The end of the 1940s witnessed the completion of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, Berlin airlift, 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 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 charged with intelligence gathering to learn when the Soviet Union was about the attack the West. There was a major problem: CIA had no intelligence agents behind the Iron Curtain in a position to fulfill CIA’s tasks.
But there were thousands of men (for they were mostly men), who had escaped from the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, at the end of World War Two to Sweden, Some were willing to work for CIA and the British intelligence services. The British Intelligence Service (SIS) started Operation “JUNGLE” and CIA began Operation “TILESTONE” using recruited agents in Sweden.
CIA and SIS found an unlikely ally in this quest for intelligence: historically neutral Sweden (CIA cryptonyms CF-Land and HBCHEST). 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, Lithuanians to their homelands. Most of them died in Soviet captivity and only a few survived and exfiltrated.
The Swedish intelligence service priority targets in the Baltics were:
1) Information on the military aviation development and installations in the Baltics,
2) Results of Russian Atomic research and guided missiles,
3) Complete information re the underground organization and strength in the Baltics.
From CIA Director's Log September 6, 1951:
Swedish Intelligence successfully dispatched three agents by sea to Estonia on 2 September 1951. The dispatch boat successfully evaded a Soviet patrol craft which followed it on the return trip. OSO has supported this operation and will receive the intelligence it produces.
The major intelligence personalities included:
USA
William (Bill) Colby; WWII veteran in Norway, CIA Office of Special Operations (OSO) officer in Stockholm, and future CIA Director.
United Kingdom
Alexander ‘Sandy” McKibbin: British intelligence (SIS) officer in charge of Baltic operations.
Sweden
Kommendör Kaptain Ken Lilianberg: Deputy Director Swedish Intelligence (G-2 section) officer in charge of Baltic operations, CIA cryptonym A-356.
Lithuania (CIA cryptonym DF-LAND)
Jonas DEKSNYS, CIA Cryptonyms A-374, TILESTONE, Lithuanian Intelligence Sevice alias PETRAUSKAS.
One example of his activities in connection with Sweden
19 January 1948
DEKSNYS 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 b 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 frontier 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 DEKSNYS's trip is to set up radio communication with the Lithuanian underground. He is carrying with him 16 American radio crystals and an elaborate cipher code furnished him 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 DEKSNYS had in Stockholm. Transmissions will be made from Sweden once a week and it is expected that answers will be received twice a month from Lithuania. DEKSNYS 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.
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication (electronic intelligence—abbreviated to ELINT)
The Swedish signals intelligence program was in fact secret cooperation with Washington and London, which severely infringed on Sweden’s neutrality policy, and based on the exchange of technical equipment and data on the situation along the Soviet Baltic coastlines
The Swedish intelligence and signal intelligence (SIGINT) services proved to be vitally important sources for hard-to-come-by information on Soviet military activities in the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) and on Soviet naval activities in the Baltic Sea. A tacit arrangement was arrived at in 1946 whereby the Swedes passed to the U.S. intelligence community any data they developed on Soviet military activities in the Baltic region, including from SIGINT monitoring of Soviet fleet activities in the Baltic and human intelligence received from the agents the Swedish intelligence service was then infiltrating into the Baltic States.
In November 1947, the U.S. Air Force signed a secret agreement to give the Swedish air force K-22 aerial cameras with 24- and 40-inch lenses, film, paper, and other equipment. In return, the Swedes gave the USAF military attaché in Stockholm two prints and one contact film copy of every photograph taken on the covert overflight missions of the USSR, Poland, and Finland conducted by the Swedish air force over the next three years. (Source: The Declassified History of American Intelligence Operations in Europe: 1945-2001 Matthew M. Aid, October 2014)
From a compilation by David Lednicer of aircraft shot down in the Cold War:
13 June 1952 Soviet MiG-15 Fagot pilot Captain Boris Osinsky, of the 483rd Fighter Aviation Regiment, shot down a Swedish SIGINT C-47 (Tp79 79001 Hugin) piloted by Alvar Almeberg, over the Baltic, near Ventspils Latvia. Everybody on board the C-47 was killed - the only wreckage found at the time was a life raft. The C- 47 was one of two, (the other being 79002 Munin, both named after Odin's ravens), together with a Ju 86 called Blondie, which supposedly belonged to the so-called 6 Transportflyggruppen at F 8, which at that time had a staff of twelve. In reality, they were used for SIGINT duties, the C-47s fitted out with five operator stations, the operators belonging to FRA (Försvarets Radioanstalt = the Radio Establishment of the Defense). In June 2003, Swedish searchers found the wreckage of the C-47 on the bottom of the Baltic in international waters near Gotska Sandoen island, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of the Swedish coastline. The wreckage was raised during the night of March 19/20 2004 and returned to Sweden.
