The killing of PM Olof Palme: Part I (DRAFT)

An attempt to make sense of the January 1986 ACC/SOPS document and the December 1985 ACC/SOPS document bringing up the upcoming assassination of Swedish PM Olof Palme (28 February 1986).

Prime Minister Olof Palme 28 September 1984 (Photo: Source: Ministry of the Presidency. Government of Spain).

Background

On 28 February 1986 at 23:21, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead in central Stockholm after having been to the cinema with his wife. He was shot at a distance of 20 cm through the trachea, the aorta, and the spinal cord, and the ammunition used was capable of penetrating bulletproof vests. This looks like a professional operation. Several witnesses saw the killer, but he disappeared immediately and was never found. The police investigation began to follow a Kurdish lead that led nowhere. The police then suspected a man who was violent alcoholic. The Review Commission of the Olof Palme Inquiry in the 1990s found that the police investigation from the beginning had been “unprofessional”. Subsequent inquiries did not lead anywhere, despite many detailed claims in the media about the suspects and their agencies. The Palme Inquiry was closed down in 2020 after the prosecutor had pointed to a deceased man, a bureaucrat and designer, who supposedly happened to have a gun in his hand with bullets able to penetrate bulletproof vests, and happened to meet the Prime Minister and his wife on the street late at night. Not many people believed this claim, not even the investigators themselves, who had actually been looking deeply into the involvement of Swedish Stay Behind networks, South African security agents and Western intelligence services. The problem has not been a lack of information but rather the huge amount of largely credible evidence pointing in different directions. This would also indicate a professional operation.

In September 1985, the Swedish Social Democrats with their leader Olof Palme won the elections despite an enormous media campaign against him. Some media had accused him of being mentally ill as well as pro-Russian. His “Common Security” project had brought together leading figures from Western countries, the Soviet Union, and the Third World. His dialogue with the Soviets led the U.S. and the British to accuse him of being “a Soviet agent of influence”. He had supported Vietnam’s fight for independence in 1960s and 1970s, the ANC’s struggle for freedom in South Africa and he had supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, while the U.S. was mining their harbors. Swedish right-wingers described Palme as a traitor, and they argued that his welfare state was too expensive. Money should instead go to the defense of Sweden against a Soviet aggression, they said. From early 1980s, Sweden experienced intrusions on an almost “daily basis” of what was believed to be “Soviet submarines” deep into Swedish archipelagoes and naval bases. The Swedish Navy used depth charges and mines against the submarines. In three years, the number of Swedes considering the Soviet Union as unfriendly, or a direct threat increased from 25-30 % to 83 %. Sweden became a different country.

Still, Olof Palme received almost 50 percent of the votes in the general elections in autumn 1985. Mass media described his peace initiatives as “appeasement policy” with dangerous consequences. When he was shot in February 1986, my first reaction was: “They finally did it”. It was certainly no surprise. He had been prime minister for more than 11 years (1969-76 and 1982-86). The political climate was tense – he was unacceptable to both the Americans and the British. When a friend of mine, Ola Frithiofson, went with Olof Palme to Heathrow (London) in 1981, airport security stopped Olof Palme, the only passenger to be stopped, opened his luggage and put up all his private belongings on the table for everyone to see. It was obviously done to bully him.

This article is not an investigation into the murder case, but rather an attempt to look into a couple of documents that might be of use to understand the killing of Prime Minister Palme. There are now declassified documents from the Police Inquiry, partly declassified U.S. and UK documents, there are private documents and leaked documents linked to people from the intelligence services. I will start by looking at the ACC/SOPS document presented by a former CIA officer for Editorial writer Olle Alsén at Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter in the early 1990s. The Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) delt with the Stay Behinds that were initiated in all West-European countries after World War II as armed resistance groups to be activated in case of a Soviet occupation. From the 1960s, some Stay Behinds were also used in the domestic struggle against the Socialists. Special Operation Forces were training with the Stay Behinds and were coordinated by the Special Operations Planning Staff (SOPS). At the ACC/SOPS meetings, there was also a NATO ITAC (Intelligence Tactical Assessment Center) representative from the CIA, who is said to have leaked this document. Some people have dismissed it without a deeper analysis. I am not able to verify it, but my intention here is to try to have a serious look at it rather than brushing it aside or dismissing it.

The ACC/SOPS document

I do not know if the attached ACC/SOPS document is authentic or not. But it is at least possible to have a sincere discussion of it. It is classified as “Cosmic Top Secret”, which is a NATO top secret classification. It originates from ITAC office NATO. It is supposedly from 7 January 1986. It starts with a few concluding points about Norway from the previous page. The documents states:

“N-13. Ingebri[g]tsen to publish series in Aftenposten stressing necessity of naval build-up in Norwegian Sea between Lofoten and Jan Mayen to intersect access of Sov. Northen Fleet, i.e. Typhons based on Kola into Atlantic.

