The GRU's "Viking" Spy in NATO
Source: espionagehistoryarchive.com
Journalist and retired Soviet military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Nikolai Poroskov provides the inside story of Swedish Air Force Colonel Stig Wennerström, who ferreted out NATO secrets for the GRU for nearly 15 years from 1948 to 1962. Poroskov relies on the first-hand testimony of Wennerström’s case officer and friend, GRU General Vitaly Nikolsky.
On June 13th, 1952, a Soviet Mig-15 interceptor shot down a Swedish Douglas DC-3 on a reconnaissance mission over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea. There were eight crew members on board. At that time the Swedes announced that the plane was carrying out a training flight.
A half-century later, in 2003, 55 kilometers east of Gotland the Swedes uncovered the body of the airplane and raised it from a depth of 126 meters. The tail end of the vehicle was torn to pieces by machine gun fire. The bodies of four men were found; the fate of the other four has remained unknown.
This time around the Swedish side admitted that the plane was monitoring Soviet military bases. They were sharing that information with the United States and Great Britain. It was then that NATO wanted to find out as much as possible about Soviet anti-air defenses in the area of the Latvian and Estonian coasts: in the case of war US and British bombers would pass precisely through this “Baltic corridor” with atomic bombs bound for Leningrad and Moscow.
The downed plane was named Hugin after Odin’s raven that would inform him of all news across the world. In the cabin there was American and British equipment – the result of a secret agreement between neutral Sweden and NATO: hardware in exchange for the results of intelligence flights.
The Swedish Air Force DC-3 Hugin that disappeared in 1952. Photo: spyflight-co.uk
In Moscow the objectives of the Swedish “transport plane” coursing near the edge of Soviet territorial waters were well known. Information came from a colonel in the Swedish Air Force, Stig Erik Constans Wennerström, who worked nearly 15 years for Soviet military intelligence – the famed Main Intelligence Directorate of the Armed Forces General Staff, or simply the GRU. The airplane was also shot down on his lead.
Eagle – A Multifaceted Personality
Perhaps GRU Major General Vitaly Aleksandrovich Nikolsky, who was Wennerström ‘s handler in the two years before his arrest, knew him better than most. I met the retired General Nikolsky at the beginning of the 1990s. He came to the editorial offices of Red Star and shared recollections of war comrades in his partisan days. One day he invited me to his home and told me he was writing a book on the Swedish period of his life.
GRU Major General Vitaly Nikolsky, Wennerström’s handler.
In Stockholm Nikolsky worked “under the cover” of the Soviet military attaché. In his book of memoirs Aquarium-2 (as opposed to Viktor Suvorov’s The Aquarium), he was allowed to put in a small chapter on Stig Wennerström.
Wennerström ‘s operational code name was Eagle, though Nikolsky called him Viking. On the day of establishing contact with the Soviet military attaché, Wennerström was the chief of the Air Force section of the Swedish Ministry of Defense’s Command Expedition. Stig was 54 then and looked strong, and he was always a good-humored and interesting storyteller. Aside from that, he was a master of snow and water skiing, a Swedish curling champion, a marksman, photographer, pilot, and driver. He was highly fluent in Finnish, German, and English, and proficient in French and Russian. Not counting, of course, his native Swedish and Danish. He knew how to hold himself in society.
Wennerström was a distant relative of King Gustavus VI Adolphus and even served as his adjutant for a time. Stig had a wide sphere of acquaintances in military circles and practically unlimited access to documents of state importance. He mainly gave information on NATO: plans for the defense of Northern Europe, a description of the new English Bloodhound surface-to-air missile, the basics of British anti-air defenses, characteristics of new American Sidewinder, Hawk, and Falcon air-to-air missiles, and also data on major alliance maneuvers. He also informed us of the development of the Swedish all-weather interceptor, the J-35 Draken, and the coordinates of an underground Swedish Air Force base being built in the coastal cliffs.
Stig Wennerström completed the naval academy and flying school, and he served on the staff of the Swedish Air Force. In November of 1940 he received an appointment as the air attaché to Moscow. By that time Stig, by temperament inclined toward adventurism, was already passing secret information to German counterintelligence. In 1943 Wennerström would command a squadron, and in 1944-45 he was the Swedish Air Force officer responsible for liaison with representatives of foreign air forces. In 1946 through General Reinhard Gehlen, one of the former chiefs of German military intelligence on the Eastern Front and then the founder of the Gehlen Organization (predecessor to the BND), the United States received Abwehr documents in which Wennerström was positively portrayed. After that he was recruited by the Americans. In the same year, having been at a Soviet Air Force parade in Moscow, he wrote a report on the prospects of intelligence activity on the territory of the USSR. In a word, Viking was of an extremely multifaceted nature.
