At 30 May, 1988, Deputy Investigation Leader Ingemar Krusell of the Palme Murder Investigation Group (PU) sent a letter to the Office of Councillor Nils G. Rosenberg at the Swedish Foreign Office. In the letter, PU requested written answers to a number of questions. The letter is quoted in the report from the Swedish Government's Palme Commission (GK), SOU 1999:88, page 435-6, and follows below in Leopold Report's translation:

During the ongoing investigation into the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme, and the search for a perpetrator or perpetrators, [PU] has received several suggestions about various foreign intelligence services. For professional assessment of these suggestions, more detailed knowledge of the intelligence organizations' status in relation to [their respective] governments and parliaments, their organization and operational behaviour etc is required. This applies, for example, to CIA, an organization that for the layman appears as a "state within the state", and shrouded in myths with regard to its activities.

In the Palme murder investigation material there are in section H 425 a number of items that suggest that the CIA in one manner or other instigated the murder. These point less to concrete suspicions than to hypothetical assumptions about possible motives. The Swedish Security Police (RPS-Säk) has stated that an assessment of the organization from the Minister at the Swedish Embassy in Washington would be an advantage for the purpose of collecting knowledge about the CIA's activities.

Referring to today's telephone conversation, [we] request a written statement in response to the following questions:

1. What is the CIA's current status in relation to the US Government and the Congress?
2. Has the CIA by the Constitution or otherwise been assigned any independent executive status in connection with security issues or in the design of its policies on political issues?
3. What is the CIA's primary mission today and how is its activity organized?
4. What was the US perception of Sweden and Swedish politics at the time of the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme? (The question is asked in view of the "manifestations" made by the US during the Vietnam War, [such as] the recall of its Ambassador [to Sweden], etc.)
5. What can we presume was the CIA's objectives for its operations in Sweden in the mid-1980s?
6. Did the US or its intelligence service CIA - from an objective assessment - in the beginning of 1986 have any reason to consider the person and politician Olof Palme a danger to their own interests, [indicating that] a removal of him was imminent?
7. Is it in a foreign policy perspective customary that the major powers' intelligence agencies eliminate or order the elimination of politically inconvenient people in leading state functions?
(The question is asked in view of the frequent objection that the goodwill loss for the power in question from the discovery of their secret services' culpability would be much greater than the possible benefits of the removal of the person in question.)
8. As follow-up to questions 6 and 7: Would, according to the Foreign Ministry's assessment, any major power, such as the US through the CIA, in the case of a "yes" answer to question 6, be prepared to eliminate a state's leading politician, despite the risk of a large goodwill loss?
9. Has the Foreign Ministry and its officials at the Swedish Embassy in Washington after the assassination of Olof Palme received or experienced any kind of reaction from any non-official US source, from which one could draw conclusions about for example a CIA involvement in the murder?

The following is the Commission's comments to the letter:

The Commission's review of the Foreign Ministry's archives revealed that the letter prompted then Cabinet Secretary Pierre Schori, at 7 June, 1988 (that is, a few days after the so-called Ebbe Carlsson affair broke out), to get in contact with the Chief of the Security Police, Sune Sandstrom. Schori underlined, according to the Foreign Ministry's record, "the dubious aspects of the request", after which Schori and Sandstrom agreed that the letter could be disregarded with no further action. Also, no response to this request has been filed in PU's archives.

You can read Leopold Report's interview with Krusell (in English translation) here.

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