IB affair

IB was a secret Swedish intelligence agency within the Swedish Armed Forces. Its two main purposes 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. The exposure of the IB operations came to be known as the IB affair (IB-affären).

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:

In the following issues of Folket i Bild/Kulturfront the two uncovered further activities of IB and interviewed a man who had infiltrated the Swedish movement supporting the FNL, Vietnamese National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam - at this time the FNL support network was a backbone of the radical opinion - and among other things, visited Palestinian guerilla camps in Jordan. The man worked for IB and had composed reports that, it was surmised, IB later passed on to the Israeli security services which resulted in the camps being bombed. The man, Gunnar Ekberg, claimed in his interview to have broken with IB, but in fact was still working for the organization. This was exposed in the following editions of FiB/Kulturfront, but by that time, Ekberg had gone underground. Swedish authorities claimed they were unable to locate him to stand trial. In 2009, he released an autobiography of his years in IB, attacking Guillou in particular for having misrepresented facts, been involved with Palestinian militant groups (particularly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and worked for the KGB; and alleging widespread terrorist ties to the groups and persons monitored by IB. He also confirmed that he had been transferred from IB to the Mossad, an Israeli intelligence agency, immediately prior to his exposure.

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