Conspiracy Olof Palme

On February 28, 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated in Stockholm City. He had no bodyguards at the time, and the murderer is still at large, 32 years later. Indeed, we know virtually nothing about the murder except that it took place. No murder weapon has been found, there is no known motive, and no obvious suspect. The only person ever convicted of the attack, the late and unlamented Christer Pettersson (a lumpenized alcoholic and drug addict) was cleared of the charges on appeal. There are still people who believe that Pettersson did it, just as there probably are people who think the late right-wing extremist Victor Gunnarsson is the real killer (Gunnarsson was the first person to be arrested for the murder but he was soon released).

                                                                        

Naturally, there are many conspiracy theories about the Palme assassination, more or less fanciful. This is hardly surprising: the police investigation into the murder was tragicomic and almost bizarre, as the Stockholm police chief Hans Holmér (an old spook) in almost monomaniac fashion singled out the Kurdish left-wing guerilla PKK as the likely culprits, until being stopped by the special prosecutors. When Holmér resigned, his old buddy Ebbe Carlsson (an old “political fixer”) continued the PKK investigation in secret, with the blessings of high-ranking government officials! Today, literally nobody believes that the PKK were guilty, and it was very hard to believe even at the time. People find it difficult to digest that Holmér and Ebbe Carlsson, these dark creatures of the intelligence underworld, were just being incompetent, and at least one conspiracy provably did happen: the previously mentioned secret phase of the PKK investigation (which was moreover illegal). Many people are also skeptical of the claim that Christer Pettersson shot Palme. The case against Pettersson stands and falls with Lisbeth Palme´s positive identification of him as the murderer – Lisbeth was the wife of Olof Palme and was present at the scene of the crime. Indeed, the killer probably tried to kill her, too. Unfortunately, the witness confrontation involving Lisbeth Palme and Pettersson is of questionable value, most other witnesses were pathological liars from the criminal underworld, and the murder (a professional hit) doesn´t fit Pettersson´s criminal record at all. Nor is his motive particularly clear (one speculation is that he really wanted to get rid of his pusher and shot the wrong guy!). Once again, the question is whether law enforcement was simply incompetent, or whether something more sinister is going on?

Gunnar Wall, the author of several books about the case, believes the latter. His latest book, “Konspiration Olof Palme” (only available in Swedish) is an excellent summary of various leads and clues which point to Palme being the victim of a conspiracy possibly involving right-wing extremists, rogue intelligence operatives and even foreign intelligence services. Wall is, I believe, a supporter of the small leftist group Socialistiska Partiet. Conspiracy theories about police, military or intelligence involvement in the murder has been legion on the far left ever since 1986. While Wall doesn´t explicitly support any one scenario, he veers strongly towards Palme being eliminated by people from Operation Stay Behind. The police investigation may have been deliberately derailed by orders from Ingvar Carlsson, Palme´s successor as Prime Minister, and other members of the Social Democratic government. After reading the book, I must unfortunately say that the scenario is very convincing. Of course, it has staggering implications – to put it somewhat mildly. Staggering, but not completely unexpected…

The most interesting part of Wall´s book discusses possible motives for an assassination of this type. Palme, a leading Social Democrat and internationally known statesman, was intensely controversial, often seen as too leftist or “soft on Communism”. He was killed shortly before a planned visit to the Soviet Union, where he was scheduled to meet new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. There was a lot of absurd paranoia in fringe right-wing circles about Palme in general and the upcoming summit in Moscow in particular. The hysterical Palme-bashing of Lyndon LaRouche´s international network is well known. Wall demonstrates that intense hostility towards Palme wasn´t simply a fringe phenomenon. It was relatively widespread among police officers, within the military and inside the top secret Stay Behind operation. What´s more, Wall also demonstrates (although I´m not sure if that´s his intention) that this hostility was politically rational – at least if you were a supporter of NATO and the United States in the Cold War.

