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Jan Guillou Comes Out of Retirement to Bark

Or burp. Or just to be a nuisance again.

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It must be comfy to live in Sweden. For some people that is. And that's putting it mildly.

Take Jan Guillou as an example. Or Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri Guillou, 67 years of age, and he has the plastic to prove it. He lives at Banérgatan 4 in Stockholm.

Jan Guillou is a so-called 'journalist', the operative words being 'so-called'. He's more importantly a novelist, creator of the Carl Hamilton series of Swedish secret agent books which have often been turned into movies for the local audience as well as often starring Stellan Skarsgård. That's where he made his considerable fortune - not as a journalist and certainly not as an investigative one.

Guillou made his name originally by being the frontman for investigative reporter Peter Bratt in the 1970s. Bratt uncovered a secret intelligence agency within the Swedish military - something he called 'IB' (sometimes expanded to 'Information Bureau'). Bratt did the groundwork; Guillou wrote the articles and got the fame and money; Bratt got in trouble.

So goes it.

It was discovered only a year or so ago that Jan Guillou had also been a spy for the Soviet Union. Unbelievably enough. He was simultaneously a spy for the Swedish security police and the social democratic party.

Jan Guillou writes occasionally even today, despite his ripe age. He comes out of retirement to answer questions about his recruitment by the KGB or to make a guest appearance in a smear documentary about Julian Assange where he can laugh at those charges against Assange (and the reaction of Assange and his legal team to them). Or where he can say nasty things about People Who Aren't As Great As Jan Guillou™ such as John Pilger, Michael Moore, and Tariq Ali.

But as with his Swedish publicist brethren, Jan Guillou doesn't take much notice of WikiLeaks or Julian Assange because 1) those things are mostly happening outside Sweden and as a result 'who cares'; 2) it's nothing for tabloid journalism which is what Jan Guillou limits himself to these days, probably getting paid almost as much as Assange would have been paid for a small op-ed; and 3) it simply takes too much energy and interferes with his drinking.

Far better to rely on the tabloids for the truth. The same tabloids who said of their proposal to work with WikiLeaks that they'd have to see if any of the stuff held by the whistleblower site was of any interest to their readership. Considering the readership is totally geared to Spears/Kardashian sleaze stolen from other foreign tabloids, there isn't much danger of WikiLeaks exposure being of interest.

Guillou's made a number of laughable statements of late, all of which indicate he's either suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's. Statements such as 'Sweden has a fine judicial system', 'most rape suspects don't get convicted', and 'Julian Assange will pay a fine and no more and can then go home'.

Woof Woof

Jan Guillou came out of retirement again today. To bark.

To point out a bit about Jan Guillou's home address: it's Banérgatan. #4. There are few addresses as expensive or exclusive in the whole country. He's right by the food store ICA Banér on the corner of Banérgatan and Riddargatan, half a block away from Sweden's richest strip Strandvägen, kiddie corner from Mercedes billionaire Märta Philipsson's old haunts on Ulrikagatan, but a small bridge trek from the Tivoli Gröna Lund and Skansen, and kiddie corner from ABBA manager Stikkan Anderson's son in law Tomas Ledin on Narvavägen where Bruce Springsteen used to stay when visiting the city. (Tomas and wife Marie Anderson and family would dutifully take into a hotel when the Boss came to town - wasn't that nice of them?)

Flats here cost millions, folks. In any currency. Film rights to secret agent books really make a difference. Particularly for former communists and spies for the KGB.

Jan has a French name, Guillou, because his father is French - he was the son of the custodian at the French embassy in Stockholm. Jan's mother Marianne Botolfsen came from an upper crust Norwegian family. Jan was a French citizen until 1975 when he switched to Swedish citizenship instead. But by then the 'IB' affair had blown over and Guillou could be presented as house-trained 'society'.

Guillou's father later became ambassador to Finland but Guillou and his mother didn't follow along to Helsinki. Guillou's considered to have been a bully raised with a silver spoon in his mouth, growing up with adoring Marianne in the upper class areas of Saltsjöbaden and Näsby Park.

Not all the bully's childhood years were easy. Especially for others who crossed the young Guillou's path. The budding journalist, still in his single digit years, was repeatedly reprimanded for acts of assault and battery, theft, and blackmail perpetrated on his schoolmates and as a result was sent to a special school outside town.

