Dick Schoof

"“Terror expert”"  Dick Schoof   (Spook, civil servant)
Born	Hendrikus Wilhelmus Maria (Dick) Schoof 8 March 1957 Santpoort
Nationality	Dutch
Alma mater	Radboud University Nijmegen
Party	PVDA
Former Director General of the AIVD. Secretary-General at the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security, Dutch PM  National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism In office 2013 - 2018 Employer Netherlands/Minister of Justice and Security  AIVD/Director General In office 2018 - 2020 Employer AIVD Preceded by Rob Bertholee  Secretary-General In office 2020 - Present Employer Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security  Netherlands/Prime Minister  In office 2024 - Present Preceded by Mark Rutte {

Dick Schoof is a Dutch civil servant. Schoof was director-general at the General Intelligence and Security Service or AIVD from 2018 to 2020 and was announced as the new secretary-general at the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security per 1 March 2020. Schoof was presented as Dutch Prime Minister in 2024, replacing the last Mark Rutte coalition with a new one led by Geert Wilders.

Early Life

Schoof studied urban planning at the Radboud University Nijmegen from 1975 to 1982. He then became education policy officer at the Association of Netherlands Municipalities. In 1988 he transferred to the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. In 1996 he became deputy secretary general at the Dutch Ministry of Justice.

Civil Servant

From 1999 to 2003, Schoof was chief director of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service and was director for the Dutch "Aliens Act" in 2000. He then became director general of Public Order and Security at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. Schoof was noted to start a new program tackling "radicalization", a role he was appointed to, although at the time, media noted, he replaced, overruled and was the last one to be reported to, surpassing the directors at the Dutch Security and Justice Department. It was quite unknown why.

"Counterterrorism-Expert"

"Recent terror attacks in Europe and elsewhere underscore the continuing threat to civilian populations, especially as ISIS seeks to make an impact in the face of battlefield defeats in Syria and Iraq. To discuss how governments and civilian actors can tackle these issues together, The Washington Institute hosted a June 16, 2017 Policy Forum with Dutch counterterrorism coordinator Dick Schoof, Quilliam International expert Muhammad Fraser-Rahim, Belfer Center analyst Farah Pandith, and Matthew Levitt, director of the Institute's Stein Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence. The event was the latest installment in the long-running Stein Counterterrorism Lecture Series." - 2017 - The Washington Institute.

Around 9-11, Schoof became a known leader in government internal programs for counterterrorism: Schoof was reported in a biography to be initially an opponent of the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism established in 2004, arguing for a more internal approach with more secrecy.

Islamic Terrorism

“Children are spoon fed extremist values and do not have to be converted. Minors in the 'caliphate' are taught from a young age that anyone who does not adhere to the correct interpretation of Islam must be slain. Children are portrayed as fighters, as happy and free. The propaganda says a lot about the role ISIS gives kids. Therefore upon their return we look at what care, safety measures and interventions are appropriate.”
Dick Schoof,  AIVD,  ANP (2017) 

NRC reported in 2021 - after info gathered by a Dutch FOIA request - that Schoof ignored and pressured his close staff about a covert program to "gather intelligence" about mosques operating in the Netherlands. His office turned out to be paying municipalities in the country to hire private investigation firms to carry out clandestine operations into local Islamic groups. The private security firm had a green light from the Minister of Justice at the time, Frank Weerwind, but he called off the whole project when NRC reported on it. Weerwind refused to comment, and the private security firm only responded that the reports of violating dozens of ethical and legal guidelines were just "reported and the perspective of one of our employees".

"Lone Wolf Terrorism"

Full article: 2009 Queen's Day Attack

In 2010, Schoof was one of the architects of the new Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice following a vehicular assault on the Dutch royal family on Queen's Day in 2009, which killed 8. The new department incorporated the Directorate-General for Security of the Ministry of the Interior and included the police in addition to the Public Prosecution Service. National security was significantly reformed, and although the conclusive report mentioned the local and state security officials didn't neglect or failed in following procedures before and after the attack it was noted the security personnel didn't expect a vehicular assault and were in a state of chaos on-site as their mobile communication systems didn't work, according to officials that wanted to remain anonymous, new chains of command should be implemented, with the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism now being the leading organization in the new national police law, being also responsible for deciding the local, state and national threat levels in case of such events with public officials, even regardless of threat-levels, and the chains of command to work in separate confidential "rings".

A decade after the events, events have increased police powers which according to internal studies, didn't really have the desired effect and noted the increased ring of command with even classified private security personnel resulted in breaches, with the police able to send random individuals home, telling certain dissidents to stay home and creating a strategy of tension. 35 intern police reports subsequently showed a massive amount of unstructured organization in the following decade as well. Schoof himself became Director General of Police at this department but faced criticism along with Ivo Opstelten and the first national chief of police Gerard Bouman for the chaotic reorganization.

Police Infiltration

Schoof his new National Police - a centralized combined structural restructuring of all the provincial police forces - came under heavy scrutiny in the 2010s for corruption, fraud, non-working IT systems, a new hierarchical system "without checks and balances", and a culture of fear among police officers.