N-14. Willoch will use Ingebri[gtsens] script to compromise Norse Social Dem[ocrats]. All delegates felt it imperative they be denied power since Brun[d]tland party against Lehman plan and likely pro-Sov[iet].

N-15. Norse contact with Hofsten and his group has been established by Bull-Hansen staff to warm campaign for Sweden to join NATO and destab[ilizing] Swedish polit[ical] scene. Funds from Pargesa AS needed (re: Thunholm).

Sweden

Invited participants: [senior Swedish intelligence officer] Adm[ira]l C Algernon on behalf of [Commander-in-Chief] Gen[eral Lennart] Ljung. Discussion centered on condition resulting from further demilit[arization] of Finnmark, which makes northern Sweden crucial for tracking traffic of Kola stationed SSBNs. Monitoring Gremikha activity given top priority. FRG delegate feels that entire Northen Flank in danger due to SPMs [Swedish Prime Minister’s] intent to seek NFZ [Nuclear Free Zone] in Scandinavia. UK delegate sees SPM trip to Moscow SP-86 [Spring 1986 or actually early April 1986] as posing greatest danger to NATO CTMT [Containment] policy if as reported by INTELCENT [Intelligence Centre.] SPM to discuss NATO exit of Norway and Denmark. Belg. (Chair) proposes increased intelligence activity re: SPM staff to ascertain reliability of INTELCEN[T] report. Danish rep. confirms increased activity in SD [Social Democratic] party vs. NATO. Norse rep. intends to supply SOPS names of leading Oslo anti-NATO activists. Chair reiterated seriousness of item under discussion. All reps [representatives] agree. Swedish rep[resentative] stated position of Ljung and key Stockholm friends that SOPS consider SPM internal Swedish problem to be handled by Swedish interests. SOPS agrees so long as threat to Northern Flank is dealt with successfully. Stockholm rep[resentative] to keep SOPS current via Oslo. ITAC introduced report from Tel Aviv re SPM activity in India for Bofors, which was confirmed by Paris. Deal offered India by Bofors reported to include Lg Quan [Large Quantities] WG 235 [Weapons-Grade Uranium 235]. ITAC requested by Chair to obtain confirmation. Näss [Swedish Security Service deputy and liaison to Western security services P-G Näss] to attend next session to report re [Swedish naval bases of] Muskö and Karlskrona incl. renewed effort by SPM to deny NATO sub-fleet access to both by 1986.

Summary and conclusions

S-01: CN [Commander North?] to present SOPS with feasibility study latest 4/86 re elsurv [el-int surveyance] station to monitor Gremikha from Kebnekajse area.

S-02: SOPS to coordinate threat reduction plan re SPM Moscow trip.

S-03: NATO exit plans in Norway and Denmark must be foiled BAMN [by all means necessary].

S-04 Poss[ible] SHPMT [shipment] of WG 235 must be interdicted or contaminated.”

See original below:

At the top of the page, the handwritten text states in Swedish: 
“Tillhör Olle A”, which means “Belongs to [journalist] Olle A[lsén]”.

Originally, many people said that this document could not be authentic, because one could not imagine that Sweden had a representative in a NATO committee (ACC). However, Wolbert Smidt (former director of operative intelligence in the BND) had participated as a German representative in both the ACC (Allied Clandestine Committee) and the CPC (Clandestine Planning Committee). Both committees dealt with Stay Behinds and clandestine operations. The major difference between these committees was that the “neutrals” participated in the ACC, not in CPC, he said in a panel at an intelligence conference in Oslo, 28 April – 1 May 2005. Of course, there were other differences, but the fact that the “neutrals” (incl. Sweden) participated in the ACC meetings was most significant.

