The Domestic Security Service (BVD), the predecessor of today's AIVD, was founded in 1949. But the first secret service in the Netherlands actually emerged on the eve of the First World War. For a long time, little was known about our country’s first secret service. In Uiterst Vertrouwelijk, Jansen, Jacobs and other experts from the academic and professional field reflect on that early period, drawing the line to modern security services and their position in society today.
For example, Bart Jacobs and Florentijn van Kampen examine some interesting discoveries made by Dutch cryptographers during the First World War, and Beatrice de Graaf outlines a past history of national counterterrorism. Laura Brinkhorst and Marieke Oprel focus on the secret services of the colonial Dutch East Indies. Other chapters address the role of intelligence services in society, the mild acceptance within the service of pre-war National Socialist ideology and the early but inevitable politicisation of the secret service.
The De Meijer report
Uiterst Vertrouwelijk is based on the De Meijer report, an extraordinary source. The authors call it ‘a true historical sensation, (...) a historiography, source publication, archive access, inventory of dates and facts and personal reflection all in one’. The author, Marius de Meijer, had been involved in the early intelligence services from 1933. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he decided to bury numerous sensitive documents - which should actually have been destroyed - in an iron box in his backyard. When De Meijer joined the BVD after the war, the documents were transferred to the new secret service. Then, just before his retirement in 1968, De Meijer himself had the opportunity to make ‘an attempt at historiography’ based on these and other documents.
The final De Meijer report subsequently remained internal and unknown to the outside world until (partly due to a 1995 PhD thesis by BVD in-house historian Dick Engelen) Constant Hijzen, Bart Jacobs and Rowin Jansen got hold of it via an access request. According to the authors, the report 'offers wonderful insight into a bygone intelligence practice. (...) For a moment, the report makes you feel as if you are in direct contact with that secret world.'
Common thread
According to Rowin Jansen, one of the book's initiators, there is one clear common thread: 'The services are there to provide timely information to policymakers so that they can then deal with threats. Society changes, technology changes, but the services change with them. This book shows how the services need to keep moving with the times to stay relevant.'
However, there are big differences too. Jansen: ‘Immediately after the First World War, the service employed fewer than 30 people, who had to work hard for every bit of information. Now there are thousands of people at the AIVD and MIVD who are more likely to be faced with an abundance of data. These days, intelligence work is sometimes like looking for a needle in a giant haystack.'
Right of access
Uiterst Vertrouwelijk is not an AIVD book: the researchers did not coordinate the content with the service leadership. Still, Jansen says it is significant that a book like this can now be published. Several active and former AIVD officers even wrote a chapter. 'Historical accountability like this would not have been possible a few decades ago. It is only in recent years that the services are stepping out more and more. Before WW2, its existence was not recognised at all, it was a hidden item in the budget. But even in the decades that followed, for example, all royal decrees surrounding the services remained secret.'
'Now you see the AIVD reluctantly seeking publicity. They increasingly understand the importance of explaining what you do, and why. Unknown makes unloved, just look at the dragnet law debate: scary images are easily created. The AIVD has significant leeway, which means it is important that they continue to explain what they do with their powers, under strict supervision.'
