Jan Guillou
Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri Guillou is a French-Swedish author and journalist. Guillou's fame in Sweden was established during his time as an investigative journalist, most notably in 1973 when he and co-reporter Peter Bratt exposed a secret, immoral and illegal intelligence organization in Sweden, Informationsbyrån. He is still active within journalism as a column writer for the Swedish evening tabloid Aftonbladet. Among his books are a series of spy fiction novels about a spy named Carl Hamilton, and a trilogy of historical fiction novels about a Knight Templar, Arn Magnusson. He is the owner of one of the largest publishing companies in Sweden, Piratförlaget, together with his wife, publisher Ann-Marie Skarp, and Liza Marklund.
Life and career
Guillou was born in Södertälje, Stockholm County, Sweden. His Breton-Swedish father, Charles Guillou, came to Sweden in 1941 as the son of a member of the French Resistance and head of the offices of Free France in Stockholm, and later became a journalist for the French nationwide daily newspaper L'Équipe. His mother, Marianne, was of Norwegian descent. Guillou acquired French citizenship at birth and became a Swedish citizen in 1975. When Guillou's paternal grandfather was offered a position at the French embassy in Helsinki, Finland, his father decided to move with him and settled there. Guillou grew up with his mother and her new husband in Saltsjöbaden and Näsbypark outside of Stockholm.Education
Guillou studied at Vasa Real in Stockholm but was expelled from the school because of his bad behaviour, including physical abuse, theft and blackmail. He then went on to study for two years at the Solbacka boarding school in Södermanland. Guillou has described his upbringing, with the continuous physical abuse from his sadistic stepfather and the harsh treatment at the Solbacka school, in the semi-autobiographical novel Ondskan. According to the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen, his mother, his sister, his teachers and his friends from the Solbacka school have contested his account and called the book a hoax.He finished his studentexamen from the boarding school Viggbyholmsskolan, located in Viggbyholm, in 1964. Guillou then attended Stockholm University from 1964 to 1966.
Family
Guillou first lived together with author and translator Marina Stagh, with whom he has two children, Dan and Ann-Linn Guillou. His daughter Ann-Linn, a journalist and feminist commentator, lives in a civil union with Sandra Andersson, daughter of film director Roy Andersson.He is now married to publisher Ann-Marie Skarp, the daughter of colonel Åke Skarp and Märta. He has an apartment in the Östermalm district of Stockholm, where he has lived for most of his adult life. He also has a country residence in Flybo, Östhammar Municipality, northern Roslagen, where he lives when he writes his books.
Employment
Guillou started his career as a journalist writing for the magazine FIB aktuellt from 1966 to 1967. He later co-founded the Folket i Bild/Kulturfront magazine, at which he worked from 1972 until 1977. He currently writes a column for Aftonbladet and also comments occasionally in other news outlets on current events usually taking the left-wing and the Anti-American side, particularly the conflicts in the Middle East and miscellaneous domestic issues, including the United States' war on terrorism, Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, the Swedish Security Service, Swedish courtroom procedures and public inquiries.Guillou has served as the host of several television programmes: Magazinet, Rekordmagazinet and Grabbarna på Fagerhult, all shown on Sveriges Television.
He co-authored the crime/drama television series Talismanen. In the series, Guillou and co-author Henning Mankell both play the roles of themselves. Guillou also authored and narrated the history documentary series Arns rike and Häxornas tid.
He was awarded the Lenin Award in 2014, and at the prize ceremony Cecilia Cervin said this about him: "You have remained "cheeky", or refractory as Jan Myrdal usually calls it, i.e., disobedient, defiant, resilient, through a long writing life. You have achieved a lot with it and that is why we pay tribute to you today."
The IB affair
In 1973, Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, a left-wing magazine, published a series of articles written by Guillou and Peter Bratt, revealing a Swedish secret intelligence agency called Informationsbyrån. The articles, based on information initially furnished by former IB employee Håkan Isacson, described the IB as a secret organization that gathered information on Swedish communists and others deemed to be "security risks". The organization operated outside of the framework of the defense and ordinary intelligence, and was invisible in terms of state budget allocations. The articles in Folket i Bild/Kulturfront accused the IB staff of being engaged in alleged murder, break-ins, wiretapping against foreign embassies in Sweden and spying abroad.The exposure of the IB in the magazine, which included headshots with names and social security numbers of some of the alleged staff published under the headline "Spies", led to a major domestic political scandal known as the "IB affair". The activities ascribed to this secret outfit and its alleged ties to the Swedish Social Democratic Party were denied by Prime Minister Olof Palme, Defense Minister Sven Andersson and the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, General Stig Synnergren. However, later investigations by various journalists and by a public commissions, as well as autobiographies by the persons involved, have confirmed some of the activities described by Bratt and Guillou. In 2002, the public commission published a 3,000-page report where research about the IB affair was included.