Julian Assange - A Little Creep With No Principles

It's painfully obvious that Julian Assange, the frontman of WikiLeaks, is no masculine ideal. To put it mildly. I won't offer an opinion of whether he's guilty of some form of rape and sexual molestation. But his eager supporters can't either, those who say he's innocent.

The fact we don't know is because of Julian Assange himself because he refuses to submit to interrogation in Sweden. Which, if he was as innocent as he and his supporters claim, would be a quick and easy way to dismiss the allegations. Most of the people accused of sex crimes in Sweden are acquitted, this due to the stringent demands for proof.

Assange has instead initiated a campaign against the Swedish judicial system. He compares Sweden with Saudi Arabia and says that men are convicted on an assembly line in Sweden because our country is in the iron grip of feminists. In addition he talks of a conspiracy that via Sweden and through false rape accusations will get him extradited to the US. Where he of course would be judged harshly as vengeance for the revelations published by WikiLeaks.

Also for, as I have done for decades, criticising the shortcomings in the Swedish judicial system, the judicial reasoning of Assange and his supporters seems so absurd that they're not worth taking seriously. Even more painful is the fact that well known radical social critics such as John Pilger, Michael Moore, and Tariq Ali seem to be backing this campaign.

It's true WikiLeaks have published a number of shocking revelations. Most known is justifiably the video recording which shows how US soldiers converse gleefully as they murder a dozen obviously civilian individuals in Baghdad in 2007. In other words it's about something as unusual as war crimes recorded by the war criminals themselves.

It's understandable that the US war agencies find this publication extremely inappropriate. Or straight out that it constitutes an act of treason.

And now we approach a real justice scandal far away from Julian Assange's self-absorbed idiotic campaign. For the US authorities have a year ago arrested the alleged whistleblower and are harassing him beyond the point for what is deemed torture. Bradley Manning, 23, is kept naked in an isolation cell, prevented from sleeping, and is inspected naked at attention several times each day. He's not yet been put on trial, it's uncertain why, but the prosecutors have declared that they will ask for prison for life for a type of treason.

Bradley Manning should reasonably defend himself by pointing out he contributed to revealing US war crimes and high democratic ideals therefore excuse his leak of the information. It can't be the intention that the US war agencies should be able to keep their crimes a secret and keep the US public in the dark.

That's approximately how the defence should be structured. Significant judicial principles are positioned against one another and Bradley Manning is in need of the best solicitors that can be found.

And money is needed in the US judicial system.

There WikiLeaks haven't contributed, despite earlier promises. Instead Julian Assange has three British solicitors who are to help him avoid coming to Sweden to be interrogated.

This story also has a political martyr of the same caliber as Daniel Ellsberg who in the 1970s leaked information about the US war in Vietnam, was put on trial, got money collected for a first class judicial defence - and was acquitted.

But the political martyr is most likely not Julian Assange, even if he completely seriously wants to make it look that way. The victim is Bradley Manning.

At the very most, Julian Assange risks a fine, judging from the allegations. His source Bradley Manning, the reason for Assange's hero status, risks a life in prison.

But that doesn't seem to worry either Assange or his supporters. Solicitors for Assange are more important than for Bradley Manning in their eyes.

Completely aside from the question of guilt in the rape story one can calmly say Julian Assange is a little creep with no principles. To once again put it mildly.

Like stepfather like son? It would seem so. But there's money to be made there too. Perhaps in an attempt to whitewash his own hooligan years, Guillou told people his stepfather had been a sadist who systematically beat him on a daily basis. Guillou wrote a novel about this unfortunate situation and of course got someone to buy the film rights for good money - even though the 'truthiness' of the book has long since been debunked by his mother, his stepsister, his school mates, and colleagues.

Jan Guillou began his colourful career as a journalist for the Bonnier-owned girlie porn periodical FIB ('Folket i Bild') Aktuellt in the 1960s. (He even wrote a book about that too.) After his girlie porn stint he went over to another periodical with a similar name: FIB ('Folket i Bild') Kulturfront, a left wing publication with no boobies but lots of communist polemics. Jan somehow got himself appointed editor in chief by 1973. And this is when the fun starts happening. For later that year his mag published the articles on the secret IB agency - an agency within the Swedish military that most people didn't know about, a very secret agency - and like all budding political heroes from Che and onwards, he got himself sent up the river for ten months, living in conditions not unlike what he has today at Banérgatan 4. The charge? Espionage. Of course no one back then knew he was more than your average run of the mill Julian Assange; no one knew he'd worked for years for the KGB.