ACC would deal with Stay Behinds and training for the Stay Behinds, also in Sweden with infiltration and exfiltration of Special Forces from submarine or from small airplane (such airplanes were in mid-1970s mistaken for being used in drug smuggling and the responsible British staffs may, because of that, have put more emphasis in using submarines for landing Special Forces). The Stay Behinds in Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway and probably Denmark) was British responsibility using Royal Navy Porpoise and Oberon class submarines (see below). One captain of an Oberon class submarine told me that he was just a “taxi driver” for the Special Forces (SBS or Special Boat Service) both along the Norwegian coast and in the Baltic along the Swedish coast. In private talks with Smidt at the conference in Oslo and later at his home in Berlin, he told me that the CPC was “more interesting” to him, because SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) himself was chairing the meetings, while the ACC had a rotating chairmanship. Smidt also said that the submarines used for infiltration & exfiltration of Special Forces into Sweden and Norway, were not the same submarines that had shown periscopes or even sails in Swedish archipelagoes and naval bases. The submarines operating for the ACC/SOPS (with Special Forces training with the Stay Behinds) never appeared on the surface, he said. That was at least his understanding The submarines that revealed themselves were other submarines (see below). In addition, Ingemar Engman, close assistant to Swedish Defence Minister Sven Andersson (1957-73) and later Assistant Secretary of Defense for Defense Material and responsible for classified accounts at the Swedish Defence Ministry, also pointed to Swedish participation in such a NATO committee. He brought it up with Ambassador Rolf Ekéus, for his official Swedish Submarine Inquiry in 2001 and his Cold War Inquiry 2002-03, but Ekéus had no other source confirming this claim at the time, and he never brought it up in the reports (I was civilian expert to the Submarine Inquiry for half a year 2000-01).

Not many people knew about SOPS (NATO Special Operations Planning Staff). It was certainly involved in these operations because Special Operations Forces were used in contacting and training with local Stay Behinds. That Western submarine operations in Swedish waters – at the naval bases of Muskö and Karlskrona – were discussed in an ACC/SOPS document is logical. Swedish participation in this committee, in ACC is a fact and ACC had to coordinate with SOPS (as ACC/SOPS), but this was very sensitive. The committee was obviously worried about Palme bringing up the use of Western submarines in Swedish waters in the upcoming meeting in April with Gorbachev in Moscow.

Oswald LeWinter (who handed over the document to Dagens Nyheter journalist Olle Alsén in Sweden) was certainly from the CIA. Alsén had received the contact through the BBC journalist Allan Francovich, who had interviewed LeWinter for his 1992 BBC documentary on the European Stay Behinds. The film was called “Operation Gladio” after the Italian Stay Behinds. They had been used in domestic killings in the 1960s and 1970s to create chaos to justify emergency measures. LeWinter had also discussed the British and U.S. division of labor with the former running Stay behinds in Scandinavia and the Low countries, while the latter having main responsibility for Southern Europe and Germany. It is clear that several things in the ACC/SOPS document would not have been possible to obtain without special access. LeWinter claims that ITAC was linked to ACC, and that ITAC had a CIA representative at the meetings including LeWinter himself in late 1970s to early 1980s. He had participated in the ACC/SOPS meetings, but he had left this position in early 1980s. He might have received the document from his successor.

Alsén presented LeWinter to Ingemar Engman. He was “genuine”, Engman told. LeWinter’s description of the Swedish participants, their behavior, was correct. His description of Lieutenant General Sven-Olof Olson (former Commander Southern Military District and Chief of Air Force) was to the point. LeWinter had clearly experienced meetings with him and others. LeWinter was not a “fake”, although some of his information might have been false leads. For example, he might have been forced to present false information to discredit his earlier statements. LeWinter has been described as “an agent of disinformation”, but this is also a usual way to discredit a source. In addition, others have received the same document from other sources. Daniele Ganser and Mats Deland argued in Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies (2010) that there were two other sources to this document: “both with secret services background”. We cannot exclude that this ACC/SOPS document is authentic. One has to analyze each statement or each particular document to find out what might be true or not.

I spoke with former Chief of the Norwegian Military Intelligence Service, Rear Admiral Jan Ingebrigtsen (1979-85), who was mentioned in this document. His reaction to the document was: “It should not come into the hands of a journalist”. He thought that the document was authentic. He had written these articles mentioned in the document, he knew Algernon from such meetings, and several other things were apparently correct. In 1986, Jan Ingebrigtsen had recently left the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) and the claim in the document that Prime Minister Kåre Willoch was willing to use “Ingebrigtsen script” appeared credible to him. Kåre Willoch did not trust the Labor Party, when it came to a nuclear weapons-free zone and when it came to the U.S. maritime strategy, and Kåre Willoch would have used texts by Ingebrigtsen as background information for the Norwegian debate. I used to meet Kåre Willoch regularly, but he argued that when it came to sensitive matters, he usually did not want to know about it.

