Herbert Pundik used his work as a journalist as a cover to provide intelligence reports to Israel’s Mossad

Former chief editor of Politiken newspaper and respected Danish foreign affairs journalist Herbert Pundik, has spoken for the first time about his days as a spy for the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency.

In an interview with the Information.dk news website, Pundik explained how he came to work for Mossad in the 1960s but doesn’t believe it affected his impartiality as a journalist.

Born in Copenhagen in 1927, but living in Israel since 1954, Pundik began working as a correspondent and reporter for public broadcaster DR as well as Information and Politiken newspapers.

During this time, he worked a lot in Africa and used his journalism work as a cover for collecting information for the agency.

‘I did a detailed analysis of the distribution of tribes in Somali areas and their relationships to political parties ... I also did a study of the political conditions in northern Nigeria.’

Pundik questions where the border lies between spying and investigative journalism.

‘It was all material that the newspaper could have used, but there just wasn’t interest in this and that person’s relationship to this and that man…’

He underlined that he was never asked to provide information about Denmark to Mossad, not only because Denmark wasn’t a country of interest, but also because he says it’s the agency’s policy never to recruit a foreigner to spy on their homeland.

‘It was largely intelligence work I did, and which I did on the condition that all my reports be shared with the Danish authorities.’

Herbert delivered his reports to the Israeli embassy, which in turn made copies available to the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (FE) - the country’s foreign intelligence agency.

Peter Ilsøe, the former deputy director of FE was a good friend of Herbert’s and the journalist says he confirmed that the material was being delivered to the Danes.

Herbert worked for Mossad for about 10 years, but quit his role when he took on the post of editor of Politiken newspaper in 1970 – a position he held for 23 years.