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This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: This program concludes our examination of an essay by the brilliant Henrik Kruger, the author of The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence and International Fascism.
The information presented in Kruger’s article supplements analysis in The Great Heroin Coup, a book we have used extensively in the past, particularly in the Anti-Fascist Archive programs.
Against the background of our series of interviews with Peter Levenda on the subject of his book The Hitler Legacy, Kruger’s breakdown of the Palme assassination serves to illustrate some of the networking that figures prominently in discussion of the World Anti-Communist League, Operation Condor and individuals and institutions involved with the Iran-Contra machinations. Younger listeners/readers may not be familiar with these points of discussion.
Kruger’s magnificent work set forth in The Great Heroin Coup is featured prominently in many programs, including AFA #‘s 4; 15, 19, 22, 24–28, 29–34.
(The article was written in 1988 and does not appear to be available on the internet. If it were, we would provide a link.)
Detailing some of the investigative elements that figure prominently in the unsolved 1986 murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, the essay sets the crime against the background of what he terms the “International Fascista” (in The Great Heroin Coup).
(TrineDay publishers is scheduled to publish a new edition of The Great Heroin Coup with 75 pages of new material.)
Setting forth individuals and institutions that were known to have borne a grudge against Palme and whose behavior prior to, at the time of, and after Palme’s killing suggests the possibility of involvement in the crime, Kruger underscores the international “networking” that may have been involved in event.
The various strands of the conspiratorial web set forth by Kruger comprise a large chunk of the fascist networks explored in these broadcasts, a network Kruger calls “The International Fascista.” (Information about WACL can be found in AFA #‘s 14, 15.)
After detailing the hostility to Palme nursed by Latin American death squads linked to WACL, Operation Condor, elements of CIA and the milieu at the center of the Iran-Contra machinations, Kruger dissects Swedish and Scandinavian fascist networks linked to other focal points of the investigation.
Perhaps acting in concert with Croatian terrorist Miro Baresic (aka “Tony Saric”), these Scandinavian networks have influence within the ranks of the Swedish intelligence service, Sapo.
Some of the same international fascists alleged by Kruger to have participated in the killing of Olof Palme were also fingered by the late author Stieg Larsson.
Program Highlights Include:
- Review of the links of the Bofors munitions firm to the investigation into Palme’s killing.
- Connections between Bofors and Swedish industrialists who worked for the Third Reich, such as the Wallenberg family and Axel-Wenner Gren.
- Links between the Swedish milieu overlapping Bofors and the Bormann capital network.
“The WACL Trail: Pa Sporet Af En Morder (‘On the Trail of a Murder’)” by Henrik Kruger with Agnete Vistar; Press; #37 12/1988; pp. 42–52.
Introduction
In the middle of November, a group of police agents traveled to West Germany. Their task was clear. They would investigate a new trail in the investigation of the Palme death. This trail came from a tip that originally came from the Swedish Prime Minister’s widow, Lisbeth Palme.
The police investigation in West Germany is, among other things, related to matters surrounding Miro Baresic. He is a Croatian terrorist who had earlier been in Swedish prison sentenced for the murder of the Yugoslavian ambassador to Sweden.
What the inquiry was searching for exactly is not known, however, the trip marked a new phase in the solution of the murder. Perhaps, the Swedish police had at last gotten a hold on the larger icture.
Miro Baresic is an extremely interesting person for several reasons, including his close ties to an international network. This network was composed of persons who hated Olof Palme with a passion.
This network is focused around the WACL organization. WACL stands for World anti-Communist League. It attracts persons with one thing in common: they hate communists and all who have only a hint of leftist orientation.
The network is composed of politicians, covert operators, financiers and terrorist organizations with connections throughout the world. They have been involved in wars from South-East Asia to Latin America and in scandals such as Iran/Contra. They have committed countless murders.
At least once, persons with close ties to WACL condemned Olof Palme to death. That time, in 1976, the plans came to naught as there were, apparently, too many practical problems.
This network operates in a fashion that makes it very difficult to identify the power and men behind the actions. The Swedish police have on three occasions investigated persons in connection with the Palme murder without discovering that all had close ties to this network.
Only a few journalists have been able to penetrate into WACL and its network. Among those few is Danish author and journalist, Henrik Kruger, who for over five years has diligently devoted himself to investigation of these anti-communists.
Through the years, he has published his extensive research articles in a variety of foreign journals, including Covert Action Information Bulletin and Swedish Kvallsposten.
In this article, Henrik Kruger presents part of his extensive knowledge for Press readers. Here is an explication of some amazingly complex and astonishing material. This article came into existance jointly with Press readers. This article came into existance jointly with Press journalist Agnete Vistar. It gives exceptional insight into a world so brutal, that it makes the Rambo universe of Sylvester Stallone seem quite tame.
Here, no methods are too cynical nor self-serving, no methods too brutal nor nasty in this network’s efforts to rid the entire planet of what they see as communists and other deviates.
Welcome to WACL country!
In 1976, when Olof Palme participated in the international socialist congress in Madrid, he was the gathering’s best protected personal Prior to his travelling to Madrid, the head of the Swedish Social Democrats had been cautioned tht Palme was on the top of a Latin American deathsquad’s hitlist. The leader of that group was the Chilean, Michael Townley.
Townley and his group, by this time, had a legacy of blood on their hands from a long series of assassinations. Townley had worked for the CIA’s Operation Track II, a campaign of sabotage and terror that resulted in Chile’s socialist leader, Salvador Allende’s overthrow and Pinochet’s takeover of power in Chile. After, Townley began to figure into the ranks of the Chilean intelligence service. There he led death patrols which murdered many prominent exiles in Latin America, Europe and the United States. The most famous of these murders was carried out in the open street of Washington D.C. There, Chile’s former Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the United states, Orlando Letelier, was slain by a bomb placed in his car. Townley had undertaken the planning for that murder together with CIA trained Cuban exiles.
All this came out during the 1978 trial of Letelier’s assassins, in which Townley was a prime witness. From this trial it was further revealed that Townley literally had a deathlist that had Palme’s name at its top. At the same time, Palme himself received a report that informed him that Townley, as a Chilean intelligence agent, had been in Stockholm in 1976 to plan an assassination attempt against him. It further stated that Townley had also been in Madrid during the socialist congress, together with the Italian terrorist Stephano delle Chiaie. Because of the keen watch over Palme, Townley and delle Chiaie were not successful carrying out their assassination plans.
Ten years after these assassination plans of Townley’s, Palme was murdered in Stockholm. Immediately after the murder, Swedish police investigated whether it could have been Chile’s intelligence service putting their old threat to murder the Swedish Prime Minister into effect. Two agents were sent to the U.S. to interrogate Townley. Today, the former murderer lives under false identity in a secret location in the United States. The police agents were able to get his new name and address from the FBI. (1) In return for their questions, they got nothing out of Townley. He is a man who lives in perpetual dread of being liquidated by the circles he formerly collaborated with when he was a hit-man. By the time of the interview, he had been out of circulation for eight years. Townley was only able to speak about what he did during that earlier period, so the inquiry led to nought. The Swedish investigators therefore concluded that the Chileans couldn’t have been behind the murder of Palme.
Death Patrols
The Swedes travelled home without accomplishing anything, and soon the plice in Sweden started along a completely different trail: that the assassination must have been the work of a lone Kurdish nut. This new trail, they will later see, had disappeared in the sand.
Back in his secret location in the U.S., Michael Townley must have been surprised at the Swedish police’s basic lack of insight. They were apparently not aware of the fact that he had not worked exclusively and only for the Chilean intelligence serice. Closer investigation perhaps would have led to the police on a different and more interesting trail.
The Swedes would have discovered that Townley was active in, and had worked for, an organization named Condor, with threads leading back to a worldwide nework of fanatical anti-communists. (2)
Condor was an organization for carrying out assassinations. The Banzer plan (named after the Bolivian dictator of the same name) was an especially frightening and longterm operation of Condor’s. It consisted of the arrest, torture and murder of those nuns, priests and bishops displaying a social and political conscience within the Latin American countries with dictatorships. The Banzer plan which was originally agreed upon in 1975, has its offshoots into the 1980’s. Deathsquads of the extreme right have liquidated nuns and priests by the scores. The deaths of four American nuns in El Salvador awakened great international notice, but it was the assassination of El Saladorian Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980, that caused the greatest furor. The murder was condemned world-wide.
Who, though, really stood behind Condor? Today it is known that Operation Condor was to a large extent supported and financed by nothing less than the CIA. It was disclosed in 1974 by an American Senate committee, that CIA agents in Latin America had functioned as torture instructors. The CIA’s chief for its Latin American branch was, at this time, Theodore Shackley. He is a person we are going to meet many, many times again in this article. This disclosure about the torture instruction gave rise to a public scandal and 64 agents were sent back to the United States. (3)
The financing of Condor shows a great deal of the organization’s international character and proportions. The agents in Condor were supported economically by WFC (World Finance Corporation), the gigantic banking system that was set-up in Miami by Cuban exiles. The money in the bank stemmed, principally, from the sale of narcotics. At WFC, it was laundered and then channeled to the death squads and the Cuban exile terrorist groups which assisted Condor personnel in a long succession of Latin American terrorist actions during the 1970’s. More on this later.
