The Impact of a High-Tech Spy

Abstract

Air Force colonel Stig Wennerström was the most dangerous spy to Sweden in the Cold War era. His espionage was found to have been especially crippling to the Swedish air defence and its high-tech systems. That is where repair work was seen to be most urgent. As the politicians turned down appeals for extra funding, it was up to the military system itself to handle the situation. In spite of this, the Supreme Commander appears not to have pressed for Air Force priority to repair resources. The service's proportion of the defence budget did not increase, and other quantitative and qualitative evidence points to a similar lack of Air Force priority. Three theoretical approaches are used to explain how this failure to act could have come about. A rationality model is discussed and compared to an organizational competition approach and to an approach based on the character of key individuals.

Acknowledgements

I have received helpful comments from a number of persons contributing to the site www.fht.nu: Göran Kihlström, Claes Ronge, Ingemar Carlsson, Bengt Myhrberg, Karl Gardh and Rune Erlandsson.

Notes

¹The Wennerström archive, The Military Archives of Sweden (Stockholm; hereafter WA). Vol. 70 (hereafter just number), ÖB-utlåtande 28/2 1964.

²Stig Wennerström, Från början till slutet (Stockholm: Bonniers 1972) p.239.

³Ibid., pp.113–116

⁴Ibid., p.202

⁵Thomas Whiteside, An Agent in Place (London: Heinemann 1966).

⁶Jerker Widén, ‘The Wennerström Spy Case: A Western Perspective’, Intelligence and National Security 21 (2006) pp.935–936.

⁷Jerker Widén, Väktare, ombud, kritiker: Sverige i amerikanskt säkerhetstänkande 1961–68 (Stockholm: Santérus 2009).

⁸Jan Wangenfors, ‘Wennerströmaffären’, Militärhistorisk Tidskrift (1999) pp.131–180.

⁹Widén, ‘The Wennerström Spy Case’, p.954.

¹⁰Wangenfors, ‘Wennerströmaffären’, p.167.

¹¹Anders Sundelin, Fallet Wennerström (Stockholm: Pan 2000) pp.304–305.

¹²Magnus Petersson and Lars Ulfving, ‘Wennerströmaffären – ett nationellt trauma’, Militärhistorisk Tidskrift (2001) pp.73–90.

¹³B.-G. Bergstrand, Svenska försvarssatsningar under åren 1947–2009 (Stockholm: FOI (The Swedish Defence Research Agency) Memo 2067 2007) p.51.

¹⁴A key volume for this article (Volume 70) was declassified as late as 2001.

¹⁵<www.fht.nu>.

¹⁶Johan Gribbe (ed.), JA 37: Pilot och system (Stockholm: TRITA/HST 2008); Mikael Nilsson (ed.), Sambandssystem 9000 ur ett användarperspektiv (Stockholm: TRITA/HST 2008).

¹⁷Ingemar Dörfer, System 37 Viggen. Arms, Technology and the Domestication of Glory (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget Oslo-Bergen-Tromsø 1973); Johan Gribbe, Stril 60 (Möklinta: Gidlunds förlag 2011).

¹⁸Tommy Pettersson, Med invasionen i sikte (Stockholm: Svenskt militärhistoriskt biblioteks förlag 2009).

¹⁹Petter Wulff, Spioneriets följder. Wennerström och försvarsplaneringen (Stockholm: FOID–0034–SE 2002) pp.8–10.

²⁰Ibid., p.15.

²¹Håkan Jarmar, ‘Torsten Rapp som ÖB. En studie av maktens fördelning inom det militära försvaret under 1960-talet’, Militärhistorisk Tidskrift (2005) p.76.

²²WA 70, ÖB-utlåtande 28/2 1964.

²³Per Lundin, Niklas Stenlås and Johan Gribbe (eds.), Science for Welfare and Warfare. Technology and State Initiative in Cold War Sweden (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications 2010).

²⁴Petter Wulff, ‘Sweden and Clandestine German Rearmament Technology’, ICON, Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology 11 (2005) pp.218–234.

²⁵Lennart Andersson, Svenska flygplan (Stockholm: Allt om hobby 1990) p.208; see also Lundin, Stenlås and Gribbe, Science for Welfare and Warfare.

²⁶Gribbe, JA 37, p.32; Nilsson, Sambandssystem 9000, p.16.

²⁷Mikael Nilsson, Tools of Hegemony. Military Technology and Swedish-American Security Relations 1945–1962 (Stockholm: Santérus 2007). He discusses Sweden's dependence on US defence technology. Gribbe, Stril 60, discusses the dependence on English defence technology.

²⁸Gunnar Åselius, ‘Swedish Strategic Culture after 1945’, Cooperation and Conflict 40 (2005) p.28.

²⁹ Utlåtande av juristkommissionen i Wennerströmaffären (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt & söner 1964).

³⁰WA 76, part 11, 9/3 1964.

³¹WA 70, 28/2 1964.

³²WA 76, part 4, 23/3 1964.

