SWEDEN’S MASTER SPY

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31053, 7 May 1966, Page 4

SWEDEN’S MASTER SPY

Wennerstrom the Spy. By H. K. Ronblom. Hodder and Stoughton. 222 pp.

In this fascinating account of a recent cause celebre, when the spying activities of a well-known Swedish officer were unmasked, the author has tried to probe the peculiar mentality and contradictory impluses which prompt a highly respected public man to betray his country. Mr Ronblom expresses the belief that Colonel Stig Wennerstrom who for 15 years spied for the Russians —chiefly against the British and Americans—“was a man in whom basic natural loyalties were never deeply implanted,” and this assessment would seem to be brought out by his story. Wennerstrom was a person-

able figure with an almost fanatical belief in always being “correct” in bearing and behaviour. Trained first at the Naval College, he then transferred to the Air Force where prospects of distinguishing himself were brighter than in the other two serviceo. From 1925 to 1945 his progress was satisfactory; he married the daughter of a rich manufacturer, and became popular in the circles in which he moved. Yet from 1940, when he was appointed to the defence staff intelligence section, and sent to Russia as an attache, his spying activities began to take shape. As a good linguist he was persona grata with the Americans, Russians and Germans, and soon began to un-

dertake some discreet observation work for the first two. His friendship with prominent members of the foreign missions in Moscow aroused the interest of the Swedish security police, but they found no real evidence of his subversive activities.

In 1941, on the outbreak of war between Germany and Russia, Wennerstrom was recalled to Sweden, and posted to the Defence Staff until 1943 when he became squad-ron-commander with the Air Force Group at Satenas. At about this time he was passed over for promotion because of a rather poor flying record, and his “amour propre” was severely wounded. The stage was thus set for his future role, and development of the cold war in 1946 found him being approached by both the Russian and American secret services with offers to work for them. He did indeed carry out the perilous assignment of double agent until 1948 when he was appointed to the new post of air attache in Moscow. There he was to meet the one man who was to command his lifelong admiration, General Pjotr Pavlovitch Lemenov. Lernenov held a high position in the Russian Secret Service and under his direction Wennerstrom’s activities were thereafter devoted solely to Russia’s interest. When the ur suspecting Swedish Intelligence service transferred him to Washington, Wennerstrom was faced with an awkward moment of truth. The Russians had become privy to his earlier associations with the Americans and it was on Lemenov’s representations of his probable future usefulness that he was allowed to take up his Washington appointment rather than face swift liquidation. While in Washington Wennerstrom quickly proved his worth to his Russian masters and he became absolute master of the various subterfuges whereby he could supply Moscow with valuable information. It is a credit to his graduation in the art of deception that the alert espionage service in America never found him out. But Nemesis was to catch up on this mastier spy after his return to Sweden. In 15 years of work as a highranking Russian agent he had not been called upon to do his own country much harm, and there is evidence that he would now have liked to pull out of the whole dangerous business. Russia, however, would not let him go, and in his few contacts with his hero, Lemenov, he was soothed into resignation to his now role of spying on Swedish defences and the country’s political attitude to the rest of the world. Nevertheless he became a very unhappy man—nervy, and suspicious, and his occasional outbursts of rage against the Russian did not go unnoted by the Security police, who set a watch on him by cne of his own servants. Certain films he was smuggling to the [ Russians came to light, and his game was finally up.

Most of his story was gleaned from his own depositions at his trial where he pleaded ideology as the motive force for his traitorous activities. This plea was ruled out at once as not being in character. Vanity, ambition, and to some extent, the liking for high living, were believed to be the chief reasons for bringing about his rise and fall, and that pregnant phrase of the author, quoted in the beginning,—a lack of national loyalty—the first ingredient in the making of a master spy. His trial ended last year with the predicted sentence—hard labour for life. The book is more interesting than any ordinary cloak-and-dagger thriller, and is ably translated by Joan Bulman.