A month after the terrorist attack in Oslo last year, Lars Lilleby took over the job as head of the counter-terrorism department in PST. He does not recognize what is written in the 25 June committee’s report about a lack of culture which may have hampered PST’s preventive work. – In the short time I have worked here, I have not experienced that. So I don’t recognize myself in that, says Lilleby to news. Skepticism towards the e-service The committee’s leader Pia Therese Jansen presented the 25 June committee’s report on Thursday 8 June. Photo: Terje Pedersen / NTB In the report from the 25 June committee, which was presented on 8 June, it is stated that a prevailing culture in PST’s counterintelligence department was to keep a cool head and not overreact to new intelligence. The committee questions whether this may have hampered PST’s work with the notification from the Norwegian Intelligence Service, which came five days before the attack, because they kept their heads cooler than necessary and did not perceive the seriousness and the urgency aspect. It also states that some in PST were skeptical of information from the E-service and thought they might have a tendency to exaggerate the importance of received information. – I don’t recognize myself in that either. I would say that we have a very good and close collaboration with the E-service. We have that almost every single day in specific cases. There is a free flow of personnel and information within the existing laws and regulations, says Lilleby. – So it is not something I have experienced in my time here in PST. We have a very good and close collaboration with the E-service and we are completely dependent on that. Have employed two psychologists It is Lars Lilleby who has been appointed to follow up the recommendations from the evaluation report in PST. They are already working on that, he and PST manager Beate Gangås told a press conference in PST’s head office in Nydalen yesterday. PST manager Beate Gangås and department director Lars Lilleby held a press conference in PST’s head office in Nydalen. Photo: Olav Døvik / news Lilleby said they have already made changes in the counter-terrorism department to strengthen work on preventive matters. PST has employed two psychologists permanently to gain a better understanding of the people they consider to be possible terrorist actors and they have strengthened their work with searches in open sources. – One of the steps we want to take is to identify to a greater extent possible terrorist targets or environments that can be thought to pose a terrorist threat and then start the search for people in this way, says Lilleby. – Today we are probably looking for people after tips and reports of concern have come in about them and what happens then is that we don’t catch those who keep calm or are good at hiding their tracks. Alerted by the E-service Five days before the terrorist attack in Oslo last year, PST received a notification from the E-service about a planned terrorist attack which they believed would be carried out in Norway with Arfan Bhatti as the mastermind. The notification did not mention that the information came from an operation that the E-service itself ran. – People who work in PST have been clear to the committee that they would have appreciated if they had received earlier information that this was an operation, says PST boss Beate Gangås to news. Are you sure that you will receive this type of information the next time you receive a notification from the E-service? Can you be sure of that? – What you must be sure of is that we will ask, insist and explain why we need information, also when it comes to context. We also have to make this clear when we have the usual collaboration, so that we understand each other’s areas of responsibility, understand each other’s roles and are able to exchange information in a timely and as comprehensive manner as possible. PST chief Beate Gangås regretted that PST was unable to avert the terrorist attack on 25 June last year when she received the evaluation report on 8 June. Gangås says they are working to achieve an even better collaboration with the E-service. – Are there things in the report that you have found critical of PST that you do not necessarily fully agree with? – There are individual statements that people do not recognize, there are different perceptions in PST. So it is clear that it is always the case that there are details that we will be able to disagree on and that may not have been the way I meant it when I said it. There are some who make statements that the committee may have given more weight to than others. – But I think that should not be our main focus now. Now we will be concerned with the findings and the recommendations that are there. Look at the big picture and do everything we can to improve where possible. The PST manager says there are individuals who feel the criticism that PST receives very hard, who find it difficult and look back on whether they should have done something differently. She is concerned that this should not be about individuals, but about PST as a whole. – I am very concerned that this is an evaluation that we have asked for and received. It will help us see if we and I as PST manager can do something to ensure that it will be easier to do this job, for us to find each other, for us to have the tools we need, the resources we need, says Gangås.
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– I don’t recognize myself – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