I also spoke with a friend of mine and successor of Ingebrigtsen, the Chief of Norwegian Military Intelligence Major General Alf Roar Berg (1988-93). He said that he didn’t know whether the document was authentic or not. He did not exclude that this ACC/SOPS document was a genuine document. Nothing in the style of the document had surprised him. He was called around 01.00 AM in the night about the murder of Olof Palme. He was at the time heading the Analysis Section of the Intelligence Service (1986-88 and before that he had had the relevant position in the Defence Ministry, 1984-85). On a later occasion, he also mentioned that there was a system for taking out people, people who did not follow the rules, for example, if they were speaking out about classified matters. One example from a third source seemed to indicate that one might have used assassins from other countries to carry out these kinds of tasks, because in general it is more difficult to carry out such operations against one’s own people. Ingebrigtsen said he usually did not participate in these ACC meetings himself. He sent his subordinate, his director for this section (the head of the Stay Behinds) to these meetings.

I had some talks with a couple of former chiefs of Stay Behinds but not about Olof Palme. One of these officers I met a conferences, receptions and dinners, and I actually had a lunch with him when I intended to show him the ACC/SOPS document, but he did not tell the truth about the use of British Oberon class submarines to land Special Forces in Norway, and there was no point to bring up the above document with him. Afterwards, I thought it might have been a mistake., because he would have been the Norwegian representative at the meeting. The other chief of Stay Behinds had kept close ties to the British and he knew about their use of Oberon class submarines along the Norwegian coast. He had had close ties with John Venning, the MI6 Chief of Station in Oslo. MI6 had convinced him to use a criminal to make a break-in into Norwegian military weapons storages to steal weapons for the Irish IRA, perhaps to be able to track the route for the transfer of weapons to the IRA and/or to be able to discredit the IRA for stealing Norwegian weapons. His chief, the director of NIS, Alf Roar Berg heard rumors about the use of the criminal Espen Lie, but Berg’s subordinate had then denied everything. When it was revealed in the media in 1991, Berg had to replace him (he became a teacher at the Defence College). This was already published in Norwegian newspapers at the time.

I met Venning’s successor at cafés and parties, and I had him for dinner at home once, after the Belgium former Socialist Party Foreign Minister Willy Claes had been appointed NATO Secretary General. Claes had been President for the European Socialists; he refused to participate in the 1991 Gulf War; and he sought a diplomatic solution to the Bosnia War. My MI6 friend told me that Claes was unacceptable from a British point of view, but the British couldn´t veto him. They had already “used up their veto”, he said. Some weeks later, the “Augusta Affair” blew up in the face of Willy Claes. As a Belgium minister, he had been involved in buying Augusta helicopters from Italy, which had included some bribes, which forced Claes to leave his position as NATO Secretary General. The leak about the bribes would most likely have been planted by the British. The problem with Olof Palme seems to have been that he wasn’t corrupt enough. In this case, in the case of Willy Claes, corruption appears as a “life insurance”, and the bribes to Claes may have saved his life.

I also spoke with General Fredrik Bull-Hansen, who had been predecessor to Ingebrigtsen as Chief of Norwegian Intelligence Service (1977-79). In 1986, he was Norway´s Chief of Defence (the top general in 1984-87), and he is mentioned in the ACC/SOPS document in connection with Hans von Hofsten, who was a harsh critic of Olof Palme and who had organized the Swedish “Naval officers’ revolt” against Olof Palme in collaboration with the Swedish journalist and later Press Secretary to Prime Minister Carl Bildt, Lars Christiansson. It is not far-fetched that von Hofsten had tried to get some contacts in Norway at the Defence Staff. Bull-Hansen did not believe that the document was authentic. The document, however, does not state that von Hofsten had been in contact with Bull-Hansen himself, but rather with an officer at the Norwegian Defence Staff. I don’t think Bull-Hansen lied to me. He may simply not have been aware of von Hofsten’s activities. He actually told me at a reception that, after the Cold War, one had to start from scratch and to be more open about what had happened in these years. Someone else, who participated in our conversation, became worried and tipped off another intelligence officer about what Bull-Hansen had said. Bull-Hansen also told me about a secret MI6 office at the NATO Northern Command in Oslo at Kolsås (inside the mountain of Kolsås). He said that this office had been running irregular activities. In 1986, Bull-Hansen had turned to its British Commander-in-Chief (General Geoffrey Howlett) and demanded that he stopped this irregular MI6 activity. According to Bull-Hansen, this MI6 office was then closed down.

