SWEDEN: Swarming with Spies

For a half dozen Swedes who for five years betrayed their country’s secrets to Russia, the payoff came last week in a Stockholm magistrate’s court: life at hard labor for Ringleader Fritiof Enbom and his chief assistant, jail terms for the others, including Enbom’s brother and his mistress (TIME, June 30). The trial lasted six weeks, produced some testimony so secret that the court ordered it impounded for 60 years. Among the revelations: Enbom’s gang gave Russia some of the plans for the gigantic and costly Boden fortress, Sweden’s major defense line against a Red attack through Finland.

As the gang headed for jail, an uneasy Sweden was beginning to realize that although Enbom made big headlines, he is a minor cog in a vast Soviet spy machinery. Last month the Polish military attache in Stockholm was caught photographing air force fields and sent packing —the tenth member of a Red embassy in five years to be caught redhanded. The Pole was not caught mapping an ordinary air base—the usual game of attaches—but camouflaged fields considered so top secret that they were to be left unused until war came, in order to avoid premature detection.