Common to nearly all of these terrorists, were their connections to WACL, the worldwide organization of anti-communists. It was at the 1975 gathering of WACL’s Latin American section in Rio de Janeiro that the plan to murder the socially aware and liberation theology inclined priests, nuns and bishops was agreed upon. The leaders of Operation Condor were practically all WACL members from those countries in Latin America with dictatorial regimes.
It was within this WACL complex that assassin Michael Townley functioned. This was the labyrinth which the Swedish police apparently didn’t know about when they were in the U.S. interrogating him. It was not only Chilean, but WACL people that were behind the plan in 1976 to murder Palme. They hated Palme for his involvement in human rights struggles and for his support of oppressed people’s battles for justice.
It is next to impossible to know WACL’s true dimensions. Under a respectable exterior is concealed a network of dangerous undercurrents reaching over the entire planet. Common to all supporters is a violent hatred of all communists.
WACL is a worldwide network of ultra-rightist communist haters: an umbrella organization which functions as the contact point for the far right groups responsible for much of the fascist terror around the world. Both the Swedish press and private researchers have spoken of a right-wing extremist conspiracy and WACL connections to the Palme murder. It has probably not resulted in more than just talk because few really knew anything about WACL and because of its dispersed and unwieldy nature and structure. Instead, the press has concentrated on WACL’s visible surface layer, and not on those treacherous undercurrents.
WACL’s official facade is the General Secretariat of the right-wing Moon religious movement’s building in Soeul, South Korea. WACL holds yearly official congresses and outwardly looks like a ‘nice’ organization. (These congresses were even visited by Danish politicians such as Mogens Glistrup, Pia Kjearsgard and conservative Housing Minister Agnete Laustsen.) But an attempt to understand WACL as an acronym for an ordinary organization is a mistake. (Our Scandinavian cultural heritage and idels contain little to help understand what is concealed behind the four letters.) The pattern is not so simple.
It is important to point out that the organization is NOT gigantic, nor is it a centrally run conspiracy where the big decisions are made from above and each member is responsible for actions assigned to them. WACL, rather, is a network, a widely branched catalyst for powers of the extreme right. This forum reaches into every possible aspect of a society. Drawn to it are businessmen, covert operatives, ultra-conservative politicians members of parliaments, public office holders, generals, officers, executioners and various terrorist organizations and their sympathizers and run-of-the-mill pinkos. The overriding factor is to combat all who carry even the scent of socialism.
Within WACL’s framework these right-wing cancers come into contact with one another and maintain that close association. Through the WACL network, one can find the tools, partners and expertise in and economic support for political repression, propaganda, manipulation, weapons, torture, terrorism and assassination.
If one is interesed in murder campaigns, one can draw on the WACL network anywhere in the world. In the last twenty years the name of WACL has, in fact, emerged in connection with countless criminal activities. Among the most horrifying activities with which WACL was associated, were the deathsquads which have wrought devastation in Guatemala. Over 25,000 lives had been terminated within only four years in the early 1970’s. The death squadron’s leaders were members of CAL, WACL’s Latin American branch. Among other victims were the 72 persons killed when a civilian Cuban airliner exploded over Barbados in 1975. An entire Cuban sports team perished in that flight. Behind that terrorist deed was an organization which included members of the WACL Cuban exle group, Alpha-66. That is merely a selection of two examples, but there are many, many more.
An Old Hatred for Palme
It does seem incredible that the public at large do not know more of an organization of this brutality and extent, but, it fits with the methods the WACL organization operates by. One can find no firm command channels when an action is to be taken. The planning is not carried out by any single group, but through a labyrinthine cell-system. It allows information on a given murder contract to flow through different channels until they arrive at the requisite action groups.
These action groups, often without knowing of each other, then arrange the escape routes and assist with weapons, false passports and assassins. Simultaneously, others arrange disinformation campaigns which can be put into effect if, and when, necessary. The recurring pattern is that the men behind the scenes draw upon the local group in the country where the murder will take place., thereby reducing the risk of the murder plot being traced back to the originators of the hit, lurking elsewhere in the shadows. (5)
There is nothing that prevents the WACL network, despite its far right convictions, from making contact with leftist oriented groups having the correct religious or nationalistic aims. Religion and nationalism are often more important for these groups than their placement along the political spectrum. Thus, they can be manipulated by the promise of weapons in exchange for assassinations.
Nowhere did abhorrence for Palme thrive quite so strongly as among WACL members. It was an old hatred, stemming from Vietnam War days. It increased with Palme’s support for both Cuba and Chile under Allende and later his support of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. This hatred was held with a passion.
In the last year, it has come out that persons with connections to WACL probably had, in the months leading up to Palme’s death, even more with which to feed their hate.
Today, many things point toward a host of powerful persons with longtime WACL connections having been involved in Bofors’ extensive weapons smuggling to Iran. When Palme, a short time before his death, considered stopping these Bofors dealings with Iran, these people presumably then had an obvious economic and ideological motive to stop him. And, in such an instance, as so often before, they would avail themselves of WACL.
In this connection, one fact is very important: the people that were involved in the Iranian weapons deals, had earlier had connections to Condor. In 1976, the Condor organization had condemned Palme to death. One of the men involved and the most central, is named Theodore Shackley.
Shackley was the leader behind some of the CIA’s largest and most bloody actions of the 1960’s and ’70’s. He, together with close collaborators, was responsible for the campaigns of death in Laos, Vietnam and South America. They are sworn WACL supporters. Yet, today having officially left the CIA, his powers are stronger than ever. He was, with his team, behind the Iran/Contra Scandal, for one example.
Shackley is a completely unique person, with a power that seems almost incomprehensible. He is the man that stood behind a long succession of the CIA’s most bloody and illegal operations beginning in the early 1960’s. During a lightning twenty-five year career in the CIA, he made himself a legendary reputation. Shackley came to be called the “Blond Ghost” because of the secretiveness surrounding him. Shackley’s contributions to the efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency have been so great that they have even been designated as a kind of “invisible government.” Of course, he has not operated entirely on his own initiative. There is a basis to his power. A political and economic ‘shadow land’ with apparently enormous powers has had a use for him. Who they are, precisely, can not be known, but Shackley is a person with enormous skills and an unchallenged organizational capability. It is said, that among other things he’s done, he carried out those foreign policies that the “official” American government did not want to be seen as having connections to.
All who have worked under Shackley in the CIA have said they were afraid of him. Some were so fearful, that they tried to have as little to do with him as possible. Others, have had a nearly fanatic sense of loyalty to him . . . . also based on fear. He is described as arrogant and as having a complete lack of scruples in his war against communism. The enormous toll in lives his operations have taken have earned him the additional nickname of “The Butcher.”
In 1961, at only thirty-six, Shackley was already the CIA’s station chief in Miami. The Miami station was the most important and largest station outside of the Langley, Virginia headquarters. His closest colleagues were agents Thomas Clines and David Atlee Phillips, who would remain his loyal assistants throughout the years. To carry out his terrorist actions, he recruited Cuban exiles from Mafia boss Santo Trafficante’s narcotics organization. Trafficante supplied both personnel and expertise for Operation Mongoose, the CIA’s secret war against Castro and Cuba in the early 1960’s. He also took part, personally, in the planning of the CIA’s assassination attempts against Castro.
Trafficante was the USA’s largest narcotics importer and it was he who supposedly gave Shackley the idea of financing the most sensitive operations with narcotics profits, something that would soon become Shackley’s specialty. Later, when Shackley was transferred to Laos, he allied himself with the heroin general Vang Pao and the warriors of Vang Pao’s Meo tribes. The link to the CIA’s infamous war in Laos was a death campaign in which tens of thousands of men, women and children were killed by the Meo soldiers along with American Green Berets from the Special Operations Group, under the leadership of General John Singlaub. Under Singlaub there worked a young lieutenant, Oliver North, and also an Air Force lieutenant major, Richard Secord. All three would become leading figures in the Iran/Contra affair twenty years later. Singlaub was, at that general period of time, world director of WACL.
The campaign of death in Laos was controlled by Shackley. Shackley, North, Secord and the others who worked together there have come to be known as the “Secret Team.” [This term derived from a book by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty and was adopted by the Christic Institute in their ill-fated RICO suit against some of the principals in the Iran-Contra affair.–D.E.] After a while, Shackley became the CIA’s chief of station in Vietnam. He was later called home in 1972 by his superiors to steer the CIA’s secret operations in Latin America. He continued his incredible career and became the chief of Operation Track II. Track II was a campaign of sabotage and terror that led to Allende’s overthrow in Chile and Pinochet’s takeover of power. That was the “starter’s gun,” the beginning of the CIA’s control of, and engagement in, death and terror campaigns throughout South America. Shackley arranged for the training of Cuban exiles in terrorism, who then traveled around assisting death patrols in torture and murder. Both the death squads and the anti-Castro Cuban exiles had connections to WACL. Then some began to wonder when Asians began to appear among the death patrols. It soon became apparent that these were some of the Meo warriors Shackley had trained in Laos.