This is interesting. A MI6 agent in Stockholm, Mac Falkirk, claimed that MI6 had been running him from MI6’s office, the “Office of Policy Studies” at Kolsås (not from the MI6-office in Stockholm). At first, I was skeptical about the existence of this office. I had never heard about it, and I thought this was a weak point in his story, but Bull-Hansen confirmed its existence and that they were running irregular operations. Falkirk had first told the Dagens Nyheter journalist Cecilia Steen-Johnsson, whom he had known for perhaps 20 years, and she put him in contact with Olle Alsén (according to Alsén’s documents and the Review Commission of the Palme Inquiry). Christer Larsson at Swedish Radio researched the case in cooperation with Alsén and Göran Beckérus at Dagens Nyheter. Larsson wrote a relatively detailed report on their research in 1992. Falkirk’s female source at the Prime Minister’s Office had (in autumn 1985) succeeded in bringing him the secret agenda for Olof Palme’s upcoming Moscow meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in early April 1986. Falkirk had copied the agenda in “their shop” at Drottninggatan (close to the Prime Minister’s Office). The agenda had several points, but one point supposedly stated that they were going to discuss the security of the Nordic region and if possibly Norway and Denmark could leave NATO, according to Johnsson. Larsson also writes about another MI6 agent who seemingly confirms the shop at Drottninggatan and that they had copied the agenda. Shortly afterwards, Falkirk was informed that the document had been used by the CIA Station Chief in Stockholm to discredit Palme before senior Swedish naval officers at a U.S. Embassy reception (the naval officers might have been then Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Bengt Schuback and his predecessor Vice Admiral Per Rudberg). Johnsson knew people who had been informed about it at the Swedish Navy’s Lucia festivities on 13 December. Rumors had spread to the Naval Officers’ Club in Stockholm. One had considered Palme a traitor. “He should be shot”, some people said. Falkirk had gotten bad feelings about the whole thing. He believed that he in some way had been used in the attempt to target Palme. A week after the murder, Falkirk had had a lunch with Sven O. Andersson (Sweden’s Chief of Psychological Defence) and with former Defence Minister and Foreign Minister Sven Andersson at a China restaurant at Odengatan (at Odenplan; see Olle Alsén’s notes “The Falkirk document”). Sven O. Andersson supposedly said: “if the Swedish people will get to know the truth about the murder of Olof Palme, Sweden will not be the same in hundred years”. Sven Andersson died the following year, and Sven O Andersson died the year after (When writing this, I am sitting in the apartment below Sven O Andersson’s apartment that he had before he died). Later, Falkirk told the Swedish Review Commission that he just made up the story, but that would have been an agent’s obvious response to any official commission and the existence of the secret MI6 office at Kolsås was not something he made up, and the other MI6 officer seems to have confirmed the statement from Falkirk. Palme’s agenda for the Moscow meeting, which would bring up Norway and Denmark in NATO coincides with one of the most important points in the ACC/SOPS document above and it is explicit in another ACC/SOPS document below. Falkirk seemingly confirms these documents.

Rear Admiral Carl-Fredrik Algernon is mentioned in the January document as the Swedish representative to the ACC/SOPS meeting. Admiral Ingebrigtsen knew Algernon. He had met him as a most senior intelligence officer several times, and he told me a story when they met at the Kastrup airport in Copenhagen. Algernon was at the time heading the National Swedish War Materials Inspectorate (1981-87) dealing with clearances for Swedish export of defense material. As a former senior intelligence officer, he could easily have been the Swedish representative at ACC meetings. This seems credible, and it was obviously credible to Ingebrigtsen. Norwegian Finnmark at the border to the Soviet Union, was not “demilitarized”, as stated in the ACC/SOPS document, but Norway had not deployed a strong military force in this county. The real Norwegian defense line was further west, because of topography. The Americans and the British would definitely speak about Finnmark as “demilitarized”. At a Harvard-U.S. Navy Conference on Iceland in 1987, Jacob Børresen, Military Assistant to Norway’s Defense Minister Johan Jørgen Holst, mentioned Norway’s policy for Finnmark. U.S. Navy Admiral Paul Butcher leaned over to the Dean of Naval War College Robert Wood: “Did you hear what he said”, Butcher whispered (Wood told me in 1989). They went to a hotel room with Sweden’s later Prime Minister Carl Bildt and drafted a U.S. note of protest against Norway, which confirms that they were unhappy about what the ACC/SOPS document called a “demilitarized Finnmark”. In addition, the Americans would most likely want to have a Swedish backup for Norway’s signal intelligence base at Vadsø in Finnmark to “monitor Gremikha activity” (the new naval base on Kola Peninsula east of Murmansk) and other activities. This is very likely, but I don’t know the details. However, I was told in late 1980s by Algernon’s man, former Deputy Chief of Defence Staff Intelligence Björn Eklind, that the Swedes did follow Soviet activities on Kola from somewhere in the north of Sweden.

