition Party in the "security triangle" of the government; the party holds the Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Interior Ministry portfolios.
      On the other hand, there is a desire in the government to avoid a political showdown. A dispute would not really fit the character of the position, as the trend has been to fill positions of heads of intelligence services inconspicuously. This is what happened last December, when Georgij Alafuzoff was named head of intelligence for the Finnish Defence Forces. The appointment merited only a couple of lines in the newspapers, although it is nearly as important a post as that of Director of the Security Police.
      If no agreement is reached at first, filling the position could easily be postponed until the late autumn. Many politicians feel that a postponement would be important so that there could be discussion on the qualities that the director should have.
     
The mission of the Security Police changed radically after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11th, 2001. It became an integral part of the organisation of the fight against terrorism. A new director will have to be clearly more "international" than his predecessors. The director will need to be able to operate in the international intelligence network, and will actually need to have ready contacts with the intelligence services of the European Union countries in particular.
      The new director will at the same time have to continue the work of the predecessors. When SUPO was set up in 1949, its most important task developed into fighting espionage by the Soviet Union. After the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, it appeared for a short time that Russia had lost its interest in Finland. This proved to be only a passing phase.
      Russia again wants to influence Finnish politics. It is using surveillance activities to this end as well. SUPO needs to resist Russia's intentions, and at the same time it needs to collect information about Russia, and make assessments of Finland's neighbour.
      It is no coincidence that a Russia expert was named to the military intelligence post.
      The significance of Russia is further increased by the fact that in addition to President Vladimir Putin, many other Kremlin leaders know Finland very well. The best expert among them is Putin's likely successor, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who worked as an intelligence officer at the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki in the late 1980s.
     
The former and current position of Ivanov also suggest that the new SUPO chief will have to know the history of the Security Police itself. SUPO is Finland's most important bank of political information, accumulated over nearly 60 years.
      When asking for the Sergei Ivanov file from the archive, the new director will have to be able to read it, and to make use of the unique information. There is, perhaps, more information about Ivanov in Finland than in any other EU country. He was under surveillance by SUPO detectives for years, as were hundreds of other KGB men who served in Helsinki.
     
As a result of the intelligence gathering, SUPO also got much information about Finns who had dealings with the embassy on Tehtaankatu. The use of the material calls for good information management skills: politics during the Cold War was different from what it is now.
      Almost as sensitive is the information that Finns gave of each other. SUPO has collected information from unofficial "information sources". They have operated in parties, organisations, and even at workplaces.
     
For instance, it came out last autumn that there was a report by a former employer of Tarja Halonen, while she was a student, in which the young Halonen's life and her thinking was assessed in very intimate detail.
      It was on that basis in the 1960s that SUPO made an assessment of Halonen's suitability for a post in the Foreign Ministry. She did not get the job, but later Halonen became a long-serving Foreign Minister, and the President of the Republic, from which post she can now have an influence on who is appointed as SUPO Director.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.8.2007


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Debate over disclosure of Stasi material heats up as Security Police director resigns (30.7.2007)

UNTO HÄMÄLÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
unto.hamalainen@hs.fi