The Guardian in 2018 reported that "The Netherlands is starting to resemble a narco-state with the National police unable to combat the emergence of a parallel criminal economy, a report from the Dutch police association has warned". The Dutch police in drug capital Amsterdam was noted by investigators to be heavily infiltrated by the leading European drug criminals, who started executing journalists, such as Peter R. de Vries in 2021.

MH17

Full article: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Full article: Euromaidan

Schoof became National Terrorism Coordinator in 2013, a position he previously found close to useless. In this role he became responsible for leading parts of the investigation for MH17, an airlines shot down above Ukraine in 2014 under suspicious circumstances.

Following MPs

In 2022, newspaper De Volksrant reported that under Schoof's reign the AIVD, tapped and had its own agents following former State Secretary of Foreign Affairs and then Dutch senator René van de Linden because of "questionable contacts the politician had with a Russian spook and others with close ties to President Vladimir Putin". Van der Linden was also the president of the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly for 2005 to 2008, and was reported to have befriended Valeri Levitski, an accused Russian spy who was expelled from France in April 2018 for ties to the Russian security service GRU. Levitski, the head of Russian nationalist party LDPR Leonid Slutsky and Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev, a high ranking senator from Putin’s United Russia party. According to the newspaper, the AIVD began to worry as Van de Linden started inviting Russian high ranking intelligence to his home after the Malaysian Airlines crash, such as Sergei Naryshkin. After a high-ranking member informed Van de Linden he was speaking to Russian Intelligence officers, Van de Linden was said to have cut all contact "being shocked by knowing he was being used as double agent and being tapped", as he denied to have ever looked into the background of his friends. The newspaper reported the high-ranking Dutch intelligence member that met with Van de Linden was either Dick Schoof or the then head of the Military Intelligence, MIVD.

Tracking Civilians online

The Dutch National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV) was reported by NRC in 2021 to have followed politicians, left-wing and right-wing activists, and religious leaders for years using fake accounts. The NCTV had no legal base to do that and continued to do so, even after Schoof was advised by legal experts internally, to halt at once. The NCTV could not be investigated as they had no legal basis to keep the data saved for analysis or any criminal probe. The NCTV gained more powers in 2022, after a law was passed in parliament following a surge of Covid 19 dissidents.

Malaysian Airlines

The investigation into the crisis management organization after the crash of MH17 has been adjusted by the independent external researchers after officials from the Dutch Scientific Research and Documentation Center reported that they found parts of the conclusions "too heavy" and "too negative". Dick Schoof, as National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security tried to influence the independent investigation, according to documents that the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security public following a Dutch FOIA request to the Dutch public broadcaster NPO. According to broadcaster Powned, Schoof personally requested parts of the investigation to be redacted, removed, and sealed for "political and departmental reasons". A new FOIA request in what the original document was, or what was asked to removed was not answered due to "national security". After a whistleblower came forward internally, the report was not investigated, but new measures were taken "to prevent researchers being recalled for their contents to these reports".

Muting Journalists

Schoof was reported in 2017 to have threatened to sue journalist Huub Modderkolk for not removing passages from his book detailing names, projects, operations and sources from AIVD personnel. Modderkolk's book was released at the same time around the leaks about the Integrity Initiative, a UK deep state faction. One passage revealed the AIVD was targeting Kaspersky, a Russian cybersecurity company.

When Bas Meesters of De Groene Amsterdammer remarked "Our idea of privacy is changing and so is our idea of security. And thus - you suggest - is our perception and interpretation of the democratic rule of law changing?", Schoof responded with an old eerie saying;

“Here you come to the metaphor of the frog in the pan. If you slowly make the water in the pan hotter, the frog would stay put. But if you throw the frog into a hot pan, it jumps right out.”
Dick Schoof (2023) 

Iran

In 2019, Schoof publicly accused the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of executing two dissidents that fled the country decades ago. Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi - sentenced to death for a alleged bombing at the Iranian Islamic Republic Party's HQ in 1981, killing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Iran-Iraq war, then Iran’s supreme leader and 2nd-in-command - was assassinated in 2015 around 12 miles from the city Amsterdam in the town of Almere. Iranian activist Ahmad Molla Nissi - founder of a political and militant party seeking an autonomous Iranian province - was shot dead a few miles from the Dutch national parliament in The Hague.

Dutch 2023 Coalition Crisis

Schoof's advisory panel within his ministerial department was responsible for a vital part in the Dutch 2023 Coalition led by Mark Rutte that fell over the 2023 Migrant Crisis. Schoof's advisory judicial panel recommended against forbidding policies that allowed families of immigrants to automatically be assigned asylum if one member of the family obtained it. When the VVD party ordered and pressured the government coalition to force a temporary ban, a judge and higher court ruled a few months later the ban to be against Dutch and European law, using "over 80% of argumentation from Schoof's department", acknowledged by Schoof.

Prime Minister

In a quite ironic set of events, Schoof was presented as new Prime Minister by all 4 new parties for Geert Wilders his new coalition in the following 2024 coalition.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.