A fantastic detailed typed and handsigned letter dated Stockholm, June 20,1967 by former Minister of Sweden Olaf Palme. The letter is addressed to Lawrence E. Spivak the host of Met the Press and mentions many topics: Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, American Relations, his interview, friend of America. A rare opportunity to obtain a letter handsigned by a leader whose life was cut short by an Assassin

 

The assassination of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden, took place on Friday, February 28, 1986, in Stockholm, Sweden, at 23:21 Central European Time (22:21 UTC). Palme was fatally wounded by gunshots while walking home from a movie theatre with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen.

Even though Christer Pettersson, a small time criminal and drug addict, was arrested, tried and convicted for the murder in 1988 he was later acquitted on appeal to the High Court, and some still consider the murder unsolved with a number of alternative theories offered. Pettersson, who died in 2004, had, however, confessed to the murder.[1] His girlfriend at the time of the murder also revealed, in 2007, several letters written by Pettersson in 1986 admitting to the murder.[2]

 

 Background to the assassination
 
Grand movie theatre.
Crossing of Sveavägen–Tunnelgatan, where Palme was shot.Despite Olof Palme's position as minister of state, he tried to live an ordinary life. He would often go out without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from a movie theatre with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on February 28, 1986, the couple were attacked by a lone gunman. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range at 23:21 CET. A second shot wounded Lisbet Palme.

Police said that a taxi-driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm. Two girls sitting in a car close to the scene of the shooting tried to help the prime minister. He was rushed to the hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival at 00:06 CET on March 1, 1986. Mrs. Palme's wound was treated and she recovered.

The attacker escaped eastwards on the Tunnelgatan and disappeared.

Deputy prime minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties of prime minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party.

 Murder theories
Palme's assassination remains unsolved, with a number of alternative theories surrounding the murder.

 "The 33-year old"
A Swedish right-wing extremist, Victor Gunnarsson (labeled in the media 33-åringen, "the 33-year old"), was soon arrested for the murder but quickly released, after a dispute between the police and prosecuting attorneys. Gunnarsson had connections to various rightwing extremist groups, among these the European Workers Party, the Swedish branch of the LaRouche Movement. The extent of his connection to the latter group was having signed a petition they were circulating on the streets of Stockholm. Also, pamphlets hostile to Palme from the party were found in his home outside Stockholm.

 PKK
Hans Holmér, the Stockholm police commissioner, followed up an intelligence lead passed to him (supposedly by Bertil Wedin) and arrested a number of Kurds living in Sweden, after allegations that one of their organisations, the PKK, was responsible for the murder. The lead proved inconclusive however and ultimately led to Holmér's removal from the Palme murder investigation. Fifteen years later, in April 2001, a team of Swedish police officers went to interview Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Öcalan in a Turkish prison about Öcalan's allegations that a dissident Kurdish group, led by his ex-wife, murdered Palme. The police team's visit proved futile.

 Christer Pettersson
Almost three years after Palme's death Christer Pettersson, a criminal, drug user, and alcoholic, was arrested for the murder in December 1988. Picked out by Mrs Palme at a line up as the killer, Pettersson was tried and convicted of the murder, but was later acquitted on appeal to the High Court. Pettersson's appeal succeeded for three main reasons:

The murder weapon had not been found;
He had no clear motive for the killing;
Doubts about the reliability of Mrs Palme's evidence.
Additional evidence against Pettersson surfaced in the late 1990s, mostly coming from various petty criminals who altered their stories but also from a confession made by Pettersson. The chief prosecutor, Agneta Blidberg, considered re-opening the case. But she acknowledged that a confession alone would not be sufficient, saying:

"He must say something about the weapon because the appeals court set that condition in its ruling. That is the only technical evidence that could be cited as a reason to re-open the case."
While the legal case against Pettersson therefore remains closed, the police file on the investigation cannot be closed until both murder weapon and murderer are found. Christer Pettersson died on September 29, 2004, of cerebral hemorrhage after injuring his head.

 South Africa connection
 
Cuban poster by Rafael Enriquez (1986).On February 21, 1986–a week before he was murdered–Palme made the keynote address to the Swedish People's Parliament Against Apartheid held in Stockholm, attended by hundreds of anti-apartheid sympathizers as well as leaders and officials from the ANC and the Anti-Apartheid Movement such as Oliver Tambo. In the address, Palme said, "Apartheid cannot be reformed, it has to be eliminated."

Ten years later, towards the end of September 1996, Colonel Eugene de Kock, a former South African police officer, gave evidence to the Supreme Court in Pretoria alleging that Palme had been shot and killed in 1986 because he "strongly opposed the apartheid regime and Sweden made substantial contributions to the ANC". De Kock went on to claim he knew the person responsible for Palme's murder. He alleged it was Craig Williamson, a former police colleague and a South African superspy. A few days later, Brigadier Johannes Coetzee, who used to be Williamson's boss, identified Anthony White, a former Rhodesian Selous Scout with links to the South African security services, as Palme's actual murderer. Then a third person, Swedish mercenary Bertil Wedin, living in Northern Cyprus since 1985, was named as the killer by Peter Caselton, a member of Coetzee's assassination squad known as Operation Longreach.[1] The following month, in October 1996, Swedish police investigators visited South Africa but were unable to uncover the evidence to substantiate de Kock's claims.

