Poul Brink
 Poul Brink    (journalist) | ||||||||||||||
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| Born | 2. September 1953 | |||||||||||||
| Died | 23. October 2002 (Age 49) Copenhagen | |||||||||||||
Cause of death | "heart attack" | |||||||||||||
| Nationality | Danish | |||||||||||||
Heavily attacked in media by the deep state after exposing nuclear cover-ups.
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Poul Kristian Andersen Brink was a Danish journalist and author who exposed how Prime Minister H.C. Hansen (1955-60) secretly had allowed nuclear weapons in Greenland, and the cover-up after the crash of a nuclear bomber in 1968. He was also reported to the police for revealing state secrets and heavily attacked in media by the deep state. He died at age 49 during a run, stated to be from a heart attack.
Career
Poul Brink was originally educated on the job in 1979 on the public Danmarks Radio's regional radio in Aarhus, and since 1987 employed by by Denmark's most viewed news program TV-Avisen in the same city. In 1991, he moved to TV-Avisen in the capital Copenhagen, where he was affiliated with the foreign editorial office specializing in, among other things, Great Britain.
In 1997, Brink received the Cavling Prize, the Danish journalists' most prestigious award, for his revelations of the Thule affair: How the Greenlandic and Danish people were led astray by allowing American nuclear weapons at the Thule base in Greenland despite the official Danish no-nuclear-weapons policy, and how the Danish and US governments covered up the circumstances surrounding the Thule accident, in which a US nuclear-armed B-52 bomber crashed near the Thule base in 1968.
Thule affair
The year before he received the Cavling Award, Poul Brink was reported to the police for having published confidential documents regarding the Thule base.
Brink applied for archive access to an agreement between the USA and Denmark after an American plane with four hydrogen bombs on board crashed on the ice sheet in Greenland. The result of the archive access was published in TV-Avisen without government intervention, but when the same information that a million Danes had seen on the TV screen was faxed to a former US Deputy Secretary of State, the hammer fell. National Archivist Noack reported Brink to the police (probably following an advice from the Ministry of Justice). It was rejected by the police, and the state archivist abandoned the charge.[1]
Brink's uncovering of the secret Danish nuclear policy started with him being approached in 1986 by Marius Schmidt, who helped clean up after the 1968 plane crash, because many of his friends had suffered skin disorders after the clean-up. Many of the workers later died. At first, Poul Brink was skeptical, but he still began to dig into the matter. For almost 10 years, he systematically researched the uncovering of the case, which resulted in his book he Thule Case - The Universe of Lies in 1997, which. described former Prime Minister H.C. Hansen's secret acceptance that the United States store nuclear weapons in Greenland. His revelations changed the official history about Denmark's role in the Cold War.[2]
In the preface, he wrote: "However, I did not sit down and choose the Thule case, because no one knew at the time that it existed. It evolved because my interviews gave rise to questions that required further interviews, which raised new questions. It was only gradually that the magnitude of the deception became known."
Poul Brink died suddenly of a heart attack during a run[3] on October 23, 2002, only 49 years old, leaving behind his wife Estibaliz Hernández Marquínez and son Kristian Brink.
Poul Brink's book on the Thule case led to a film adaptation, The Idealist, written and directed by Christina Rosendahl.[4], premiering in April 2015. Both in Poul Brink's book and in the film, it is insinuated that he was shadowed by unknown individuals from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.[5]