Many explicit claims in this ACC/SOPS-document are credible and possible to verify, and it is a fact that the Swedish banker Lars-Erik Thunholm, who is mentioned in the document, participated in a campaign against Prime Minister Palme to “destabilize Swedish political scene”. Thunholm was the Chairman of the Board of the Wallenberg bank Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) 1976-84, which show the significant role of leading Swedish industrialists. An earlier document from the ACC/SOPS meeting 15 December speaks about the role of Swedish industrialists. LeWinter’s reading from this document was tape-recorded by Olle Alsén.

ACC/SOPS document (page 2 of 9) obtained by Patrik Baab for his and Harkavy’s book Im Spinnennetz der Geheimdienste: Warum wurden Olof Palme, Uwe Barschel und William Colby ermordert? (Frankfurt: Westend, 2017), p. 368.

The German journalist Patrik Baab was able to get hold of a copy of this document for his book on the killing of Olof Palme, et.al. Baab’s source was not LeWinter or anyone connected to him. His document was from a very different source, but it is the same document, the same wording. Olle Alsén’s transcript has a few language mistakes (incl. the name of “Kashoggi”), and it includes additional half a page that brings up SPM’s (Olof Palme’s) financial support for the Mandela group in South Africa and for pro-Moscow elements in Angola and Namibia as well as commercial activities indicating transfer of weapons-grade uranium to India and weapons to Iran. The document states that SOPS will send two people, including the ITAC representative, to the Yggdrasil meeting to be held in Wiltshire west of London, in the first quarter of 1986. The attendees are Swedish bankers and industrialists. “Host P [Erik Penser, Bofors], P.G. [Pehr G. Gyllenhammar, Volvo], C.N. [Curt Nicolin, ASEA later ABB], Göran E. [Göran Ennerfelt for Antonia Ax:son Johnsson (shipping)], Mats L [Mats Lundberg] for C.U.V. [Claes-Ulrik Winberg, Bofors], P.W. [Peter Wallenberg (SAAB and Enskilda Banken)], T.S. [?] and a general. Top item on the agenda will be rept. [report] on Näss [Swedish Security Service deputy and liaison to Western security services P-G. Näss] Beirut activity w. [with] respect to SPM [Olof Palme]”. Yggdrasil AB was a Penser company in control of Bofors arms manufacturer. “Chair is reminded by US rep that joint US-UK effort has resulted in obtaining copy of secret SPM [Swedish Prime Minister] agenda for Moscow mtg [meeting] in spring 86 [1986] from contact on staff SPM. Agenda confirms presumptions made earlier this year (ref: MS/7851Ø) by UK rep Re: Threat to NATO Northern Flank. Current status of above makes it imperative that ‘Operation Tree [Palm Tree]’ be carried out successfully. SOPS has been assured that arm’s length will be maintained to insure deniability. Project management is local [organized in Sweden], technicians [assassins or executors] imported. SOPS requires details to be kept fully compartmented on need to know basis. Dutch [representative, ACC/SOPS] feels it necessary to reiterate that the connection between SOPS and Yggdrasil group is completely informal and not officially acknowledged or sanctioned by member governments.” The document speaks about the role of Swedish industrialists incl. Wallenberg, the role of P-G Näss, the UK and U.S. obtaining a copy of the SPM agenda for the Moscow meeting with Gorbachev, the “threat to the Northern Flank”, the uranium to India and that the Swedish Palm “Tree” has to fall. Everything is in line with the January 1986 document but also with the claims about the secret agenda made by Mac Falkirk of MI6.

The Swedish Secretary General for Civil Defence Karl-Gunnar Bäck was a couple of days after the murder informed by another British MI6 agent, who claimed to have specific knowledge about the people that were organising the killing og Olof Palme. He spoke about a group of Swedish businessmen that were in contact with the South African Security Service and some individual Swedish police officers with links to the Swedish Security Service. This information apparently confirms information from the ACC/SOPS documents. Bäck tape-records his information and handed it in to the Security Service, where everything disappeared.

According to Olle Alsén and Dagens Nyheter, Lars-Erik Thunholm and the Wallenbergs largely financed Alf Enerström’s and Gio Petré’s media campaign with regular advertisements in major newspapers against Prime Minister Palme (see below). Petré had been living with Enerström for 27 years before she married Thunholm. The fact that Wallenberg group financed this campaign was also confirmed by the Review Commission on the murder of Olof Palme. Algernon fell in front of a subway train a year later in January 1987 and died. He had been planning his holiday. Eklind, who knew him well, said: if he had wanted to commit suicide, he would have used his service weapon and definitely not throw himself in front of a train. He considered the official claim of suicide as nonsense.

The January ACC/SOPS document about the Norwegian scene states in N-14: “Willoch will use Ingebri[gtsens] script to compromise Norse Social Dem[ocrat]s. All delegates felt it imperative they be denied power since Brun[d]tland party against Lehman plan and likely pro-Sov[iet].”

