Dr. Wilhelm Agrell
Lund University, Sweden

Notes

1 The debate on the changing intelligence agendas has been dominated by an American perspective; see Roy Godson et. al. US Intelligence at the Crossroads, Brasseys 1995. It is notable that a number of books published in Sweden have focused more on strategic intelligence for private enterprise than on national intelligence.

2 See Stephen Dorril, The Silent Conspiracy, Mandarin 1995 that deals with the problems of legality and political control in British counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism in the 1970s and 80s.

3 The leading Swedish business bank Skandinaviska banken introduced an intelligence department in the 1990s. The department was not new; it originated from one established in the 1920s, but the name Internal Statistics was chosen as a euphemism.

4 Swedish intelligence archives from the Cold War have only recently been available for research. No major overview similar to the ones published on Norwegian and Finnish intelligence yet exists. The Second World War is dealt with in Wilhelm Carlgren, Svensk underrättelsetjänst 1939-1944, Liber 1985. An insight into the secret intelligence service in the first two post-war decades is given in the posthumously published memoirs of the director 1946-1965: Thede Palm, Nagra studier till T-kontorets historia, The War Archives 1999.

5 The first known photograph of the Soviet Tu 126 Backfire bomber was, for example, taken in the mid 1970s by a pair of Swedish fighters that intercepted the bomber on a trial run over the eastern Baltics.

6 The former director of the secret intelligence service IB, Birger Elmér, in 1993 informed a government investigation commission that the Social Democratic Party could draw on a network of 20,000 informers that covered virtually every state and private enterprise in the country. This vast network was co-employed by IB.

7 Den militära underrättelsetjänsten. Betänkande av 1974 ars underrättelseutredning. Sveriges Offentliga Utredningar 1976:19. This is the declassified version of the report; the full version is still classified. Some of the annexes were only recently released (see below).

8 The historian, Stig Ekman, was not able to publish his investigation; classified as top secret, it took him more than twenty years to get a declassified version released with large deletions. This declassified version was eventually published under the title Den militära underrätelsetjänsten. Fem kriser under det kalla kriget (The Military Intelligence Service. Five crises during the Cold War), Carlssons, 2000.

9 The US intelligence community experienced a similar failure, but with more devastating consequences for national security. See Iran: Evaluation of US Intelligence Performance Prior to November 1978. Permanent Select Committee of Intelligence. US House of Representatives 1979.

10 Underrättelsetjänsten - en översyn. Betänkande av 1996 ars underrättelsekommitté. Statens Offentliga Utredningar 1999:37.