Shadow Management
Naturally, the financing of that extensive project did not come from the official CIA. Several of Shackley’s Cuban exiles established a huge banking system – World Finance Corporation – in Miami where Mafia boss Trafficante’s money was laundered and then channeled into Condor and the Cuban exile’s terror groups, such as Alpha-66, Omega‑7 and CORU. The banking system was exposed and forced to close its doors after a police investigation in the beginning of 1979. The policeman who headed the inquiry was stopped by the CIA, but before he was muzzled, he was able to tell the press that not less than twenty-eight CIA agents had worked in the bank.8
The Secret Team had also operated another bank, the Nugan-Hand Bank in Australia, with over forty affiliates around the world. The bank was principally used for weapons and narcotics transactions. The names of the companies which had done business via the bank came out in 1982 when a large Australian government report disclosed information about the bank. One of these firms was Bofors, the Swedish weapons manufacturer. That was the first time that Bofors’ name had been connected with the Shackley crowd.9
By the mid-1970’s Shackley had been made deputy chief of covert operations worldwide in the CIA. Later, all of his staff was fired by the new CIA director, Stansfield Turner. Eight hundred men were officially tossed out of the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1977 Turner had been appointed by the new President, Jimmy Carter, in place of the earlier director, George Bush. Jimmy Carter had not cared for Shackley’s methods. He was particularly indignant over a scandal which had worked its way into the American mass media by that time. It had been disclosed that two of Shackley’s compatriots had trained terrorists in Libya. That was soon to be a bit of a letdown for Shackley, who’s star, otherwise, shone brightly. He had specifically been promised the post of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, if Ford had won the presidency.
But Shackley, apparently, was too indispensible and powerful to just be fired in any ordinary manner. He had proceeded outside of the Agency in such a manner, that today, it is very difficult to tell what is his ‘Secret team’ and what is official CIA. Apparently, they couldn’t manage without an entire division’s experience and expertise. Shackley and his team were now more active behind the scenes than they had been at any time before.
Shackley’s close associate, David Atlee Phillips headed the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), which came to function in some cases as an intelligence service for WACL. One of the two from Shackley’s corps that trained terrorists in Libya was the current fugitive, Frank Terpil. He once said to an American journalist: “It is in reality the assholes from AFIO that run the CIA from the outside, as a shadow leadership: Ted Shackley, Phillips, Angleton, Conein…”
Shackley had (and has), well in order, his world of ‘behind the scenes’ political operations. The most important support group is the American Security Council. It represents the United States’ military-industrial-complex and constitutes the major portion of the USA’s representation in WACL.
Shackley’s group finances its operations with weapons and narcotics smuggling. Simultaneous with those operations, his operatives struggle in their savage war against leftist forces of the entire face of the earth. Slowly, but surely, they have built up an amazing shadow-land economic base, which resembles a multi-national corporation.
The network through which these operations take place is called ‘The Enterprise’. The lead figures, in addition to Shackley himself, are Thomas Clines, Richard Secord and Albert Hakim. These names also come from the top of the lists of Iran/Contra Hearing’s witnesses. The Enterprise has a plethora of small companies. Some, Shackley owns on paper; others list him as a consultant or as an officer on the board of directors.
In fact, it was Shackley’s team that started the entire Irangate scandal. Among the many places in which this has been established is in the Tower Report. Shackley has conceded that it was he who met with the Iranian weapons and narcotics dealer, Ghorbanifar, in Hamburg. Also, that it was he who brought the Iranian proposal on an exchange of hostages for weapons to Washington. The Enterprise was connected to the weapons deals that came out of this, in fact. Part of the money from Iran wound up going to the Nicaraguan Contras. Another portion drifted directly into the pockets of Enterprise personnel, and a portion has vanished into the blue altogether. One can only guess as to what has become of it.
The real drama in the Iran/Contra scandal did not come out in the Washington hearings, which were transmitted to the world’s television screens. In the hearings, only a little was unveiled. Florida was the ‘happening’ place, even though this was in relative public silence. A huge lawsuit was being prepared in Florida involving large scale cocaine smuggling in connection with Iran/Contra. This, of course, involved the Shackley people. The legal case was left to drift and then was stopped by Edward Meese, Reagan’s Attorney General. However, a Senate investigation continued. Simultaneously, there arose a civil suit against the same Shackley crowd and the earlier WACL chief, John Singlaub, for the bombing and assassination attempt on former Contra leader Eden Pastora. Seven people were killed in the bombing, including four journalists.10
One of the main witnesses in the two cases was Gene Wheaton, a former high level U.S. military intelligence officer. He was stationed at an important post in Iran during the late 1970’s.
He, together with two colleagues, just happened across the illegal transactions of Shackley’s bunch in the Middle East and then prepared a report on these activities. When Wheaton’s two colleagues were on their way to Washington with the report, they were very conveniently murdered, and the report vanished. Since the murders, Wheaton has used his spare time to seek additional evidence against the Enterprisers.
The primary author of this article talked with Wheaton in his Los Angeles home in March of 1987, before he testified as a witness. At that time, Wheaton had a list containing seventeen names, which he was certain, represented persons murdered by the Enterprise group throughout the years. Among those listed was a former CIA agent, Kevin Mulcahy. Mulcahy died the day before he would have given testimony in the lawsuit against World Finance Corporation, the narco-banking system. WFC laundered narcotics money and then transferred it to Shackley’s Cuban exile terrorists around Latin America. Mulcahy was found in a Maryland woods, not far from where the motel where he was secretly waiting for the trial. His body was found with his pants down around his ankles.
“I am myself as right-wing as the people in Shackley’s team”, said Wheaton. “I can accept much of what they do. But not the murder of colleagues.”
Gene Wheaton’s life has been threatened by the Shackley squad. He has responded by sharing his information with as many people as possible. In this manner he hopes to diminish the likelihood of his becoming a target for assassination.
Since the interview, Wheaton has additionally sworn out depositions stating that Shackley has a covert firm located on Andros Island in the Bahamas. This ‘firm’ trains assassins.
Wheaton’s list of 17 murdered people appears not to have been complete. During preliminary investigations for the Miami trial alone, four new witnesses died. The smuggler and pilot, Barry Seal, was shot down. A similar thing happened to the world famous speedboat builder, Don Arnow. They both had had close connections with cocaine smuggler George Morales. Another chief witness, Steven Carr, was found dead of a drug overdose and so on and so forth……
These witnesses could have been dangerous to Shackley’s group. For example, they could have substantiated the accusations about narcotics. They could have verified that the very airplanes that flew weapons from Florida to the Contras in Costa Rica and Honduras returned with cocaine. According to the arrested smugglers, it was some of Shackley’s Cuban-exile weapons transporters that headed weapons smuggling to the Contras.
Connections to Bofors
Today it is still too early to say if it was in fact Olof Palme’s attempts to stop further smuggling of weapons which cost him his life, in much the same manner as the four Miami trial witnesses. Palme had tried to stop Bofors’s extensive weapons transfers to Iran.
There is much, however, that indicates that a close connection between Bofors and the Enterprise players existed:
-As was mentioned before, Bofors had done business via the illegal Australian Nugan-Hand Bank. A bank that by 1977 chiefly dealt in weapons and narcotics money. The bank was managed by Enterprise personnel.
-The Danish ship, Erria, which smuggled Bofors’ weapons to both Iran and the Contras, was owned by Dolmy Business Inc. Behind Dolmy stood two from within the Enterprise, Richard Secord and Albert Hakim.
-Bofors transferred 188 million kroner (about $30 million) to the Panamanian company, Svenska Incorporated. The leader of this firm was the notorious drug and weapons smuggler, Steven Samos. He was a close business partner of the the people in the Enterprise and deeply involved in the Contragate Scandal. Part of the money is known to have, almost certainly, been employed for bribes in connection with Bofors’ multi-million dollar deals with India. Steve Samos also led another company, International Management & Trust Corp.11 This was a ‘cover’ firm, which did not function. Instead, its employees worked in Amalgamated Commercial Enterprises. A portion of the Enterprise’s support to the Contras went through Amalgamated Commercial Enterprises.
-The Bofors weapons which Iran had bought through Swedish weapons dealer Karl-Erik Smitz were often transported on the planes of St. Lucia Airways, which was operated Enterprise folks and directed with help from Oliver North.
If the Enterprise benefited financially from the Bofors deliveries, and if Olaf Palme attempted to stop these deliveries of weapons and thus the money stream from Bofors, then would have Shackley and his men (and also Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini) had quite a motive to murder the Swedish Prime Minister. In such a case, they would probably have used the WACL network, as they had so often before. They would have had a ‘here-and-now’ need to remove him. They are so skillful at such things, that they could have arranged it quickly.