This must be read in context. The “Lehman plan” or the U.S. Maritime Strategy would escalate any US-Soviet conflict on the Central Front or in the Middle East to Northern Norway and instead of nuclear “vertical escalation” on, for example, the Central Front, U.S. Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, had succeeded to change U.S. strategy to pursue “horizontal escalation”, to move the U.S.-Soviet conflict to the area where the Soviet Union was most vulnerable, to the Kola Peninsula, including attacking the strategic submarines (the SSBNs) based at Murmansk and Gremikha. This would immediately move the conflict to the Northern Norway, which would not be in Norway’s interest. The Social Democrats with the head of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee and later Foreign Minister Knud Frydenlund was critical to the “Lehman plan”, and he sent his close advisor Sverre Jervell to Harvard to find out what the U.S. Navy and the CIA were really up to, because he did not trust what the Americans told Norwegian military officers. The Norwegian Social Democrats did not want to provoke the Soviets; they wanted to have a dialogue with them, but they were not “pro-Soviet”. However, the more rightwing circles in the U.S. and the UK would definitely consider this approach “pro-Soviet” in line with the statement: “Either you are with us, or against us”. In other words, this claim in the document is quite plausible.

I always thought that the least credible claim in the January 1986 document was its worry about a Nordic Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (NFZ). Such a “peace policy” would never have been accepted by the Nordic NATO elites. The whole thing was exaggerated, and the exit of Norway and Denmark from NATO would not happen. Claims that “the entire Northern Flank [was] in danger due to SPMs [Swedish Prime Minister’s] intend to seek NWZ [Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone] in Scandinavia” were not serious. A discussion about a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone had supposedly been mentioned in Olof Palme’s secret agenda for the meeting with Gorbachev in April and this had infuriated Swedish naval representatives. The ACC/SOPS document’s statement, “NATO exit plan in Norway and Denmark must be foiled BAMN [By All Means Necessary]”, seemed pretty far-fetched to me in the 1990s. Mac Falkirk claimed that Social Democrats close to the Danish leftwing Minister of Social Affairs, Ritt Bjerregaard and close to Norway’s Labor Party Leader Reiulf Steen wanted a nuclear weapons free zone, but the security elite in these countries would never accept such a proposal. At the time, I thought that this was the weakest point of the document. It made it less credible. I told that to the Dagens Nyheter journalists Olle Alsén and Göran Beckérus in the 1990s.

However, after reading a number of documents from the British Foreign Office from late 1970s and early 1980s that journalist Pelle Neroth found at the British National Archives, I had to change my mind. The British worry about a Nordic Zone was real. To state that Olof Palme’s trip to Moscow would pose a great danger to NATO’s Northern Flank appears stupid to put it mildly, but the British and U.S. side believed in the necessity of confrontation. They were genuinely worried about the anti-nuclear campaign in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, which was clearly expressed in the British documents. The British wanted the campaign to be foiled “by all means necessary”. In his 1981 New Years speech, Norway’s Prime Minister, Odvar Nordli, spoke about a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone. The US Secretary of State Alexander Haig hit the roof, the aid to Norway’s Foreign Minister told me. The Norwegians were on a “slippery slope”, one British Foreign Office document claimed. One had to speak harshly with the Norwegians, and the Swedes were even worse. Nordli left office a month later. The Labor Party Chairman, Reiulf Steen, also spoke about a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone, while the British supported Vice Chairman Gro Harlem Brundtland, who was married to International Affairs scholar Arne Olav Brundtland. I knew Arne Olav well. He was in favor of a détente policy, but he certainly favored a strong NATO. Nordli and Steen had to leave months later and were replaced by Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The January ACC/SOPS document concludes that some “responsible Swedish officers” will take care of SPM (Olof Palme), to handle the “threat to the Northern Flank”. This is logical, and the alternative would be to let foreign forces take care of “SPM”, which would have constituted a foreign attack on the State of Sweden. It is obvious that the Swedish military representative preferred to handle “SPM” as “an internal Swedish problem” and the ACC/SOPS-meeting apparently supported this as “long as the threat to the Northern Flank is dealt with successfully”, as stated in the document. The main responsibility for the operation against “SPM” was delegated to Sweden although one may have planned to use a foreign assassin.

