IB affair
Swedish surveillance scandal
The IB affair (Swedish: IB-affären) was the exposure of illegal surveillance operations by the IB secret Swedish intelligence agency within the Swedish Armed Forces. The two main purposes of the agency were to handle liaison with foreign intelligence agencies and to gather information about communists and other individuals who were perceived to be a threat to the nation.
History
The meaning of the name IB is not known with certainty. It is often said to be an abbreviation of either Informationsbyrån (The Information Office, Information Bureau) or Insamling Birger ([Information-]Gathering Birger, after its director Birger Elmér). This is, however, speculation, and neither name was in general use within the organization.
The key persons leading to the exposure of the IB were journalists Jan Guillou and Peter Bratt and their original main source Håkan Isacson. The two reporters revealed their findings in the leftist magazine Folket i Bild/Kulturfront on 3 May 1973. The story was immediately picked up by many leading Swedish dailies. Their revelations were that:
There was a secret intelligence agency in Sweden called IB, without official status. Its director Birger Elmér was reporting directly to select key persons at cabinet level, most likely defence minister Sven Andersson and Prime Minister Olof Palme.
“IB affair” enters the record as swedish surveillance scandal. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what affair, Swedish and surveillance can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “IB affair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.