*When Olof Palme was murdered, there sat in a Swedish prison, a man with an intimate knowledge of Condor and WACL. His organization had previously threatened to murder the entire Palme family. Despite that, the Swedish police are only now beginning to become interested in Miro Baresic. This interest comes over one year after Baresic had been released and had boarded a flight to Paraguay.*
When Palme was murdered, an international terrorist and murderer complete with an enourmous knowledge of Condor and WACL was right in Sweden.
Ten years earlier, when a deathlist, complete with Palme’s name its top, circulated among the Condor crowd in Latin America, this man found himself high up in the Condor hierarchy. His name is Miro Baresic. His story is nothing short of fantastic.
Baresic is an extreme right-wing Croatian who is connected to the WACL organization through ABN (Anti-Bolshevic Bloc of Nations). ABN is an organization that collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War.
On the 7th of April 1971, in Stockholm, Baresic together with another Croatian, tortured and then murdered the Yugoslavian ambassador to Sweden. On this first time around, Baresic didn’t succeed in escaping Swedish authorities. He was arrested, but before the trial, the murderer’s comrades threatened to murder Palme, his wife Lisbet and their three children, if the murderers’ sentences are greater than five years in prison. The threats were taken very seriously. When Palme spoke to the May Day rally in Norrkoping, Sweden, he was surrounded by a veritable army of security people.
The two Croatians were sentenced to life imprisonment. Following that they managed to escape from Kumla Prison, but were caught and jailed again. Then in September 1972 their comrades seized an SAS plane in Malmo, Sweden. The world’s eyes were riveted on the hostage drama. Sometime later the world heard from the Croatian terrorists: The two ambassadorial murderers and an additional five other imprisoned Croatians must be surrendered. Otherwise, they threatened to blow up the plane with the 86 passengers aboard. The Swedish government saw no other way out except to yield, and the two murderers were brought aboard the plane.
The SAS pilots were forced to fly to Spain. There, the Croatians were at first imprisoned. But the rightist government of Franco refused to surrender them up to Sweden, and in the beginning of 1974 they were given permission to travel to the terrorist’s paradise of Paraguay. There they quickly connected up with a Croatian WACL group that functioned there as a death squadron.12
Then things began to go well for Miro Baresic. He began to work directly under Condor’s infamous chief within Paraguay, Pastor Coronel, the head of the Security Police. Coronel is a horrifying gentleman, whose police force has specialized in the advanced torture techniques. An American lawyer relates this macabre incident:
One time, Coronel had a really ‘fat’ catch: a leader of the small illegal communist party. Coronel had the communist brought directly into his office, where he promptly shot him twice in the head with his Magnum. Coronel then ordered the head cut off and took it to the Presidential Palace. His message was clear – he wanted to demonstrate how efficient he was at maintaining the nation free from communists.13
So it was to Coronel, that Baresic became the right hand. Coronel is his country’s representative to WACL, and participates eagerly in the organizations meetings. Baresic was made the chief instructor for Coronel’s agents. By this time he had changed his name to Tony Saric, so he could travel freely.
The murderer Tony Saric, alias Miro Baresic, was then about to become a big gun. Coronel had full confidence in him, and at the end of 1977 Baresic came to the United States on a diplomatic passport. He became, nothing less than, the chief of security for Paraguay’s embassy in Washington, D.C. He also was made the personal bodyguard to Ambassador Escobar, who was also a WACL delegate.
But Baresic’s story is not over yet. At the legendary WACL conference held in Washington, D.C. from the 27th – 30th of April 1978, Saric appeared as the Croatian delegate. The yearly WACL conferences have a reputation of being a framework for the greatest showings of international terrorists, neo-Nazis and fascists since the Second World War. They swarm with right-wing extremists. At that conference, for example, there were twenty-one delegates from the Cuban exile terror group, Alpha-66, alone. Also in attendance were a series of Swedish right-wing extremists, who we will meet further on in this article.
Exit Without Escort
Two years later, things start to go wrong for Tony Saric. After having just won a large karate competition in the United States he jubilantly ran around the arena with a Croatian flag. Among those in the audience were two FBI agents, who found something in Saric’s conduct suspicious. They know that some bomb-saboteurs in the U.S. have had connections with Croatians having connections to Paraguay. When they returned to the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. they dove into the extensive files, and after some hunting around, were shocked to discover that Saric was identical with the wanted murderer and terrorist, Miro Baresic.
The hammer fell, Baresic was arrested and, after one year, he was returned to Sweden. But he was, evidently, no ordinary prisoner. In prison he was a celebrity. When it was announced he was about to marry a Swedish woman, there was talk that he would be released. According to Swedish press reports, a ‘diplomat-like’ man who travelled in a big car presented him quantities of dollars as a wedding gift. Who that man was, is a story not yet unraveled. However, it is an indisputable fact that the terrorist and murderer Baresic has been granted leave from prison many times, often without escorts.
Later, in December of 1987, Miro Baresic was released and together with his wife boarded a flight to his beloved Paraguay.
Miro Baresic is an interesting figure because of the information he could have provided the Swedish police regarding WACL and Condor. Furthermore, he was of interest because of an intuitive feeling on the part of Lisbet Palme immediately after the murder. She told the Swedish press that she felt her husband was murdered by Croatian terrorists, and that she had a feeling that there was something familiar about the murderer.
Only now are the Swedish police beginning, seriously, to turn their attention toward the Croatian right-wing extremists. This, after Baresic has been released. And, released despite the fact that his circles earlier had been connected with Swedish terrorist actions and murder; including having threatened to liquidate the entire Palme family. The authorities had not noticed that the same circles were closely linked to the Latin American groups that had had Palme on their deathlist.
Just now a group of Swedish police are in West Germany to investigate some of the Croatian exiles who belong to the Ustachi circles around Baresic.
One thing is certainly thought provoking: Baresic, the murderer and terrorist has only served seven years of his sentence, at a time when the world was taking such a hard line against terrorists.
Only now, just as this article is being written (12/88), it has been learned that Baresic had leave on February 28, 1986 – the very day that Palme as murdered! What occupied his time that day is not known. His Croatian friends have provided him with an alibi.
Also recently disclosed is that Yugoslavia had repeatedly and unsuccessfully pressed to have Baresic extradited. Instead, he was given his freedom in 1987, and flew off to Paraguay.
Several times before Palme’s murder, Baresic had presented petitions for clemency. These requests were blocked by Palme, who intervened personally, according to the Swedish Social Democratic paper, Aftonbladet. Leniency came after Palme’s assassination.
*The broad and multi-branched WACL network has supporters world-wide. When Olof Palme was killed, four Scandinavian WACL adherants with expertise in getaway routes and deep connections into the Swedish police could have been found in Sweden. While, it should be emphasized that this does not constitute proof of any direct connection to the Palme murder, it is suggestive of what ought to be investigated.*
The Baresic trail leads directly into the WACL network. All of the Croatian exiles around Baresic were WACL people and part of the same labyrinthine underworld which Shackley and the Iran/Contra team had drawn upon. The Bofors trail also leads into WACL.
This, however, is not the only trail with Swedish connections that points toward WACL. At the time of the Palme murder, two neo-Nazis with international getaway route expertise and connections to WACL, were in Sweden.
We need to backwind the calendar to April, 1978, when the infamous Washington, D.C. WACL conference was in session.
As mentioned previously, Baresic was present under the pseudonym Tony Saric. Despite that, many must have recognized him. Among those who no doubt did, were two Swedes, Ake J. Ek and Anders Larsson, as well as the Norwegian, Tor Petter Hadland. The remainder of this article will deal with these three Scandinavian connections. We will take them in turn: Tor Petter Hadland first along with his connections to another Norwegian Nazi, Erik Blucher.
Hadland was the leader of the Norwegian neo-Nazi party’s group, the Norwegian Front Stormtroopers. When the Norwegian Front Stormtroopers began in 1977 to appear in connections to WACL, it was Hadland who represented these Norwegian Nazis at the WACL meetings held around the world. Hadland was Erik Blucher’s right-hand man. Blucher as leader of the Norwegian neo-Nazis had several times been involved in scandals involving both military training of young neo-Nazis and illegal weapons in Norway.
In 1979, along with Hadland And other European Nazis, Blucher attempted to stage a power coup within the European branch of WACL. A more ‘moderate’ group, however, was victorious. The two neo-Nazis were forced to leave WACL officially, but continued to work within WACL behind the scenes.
Then in ’81, Blucher’s and Hadland’s paths diverge for two years. Hadland took up residence in Orebro, Sweden and Blucher traveled to London, where he quickly contacted the neo-Nazi circles who had operated a getaway-route-central called Brown Aid. This escape route center helped, among others, twenty-three Italian terrorists.14 Two of these Italians had been sought in connection with the massive bombing of the Bologna train station in Italy.
This getaway-routing center was exposed in 1981 by the British television station, Granada. After the exposure, the center needed both a new international getaway ‘travel’ secretary found and to be built up again. According to British sources, Erik Blucher became that new secretary.
In 1983 the English police had started to suspect Blucher, and he traveled to Sweden where his old friend, Tor Patter Hadland, had procured him an apartment. Blucher signed his name as Erik Olsen.