Palme was an old intelligence man himself, and had originally been a Cold War Social Democrat or “State Department socialist”, who admired the United States. Indeed, he came from a solidly upper class background (Latvian-German nobility). Sweden was nominally neutral in the Cold War, but in practice cooperated with NATO and was seen as a de facto NATO member by the Soviets. The Social Democrats, despite their leftist domestic politics, willingly administered this state of affairs. The government created its very own top secret intelligence service, known simply as IB, which carried out anti-Communist operations both in Sweden and abroad. Palme must have known essentially everything about IB. It therefore stands to reason that he also knew about the Swedish branch of Stay Behind, a network of NATO-related secret agents assigned to remain behind enemy lines in case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Many of the people recruited to Stay Behind had far right-wing views, and some had been Nazis during the war. Then, something happened. Beginning with the Vietnam War, Palme began to sharply denounce the United States. The Swedish government and the Social Democratic Party established good relations with Cuba, Vietnam, Sandinista Nicaragua, the PLO, and the ANC in South Africa. Meanwhile, Sweden nevertheless continued to collaborate with NATO in secret, creating a rather anomalous situation. As long as Palme´s attacks on the United States could be seen as mere campaign rhetoric to keep radicalized youth within the Social Democratic fold, his actions could be seen as somewhat rash but ultimately non-threatening. But what if Palme *actually* threatened the Western alliance?

Palme campaigned vigorously for turning the Nordic countries into a nuclear weapon-free zone. One of his collaborators in this project was the Soviet advisor Georgy Arbatov. Of course, a de-nuclearized zone of this kind would favor the Soviet Union more than the United States. Since Norway and Denmark were NATO members, such a zone could have prompted them (or forced them) to leave the Western military alliance. There are also speculations that Palme stopped a joint Swedish-NATO surveillance project in the Baltic Sea, the purpose of which was to monitor Soviet submarine activity. The project didn´t go ahead until after Palme´s assassination. Actions such as these, combined with the above-mentioned support for Communist and leftist governments and movements around the world, would naturally have aroused the suspicion of the United States. (One case not mentioned in Wall´s book is the murder of Swedish reporter Cats Falck in 1985. She was investigating suspected Swedish arms smuggling to East Germany, a Soviet ally!)

In many nations, Stay Behind had interfered in domestic politics in lieu of a Soviet invasion. Most notoriously in Italy, where agents of Gladio (the local name of the operation) are believed to have been responsible for outright terrorist attacks on civilians and connections to the shadowy Masonic lodge P2. Wall regards it as possible that Stay Behind agents in Sweden were activated shortly before Palme was supposed to fly to Moscow to meet with the Soviet leadership. They certainly had the weapons, the training and the ideology needed to take care of the “traitor”. Palme was probably tricked into a trap (hence no bodyguards) and disposed of by a hired hit man, perhaps a South African or a Chilean. Wall doesn´t believe that the Social Democratic government was directly involved in the conspiracy, and neither was the regular police. Rather, the government realized fairly quickly that an investigation into the murky underworld of secret intelligence operatives would be too sensitive. It would lead to too many awkward questions being asked about the responsibility of the Social Democrats themselves in creating the Frankenstein´s monster. It might expose the secret Swedish ties with NATO. It could also lead to a severe diplomatic crisis with one or several foreign nations, if their intelligence services were somehow involved in the murder. Rather than risking this, Ingvar Carlsson decided to stalemate the investigation from the start. In this, he had a good ally in Holmér, an old pro-Social Democratic “asset” in the mostly anti-Social Democratic Swedish secret service SÄPO. A bizarre detail is that the man responsible for Holmér´s personal security, a certain Östling, is believed to have been a Nazi and extremely hostile to Olof Palme! When Holmér was derailed by the prosecutors, Ebbe Carlsson simply took up the cudgel, continuing the phony investigation. He need not have worried – in the event, the police decided to nail the junkie Christer Pettersson, a politically harmless killer, and Lisbeth Palme decided to go along. 

Wall´s book “Konspiration Olof Palme” is meticulously researched, and the author has even managed to get interviews with some of the protagonists and access to previously unpublished documents. He has a collaborative relationship with Lars Borgnäs, a reporter with a broadly similar perspective, and often references Borgnäs´ own book on the Palme case, “En iskall vind drog genom Sverige”. After reading it, I can only say that I think Wall is very close to the truth. But will it ever be officially confirmed? Will we ever really get to the truth? A pessimistic guess is no, since the decades ahead will be anything but politically stable. Official revelations about what actually happened on February 28, 1986 will simply fan the flames of discontent. So don´t be too surprised if the present establishment decides to bury this issue even more than before…