Guillou's relationship with Peter Bratt has been a strange one. It was Bratt who did all the digging on the IB story; Guillou, who's openly criticised home language studies and credited his lack of skills in French as being the primary reason he's able to be such a conversational object in Swedish society, put his name foremost on the publications based on Bratt's work, much like Niklas Svensson was later to do with the Assange story. (Why do they bother teaching ethics to journalists anyway?)

Bratt got a stiffer prison sentence - 12 months. Considering he was the one did all the 'spying', that seems appropriate in a perverse kind of way. But Bratt exposed a grievous injustice in Sweden: the reigning social democrats were working with the CIA to collect information on individuals who leaned 'too far' to the left - a type of forerunner to what's been uncovered today through WikiLeaks cables and Norwegian stories about the US 'Surveillance Detection Units' operating out of embassies.

'IB' - formally the Special Bureau of the Defence Staff - was a secret organisation playing 'hide and seek' from the 1950s and until the crash in 1978. A public inquiry was finally completed 29 years later. But Guillou'd made his name. And after spending time behind bars - Swedish velour bars - he was a martyr. And perhaps a hero. That latter part would take a bit of further PR by Jan Guillou.

Most of the information Bratt got came from whistleblower Håkan Isacson, a former IB employee. Bratt had a falling out with Guillou over the affair. Guillou accused Bratt of telling the police he'd been stealing the IB mail, something Bratt denied and was able to later prove was a lie. Bratt isn't unknown today in Sweden but he didn't cultivate a career of celebrity like Guillou. And Bratt's been highly critical of the way Guillou's been milking the affair and taking the credit not so much from himself but from the real hero - Isacson.

Guillou still manages to keep his name in the news even though he's not really doing anything important. He's been outspoken against the Swedish Pirate Party and those who supported it. He's been a member of Maoist organisations. He's been a member of Sweden's communist party (but they kicked him out for not paying his dues). He also makes it clear he still has tendencies to violence. He absolutely loves killing animals.

Guillou's anti-Semite, very pro-Palestine, described Zionism as 'fundamentally racialist', continually compares Israel with the former apartheid government of South Africa, openly declares his hope the jewish state will be destroyed, and has even gone on the record to attack organisations fighting anti-Semitism. Guillou's quotes about gay culture have gone to history as well.

'Homosexuality is more a trend than something you're born into - it entered but will soon depart human history.'

Best of all of course is Guillou's work for the Soviet spy agency KGB for which he performed assignments from 1967 (at the start of his journalistic career with the girlie porn mag) until 1972 (right before Bratt's exposé of Sweden's secret IB agency). The details of his treasonous activity were disclosed by the Swedish secret police; Guillou had the audacity to admit it was true; no legal action was taken.

But Guillou wants to keep his halo - he says he was doing his KGB work in an attempt to infiltrate the KGB all on his own with no help from the Swedish secret police (and of course without their knowledge - Kim Philby should have tried that). Talk about a little creep without principles.

'Omigod that can't be true!'

For Peter Bratt, who together with Jan Guillou exposed the IB affair, the revelation his partner Guillou was a secret Soviet KGB agent comes as a shock.

'Omigod that can't be true!' he told Expressen.

The exposé of the so-called IB affair came on 3 May 1973 in the periodical Folket i Bild/Kulturfront. It was a joint venture between the journalist Peter Bratt and Jan Guillou. The exposé led to both Jan Guillou and Peter Bratt being convicted of espionage.

Jan Guillou wrote in his new book 'The Power and Impotency of Words' that Peter Bratt grassed on him in his police interrogation, calling Bratt a 'stool pigeon'. Bratt denies grassing him, calling Guillou a liar, something the actual police documents were able to prove.

Expressen reaches Peter Bratt early on Saturday morning to tell him his former colleague is suspected of being a KGB spy. Bratt is shocked.

'Omigod that can't be true!' he says.

This was nothing that came up in your work with him?

'Are you nuts? I had no idea. I knew he was in bed with the Swedish government. But this is a lot worse.'

Bratt goes on.

'He was working with the Swedish government and Anders Thunborg (social democrat party board secretary 1961-69 and cabinet secretary in the department of defence 1969-74). He was in addition an asset for the Swedish security police and regularly sent them written reports. If this information proves to be true, that he also worked for the KGB, then it means he cooperated with the KGB, the Swedish government, and the Swedish security police all at the same time.'