Exactly what Blucher, the escape route expert, and Hadland, the organizer, did after that, we can only speculate about. Certain of the circumstances surrounding their further movements are unknown, but it has been possible to sketch and outline of them:
In November of 1984, Tor Petter Hadland abandoned Orebro and fled to an apartment located at 32 Blockstenvagen in Stockholm’s suburb of Handen. Blucher often had stayed at the same address.
Less than one year later, in September 1985, Blucher was living in a slum-clearance apartment in Helsingborg at 15‑C Blakullagatan. This address is not far from the border crossing point to Denmark, although Blucher was never there.
Blucher, additionally, established a firm named Edelweiss Survival. He maintained a post box in Snekkersten, near Helsingor, Denmark. Edelweiss Survival had two addresses: Box 7094 in Sundbyberg and another at P.O. Box 13026, Helsingborg, Sweden. Perhaps it was a coincidence that the getaway route expert, Blucher, had apartments and post box addresses in Stockholm and on the border between Sweden and Denmark, perhaps not.15
The well-informed British magazine, Searchlight, reported in 1985 that a secret center for European neo-Nazi activities had been established in Stockholm. Former WACL people were involved. Some evidence indicated that Hadland and Blucher were involved.
Whether or not they had anything to do with the murder of Olof Palme on the 28th of February, 1986 is not known. It does seem strange, though, that none of the Swedish authorities had any interest in the two Nazi’s expertise in escape routes internationally and of their organizational capabilities. One thing, however, we do know:
Three months after the death of Palme, Hadland gave notice on his apartment outside of Stockholm and moved home to Norway. At the same time, Blucher once again changed his name (to Tor Erik Nielsen) and give notice at his apartment in Helsingborg. The getaway route experts had found new pastures.
Warning
Another interesting development paralleled the activities of Blucher and Hadland. It took place around yet another WACL bigwig, the Swedish Anders Larsson. We turn back the clock to 1978 to the WACL conference in D.C. for the last time when both Tor Petter Hadland and Miro Baresic (under the false name of Tony Saric) were in attendance. Anders Larsson also was at this Washington conference of WACL.
Anders Larsson is a strange gentleman. It was he, paradoxically, that had maneuvered Blucher, Hadland and their new-Nazi comrades ‘out’ of WACL. It was also Larsson who was one of the principal people behind the preparation of the WACL ‘Blue Document’ which disclosed the Nazi affiliations of some of the more ‘clean’ –appearing WACL members.16
Many things point, however, to Larsson’s ‘war’ against the neo-Nazis having been for strategic purposes. As one member of the circle around him wrote in a letter dated 2/25/81: It seems as if Larsson operated under the motto – “Our Nazis are good Nazis, but their Nazis are bad Nazis.” Or to say it another way, Larsson’s battle against the Nazis was not ideological, but rather exclusively a power struggle. Larsson had good relations, for example, with the Nazi collaborators from the ABN (Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations) which is an umbrella organization under WACL. ABN is the same organization to which Miro Baresic belonged.
Larsson was known for his being an ardent Palme-hater. He never tried to hide his contempt for the Swedish Prime Minister who he thought deserved to be exterminated. As far back as the 1970’s, Larsson, with the help of American contacts, had arranged for large anti-Palme demonstrations in the United States.
Larsson was WACL’s general secretary in Sweden. He withdrew from that position in 1983. He often signed his letters with the signature “anti-Palme”.
Two months prior to Palme’s murder, Larsson along with a right-wing prison officer surveilled the Swedish Prime Minister during the funeral of Alva Myrdal. On the 20th of February, Larsson delivered a mysterious letter to the Swedish State Ministry. Inside the envelope lay a newspaper headline with the text: “Palme Dead”.
One week later Olof Palme was shot and killed.
The Palme-hating Anders Larsson was, in fact, the very first person investigated following the murder. But why should Larsson deliver a warning letter to Palme if he himself was involved in the murder conspiracy? An explanation could be that Larsson knew something via his old WACL connections and acted as he did as part of a power struggle in extreme right circles. He may have wanted to warn of the assassination plans then, but later was afraid to tell anything about it.
Swedish journalists and Palme investigators say that today Larsson appears very frightened and has all but gone underground.17
When Anders Larsson retired from his WACL work in 1983, his functions in Sweden were taken up by police agent Ake J. Ek. Ek was a seasoned WACL member. PRESS has earlier demonstrated (issue #35) various connections between the Swedish police and WACL vis-à-vis the so-called ‘police trail’. Ake J. Ek, who is a well known extremist right winger could be another one of these connections.
Ek was also at the Washington WACL conference back in 1978. There he had various dealings, side-by-side, with Tor Peter Hadland, Anders Larsson, Miro Baresic, numerous other neo-Nazis, torturers, executioners, and members of deathsquads. Ek had been an instructor of psychology at the Swedish Police Academy for a number of years. Thus, at this academy he was on the pedagogical side of things. It was in this ‘intellectual shadowland’ that a long succession of the notorious Norrmalm police members were trained. Norrmalm Police Watch District #1 is in the spotlight today precisely because of these right-wing police agents’ peculiar movements in the neighborhood of the crime scene on the night of Palme’s death. There are indications that some of the police have had connections to Nazi circles. One of the policemen had a Nazi helmet in his apartment which also contained an unspecified collection of radio communication equipment.
Soldier of Fortune
There are many strange stories surrounding Palme’s assassination. One example is the tale about a Yugoslavian soldier of fortune by the name of Ivan von Berchan. One month before Palme’s death, von Berchan, allegedly, approached Sapo, Sweden’s intelligence agency. The soldier of fortune related that a CIA agent using the cover name George Moran had been offered a contract for $2,000,000 to murder Palme. He had known the CIA agent from Libya at the end of the ‘70’s. This was just at the time that personnel from the Secret Team was training terrorists in Libya. With this connection, we are back to Shackley and the people behind Iran/Contra.
The Sapo agent who the soldier of fortune approached was Alf Karlsson. Karlsson asserts that von Berchan first approached him after the murder of Palme. That, however, directly contradicts a statement from Stockholm’s mayor, Inger Baven and his secretary. According to both Inger Baven and the secretary, Ivan von Berchan communicated the same information one month before Palme’s being terminated.
It was the Sapo agent, Karlsson, who in 1984 had originally denounced the small Kurdish party, PKK, as a terrorist organization. In addition it was he who persistently supported Hans Holmer in his hunt for the Kurds involved in the assassination of Palme. And lastly, it was Karlsson who had been on watch at Sapo the day the murder of Palme was committed. He, therefore, must have known that by afternoon Palme had called off the supervision of the Sapo agents which usually functioned as his bodyguards.
Alf Karlsson is known to be part of the Swedish far right. He has subsequently resigned from his position within the Swedish intelligence service. He currently works in former Sapo chief, P.G. Vinge’s private firm location in Stockholm, Vinge Protection AB. The firm exercises ‘social control’ activities within corporations. In the newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, Karlsson described Ingvar Bratt (a former Bofors employee who disclosed the Bofors smuggling to Iran) as an example of “a catastrophe that took place because of a human leak in an otherwise perfect security system”. It was just those types of human leaks that Vinge and Karlsson, with their consulting firm’s expertise, set out to stop. Vinge had for many years been one of Sweden’s most zealous Palme haters. His difficulties collaborating with Palme caused Vinge’s resignation as Sapo chief in 1970. It was Vinge, during his time as Sapo chief, who allegedly branded Palme a ‘security risk’.
These circumstances do not prove that Karlsson was involved in the planning and eventual murder of Palme. However, can one reasonably rely on the Swedish authorities to investigate those trails which involve these very same Swedish authorities?
Clearly, what is needed is to start again from the beginning. It is necessary to attempt to assemble the loose ends that appear to have been overlooked in the confusion. Necessary to see with fresh eyes the motives, logic and possible trails. And, as this article sought to provide analysis for, start over again with a look toward the right-wing extremist organization named WACL … precisely because this organization is extensive enough and motivated to have intervened in all of the major trails in connection to the murder of Olof Palme. . . . .
NOTES
1) His new identity was provided according to the U.S. witness protection program, under U.S. law.
2) In a report, classified Secret, to the Foreign Relations Committee it was reported: “Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay have effectuated a coordinated a cooperative intelligence operation called Operation Condor. This joint effort consists of three phases. Phase three involves the creation of special groups, which will carry out sanctions, including assassinations, against enemies of the regimes in the named countries.”
3) Many of them were later deployed in the newly formed international narcotics police, DEA. Fourteen of them were Cuban exiles trained by Shackley in terrorism. A rather long succession of them later returned to Latin America camouflaged as narcotics agents. There they resumed their old functions as torture instructors.
4) The travelling deathpatrols went by the generic name of ‘White Hand’. Among the one found chiefly exiled Cubans and Chileans, but also French, Italian and Croatian terrorists. A member of the White Hand told journalist Jack Anderson of the Washington Post in 1984: “CAL is the white Hand”. CAL is the Latin American branch of WACL.
5) For example, when exiled Cuban terrorists were to murder Bernardo Leighten (former Parliament leader of Chile) in Rome. They had already teamed up with Italian fascist and terrorist Stephano della Chiaie.
