London
As reported by Reuters, Sweden’s foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said earlier this week that the government is moving ahead with plans to establish a new intelligence body directly under the Foreign Office—UND (Swedish for INTEL). International media—and Malmer Stenergard herself—have described the organisation as a Swedish equivalent of the CIA or Britain’s MI6, implying that Sweden has until now lacked a civilian foreign intelligence service.
Nothing could be more wrong. Since 1939, Sweden has maintained a civilian intelligence structure hidden within the military—accountable directly to the government and the supreme commander. From its beginnings to the present day, it has been colloquially known as “the firm.”
As I discuss in my forthcoming book, The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians, its first iteration was C Bureau, hastily cobbled together on the eve of World War Two and manned largely…