Bratt was back the following day after he'd digested the shocking news a bit more.

'Of course I'm shocked. It's so stupid. But at the same time it fits the way he works - a moral code all his own. He worked for the Swedish security police without telling anyone, he worked for the KGB without telling anyone - and at the same time he helped build our magazine and was in contact with the Social Democrats. Jan Myrdal would never have let him near the magazine if he'd known Guillou was sending information to the KGB. He can say what he wants about not sending particular items to the Soviets. I think things are serious enough as is.'

Does this change your impression of Jan Guillou?

'No. It only strengthens the impression I already have.'

What impression is that?

'Of a brutal callous human being who thinks he's better than everyone, fancies himself as some sort of übermensch. If this had been known at the time of the trial then things would be very different today. Everything would have been ruined - for the magazine, for everything.'

Guillou even admits being paid by the Soviets for his work. Which more or less should seal the deal. And he claims he was able to convince the KGB to stop using him in 1972. And that the reason for ending his work for the KGB was he wasn't 'getting any info from them'. And also that he wanted to concentrate on Peter Bratt's materials on the IB story instead. Ooh ooh Guillou.

So what happened to Guillou when Expressen disclosed his connection with the KGB? Oh he's a victim again, nothing else, be so sure of that - he insists his luxury flat was searched by the CIA. How absurd.

Expressen's 40 Articles Exposing KGB Spy Jan Guillou

24 October 2009

Jan Guillou hemlig agent åt Sovjet
Jan Guillou blev värvad av spionchef
Så tränade KGB Jan Guillou i spionteknik
'De åkte till Sovjets ambassad och hämtade champagne'
Vännen gick till Säpo
Verklighet och påhitt vad är vad om Hamilton?
Läs agentutdragen ur Guillous böcker
Mats Larsson: 'Journalister ska inte leka spioner'
Så blev Jan Guillou dömd i IB-affären
Det fruktade KGB vill slipa sin yta
Drömmen att 'fånga en kgb-spion'
Vännen Leif GW Persson: Jag tror på Guillou
KGB kan ha testat Jan Guillou
Agrell: KGB kan ha velat testa Guillou
Stig Bergling har svårt att smälta avslöjandet
Sven-Erik Alhem: Guillou kan inte straffas
Ulf Bjereld: Guillou rörde sig ofta i en gråzon
IB-kollegan Peter Bratt om avslöjandet: 'Herregud, det är inte sant'
Säpo: Vi är försiktiga att kommentera
'Han borde varit först med att berätta detta'
Underrättelseagenten kände till Guillous kontakt med KGB
KGB-spionen Grigorjev förnekar att han kände till Guillous arbete

25 October 2009

Bratt till ny attack mot Guillou
Här spanade IB på Guillou
Guillou hemlig KGB-agent - scoopet alla pratar om
Jan Guillou: 'Det var ett extraknäck'
Leif GW Persson: Guillou måste skämmas
Mårten Palme: Jag läste med ett leende...
Jan Guillou: 'Vi delade på pengarna'
Gunnar Ekberg: Guillous KGB-uppdrag svärtar ner IB-scoopet

26 October 2009

Jan Guillou: Det är skitprat
Har du stött på en ryss vid namn Gergel? frågade jag
Mona Sahlins krav på Jan Guillou
KGB-chefen om fallet Jan Guillou
Reinfeldt till Guillou: Lägg korten på bordet

27 October 2009

Leif GW Persson skriver själv om vännen Jan Guillou
Reinfeldt: 'Red ut vad som hänt, Guillou'
Här kan KGB- dokumenten finnas kvar
Jan Guillou: 'Jag har gjort två misstag'

10 November 2009

Läs artiklarna om Guillou-avslöjandet (all the articles at once)

So was Guillou arrested and tried for treason? He'd admitted he'd spied for the Soviets. So did anything happen to him? Nope. Of course not. Was there some special reason they didn't throw the book at that arrogant traitor? There well could be.

And today, for whatever reason - be it he's under pressure from someone who has his tiny testicles in a vise, be it because of his previous fiasco appearance in the recent documentary against Assange, or be it simply because Bailey's Irish Cream yields a helluva hangover, Guillou went on the attack again. Today. In a tabloid.