6) Shackley brought Vang Pao together with mafia boss Santo Trafficante some years later in Saigon. After that, the stream of narcotics into the United States increased.
7) The Watergate Scandal began to trickle out in 1972. It appeared that tr=here of the persons who broke into the Democratic Headquarters in Washington operated directly under Shackley.
8) District Attorney Jerome Sandford quit in anger over the CIA’s actions.
9) By 1977, Secret Team members were already, via Nugan-Hand middlemen, in the illegal business that revolved around Bofors’ anti-aircraft weapons to Thailand.
10) As an example of the rather incredible abilities of Shackley’s people at disinformation, one can cite the theory about the KGB being behind the cocaine smuggling that suddenly appeared in several major newspapers when the case began to roll. The false trail was constructed in Canada, presumably long before there was even talk about a trial. All they had to do was to push the button when threatened by disclosure.
11) An almost identical firm name, European Management & Trust Corp., emerged in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. This firm was owned by Alfred Buhler who for several years had been a middleman for the CIA’s weapons deals in the Middle East. In 1983 the New York Times disclosed that Buhler had earlier been involved in the abduction of the Congolese political leader, Moise Tsombe. Buhler had also, at the time, worked together with Thomas Clines, a front figure in the Iran/Contra scandal and a member of the ‘Secret Team’. Buhler resides in Vaduz today. Just recently CIAOU, the large weapons consortium in Vaduz has been paid 14 million Danish kroner by Bofors.
12) The group murdered, among others, the Uruguayan ambassador to Paraguay. This was ‘justified’ as a ‘accident’ – the Croatians had mistaken him for the Yugoslavian ambassador.
13) The victim was Miguel Soler. The episode is described in the book, Labyrinth, by Eugene Propper, who was the lead prosecutor in the trial for the murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington.
14) The worst of these, Allesandro Alibrandi, was sought for the murders of a journalist and of an investigative judge in Rome. The Italian terrorist’s leader, Stephano della Chiaie, and Elio Massagrande had taken part in the WACL congress held in 1981 in Paraguay.
15) The extraordinary coincidence, however, is that the name of the Blucher firm, Edelweiss Survival, is very close to the name of two other firms – Edelweiss, and Survival Supply – which are owned by a retired British major. His name is Ian Souter-Clarance, and he is a known person in English neo-Nazi circles. He had been involved in the Brown Aid escape route net in England, just as Blucher had been.
16) This purge was, however, not exceptionally whole-hearted. Tor Petter Hadland, for example, instead participated in meetings of WACL’s youth organization, WYACL. The brains behind the neo-Nazis ‘coup’ attempt, former WACL leader Roger Pearson, functioned continuously in the American WACL group four years later. The terrorist and executioner also continued as a WACL member.
17) Larsson is a close friend of former South African agent, Bertil Wedin, who is beginning to come under media investigation. He had been the source of disinformation in the Turkish right-wing press about the Kurdish trail. See PRESS #35. [Stieg Larsson pointed his investigation in the direction of Wedin–D.E.]
2. The late Stieg Larsson cited Bertil Wedin, an associate of Alf Larsson, as being involved in the assassination.
Sweden’s national obsession with the unsolved 1986 murder of its then-prime minister Olof Palme – renewed this week by a revelation that novelist Stieg Larsson helped police with the investigation – has taken yet another twist after it emerged that a key suspect no longer has an alibi for the night in question.
Palme, a populist, leftwing politician whose views made him numerous enemies at home and abroad, was shot in February 1986 as he walked home with his wife from a cinema in Stockholm. Almost 30 years of inquiries has seen the focus fall on everyone from South African agents – Palme was a vocal critic of apartheid – to rogue Swedish spies.
On Tuesday a Swedish newspaper revealed that Larsson – the late author of the hugely successful Millennium trio of crime thrillers, and an expert on far-right groups – left 15 boxes of files connected to his own probe into the case. Larsson passed police the name of Bertil Wedin, a Swede with links to South African security services, as the man who organised the killing. Wedin, now living in northern Cyprus, denies this and police say he is not a suspect.
However, the newspaper given access to Larsson’s files, Svenska Dagbladet, reported on Thursday that its own investigations had brought a new lead about another right-wing activist who was an associate of Wedin. Alf Enerström, a doctor and implacable rightwing opponent of Palme who spent time in a psychiatric hospital after shooting a policewoman, was investigated closely by police but always maintained that at the time of the killing he was at home with his then-partner – an account she backed up.
However, when questioned by Svenska Dagbladet, Gio Petre, a former actor who separated from Enerström in the late 1990s, said this wasn’t the case. On the night of the murder Enerström in fact left the flat saying he had to put money in a parking meter, Petre said. She told the paper: “I thought it was strange because it was free parking on a Friday night and over the weekend. He came back late.”
Asked why she had not said this before, Petre said: “I did not dare. I was scared of Alf, he was violent. You are the first people to ask me about this in a long time.”
Enerström was of interest to the police because he was known to be a gun lover and a vehement critic of Palme. According to Svenska Dagbladet he told police he saw Palme as a traitor, saying: “Whoever killed Palme wasn’t just doing a service to God, they also did the country a favour.”
Petre also told the newspaper she believed her former partner owned a Smith & Wesson revolver at the time, the type of gun police believe was used to shoot Palme. . . .
3. The Bofors firm is part of a munitions cartel that includes Krupp (now Thyssen/Krupp) and has evolved into part of the Bormann capital network.
All Honorable Men by James Stewart Martin; Little Brown [HC]; pp. 252–253.
. . . .One of the mysteries of World War II has been the unexplained international relations of the Swedish industrial organization, A.B. Svenska Kullager- Fabriken, known as SKF, Sweden’s largest industrial concern and the world’s largest manufacturer of ball and roller bearings. The principal Swedish interest in SKF is held by the Wallenbergs through their Enskilda Bank and its investment subsidiary, A.B. Investor. The actual extent of German or other foreign control, either directly or through the Wallenbergs, has not been disclosed.
For many years the active management of SKF was in the hands of Sven Wingquist, the founder of the firm. In 1941, he gave up the day-to-day management but remained as chairman of the board. From time to time, beginning in 1933 and 1934, Sven Wingquist came into the world spotlight as one of a colorful clique of international adventurers, who gained special notoriety by their buzzing around Edward VIII at the time of his abdication in 1936. They included Axel Wenner-Gren, the yachtsman; Charles Bedaux, inventor of a labor speed-up system; and Jacques Lernaigre-Dubrenil, French banker and vegetable-oil man of West Africa.
Axel Wenner-Gren will he remembered as a yachtsman with a remarkable record of coincidences. He cruised the seas throughout much of the war in his yacht, the Southern Cross, and turned up to rescue survivors of German submarine attacks, beginning with the German sinking of the British ship Athenia in 1939 and continuing through the Caribbean submarine campaign of 1942. At the time, some people speculated about how one yacht could happen along so often when a submarine spotted a vessel; but the coincidences were never explained. . . .
. . . . Sven Wingquist and Axel Wenner-Gren had taken an active part after World War I in the German plans to mask the ownership of subsidiaries abroad. To get around the Versailles Treaty, firms like Carl Zeiss, manufacturers of military optical equipment, set up branches such as the “Nedinsco” firm at Venlo in the Netherlands and carried on as before. The Krupp firm did the same in Spain, Sweden, and other countries.
In 1934 the Swedish government discovered that Krupp controlled a block of shares in the Bofors steel and munitions works through a Swedish dummy holding company called “Boforsinteressenten.” Sven Wingquist, who was chairman of the board of the Bofors steel and munitions works, was one of the two Swedish citizens who had been voting this stock for Krupp at stockholders’ meetings.
The Krupp concern controlled approximately one third of Swedish Bofors in this manner and had maintained enough additional voting strength through Axel Wenner-Gren to control the affairs of Bofors. . . . .
4. The Bofors firm was certainly among the Swedish companies to have prospered under the auspices of the Bormann capital network.
. . . . An interesting sidelight to this struggle between the Allies and Germany for influence on Sweden is the peculiar role played by Marcus and Jacob Wallenberg, members of Sweden’s most important banking family. Marcus headed a government commission which negotiated with Britain and the United States throughout the war. At the same time, his brother Jacob was the chief negotiator for the Swedish government with Nazi Germany. Thus were both sides covered for Swedish business, including the family’s very own substantial economic interests. Following World War II, this family empire was to achieve its most spectacular prosperity, as German investments under the Bormann program matured in their Swedish safe-havens.
In this way, impressive wealth accrued to the Wallenbergs, as well as to the other Swedish and German investment groups controlling large holdings in the many Swedish companies under German dominance in 1944. . . . [This would certainly have included the Wenner-Gren assets. Note that James Stewart Martin discusses the Wallenberg connection at great length in All Honorable Men.–D.E.]
