Sunday Times: New book says Thatcher ordered false-flag "Soviet" raids on Swedish coast in 1980s

[JackRiddler]

Now don't attack me for passing this on, or ask me to explain what it means in the big picture - blame the book's author or the Sunday Times if you don't like it.

From The Sunday Times
January 27, 2008

Margaret Thatcher told navy to raid Swedish coast

Pelle Neroth

MARGARET THATCHER ordered the Royal Navy to land Special Boat Service (SBS) frogmen on the coast of Sweden from British submarines pretending to be Soviet vessels, a new book has claimed.

The deception involved numerous incursions by British forces into Swedish territorial waters in the 1980s and early 1990s, designed to heighten the impression around the world of the Soviet Union as an aggressive superpower. Sometimes the boats landed commandos, but often their job was to fool the Swedes by mimicking the sonar signals given off by the Soviet vessels that stalked the same waters.

The Swedish government, neutral in the cold war, is not believed to have known about the deceptions, which were carried out by the British and American navies. A Swedish parliamentary inquiry noted evidence found on the seabed of submarine “midgets with bottom-crawling capacity of a hitherto unknown character”.

The cold war under the Baltic is detailed in a book by Ola Tunander, research professor at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo. Tunander writes that there were more than 4,000 reported detections of foreign submarines in Swedish waters in 1982-92. The West claimed the vessels were all Soviet, probing the country’s defences. Tunander believes many were part of a CIA-run operation by Britain and America that continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

MORE - CLAIM THATCHER SIGNED OFF ON ALL SUCH INCURSIONS - UNNAMED SWEDISH SOURCE SAYS "COMPLETELY UNTRUE"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3257297.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3257297.ece

[AZCat]

1. Dupe.

previous thread by seemslikeadream

Not that I blame you - the title of the previous thread is somewhat deceptive.

[seemslikeadream]

4. deceptive?

I was deceptive about someone being deceptive? OK

[AZCat]

5. I didn't mean it badly...

just that the title of your thread didn't make it obvious (at least to me, and apparently JackRiddler too) that it was about that article.

[JackRiddler]

2. kick...

[HamdenRice]

3. I wonder what the sailors thought about this

What did they think their mission was? Were they given "big picture" instructions about why this deception was necessary? Now that they are presumably retired, how do they feel about keeping these secrets?

That has some relevance to certain theories about 9/11.