Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Is a reckoning coming?

Very interesting news that the Helsinki Administrative Court has told the Finnish Security Police that they have to release the 'Stasi list' - a list recovered by, if I remember the order correctly, the CIA at the collapse of East Germany from the Stasi records. The list is of Finns who had contact with the East German intelligence agency. The information was passed on to West German intelligence who, in turn, gave a copy to Finland. There have been many suggestions as to who is on the list, the sort of thing you hear over coffee at meetings and seminars around Helsinki, but the one leak of name turned out to be baseless, and was probably a political hatchet job on the man concerned - Alpo Rusi. This caused huge stress for Mr Rusi, but also behind the scenes earthquakes for the the Security Police where it seemed they had handled the case badly.

All sorts of dubious happenings took place in the Finland of the 1970s as Finlandisation reached its high point. Many believe that lots of politicians and public figures who are still active today had compromising contacts with Eastern bloc intelligence agencies. All sorts of political divisions and feuds still important today can be traced back to that era. How much of this turns out to be conspiracy theory, and how much history, may become clearer if the list is published.

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