The claim that Olof Palme had tried to stop Western subs “access to” Swedish naval bases is also almost certainly true, and it is very likely that he would discuss this issue in Moscow. At the time, he had been briefed by several individuals telling him that the intruding subs were not Soviet vessels as his former defense and foreign minister Sven Andersson had told him. They were from the West. From Autumn 1983, he received credible information stating that the submarines were from the West. They had been used by the U.S. and the UK to make the Swedes believe in an imminent Soviet threat in order to “disarm” the anti-nuclear weapons campaign and to disrupt Prime Minister Olof Palme’s dialogue with the Soviet Union. These Western submarines acting as Soviet subs were at least partly directed against Prime Minister Palme. His intention to bring it up with Gorbachev in early April 1986 would have been enough of a reason to eliminate him.

The January ACC/SOPS document states: “Näss to attend next session”. Per-Göran or P-G. Näss was a top-representative of the Swedish Security Service (SÄK or SÄPO), and Swedish liaison to the Western services. Together with another senior security service representative, Christer Ekberg, he had been to Beirut in an attempt to recruit a suitable assassin, Alsén writes. The report from Näss was also brought up in the ACC/SOPS document from December 1985. This report was supposed to be a major issue in the upcoming Yggdrasil meeting outside London.

Alsén and two other Swedish journalists (Göran Beckérus and Christer Larsson) tried to test LeWinter’s credibility by asking him to come up with information on two Swedish generals (former Chief of Intelligence Major General Bengt Wallroth and Major General Ragnar Persson), which he did, and he presented some details of their carriers although Wallroth’s “CV” contained more information. But another Swedish journalist claimed that LeWinter had spoken with him and asked about the two generals, which made the others suspicious. However, the claim from the latter journalist did not make sense, because he had no special access, and the documents presented by LeWinter gave some details of the careers of the two Swedish generals. This information seems to have been genuine, but the three journalists (or at least Beckérus and Larsson) were still worried, because they could not confirm this information. Some people tried to disconfirm the document by claiming that one of the generals, Ragnar Persson, had not been a Swedish general at all, but that was not true. He was, and we also have to think about the hidden agenda among the people who tried to discredit such information.

Finally, the January ACC/SOPS document’s statement of Olof Palme’s offer of “Lg Quan WG 235” (Large Quantities of Weapons Grade Uranium 235) to India to finalize the Bofors artillery deal in 1985-86 is also controversial. The documents states: “ITAC introduced report from Tel-Aviv re SPM [Olof Palme’s] activity in India for Bofors which was confirmed by Paris. Deal offered India by Bofors reported to include Lg Quan WG 235 [Large quantities of weapon-grade uranium 235].” Paris would know something about it, because the French company that tried to sell its artillery, had already concluded a deal with India, they believed, and they had offered huge bribes. They understood that something was seriously wrong with the Swedish offer, and the Israelis may possibly have known because of a leak in Sweden. The December 1985 document also states that “UK rep offered confirmation of Swedish shipment of WG 235 to New Delhi. SIS [MI6] rept. States shipment made via FRG (Kiel).”

Several people have rejected the claim that Sweden had offered “Weapons Grade Uranium” as totally implausible. However, a very competent person at the Defence Ministry in Stockholm told me that Olof Palme had demanded, and succeeded, in reducing the bribes for the Indian purchase of the Bofors artillery, lowering them from 17 % to 7 %. The Swedish–Indian several billion-dollar contract was important. It was a huge sum at the time, and some people supposedly lost a large amount of money (some British players were supposedly left out), because of Olof Palme’s intervention. The French had offered enormous amounts of bribes. The question we have to ask us is the following: what did the Swedes or rather Olof Palme offer instead? Palme had been directly involved in the Swedish nuclear weapons program in the 1950-60s. The program had been closed down or rather “put on ice” in mid-1960s, and of course one can imagine that he, in the mid-1980s wanted to get rid of it. This would have been an offer Rajiv Gandhi could not resist. I asked responsible people on the Indian side, also the “father” of the Indian nuclear weapons program. He said that this, if true, would have been something between Olof Palme and Rajiv Gandhi. He had not purchased the nuclear material, he said. He did not know about its origin, but the timing fits with Indian nuclear program, which really started in late 1980s. If it is true that Palme offered what was left over of the Swedish nuclear weapons program, this would explain several things. A friend of mine, Einar Ansteensen (head of Political Section and the Planning Section in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 15 years) was also a friend of Olof Palme. According to Ansteensen, Palme had told him that he felt a bit schizophrenic, because he was “walking in peace demonstrations during the day while selling weapons at night”. Ansteensen had been the mentor of the Norwegian foreign ministers Knud Frydenlund and Thorvald Stoltenberg. He was stationed in Stockholm in the early 1980s, and I had a lot of talks with him at seminars and at the home of a common friend. It is obvious that Olof Palme thought it was necessary to support Bofors, and that this was part of a Swedish “Realpolitik” that he couldn’t escape.