Red Submarines

New evidence of Soviet spying

It read like a chapter of seabed science fiction, but last week Swedes were taking very seriously indeed a report by their government charging the Soviet Union with a spectacular underwater spy effort off the Swedish coast. After a six-month investigation, an official commission concluded that up to six submarines had been involved in a bold intrusion into the waters near Sweden's Musk Island naval base last October. The fleet was said to include three advanced miniature submarines, some equipped with tanklike treads for crawling along the sea floor. One of the minisubs, the report disclosed, may have crept 50 miles to the north, right into a waterway that runs through the center of Stockholm.

A neutral nation that has long steered a careful path between the two superpowers, Sweden reacted to the spying with unusual harshness. The government recalled its Ambassador to Moscow, and Socialist Prime Minister Olof Palme summoned Soviet Ambassador Boris Pankin for an hourlong dressing down. Declared Palme: "The gross violations of Swedish territorial integrity should be roundly condemned by all."

The 89-page report was commissioned in the wake of the October incident. Despite a three-week effort by 40 search vessels, the Swedish navy never flushed out what it believed were two or more foreign submarines lurking in the waters off Musk Island. Nor could it produce a satisfactory explanation of how the mysterious intruders had penetrated the defenses of the naval base, whose radar keeps a continual watch on Sweden's Baltic Sea coastline facing the Soviet Union.

The commission's findings did little to exonerate the Swedish military. Instead, the report revealed evidence of large-scale Soviet snooping in Swedish waters. The suspicious movements that prompted the October search, the commission said, were "part of a larger operation in the southern portion of the Stockholm archipelago." It reportedly involved three conventional Soviet submarines and three manned "bottom-creeping minis" of a type that was previously unknown. Some experts think the Soviets could have been gathering intelligence to plan the invasion of Sweden and Norway, so as to gain control of the vital northern Atlantic sea-lanes in the event of war. '

According to the Swedish report, the minisubs are between 32 ft. and 50 ft. long, carry a crew of two to five and are propelled in some cases by treads, in others by conventional screws. One small sub, the commission said, navigated the shallow channel into Stockholm's harbor during a visit by the U.S. fleet last September. The vessel came within one mile of King Carl XVI Gustaf's palace on an island in the center of the capital (see map). The Swedish navy also attributes the failure of the October search to the minisubs. "Sonar didn't work where they were concerned," says Vice Admiral Bror Stefenson. "If they had been the normal size they wouldn't have got away."

The Swedish government has marshaled extensive evidence to support its case, including videotapes of tread marks on the sea floor, but it admits that it has no direct proof of the charges against the Soviets. The official Soviet news agency TASS denied the accusations, calling them "baseless propaganda," and even some Western intelligence experts suggest that the Swedish navy may have made the claims to deflect criticism of the unsuccessful search last fall. But many Western officials believe the Swedes, who have agreed to share information on the incursions with NATO.

The Swedish claims were bolstered when Norway announced that a naval frigate had fired a missile at a suspicious submarine, also believed to be Soviet, near its main naval base northwest of Oslo. Three ships, two submarines and a flock of aircraft joined in a hunt for the vessel, but at week's end it seemed to have disappeared in Norway's rocky fjords.

Sweden, meanwhile, is acting on its suspicions: beginning on July 1, Palme warned the Kremlin last week, the Swedish navy will attack any intruding submarine on sight. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.