The IB Affair 1973 — the secret intelligence service
Bratt and Guillou revealed IB's ideological registration in FiB/Kulturfront in 1973. The journalists were convicted of espionage. The Security Service Commission (SOU 2002) later confirmed the revelation in essentials.
The claim
"Sweden ran a secret intelligence service that registered citizens by political opinion without Parliament's knowledge."
What is supported
In May 1973 Peter Bratt and Jan Guillou published articles in the magazine Folket i Bild/Kulturfront revealing IB (the Information Bureau) — an intelligence organisation that had operated secretly since the late 1950s.
IB collected information on Swedish citizens on political grounds — particularly people active in communist parties, the FNL movement and parts of the left. The Security Service Commission confirmed the revelation in essentials three decades later.
Bratt, Guillou and their informant Håkan Isacson were convicted of espionage in 1974 and sentenced to prison — even though the revelation concerned Swedish authorities surveilling Swedish citizens.
What is not supported
That IB was directly involved in the assassination of Olof Palme or other acts of violence.
Such links have circulated but find no support in the Security Service Commission's material or in the Palme investigation. IB's documented activity concerned political registration and infiltration — not violence.
Precisely which individuals were registered.
Parts of the material remain classified. Individuals have been allowed to view their own registration cards on request — but a complete list has never been made public.
The honest conclusion
The core revelation was correct and was confirmed by a state inquiry three decades later (SOU 2002). That the journalists were sentenced to prison for exposing abuse of Swedish citizens by Swedish authorities is one of the most telling democracy questions of the post-war era.
What this teaches us
When what is revealed is the state itself as secret, the whistleblower's offence becomes greater than the abuse revealed. The source protection and freedom-to-communicate provisions of the Freedom of the Press Act stand in tension with espionage law to this day — see our review of the 2022 foreign-espionage offence on /en/freedom-of-expression.
Sources
Explicitly excluded as sources: Flashback, Nordfront and anonymous blogs.
Updated 2026-07-08