Intelligence Elsewhere: Spies and Espionage Outside the Anglosphere

13 Sweden: Intelligence the Middle Way

C H A P T E R 1 3 Sweden: Intelligence the Middle Way Wilhelm Agrell It’s exactly when formalities have to be observed so carefully and completely, as in Sweden, that it’s easiest to circumvent them and do as you please. —From the novel The Queen’s Diadem, by C. J. L. Almqvist, 1834 I n many respects the creation, development, and nature of the Swedish national intelligence institutions is no different from that of a number of other small states in Northern Europe. The region was deeply affected by World War II and early in the Cold War became a geostrategic conflict zone and still to some extent remains one, although in a new European security context. Sweden, like its Nordic neighbors, is a stable democracy with an independent legal system, a free press, and a society built along the ‘‘middle way’’ protected by a long peace. So, judging from the outer appearance, not very much peculiarity should be expected, not even in such a peculiar domain as intelligence. However, the outer appearance might in this respect be misleading , as the Swedish novelist Carl Jonas Love Almqvist let one of his main characters observe in one of the closing chapters of his classical earlynineteenth -century novel—quoted above—which was based on the plot to assassinate King Gustaf III at a masked ball in 1792. Here Almqvist had, as a gifted writer, grasped one of the Swedish state’s central features, which has to some extent remained intact for centuries. / 239 / 240 / Wilhelm Agrell The ‘‘Organizing’’ of Intelligence Like most other small European states, Sweden lacked the framework for an intelligence culture until the late 1930s. There was a limited understanding of the need for intelligence, there was no specific institution for its conduct, and hence there were no clusters of specialists who could have constituted the basis for a profession. There were some forerunners in the diplomatic corps, in naval radio interception, and in the General Staff, where the first intelligence-related actions were taken against Norway during the process of that country’s secession from its forced union with Sweden in 1905. In the 1930s, however, increasing international tension and the threat not only of war but also of a completely new kind of warfare affecting all society became the prime movers for defense preparations and, among them, the creation of foreign and domestic intelligence institutions. In the typical Swedish way, intelligence was systematically ‘‘organized,’’ institutions were created, and instructions were written. Formalities were, at least initially, closely observed, while the actual function (let alone efficiency) of the institutions was expected to result from the ongoing process of bureaucratic establishment. In 1937 a new Defense Staff was formed to handle joint interservice functions such as war planning and signals communications. The new staff organization also contained an intelligence branch of around twenty officers, with a foreign and a domestic section, the latter dealing with military counterintelligence and protection against sabotage. The means for intelligence collection were limited to the study of open sources, along with reporting from the fifteen service attachés stationed in the neighboring countries and the major powers. Most were military attachés from the army, and there were also some naval attachés and a few air force attachés, of whom the air attaché to Moscow, Captain Stig Wennerström, was to play a significant although somewhat unexpected role in Swedish postwar intelligence. Collection was initially the weak spot, and it became even more so as the war broke out, with increasing demand for rapid and accurate information from beyond the national borders, while the listening posts provided by the attachés were either lost (as in Poland, the Baltic states, and eventually all over Europe) or hampered by wartime restrictions.1 Also, the diplomats were important intelligence collectors, but there was a certain level of mutual mistrust between the Intelligence Department and the Foreign Ministry; the Foreign Ministry reluctantly agreed to send copies of diplomatic reports to the Intelligence Department, but it reserved the right to decide which reports and at what time.2 The Intelligence Department, conversely, could circumvent the Foreign Ministry through the employment of personal letters (handbrev), sent by the service attachés with the diplomatic bag directly to the head of the Intelligence Department. Sweden: Intelligence the Middle Way / 241 With the outbreak of World War II...