Early Cold War Swedish Agent Infiltrations into the Baltics, Part Two: The Tilestone Project ©

The end of the 1940s witnessed the completion of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the Berlin airlift, the Marshall Plan, and the Iron Curtain. Eastern, Central, and Western Europe were physically divided by barbed wire, armed patrols, land mines, and guard towers. The Communist Party's monopoly and censorship of the domestic media effectively cut off and prevented the free flow of information to the peoples of Eastern Europe and the USSR. There was also a widespread fear of war between the two blocs. America's CIA was tasked with intelligence gathering to learn when the Soviet Union was about to attack the West. 

There was a significant problem: the CIA had no intelligence agents behind the Iron Curtain in a position to fulfill the CIA's tasks. But there were thousands of men who had escaped from the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, at the end of World War Two and who might be willing to work for the CIA and the British. The British Intelligence Service (SIS) started Operation "Jungle," and the CIA began Operation "Tilestone," both using recruited agents in Sweden.

CIA and SIS found an unlikely ally in this quest for intelligence: historically neutral Sweden (CIA cryptonym CF-Land). For example, the Swedish Defense Staff (CIA cryptonym TIEBARS) allowed the boat traffic between Sweden and the Baltics from Löfthammar and Bornholm island. Sweden also maintained a radio listening post in Gotland to send and receive wireless traffic between agents in the Baltics and Sweden. Additionally, prospective agents were trained for the infiltration operations in Sweden. 

In the early Cold War, British, the US, and Swedish agencies infiltrated at least forty-two Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians into their homelands. Here is one example of the planned use of an agent infiltration into Lithuania: The Tilestone Project. Here are excerpts from a declassified CIA file.

 

DATE: 19 January 1948 

SUBJECT: Tilestone Project

 

Tilestone will leave Stockholm on 19 or 20 January for the south of Sweden. He will be accompanied by (redacted) or one of his assistants. He has been furnished the papers of a Swedish seaman and will board a Swedish vessel at some Southern port. He will be taken to Gdynia where he expects to be able to land without difficulty. He plans to travel to Warsaw and from there to the neighborhood of the Lithuanian frontier. He expects to meet several members of the Lithuanian resistance who have been awaiting his arrival on the Polish side of the border for some two weeks. He hopes to be able to return to Sweden within a month, coming back on another Swedish vessel. 

 

The primary purpose of Tilestone's trip is to set up radio communication with the Lithuanian underground. He is carrying 16 American radio crystals and an elaborate cipher code furnished by the Swedes. 

 

The code is a numerical cipher similar to that used by the Russians in broadcasts from Lithuania to Moscow. It is based on a Lithuanian book, a copy of which Tilestone had in Stockholm. Tilestone has spent the last two weeks working with Swedish cryptographic experts setting up the code and arranging a series of questions in which his group and the Swedes are interested. Transmissions will be made from Sweden once a week, and it is expected that answers will be received twice a month from Lithuania. 

 

The agent was not dispatched at this time but at a later date in 1949. There is evidence, however, that he then became a Soviet double agent codenamed Petrauskas" until 1970.