Looking Back from 1984
A neo-Nazi with a sword attacked a school yesterday, killing a teacher and student and wounding two others, all with immigrant backgrounds, on the same day that the government announced up to 190,000 refugees could arrive in Sweden this year:
Keep in mind that when you read:
a 20 percent showing in the polls is basically what the ruling Social Democrats and center-right Moderate parties are getting.
@Pterrafractyl–
As I have said so many times before THIS is the milieu of Carl Lundstrom, WikiLeaks et al.
And it is the milieu of Snowden, Greenwald, Ron Paul et al as well.
I have never seen more people be more wrong about so much as with the Eddie the Friendly Spook “op.”
Note, too, how the “migrants” (hate that term) are paving the way for the rise of fascism in Europe.
“Illegal immigration” is driving much of the fascist agenda in the U.S. as well.
FTR #864 highlights some aspects of this dynamic.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-864-interview-with-peter-levenda-about-ratline-and-other-books/
Best,
Dave
@Dave: Additionally, it’s sad, but we’re getting to the point where the collective decisions of EU and eurozone governments are almost systematically directed to push policies that promote a fascist agenda. Why? Because now they’re all bound by insane policy straightjackets like the Fiscal Compact along side the larger EU (and especially eurozone) push to make market forces and business interests the real supreme law the land and the endless farce/quest to turn every nation into a Germany-like export powerhouse (see Portugal’s recently overruled elections). And when real-world humanitarian concerns like spikes in poverty and joblessness, and “lost generations” of youth, become acceptable in the name of achieving take a backseat to ideological fantasies like converting all of Europe into a Germany-like export powerhouse and cutting deficits in a depression, we’ve created a situation where even when the EU nations do something that, on the surface, is quite noble and helpful, like taking in desperate refugees fleeing for their lives, we’re almost inevitably going to see an exacerbated xenophobic backlash because of all the economic concerns that come with helping.
Sure, some sort of xenophobic backlash would have be guaranteed even under the best of economic times when potentially millions of refugees from other parts of the world suddenly show up. But it’s hard to imagine many socioeconomic scenarios for Europe that are worse than today’s for an undertaking on the scale of taking in millions of refugees simply because it’s become clear now that the policies that all EU (and especially eurozone) nations MUST follow, indefinitely, are policies that are going to keep unemployment, stress, and hopelessness at elevated levels. And that means an indefinite rise of polarized politics and the far-right (which can’t actually continue indefinitely). When it comes to the mandate (and fantasy) that every EU nation must try to become a lean-mean export powerful with low deficits and debt, there is simply no room for compromise. That is now abundantly clear (again, see Portugal’s recently overruled elections). And that’s exactly the kind of environment that’s going to maximize the potential xenophobic backlashes.
So now we have a world where Europe is systematically so screwed up from zero-sum/‘cut-first, ask questions later’ ideologies that it can’t even help others without hurting itself. It’s pretty alarming.
@Dave: Yikes. Poland just became the latest example of how austerity plus a hefty dose of xenophobia can cause an EU nation to veer far to right: Poland’s Law and Justice Party just came back into power for the first time in a decade on an anti-austerity/anti-refugee platform. In addition, for the first time since the collapse of communism, not a single left-wing party won a seat on parliament:
“With 38 million residents, Poland is both the largest and the most economically vibrant nation in Eastern Europe and has emerged in recent years as a regional leader. Still, disenchanted voters have proved increasingly tired of hearing about a thriving economy that they feel has left too many behind and that still lags far behind those of more prosperous, Western European nations.”
Left or right, everyone hates austerity. But based on Las and Justice’s historic victory, many hate refugees too, or at least fear they’re infested with parasites:
“There are already signs of emergence of diseases that are highly dangerous and have not been seen in Europe for a long time: cholera on the Greek islands, dysentery in Vienna. There is also talk about other, even more severe diseases.”
Well, he is correct on one point. There are indeed some severe diseases spreading in Europe these days. They may not actually be spread by the refugees, but they are spreading.
@Dave: Here’s another development worth keeping an eye on regarding the ways the refugee crisis might impact the rise of the European far-right. The EU and Turkey are working on a deal: The EU pays Turkey 3 billion euros to increase coast guard patrols, arrest more smugglers and build six additional reception centers. In exchange, Turkey wants visa-free travel to Europe for its 75 million citizens and the reopening of its long-stalled EU accession talks:
“While the deal ignores the root causes of the crisis, it’s a win for all political players involved.”
Yep.
Here’s a pair of articles that are tragically topical given the ongoing drumbeat of war against Venezuela: A trove of 47,000 pages of US files related to Argentina’s dictatorship from 1976–83 was just released last week. It’s the third and final release of such files as part of the Declassification Project for Argentina, fulfilling a formal request made by Argentina in 2016. The two previous releases happened during the Obama administration.
That the documents are filled with gruesome details about the US involvement in supporting South America’s military governments is no surprise given the nature of the documents or the nature of the US’s involvement in South America’s dirty wars and the US-led Operation Condor assassination program. But as the following article points out, the US wasn’t the only Western government with an involvement in Operation Condor. It turns out West German, French and British intelligence agencies were also sending representatives to the Condor organization secretariat in Buenos Aires in 1977 “to discuss methods for establishment of an anti-subversion organization similar to Condor”, according to one of the released CIA documents. The Europeans even told the Condor secretariat that “The terrorist/subversive threat had reached such dangerous levels in Europe that they believed it best if they pooled their intelligence resources in a cooperative organization such as Condor.” Part of the appeal of the Condor approach to assassination “terrorists/subversives” was apparently that it would allow European governments to all coordinate their operations in close coordination to avoid one intelligence service from unilaterally operating in another country. So Operation Condor wasn’t just one of the darkest chapters of US and Latin American history. It was also a model for multinational intelligence agency cooperation to promote an international campaign of assassinations:
“The European intelligence services wanted to learn about “Operation Condor”, a secret programme in which the dictatorships of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador conspired to kidnap and assassinate members of leftwing guerrilla groups in each other’s territories.”
Yep, the European intelligence agencies want to learn how they could set up Operation Condors of their own. They want to learn how governments could coordinate their assassinations and kidnappings of leftist and Operation Condor was a model they found appealing:
It’s one of the rare areas where you don’t want to have international cooperation: when it’s international cooperation in political assassinations.
So these released documents raise quite a few questions, especially regarding what these European intelligence agencies did with Operation Condor knowledge they acquired. How was that knowledge ultimately used? And what other forms of cooperation did these European governments have with the Latin American military dictatorships of that period? They’re important questions, and as the following article hints, they’re the kinds of questions these governments are probably not going to want to have answer. At least not any time soon. At least that’s what we can infer from the German government’s ongoing refusal to answer questions about its own relationship with Pinochet’s government, citing confidentiality:
“The socialist Left party’s Jan Korte submitted 68 questions to the German Foreign Ministry late last year, and the incomplete answers he got irritated the Bundestag member so much that he filed an official complaint about the noncooperation of the government. “These answers are an unparalleled insult,” he told DW. “And, by the way, that is no way to treat the parliament.””
The German Foreign Ministry clearly isn’t very interested in transparency regarding the West German government’s policies towards Pinochet’s coup in Chile. And what information was released isn’t exactly exculpatory. For example, the Foreign Ministry did admit that government knew in advance about Pinochet’s coup, but didn’t give any details about how it knew it. And that appears to be pretty much the only thing the ministry was willing to admit. Whats the justification for all the secrecy? It would be a breach of confidentiality. Specifically, confidentiality between the West German government and Pinochet’s dictatorship:
And note how the German government refused to say whether any Chilean military personnel had been trained in West Germany in the years between 1965 and 1995. Given what we just learned about the West German interest in learning from Operation Condor, it raises the question of whether or not Chilean military personnel in West Germany would have been the ones receiving the training or giving it:
So the German government clearly isn’t going to be forthcoming, allegedly over concerns over respecting the confidentiality with an illegal military government that maintained torture camps. But we don’t have rely on answers from the government to get a good idea of why there’s so much resistance to providing those answers. All we have to look at is the public pronouncements of West Germany’s politicians and newspapers at the time. Pronouncements that were a mix of praise, solidarity, and giddiness over Pinochet’s coup:
The general secretary of the CDU traveled to Chile in 1973 as a show of solidarity and made light of reports that the national stadium had been turned into a torture camp. That’s already part of the public record.
So we know these West European governments wanted to set up an Operation Condor of their own back in the 70’s and we know that they really, really, really don’t want to talk about this stuff today. Was a European Operation Condor plan ever formally organized? At this point we don’t have the answers. Hopefully we’ll get them some day. And hopefully that answer will come in the form of the release of government documents. Because when you’re asking the question of whether or not there was a secret multi-government assassination agreement set up to snuff out leftists that’s the kind of answer that can come in many forms.
The author of this article–Uki Goni–is the author of “The Real Odessa.”
http://ukigoni.com/odessa/list.htm
I think, actually, that the decision to “Go Condor”–so to speak–was reached during World War II itself.
The realization of the Christian West was the foundation of that: https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1058-ftr-1059-and-ftr-1060-the-christian-west-parts‑1–2‑and-3-contextual-foundation-of-the-jim-dieugenio-interviews/
Look what happened to the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King and countless others in the U.S.