Two years later, Colonel Wennerström accompanied (and minded) the Soviet military attache, Ivan Rybalchenko, for a trip around Sweden. Subsequently the Swede would recall:
As a result of our constant being together in cars, airplanes, or trains, there grew a certain likeness of friendly relations between us… Once he read out an article from a local newspaper on the modernization and strengthening of landing strips at some military airbase. He lit one of his invariable hand-rolled cigarettes, thought awhile, and then uttered, “I should confirm that in documentary form.” I laughed: “There’s an old saying: one hand washes the other.” He said, as before not looking at me, “We can pose the question another way. How much do you want for that miserable airstrip? Two thousand?” We finally agreed to five.
Sometimes recruitments go that way. Wennerström was to keep the GRU up-to-date on the course of US strategic plans and military potential. He did that so well that Soviet military intelligence accorded him the rank of major general. It’s true that this version is denied by some officers.
The Minister’s Right Hand
From April of 1952, Swedish military attaché in Washington Wennerström oversaw the purchase of armaments for his country’s Air Force and was well-informed of all that concerned American projects. Returning to Sweden in 1957, up to his retirement in 1961 he was a chief of sector under the operations department of the general staff. He was in close contact with NATO staffs in Denmark and Norway, since he taught strategy at Swedish Air Force officer school and was a major expert on disarmament issues.
But let’s return to General Nikolsky. As he told me, he established personal contact with Wennerström in October of 1960, when the Soviet military attache paid a visit to the Command Expedition for the first time. Nikolsky’s predecessor, who had worked with Stig, introduced the general as his future case officer. During the first meeting, Wennerström quite simply took out of his safe one-and-a-half dozen photo cassettes. On the films were technical descriptions of the US Hawk missile, which the Swedes had recently acquired. Nikolsky was even somewhat dismayed. He had to shove the film rolls into his pockets.
For half a year – until the spring of 1963 – Viking passed his Soviet handler several thousand slides of special “Shield” film supplied him by the GRU, with operational documents on military, military-political, and military-economic matters. This film couldn’t be developed without special processing by chemicals known only to the GRU’s laboratory. It’s true that later this didn’t turn out quite that way: after Wennerström’s arrest, Swedish counterintelligence officers selected the chemical within a few days. However, no one could deny that the materials reached the GRU before then made it to the desks of high-ranking Swedish officials. The safes at the defense staff were open for Soviet military intelligence.
Swedish Air Force Colonel Stig Wennerström (R) with Soviet GRU General Vitaly Nikolsky (L). RIA Novosti.
Especially valuable was Wennerström’s information on US and British missile weaponry intended for supply to the Swedes. In General Nikolsky’s words, all 47 regiments of the Swedish Army were studied up and down by the GRU residency. Their level of training was precisely known, as were their contacts with NATO staffs. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Wennerström gave details of the US Navy’s shift to combat readiness and the entry of a formation of US submarines into the North Atlantic – possibly for blocking Soviet ships on the way to Havana.
To pass this message, Stig called the Soviet embassy military attaché’s office directly and invited Nikolsky to a restaurant not far from the Command Expedition. It was risky, but a refusal would be even more suspicious for audio surveillance, and the general agreed. In the restaurant the Soviet handler didn’t hold back: “If we are going to observe tradecraft this way, then I’ll have to leave the country in 24 hours, and you’ll be in prison for life.” Stig then laughed and said that contacts of the Soviet military attaché with local residents were under his personal control. Indeed, the Command Expedition monitored contacts with foreign military attaches, fulfilling the functions of military intelligence and counterintelligence.
Games of Risk
The transfer of a cassette with film in one direction and monetary reward and orders from the Center in the other took place at many diplomatic receptions. Sometimes written instructions by the Center were passed through Soviet cigarettes. Vitaly Aleksandrovich was always afraid of mixing up the special packs with normal tobacco. Once, during a movie showing, Wennerström passed over ten cassettes in the presence of the chief of Swedish counterintelligence (How’s that for intelligence humor?!). In the practice of espionage, this is possibly a singular case.
Problems with tradecraft continued. One day Wennerström, in his service car with a red light and siren, drove straight up to the house where his handler lived. He needed to immediately hand over the layout of the government’s command center and defense staff for a state of emergency, although transfer of these documents didn’t require any hurry. There was a case when Viking intercepted his handler on the way to work. Nikolsky even threatened to report Wennerström’s lack of discipline to the Center and refuse to work with him at all. That frightened Wennerström; he didn’t want to part ways with the GRU.
Viking’s compensation was a quarterly 12,000 Swedish Kroner denominated in hundreds. Larger notes were closely controlled by fiscal agencies. In Nikolsky’s opinion, the sum was not large, taking into account the value of Viking’s information. A rather large bag with new cassettes and money were left by the handler, for example, in the medicine cabinet of his own apartment, where he invited Swedish officers. The keys were in the hands of only two initiates. The same type of medicine cabinet was also at Wennerström’s villa.
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