Guillou, Peter Bratt and Håkan Isacson were all arrested, tried in camera and convicted of espionage. According to Bratt, the verdict required some stretching of established judicial practice on the part of the court since none of them were accused of having acted in collusion with a foreign power. After one appeal Guillou's sentence was reduced from one year to 10 months. Guillou and Bratt served part of their sentence in solitary cells. Guillou was kept first at Långholmen Prison in central Stockholm and later at Österåker Prison north of the capital.
The CIA affair
In 1976, two employees of Sveriges Radio contacted Guillou at Folket i Bild/Kulturfront with a story of a colleague that had been recruited by a CIA officer in Stockholm. They had earlier been turned down by a major newspaper, and now asked the journalist that had exposed IB if he could publish the story. The three worked out a scenario where the CIA recruiter could be legally accused of espionage, and instructed the recruit to collect evidence thereof. Unbelievably enough, the CIA officer agreed to give his spy written instructions of what information to retrieve, so the informal counter-intelligence group had only to stockpile these, take photographs of the two spies meeting, and discuss how much they needed before the final exposure would be made.The recruited spy was at a later meeting instructed to go to Angola with orders to get information about both military and political conditions. The legally experienced within the group advised their double agent not to agree, but he went anyway. Afterwards, the group assembled to write a false report about the conditions in the civil war-ridden country. Before the three could finalize the entire story for publishing, the spy went to Angola a second time, now with additional tasks on his instruction sheet.
After the spy had returned to Sweden, Guillou in advance placed the article in a major newspaper and with a television news editor. He also contacted the Foreign Department in order to prevent official denials, and discuss the repercussions of the espionage exposure. The published article was a true 'scoop', and the CIA spy handler was ordered to leave Sweden together with a colleague. The spy himself avoided prosecution thanks to the article's portrayal of him as a rather heroic journalist, exposing foreign illegal operations to the public. Afterwards, both he and Guillou were interrogated by the Swedish Security Service, but for assumed political reasons, no criminal charges were made.
Swedish tabloid accusation
During a five-year period starting in 1967, Guillou had a series of meetings with KGB representatives. In October 2009, the Swedish news tabloid Expressen told this story under the headline "Guillou secret agent for Soviet Union". The Swedish security service Säpo at the time knew of the contacts from Guillou's colleague Arne Lemberg, who suspected the activities could be illegal.According to Guillou, his intention was to expose the KGB espionage journalistically through a scoop based on the activities he was being exposed to and the discussions he had with his KGB contact Jevgenij Gergel. One of the journalists who wrote the articles later commented that he believed Guillou's explanation, "I do not doubt one word of what he has said".
Guillou received payment from KGB for written reports on Swedish politics, and Expressen points to this fact when defending its choice to refer to Guillou as a secret agent. Former KGB Colonel and defector Sergey Tretyakov characterised Guillou as a "classic agent". "Because he accepted money and, worst of all, signed receipts, there's no question about it. The handling of him could be a textbook example at the KGB school in Moscow". Espionage prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand wrote to PON that "Agent and spy are not synonymous ideas.... an agent does not have to commit acts of espionage. An agent can perform assignments for his handler without crossing the line to what is prosecutable."
Säpo at the time was skeptical towards Lemberg's report and commented that it found nothing illegal in a newspaper man writing an article based on public information and delivering it to Jevgenij Gergel.
The public Ombudsman of the Swedish Press, Yrsa Stenius, later concluded that Expressen presentation of facts had been an example of irresponsible journalism. According to her, Expressen had not backed up its frontpage assertion, that "Jan Guillou Secret Soviet Agent", despite the fact that this had caused "massive" damage to Guillou's reputation. Stenius's conclusion caused controversy, and a number of newspaper leader writers demanded that she resign her post.
On 1 June 2010, the Swedish Press Council acquitted Expressen of wrongdoing. Expressen denies having claimed that Guillou was guilty of the crime of "espionage", and PON agrees. The frontpage and headline assertions according to PON "do not have well defined meanings". PON was also satisfied that the factual details of the story were fully covered in the text of the articles which also included Guillou's own account of the events.