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ABSTRACT
Policy makers tend to pick and choose among conclusions presented to them. This can result in politicization, which ultimately might result in intelligence being blamed for policy failures. This has a negative impact on intelligence analysis, transforming it in an ever more cautious direction which negates its utility in the policy process. Swedish intelligence learnt that for truly important intelligence reporting, in particular that which signified paradigm shifts, the conclusions had to be presented in a manner that had an impact, in an oral briefing. Moreover, the briefer must be prepared to defend the service’s conclusions. Hence, a keyword in the analyst-policy maker relationship was trust. The relationship had to develop into a partnership, in which the policy maker had the final word but the intelligence analyst did not shrink from presenting the service’s argument. This lesson from the Cold War appears to be just as valid in the present.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 John McLaughlin, “Serving the National Policymaker,” in Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners’ Perspectives, eds. Roger Z. George and James B. Bruce, (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2nd edn, 2014), 81.
2 Treverton, Intelligence for an Age of Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 11, 135.
3 Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 142.
4 Jeffrey R. Cooper, Curing Analytic Pathologies: Pathways to Improved Intelligence Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2005), 17.
5 Mark M. Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (Los Angeles: Sage, 6th edn, 2015), 5, 189–92.
6 Idem, 189.
7 Michael Fredholm, “Trust, but Verify: The Verification Role of Signals Intelligence – Then for Decision-makers, Now for Historians,” (International Conference: Need to Know IV: What We Know about Secret Services in the Cold War – A State of Affairs 25 Years after 1989 International Conference, Leuven, October 23–24, 2014).
8 Pravda, 13 July 1946, 4. The report was marked and dated Warsaw, 12 July.
9 Nikita V. Petrov, ”Rol’ MGB SSSR v sovetizatsii Pol’shi,” Stalin i kholodyaya voyna (Moscow: Institut vseobshchey istorii, Rossiyskaya akademiya nauk, 1998), http://bbb.livejournal.com/1269125.html.
10 Dagens Nyheter, 1 July 1946, 7.
11 Dagens Nyheter, 3 July 1946, 10.
12 Dagens Nyheter, 13 July 1946, 1, 5.
13 Oddly enough, this party was not, in fact, a genuine opposition party, but a front set up by communists as a make-believe opposition. Personal communication from Prof. Andrzej Paczkowski, Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Science, Poland, 24 October 2014. The orders from the Internal Security Corps would seem to indicate that the Ministry of Public Security, too, fell for the party line and acted against what they believed was a genuine opposition party.
14 Dagens Nyheter, 19 January 1947, 16.
15 Dagens Nyheter, 20 January 1947, 1.
16 Ibid., 12.
17 Dagens Nyheter, 22 January 1947, 9.
18 Erlander was briefed orally on 23 January 1947. The written report, currently available in the FRA archive, was only issued on 3 February 1947. Tage Erlander, Dagböcker 1945–1949 (Hedemora: Gidlunds, 2001), 160–161; Jan-Olof Grahn, FRA och det kalla krigets början: Signalunderrättelsetjänsten 1945–1960 (Bromma: FRA, Historiska skrifter 20, 2013), 24.
19 Erlander, Dagböcker 1945–1949, 160–161. Translation from the original Swedish.
20 McLaughlin, “Serving the National Policymaker,” 85.
21 Michael Fredholm, “Migrants in Uniform as Intelligence Assets: Polish and Soviet Naval Aviation and Air Force Defectors to Sweden during the Cold War,” (International Conference: Need to Know VI: Intelligence and Migration, Karlskrona, November 17–18, 2016).
22 Vestkusten (San Francisco; Swedish-language weekly), 26 May 1949; Flight, 14 July 1949; Jerk Fehling, Flygunderrättelseboken: Inblickar i flygteknik och underrättelsetjänst (n.p., 2007), 228; Lennart Andersson, Fienden i öster! Svenskt jaktflyg under kalla kriget (Stockholm: SMB, 2012), 35.
23 Erlander, Dagböcker 1945–1949, 359 (1 June 1949). Translation from the Swedish original.
24 Ibid., 364 (10 June 1949).
25 TNA, FO371/77731 (TOP SECRET), dispatch from Anthony Lambert (1911–2007), the British Embassy in Stockholm, to the Foreign office, London, 10 June 1949. Kindly made available by Dick van der Aart.
26 Niklas Wikström, Den svenska militära underrättelsetjänsten 1948–1956 (Stockholm: FHS, 2006).
27 Dick van der Aart, MiG’s op de vlucht: Vliegtuigdeserteurs in de Koude Oorlog (Amsterdam: Boom, 2009), 53; citing New York Times, 11 June 1949.
28 Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York), 12 June 1949; Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska), 13 June 1949; Straits Times (Singapore), 13 June 1949.
29 U.S. National Security Council, The Position of the United States with Respect to Scandinavia, NSC 28/1 (TOP SECRET), approved by the President on 4 September 1948. Declassified and available from the Office of the Historian, Department of State.
30 Lars Olof Lampers, Det grå brödraskapet: En berättelse om IB (SOU 2002:92), 491.
31 Henrik Berggren, Underbara dagar framför oss: En biografi över Olof Palme (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2010), 218, 230–31.
