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The Listening Post in Kejsergade


By Jacob Westergaard Madsen

In the days around 22nd October 1969 some students at Copenhagen University disclosed what lay behind the mysterious activity that had taken place in the basement of the East Asian Institute in Kejsergade [street].


Curiosity was aroused by mysterious-looking men in long cotton coats who were coming and going from an adjacent building day and night, on workdays as well as during the weekends, and who frequently had to relieve themselves in the old lavatory in the yard. Wondering at this the students found out that the basement housed a secret listening post.

Headlong Flight … Hitting a Police Officer
It turned out that the installation was attended by the Military Intelligence Service, or rather: The Central Radio of the Defense that was established shortly after the war with support from among others the American Intelligence OSS, the later CIA. Apparently, it functioned as a communication junction with close location and cable connection to the Central Telegraph Office in Købmagergade from where most communication with foreign countries could be tapped. At the press-covered inspection of the basement on 24th October it turned out that it contained sophisticated equipment for monitoring of radio, telegraph, and telex communication. Such equipment has to be made in a way preventing the party performing the monitoring from being heard at the other end; still, employees and students at the university had often wondered at noise and strange sounds on the telephone line.

But apart from the fact that the listening post had been in function from 1965 and until the disclosure, nothing certain can be said about it as the evidence was removed under dramatic circumstances. When the case was written up in the newspapers on 22nd October, the students took their positions outside the gate to the yard. The police was also present to make sure that the situation did not develop into disturbances. Suddenly an Opel Rekord came speeding out of the gate. During the flight it hit a student and injured one of the policemen before continuing opposite the traffic direction. Of course, this only enhanced the impression that fishy business had been taking place.

Espionage Charges
In the wake of the disclosure the magazines Politisk Revy [Political Revue] and Vietnam-Solidaritet [Vietnam Solidarity] were confiscated and members of the editorial staff were arrested, charged with subversive activities, together with the chief editors of the newspaper Information who had published a seized article from Vietnam-Solidaritet. The espionage charges were that they had published descriptions of "military installations that were not open to all". Together with the Kejsergade case it provoked a vehement political debate. Only a year earlier, the coalition government had issued the later much discussed pronouncement that nobody should be registered solely on basis of legal political activities. Had this been violated in these cases? Who had been bugged? Had the provisions of the Constitution been broken? The Military Intelligence Service claimed that they had a political backing, the politicians that they knew nothing before the disclosure. The Espionage charges were, however, withdrawn, and the questions have never been finally answered.


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