³³Gribbe, JA 37, pp.27, 32.

³⁴WA 74, F.1, 25/7 1963.

³⁵WA 74, L, November 1963.

³⁶WA 74, A, 4/1 1964.

³⁷WA 70, 28/2 1964.

³⁸Ron Westrum, Creative Missile Development at China Lake (Annapolis, MD: Naval Inst. Press 1999) p.206; Nilsson, Tools of Hegemony, pp.325–326.

³⁹WA 76, 10, 9/3 1964.

⁴⁰WA 74, D, 18/9 1963.

⁴¹WA 74, M, 9/8 1963.

⁴²WA 76, 23, 15/4 1964, attachment 6.

⁴³WA 204, 25/1 1964.

⁴⁴Ulla Lindström, Och regeringen satt kvar! Ur min politiska dagbok 1960–1967 (Stockholm: Bonniers 1970) p.215.

⁴⁵Ibid., p.220.

⁴⁶The Military Archives of Sweden, Försvarsstaben, C-exp, Rödkoncept 1964, 18/9 1964.

⁴⁷Lindström, Och regeringen satt kvar!, pp.220–221.

⁴⁸Bertil Wennerholm (ed.), Snabbare, högre och starkare? Air Force Witness Seminar (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan 2005) p.61.

⁴⁹Ibid., p.147.

⁵⁰Herman Fältström (ed.), Rätt sort, kom för sent och var för få. Navy Witness Seminar (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan 2005) p.18.

⁵¹<http://www.fht.nu/fvdokument.html> (see document: Spaningsradar PS-65/F).

⁵²Pettersson, Med invasionen i sikte, p.95.

⁵³Nils Bruzelius, ‘Near Friendly or Neutral Shores’. The Deployment of the Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines and US Policy towards Scandinavia, 1957–1963 (Stockholm: TRITA-HOT 2053, 2007).

⁵⁴US interest in Sweden at the time is evidenced by the documents NSC 6006/1 (an annex to Swedish Government Official Report SOU 1994:11) and Guidelines for Policy and Operations, June 1962 (an annex to SOU 2002:108).

⁵⁵Widén, Väktare, ombud, kritiker, p.221.

⁵⁶Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision. Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Longman 1999).

⁵⁷Ibid., p.15.

⁵⁸Brita Schwarz, ‘Programme Budgeting and/or Long-Range Planning’, Trends in Planning (Stockholm: FOA 1977) p.37.

⁵⁹Lennart Grape, Brita Schwarz and Gunnar Tidner, Principer för vapenvärderingar och stridsekonomiska beräkningar (Stockholm: FOA P rapport A 110 1960) p.9; they build on the theory in John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944).

⁶⁰Lindström, Och regeringen satt kvar! p.215; The Military Archives of Sweden, Fst centralexpedition, BI, vol 92, 18/9 1964.

⁶¹Allison and Zelikow, Essence of Decision, p.180.

⁶²This is one of the findings of so-called Prospect Theory developed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.

⁶³WA 204, PM 25/1 1964.

⁶⁴The concept is discussed in the dissertation Expertise and Political Rationality, treating the Swedish Navy in the Interwar years; Anders Berge, Sakkunskap och politisk rationalitet (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International 1987).

⁶⁵Sheila Jasanoff (ed.), States of Knowledge. The Co-production of Science and Social Order (London/New York: Routledge 2004).

⁶⁶Karl Ydén, Kriget och karriärsystemet: Försvarsmaktens organiserande i fred, unpublished dissertation (Gothenburg University 2008).

⁶⁷John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, ‘Institutionalized Organisations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony’, American Journal of Sociology 82 (1977).

⁶⁸Olof Ruin, Tage Erlander: Serving the Welfare State, 1946–1969 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 1990) p.132.

⁶⁹The Military Archives of Sweden, Rapp archive, 5, notes from meeting 23/10 1963.

⁷⁰Jarmar, ‘Torsten Rapp som ÖB’, p.94.

⁷¹Stig Norén, ‘Torsten Rapp’, Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon 29 (Stockholm: Svenskt biografiskt lexikon 1997).

⁷²Jarmar, ‘Torsten Rapp som ÖB’, p.93.

⁷³Lindström, Och regeringen satt kvar!, p.216.

⁷⁴Jarmar, ‘Torsten Rapp som ÖB’, p.89.

⁷⁵Sundelin, Fallet Wennerström, p.384.

⁷⁶Jarmar, ‘Torsten Rapp som ÖB’, pp.89–91.

⁷⁷Ibid., p.99.

⁷⁸Kjell Goldmann, ‘An “Isolated” Attack against Sweden and its World Political Preconditions’, Cooperation and Conflict. Nordic Studies in International Politics 1 (1965) p.24. Sweden's defence policy appears to have gone the other way, down-playing the risk of an isolated attack. See Robert Dalsjö, Life-Line Lost. The Rise and Fall of ‘Neutral’ Sweden's Secret Reserve Option of Wartime Help from the West (Stockholm: Santerus Academic Press Sweden 2006).