How to Recruit a Swede? Polish Military Intelligence and Failure of Humint in Cold War Sweden

Declassified Polish documents clearly show that recruitment efforts among Swedish citizens presented numerous challenges for the staff of the Polish intelligence residency, which, for several decades, was unable to recruit a high-ranking source with access to military information. When such an opportunity finally arose, Polish officers viewed the walk-in source as a provocation by Swedish counterintelligence and subsequently reported the matter to the Swedish police. The difficulties in recruiting Swedes led the residency to seek alternative ways of acquiring human sources. After many failures, it ultimately focused its human intelligence activities on Polish nationals or Swedes of Polish descent. The scale and nature of these intelligence activities were more modest than portrayed by the Swedish media

Cold war · Counterintelligence · Economic history · Political science · Politics · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · Law