32 Wilhelm Agrell, Sprickor i järnridån: Svensk underrättelsetjänst 1944–1992 (Lund: Historiska Media, 2017), 198–9, with references.
33 New York Times, 12 May 1971; Péter Lázár, The Mansfield Amendments and the U.S. Commitment in Europe, 1966–1975 (Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School, Thesis, 2003), 13–14.
34 Peter Bratt, ”Olof Palme ville arbeta med CIA,” Fokus 43, 2 November 2011 (www.fokus.se/2011/11/%c2%bbolof-palme-ville-arbeta-med-cia%c2%ab).
35 Ibid.; Olof Frånstedt, Spionjägaren 2: Säpo, IB och Palme (n.p.: Ica Bokförlag, 2014), 60–61.
36 Staffan Thorsell, Sverige i Vita huset (n.p.: Bonnier Fakta, 2004), 200. Thorsell is a journalist and newspaper editor.
37 Pierre Schori, Minnet och elden: En politisk memoar med samtida synpunkter (Stockholm: Leopard, 2014), 334. However, the security service’s counterespionage chief Frånstedt noted that both Schori and his predecessor as the party’s international secretary Anders Thunborg were IB informants. Olof Frånstedt, Spionjägaren 1: Bland agenter, terrorister och affärer (n.p.: Ica Bokförlag, 2013), 184.
38 Lunchekot, Swedish national radio/Sveriges Radio, 23 December 1972.
39 New York Times, 8 January 1973.
40 Bratt, ”Olof Palme,”.
41 Thorsell, Sverige i Vita huset, 200.
42 Bo Hugemark (ed.), Fel sort och för mycket? Arméns avvägningsfrågor under det kalla kriget-Vittnesseminarium armén 16 September 2004 (Stockholm: Försvarsshögskolan, 2004), 41. Translation from the Swedish original, which is a transcript of a series of testimonies by senior policy makers on issues for which no documents were archived.
43 Thomas Lundén and Torbjörn Nilsson (eds), Sverige och Baltikums frigörelse: Två vittnesseminarier om storpolitik kring Östersjön 1989–1994 (Huddinge: Södertörn University College, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, 2008), 124 (Swedish intelligence on Soviet activities in the Baltic states), 127 (Swedish intelligence support), 150–51 (Bildt’s role). A transcript of a series of testimonies by senior policy makers on issues for which no documents were archived.
44 Dagens Nyheter, 15 July 2005.
45 The Instrument of Government, Chapter 12, Article 2. In Swedish: Kungörelse (1974:152) om beslutad ny regeringsform; Lag (2010:1408) om ändring i regeringsformen, 12 kap., 2 §.
46 Gregory F. Treverton, Memorandum, ‘Briefing’ Decisionmakers workshop, Stockholm, 7–8 May 2014 (RAND Corporation and Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies, CATS), 12.
47 Herman, Intelligence Power, 45–6.
48 Lars Ulfving, Spegellabyrinten: Operativ-strategisk underrättelsetjänst – Något om teori, empiri och metod (Stockholm: FHS, 2002), 60, 97.
49 Erlander, Dagböcker 1945–1949, 160–161. The written report was issued only on 3 February. Grahn, FRA och det kalla krigets början, 24.
50 Gregory F. Treverton, Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 134, 191.
51 Herman, Intelligence Power, 152.
52 Johan Tunberger, Strategisk underrättelsetjänst: Några synpunkter, Inträdesanförande i Kungliga krigsvetenskapsakadmin, 7 May 1998, 13. Translation from the Swedish original. Tunberger, formerly at FOA, was then an FRA director.
53 Ulfving, Spegellabyrinten, 60.
54 Sir David Omand, Securing the State (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 27. Omand joined the British SIGINT service, the GCHQ, in 1969 and worked for some time under Michael Herman. Omand later became the head of the GCHQ. Ibid., xvii, xx.
55 Herman, Intelligence Power, 143.
56 Erlander, Dagböcker 1945–1949, 160–161. Translation from the Swedish original.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michael Fredholm
Professor Michael Fredholm is an historian who has published extensively on the history, defense strategies, security policies, intelligence services, issues related to terrorism, and energy sector developments of Eurasia. He currently is the Head of Research and Development at IRI. Michael Fredholm has worked as an independent academic advisor to governmental, inter-governmental, and non-governmental bodies for more than two decades, in addition to service within the Swedish intelligence community. He led the team which developed the lone actor terrorism counter-strategy and training program for the Swedish National Bureau of Investigation and Swedish Police Authority, which was implemented in 2014-2015. Educated at Uppsala, Stockholm, and Lund Universities, Michael Fredholm taught at Stockholm University, Uppsala University, the Swedish Royal Military Academy, and Defence University. He also lectured, during conferences or as visiting professor, at numerous institutions and universities around the world. Michael Fredholm participates in the work of the editorial committee of the History Project of the Swedish SIGINT service, the FRA. He also regularly conducts research at the Swedish Military Archives, which safeguards the records of the military intelligence service and the armed forces, and the Swedish National Archives, which preserves, among other public records, those of the Security Service.