Norway’s secret Stay Behind army trained at Torås Fort

Dagbladet reports that Torås Fort on Tjøme served as a training base for Norway’s secret Stay Behind network, where selected agents were trained with cooperation from the US Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s MI6.

“What we are in now must be one of the most secret rooms in modern Norwegian history,” said Jørn Roger Bergland, chairman of Torås Forts venner, the organisation managing parts of the former military site.

He was referring to a deteriorating room dating from the 1940s. Its tiled walls are painted with mountains, roads and topography representing locations in Norway. Bergland said the room and map were used to train secret agents.

Stay Behind was established after the Second World War to prepare for a possible Soviet occupation of Norway. Its members were trained to operate covertly in an occupied country.

The network was kept so secret that prime ministers, their spouses, other intelligence branches, the police and the armed forces were not supposed to know who belonged to it. The size of the network and the number of people aware of it remain unknown.

Torås Fort was begun by Norwegians in 1938, while German forces completed most of the facility. After the war, the armed forces took control. Ordinary military activity gradually ended, but the base was never officially declared closed.

“From the end of the 1960s, Stay Behind increasingly operated here,” Bergland said. He added that many local people, including his mother, who grew up nearby, did not know the facility existed.

Stay Behind activity at Tjøme declined after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The armed forces ended all activity at Torås in the 2000s.

When the organisation later gained access to parts of the property, it found an oil barrel inside one of the bunkers. The barrel contained radio transmitters and receivers, along with other technical equipment. None of it had serial numbers or markings.

Bergland said the equipment was of the type also used by the CIA and MI6. The armed forces have not officially confirmed that Torås Fort was used for Stay Behind activities. Dagbladet said sources had confirmed Bergland’s claims.

The former head of intelligence group E 14 in Norway’s Intelligence Service, Ola Kaldager, also acknowledged knowing about Torås Fort when contacted by the newspaper.

Agents were reportedly selected after being observed for months or years and brought to Torås from different parts of the country. Usually, no more than three people trained there at one time. The training followed a cell structure intended to prevent one captured or exposed agent from leading investigators to others.

Training included map reading, intelligence, counterintelligence, shooting, explosives and sabotage. Evidence of the activity remains at the fort, including a large crater in the forest. Bergland said he was barely willing to approach it because its true depth was unknown.