Old Central Post Office, Stockholm
Cold War Spy Dies Convicted KGB spy goes to his grave still protesting his innocence
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Bertil Stroberg
after a letter he had written to an official at the Polish Embassy was intercepted and its content read. The hand-written letter was signed by a Sven Roland Larsson and explained that he had access to military secrets he was willing to divulge for money. If the KGB, via its friends at the embassy, agreed to the espionage, they were to send a cash retainer to the Central Post Office in Stockholm. Immediately a watch was kept on Larsson’s mail box at the post office, and Stroberg was subsequently arrested when he asked if there was any mail for a “Mr Larsson.” At the time, his solicitor, Ulla Jacobsson, said: “There is no direct evidence that my client had written the letter to the embassy, nor that he had delivered it.”
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ne of Sweden’s most notorious Cold War spies has died in Stockholm, following a year-long battle with cancer. Bertil Stroberg, an air force officer, was convicted of offering his services to the KGB in the early 1980s, but was undone
For his part Stroberg denied he was a spy and claimed he was the “unwitting victim of a conspiracy.” He said he had merely gone to collect mail on behalf of a friend. In 1983, the court rejected his version of events and jailed him for six years of which he served just three. In 2009, following a new television documentary about the case,
Secret Papers of the Greatest Codebreaker
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The National Archives released the papers to coincide with the birth of Turing, which were accurately dated
Alan Turing because one file references Hitler’s age. They were headed: ‘The Applications of Probability to Crypt’, and ‘Paper on the Statistics of Repetitions’. Both examine code-
breaking methods and mathematical equations used to tackle tricky enciphered codes used by the Nazis. GCHQ said the papers were declassified because the Service had secured their meaning and “squeezed the juice” out of them. The papers were written by Turing whilst he worked at the codebreaking centre - Bletchley Park.
Turing’s apartment at Bletchley Park
Turing, who committed suicide in 1954 by cyanide poisoning, lived in a room on the huge site (see left). It was his work that paved the way for the modern computer.
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Stroberg’s wife, Marianne, who has always supported his innocence, said that decision disheartened him immensely, “draining all his powers.”
Doctor who helped CIA find Osama bin-Laden is sacked
LEGACY OF ALAN TURING wo incredibly important 70-year-old typed and handwritten papers by British WWII codebreaker Alan Turing on the theory of code-breaking, have been released into the public domain by the UK communications spy agency - GCHQ. Turing, who committed suicide after the war, wrote the papers whilst working at Bletchley Park - the country’s central wartime code-breaking centre.
evidence was presented that cast doubt on the handwriting in the letter being that of Stroberg. This prompted the Swede to demand a retrial, but his appeal was rejected by the High Court.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan government officials have sacked the doctor who helped the CIA trace Osama bin-Laden in Abbottabad. Dr Shakeel Afridi and over a dozen other members of staff who worked at a health department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, were sacked for “organising an unauthorised polio campaign in Abbottabad.” It was under the provisions of this programme that Afridi allegedly worked to provide assistance in the CIA investigation to trace bin-Laden.
Dr Shakeel Afridi EYE SPY INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE 79 2012
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