In “The Hitler Legacy” and the interviews I did with him about that, Peter Levenda describes his visit to Colonia Dignidad, one of the operational centers of Condor.
The nightmarish activity followed him to the U.S.
Keep up the great work!
Dave
Here’s a tantalizing update on the murder of Olaf Palme: It sounds like the Swedish and South African governments have recently been engaged in talks that would involve South Africa revealing the role its agents played in Palme’s assassination in exchange for improved relations with Sweden. That’s according to Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish diplomat who studied the Palme murder as a hobby. A hobby that ended up putting Björkdahl in contact with various South African military intelligence officials who confirmed to Björkdahl that South Africa’s military intelligence was indeed behind the murder of Palme. As the following article describes, Björkdahl recently learned that the representatives from the governments of Sweden and South Africa have now been in contact to discuss the case. So it sounds like there’s a big public revelation that could be on the way in the murder of Olaf Palme because South Africa’s government has already basically admitted it was behind it and they’re now negotiating the terms of making that admission in public:
“I was never able to re-establish contact with the South African general but in June 2018 I succeeded in delivering the message to MI through another contact. Again, there was silence – until a few weeks ago, when an intelligence source in South Africa informed me that a meeting between representatives from the two governments had taken place in Pretoria on 18 March to discuss the Palme case.”
It sounds like plans are already being worked out for formally admitting South Africa’s military intelligence was behind the killings. That’s something to keep an eye on. Especially given the rather remarkable warning given to Björkdahl in 2015 from the South African general who he met with: that the operators behind Palme’s killing would simply murder Björkdahl if they felt threatened by his hobby investigating Palme’s murder:
So at this point it sounds like the people behind Palme’s murder were more than capable and willing to murder random people like Björkdahl investigating the case and the person issuing this warning is an South African general reaching out to Björkdahl to help negotiate the public admission of the perpetrators. It raises the interesting question of whether or not the network that murdered Palme might was primarily South African government operatives or if we’re looking at a broader international far right white supremacist network that was working with the apartheid government. We’ll see. At least hopefully we’ll see, assuming these negotiations between Sweden and South Africa pan out.
And if we don’t hear about some big new revelation in the case at some point that raises the question of what went wrong in those negotiations. Were the Swedish officials unwilling to improve relations to the extent South Africa wants? Or perhaps Sweden won’t be willing to give request amnesty to accused figures. There’s a range of possibilities that could derail these negotiations. But as the following article from last year reminds us, one big reason for the potential failure of the negotiations could be that the revelation would be something Swedish society really doesn’t want to hear because it was a plot between South African spies and far right Swedes in law enforcement:
“For this, Palme was loved by many – his predecessor Tage Erlander called him “the greatest political talent Sweden has seen this century” – and despised by others. He was distrusted by some on the left for being from aristocratic stock, and distrusted by aristocrats for being a class traitor. Paranoid corners of the Swedish right made wild allegations that he was a Soviet spy. Contra, a popular conservative magazine, sold dartboards featuring a caricature of his face. On the night of the killing, when word of Palme’s death reached Claes Löfgren, a journalist for the Swedish national broadcaster SVT, he was in a restaurant. When they heard the news, Löfgren told me, some people in the restaurant cheered and toasted. To Swedes of all political persuasions, the symbolism of Palme’s assassination was clear: it was as if the killer wanted to destroy the idea of modern Sweden itself.”
The murder of Olaf Palme was more than just a political assassination. It was like assassinating the idea of modern Sweden itself. That’s part of why Palme’s assassination still has so much political significance decades later. And that’s also why the revelation of South African involvement in the assassination could be so incredibly explosive to Swedish society: if South African agents really were involved then there’s a good chance Stieg Larsson was correct and this really was an international conspiracy involving far right Nazi-sympathizing elements of Swedish law enforcement. It’s also a theory that would explain the incredible bungling of this investigation starting from the destruction of crime scene evidence:
And that’s all part of what makes this report about a possible deal between South Africa and Sweden so fascinating: if South Africa’s government really was behind the assassination of Olaf Palme Sweden’s government probably was too.
Well, it appears the assassination of Olof Palme has officially concluded. Last Friday we got reports that Swedish prosecutors were planning on making a big announcement in the investigation. Then on Monday we got that intriguing report in the Guardian by Swedish diplomat Göran Björkdahl who claimed he was contacted two weeks ago by a South African intelligence source who told him that representatives from Sweden and South Africa intelligence agencies had met in March to discuss the case. This is at the end of Björkdahl’s long-running personal investigation into the murder that put him in touch with a number of South African intelligence contacts who claimed to be aware of an South African intelligence tie to the assassination — ties that involved far right Swedish networks — that they would be willing to reveal in exchange for better relations between the two countries. So did today’s big announcement by Swedish prosecutors involve an international conspiracy involving South African intelligence agents and the Swedish far right? Of course not. No, instead it was almost exactly what any cynic could have easily predicted: the prosecution has concluded that a now-deceased man was the killer and because he is deceased the case is now closed and there will be no court case.
Specifically, the prosecutor, Krister Petersson, accused Stig Engstrom — a graphic designer at the Skandia insurance company who was one of the first people to come across the crime scene — of being the killer based on what he saw as “reasonable evidence”. So what was this “reasonable evidence”? Well, the way Petersson put it, “He has the right timing, the right clothing; he has unique information, he lied, he had close access to guns of the right type,” and that, “He was right-wing and Palme unfriendly.”
So are prosecutors suggesting the motive for the killing was political by pointing out that Engstrom was “right-wing and Palme unfriendly”? Not exactly. Instead, it sounds like they were basing their conclusions heavily on the work of freelance journalist, Thomas Pettersson who published a book in 2018 that fingered Engstrom as the killed, although prosecutors are saying they did not base their conclusion on Pettersson’s reporting. But it’s hard to ignore that conclusion. As Pettersson described Engstrom in an interview, Engstrom was frustrated with his lot in life and craved attention. He was 52 at the time and, “He had not advanced at his job...He didn’t get the positions he felt he deserved. No family. No prospects in sight. So he was kind of a disappointed man at that point of his life...But he also had a drive to be recognized...To make something great of himself. He enjoyed every second of being in the media.” When directly asked what the motive was during today’s press conference, Kister Petersson — the prosecutor — bluntly stated, “He wanted attention.”
And what about the South African connection or possibility Engstrom was working with a broader far right Swedish network who wanted Palme killed? Well, Petersson acknowledges he can’t rule out the possibility that Engstrom was part of a larger conspiracy. And leaves it at that. So that’s how this case is apparently going to officially end: with accusations against a dead guy who apparently did it for attention that effectively ends any further investigations into a broader conspiracy:
“Mr. Petersson said he had reached his conclusions after an exhaustive investigation that he compared to those of the Kennedy assassination and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.”
Yeah, unfortunately likening this case to the JFK assassination or the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 is becoming more and more appropriate as this plays out. Depressingly appropriate, ‘lone nut’ and all. And you have to love how the prosecutors are openly admitting that, yeah, they can’t rule out the possibility that Engstrom was part of a larger conspiracy, but the case is being closed anyway because he’s dead:
Instead, we are told Engstrom killed Olof Palme primarily so he could get attention...presumably Engstrom’s plan was to kill Palme and then bask in the glory of being an eye witness under this scenario. A scenario that seems pretty remarkable given that Palme’s wife was grazed by the assassins bullet and Engstrom provided first aide to her and Palme. Ao he would have had a plan to shoot the prime minister and then play the role of a hero and he did this to make up for being disappointed with his station in life. It’s a great explanation if you want to avoid any real investigation into a deeper conspiracy:
So what about the South African connection? Did prosecutors mention that at all during their press conference? Yes, but only to dismiss it as a possibility investigators couldn’t investigate because the people approaching investigators about information related to South Africa couldn’t discuss specific information extensively:
““The problem is that you cannot get any specific information discussed extensively. There are a number of people who contacted us providing interesting views with respect to this lead on South Africa but unfortunately there is not enough specific information to do something about this lead,” said Petersson.”
So the prosecutors are openly saying they were getting leads related to South Africa but, for whatever reason, they couldn’t pursue these leads because the sources of the leads couldn’t go into details. And he made this statement two days after we had that report in the Guardian by Swedish diplomat Göran Björkdahl who explicitly stated that he was told by his South African intelligence source that Swedish and South African intelligence representatives met in March to discuss the handover of evidence to the Swedish government. Evidence that very well may have validated Stieg Larsson’s theory of a a broader international conspiracy involving apartheid-era South African intelligence agents and far right elements in Swedish law enforcement. It’s the kind of scenario that hints at the problem not being a lack of people willing to share specific information about these leads. The problem is with that specific information and who it specifically implicates. Or maybe who it non-specifically implicates. Who knows who far reaching a conspiracy like that could have been. Sweden’s power structure really could have been rocked to its core if this investigation had been allowed to play out, But that’s not going to happen and now that case is close. Because of course that’s how this played out.
The ‘lone nut’ strikes again.