It might appear to the uninitiated that Jan Guillou is doing his damnedest in his artificially tanned botox years to make a complete ass of himself. Yet it might also appear that way to those in the know as well.

Jan Guillou's Financial World

Achilleus Art o Media Aktiebolag (556216-7964), Styrelseledamot
Bolaget skall bedriva teater-, film- och bokförlagsverksamhet, litterära produktioner och översättningar, journalistik samt äga och förvalta lös och fast egendom såsom konst och värdepappers- förvaltning och därmed förenlig verksamhet.
Guillou, Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri, 67 år, Styrelseledamot
Skarp, Ann-Marie Helena, 59 år, Styrelsesuppleant

Palco Media Aktiebolag (556531-1338), Styrelseledamot
Bolaget skall bedriva teater-, film- och bokförlagsverksamhet. Litterära produktioner, översättningar, journalistik, före- läsningsuppdrag, förvaltning av upphovsrätten samt köp och försäljning av fast och lös egendom och värdepappersförvaltning och därmed förenlig verksamhet.
Guillou, Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri, 67 år, Styrelseledamot
Mankell, Henning Georg, 63 år, Styrelseledamot
Israel, Dan Julius Valentin, 61 år, Styrelseledamot
Mankell, Jon Karl Kristian, 30 år, Styrelseledamot
Mankell, Henning Georg, 63 år, Ordförande
Extern: Nordström, Inke Ingrid Kerstin Agneta, 58 år

Piratförlaget Aktiebolag (556573-5379), Styrelseledamot
Bolaget skall bedriva bokförläggarverksamhet och därmed förenlig verksamhet.
VD: Skarp, Ann-Marie Helena, 59 år
Althin, Carl Peter, 69 år, Styrelseledamot
Guillou, Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri, 67 år, Styrelseledamot
Larsson, Thorbjörn Rolf, 65 år, Styrelseledamot
Skarp, Ann-Marie Helena, 59 år, Styrelseledamot
Hamilton, Carl Patric, 54 år, Styrelseledamot
Marklund, Eva Elisabeth, 48 år, Styrelseledamot ← Liza Marklund ('Gömda')
Hamilton, Carl Patric, 54 år, Ordförande

Ann-Marie Skarp Produktion AB (556595-2230), Styrelsesuppleant ← current squeeze
Bolaget skall bedriva film- och förlagsverksamhet, litterära produktioner, översättningar samt äga och förvalta lös och fast egendom, såsom konst- och värdepappersförvaltning, ävensom idka därmed förenlig verksamhet.
Skarp, Ann-Marie Helena, 59 år, Styrelseledamot
Guillou, Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri, 67 år, Styrelsesuppleant

Piratförlaget Holding AB (556790-0427), Styrelseledamot
Bolaget ska aktivt förvalta ägarandelar i koncernens intressebolag, förvalta koncernkassa, starta och driva utvecklingsprojekt samt bedriva därmed förenlig verksamhet.
Althin, Carl Peter, 69 år, Styrelseledamot
Guillou, Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri, 67 år, Styrelseledamot
Larsson, Thorbjörn Rolf, 65 år, Styrelseledamot
Skarp, Ann-Marie Helena, 59 år, Styrelseledamot
Hamilton, Carl Patric, 54 år, Styrelseledamot
Marklund, Eva Elisabeth, 48 år, Styrelseledamot
Hamilton, Carl Patric, 54 år, Ordförande

Welcome to the Hall of Monkeys, Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri Guillou. Take a desk over there in the corner and start writing 'letters to the editor' for a new porn mag startup. Like in the good old days. You know the kind of letters we mean: 'dear editor the most fantastic thing happened to me last summer in the Stockholm archipelago, an erotic experience I'll never forget...'

You get something to eat later this week. For now you sleep on the floor. There'll be inspection several times per day, at which point you'll be required to strip naked. That's how real traitors - those who betray both friends and country - are treated here.

References
Swedish National Encyclopaedia: Folket i Bild
Blaskan: Peter Bratt - Med rent uppsåt
Expressen/Per Olov Enquist: Peter Bratt - Med rent uppsåt
Newsmill: Guillou's Lies About the IB Affair
Newsmill: IB Investigator: Jan Guillou's Version of History Isn't True
Newsmill: Reporter Legend Peter Bratt: WikiLeaks Saved Serious Journalism
Newsmill: 'Guillou's Dealings with the KGB Put Our Lives at Risk'