FBI searched for Soviet atom bombs in 1950s’ New York, files show
July 28, 2014 Leave a comment
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
American authorities suspected that Soviet intelligence had smuggled atom bombs in New York City and that Moscow was planning to detonate them “at an expedient time”, according to declassified documents. The revelation comes from a set of internal FBI files, which were declassified and released in redacted form in 2010. Copies of the documents, which date from the early 1950s, were posted (.pdf) on The Government Attic, a website specializing in publishing US government files obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. The documents were then noticed last week by The Village Voice‘s Anna Merlan. The file (.pdf), titled “Atomic Bomb in Unknown Consulate, New York City”, is nearly 80 pages-long. It indicates that the search for a supposed Soviet atomic weapon in New York began shortly after the summer of 1950, when the FBI received a tip from a source in Brazil. The source reportedly told the Bureau that Soviet operatives had “placed an atom bomb in a consulate […] in New York City to be detonated at such time as the Soviets consider expedient”. The problem was that the FBI was not aware of the identity of the consulate, which was presumed to belong to the USSR or to a country politically aligned with it. The Bureau thus actively engaged in searching for the bomb during the years of 1951 and 1952. The search was primarily conducted by the FBI’s informants in various communist-bloc consulates and agencies in New York, including the Soviet mission to the United Nations, located on Park Avenue, as well as the Polish, Hungarian and Czechoslovakian missions, located a few blocks away from their Soviet equivalent, on East 67th Street. The FBI also appears to have mobilized its informants inside the Soviet government-run Amtorg Trading Corporation, which handled the USSR’s trade with foreign countries, as well as the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) offices at Rockefeller Plaza. A clandestine search was also conducted at the Soviet diplomatic mission’s retreat on Long Island. American customs agents were also notified to keep their eyes open for oddly shaped diplomatic packages “which appear to be suspiciously heavy in proportion to their dimensions”. Read more of this post
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Did South African spy services kill Swedish prime minister in 1986?
July 29, 2014 by intelNews 2 Comments
The usually tranquil waters of Swedish national politics were stirred violently on February 28, 1986, when the country’s Prime Minister, Olof Palme, was shot dead. He was walking home from the cinema with his wife when he was gunned down by a single assassin who shot him from behind in Stockholm’s central street of Sveavägen. Following the 1988 acquittal of Christer Pettersson, who had been initially convicted of the assassination, several theories have been floating around, but the crime remains unsolved to this day. Now the BBC has aired an investigation into the incident, which revisits what some say is the most credible theory behind the killing: that Palme was targeted by the government of apartheid-era South Africa because of his strong support for the African National Congress (ANC). Palme was among the leading figures of the left wing in Sweden’s Social Democratic Party. He had served as Prime Minister from 1969 to 1976, and was reelected in 1982 on a left-wing program of “revolutionary reform” that included expanding the role of the trade unions and increasing progressive taxation rates. He was also a strong international opponent of South Africa’s apartheid system and under his leadership Sweden became the most ardent supporter of the ANC. By the mid-1980s, the country was providing nearly half of the ANC’s political funding. Swedish authorities viewed South African intelligence, especially the apartheid system’s State Security Bureau (BOSS), as the primary suspect in Palme’s assassination. In 2010, Tommy Lindström, former Director of the Swedish Police Service (Rikskriminalpolisen), said he was certain of the South African government’s complicity in Palme’s murder. After the end of apartheid, several South African former security officials said elements within the country’s intelligence services had authorized the assassination of the Swedish leader. But investigations by Swedish authorities remain inconclusive. Now the BBC’s security correspondent, Gordon Corera, has produced an investigation into the claims of South African complicity behind Palme’s murder. The investigation was aired on Monday by Document, an investigative program on BBC’s Radio 4 station. It is based on nearly 30 boxes of documents on the Palme assassination, found in the personal archive of the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Though known today primarily for his Millennium series, Larsson worked for most of his professional life as an investigative journalist specializing on the activities of the Swedish far-right. One of the documents in Larsson’s archive mentions Bertil Wedin, an anti-communist Swedish journalist, as “the middle man in the assassination” of Palme. Correra talks to several sources, including British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, who in 1988 alleged that the British security services had been aware of plots by Pretoria to kill Palme. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Analysis, ANC, assassinations, Bertil Wedin, Duncan Campbell, Edward Aspinall, Gordon Corera, history, Olof Palme, South Africa, State Security Bureau (South Africa), Stieg Larsson