In 1999, Coetzee, Williamson, de Kock and Caselton were all granted amnesty by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for having been involved in bombing the ANC's offices in Penton Street, London on March 14, 1982. There were no fatalities but it was widely rumored that the ANC's Oliver Tambo, who was to have attended a meeting there at the time of the bombing, was the intended target.[2]

 P2 and Irangate
According to controversial independent political investigator Lyndon LaRouche, Olof Palme's murder was related to this arms-trade operation: "The earlier discovery of documents in the police search of the Malmö premises of Karl-Erik Schmitz, and Prime Minister Palme's concern with those arms-trafficking matters, were among the prime known evidences of motive for what must have been a carefully prearranged insertion of an assassin at the relevant moment of opportunity." [3]

Italian magazine Panorama revealed that president Francesco Cossiga had sent a letter to prime minister Giulio Andreotti after having reviewed the content of interviews between RAI journalist Ennio Remondino and former CIA agents Richard Brenneke and Ibrahim Razin. President Cossiga was concerned by the statements, and said: "If the government were to think that the information had any basis, I think that it should inform the judiciary authority and the Parliamentary Commission on Massacres and, at the level of the bilateral relations, the relevant authorities in the U.S.A. and in Sweden. Otherwise, the journalists who published the information without previously thoroughly checking its validity should be punished."

According to those sources, three days before Olof Palme's death, Licio Gelli, member of P2 freemasonic lodge, had sent a telegram to Philip Guarino, at that time an important member of the Republican circle around George H.W. Bush. This telegram said: "Tell our friend that the Swedish palm will be felled." CIA agent Razin claims that the National Security Archives have the text of the telegram. According to him, P2 would have been interested by Olof Palme's murder because "Sweden was one of the main protagonists of the illegal weapons traffic at the time of the Iran-Iraq war when Palme was prime minister and thus Palme was surely aware of what was happening." [4]. According to an interview of Gene "Chip" Tatum by "Free Republic", Palme was assassinated because he refused an arms-trade [5]. The arms trade would have been part of the agreement reached during the October surprise conspiracy.

Ibrahim Razin also told that DINA agent Michael Townley, who has been convicted for Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's assassination, was in Stockholm a week before Olof Palme's murder.

 Bofors and Indian connection
In his 2005 book Blood on the Snow: The Killing of Olof Palme historian Jan Bondeson advanced a theory that Palme's murder was linked with arms trades to India. Bondeson's book meticulously recreated the assassination and its aftermath, and suggested that Palme had used his friendship with Rajiv Gandhi to secure a SEK 8.4 billion deal for the Swedish armaments company Bofors to supply the Indian Army with howitzers. However, Palme did not know that behind his back Bofors had used a shady company called AE Services – nominally based in Guildford, Surrey – to bribe Indian government officials to conclude the deal.

Bondeson alleged that on the morning he was assassinated, Palme had met with the Iraqi ambassador to Sweden, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, (the man who would later go on to become notorious as Saddam Hussein's Information Minister during the 2003 Iraq War and become known as 'Baghdad Bob' or 'Comical Ali'). The two discussed Bofors, which al-Sahhaf knew well because of its arms sales during the Iran-Iraq War. Bondeson suggested that the ambassador told Palme about Bofors' activities, infuriating Palme. Bondeson theorised that Palme's murder might have been inadvertently triggered by his conversation with the ambassador, if either the Bofors arms dealers or the middlemen working through AE Services had a prearranged plan to silence the Prime Minister should he discover the truth and the deal with India become threatened. According to Bondeson, Swedish police suppressed vital MI6 intelligence about a Bofors/AE Services deal with India.

 The RAF
The Red Army Faction of Germany claimed responsibility for the assassination of Palme via an anonymous phone call to a London news agency. They supposedly assassinated him because he was the Prime Minister of Sweden during the 1975 Occupation of the West German embassy in Stockholm which ended in failure for the RAF. They claimed the assassination was carried out by the 'Holger Meins Commando.'

 New evidence?
According to a documentary program aired on the Swedish television channel SVT in February 2006, associates of Pettersson claimed that he had confessed to them his role in the murder, but with the explanation that it was a case of mistaken identity. Apparently, Pettersson had intended to kill a drug dealer who customarily walked, in similar clothing, along the same street at night.

The program also suggested there was greater police awareness than previously acknowledged because of surveillance of drug activity in the area. The police had several officers in apartments and cars along those few blocks of Sveavägen but, 45 minutes before the murder, the police monitoring ceased.

In the light of these latest revelations, Swedish police undertook to review Palme's case and Pettersson's role. However, the newspaper Dagens Nyheter of February 28, 2006 carried articles ridiculing the TV documentary, and alleging that the filmmaker had fabricated a number of statements while omitting other contradictory evidence.[6]

 Other theories
John Ausonius, "the Laser Man", also known as John Stannerman, was one of the suspects. However, Stannerman had a solid alibi since he was imprisoned on the night Palme was shot.

 Trivia
The cost of the investigation stands at SEK 350 million, EUR 38 million or USD 45 million as of February 25, 2006.[3]
The total number of pages accumulated during the investigation is around 700,000.[4]
The reward for solving the murder is SEK 50 million.[5]

 Film portrayals
In the 1998 Swedish fictional thriller movie The Last Contract (Sista kontraktet), Palme's assassination was portrayed as having been planned by the CIA. A Special Branch detective, Roger Nyman (Mikael Persbrandt), is on the trail of the international hitman (Ray Lambert, played by Michael Kitchen) but finds his line of inquiry is blocked by senior police officers and the Swedish establishment. The reason suggested for the murder is the firm stance taken by Palme in rejecting deployment of nuclear weapons in Scandinavia. The assassin himself is then killed, to cover any trace back to the CIA.

The Last Contract has been favourably compared to two other thriller movies featuring political assassinations: Day of the Jackal and Oliver Stone's JFK.[6][7]

 References
^ "Experts doubt Palme case to reopen", BBC, 2001-10-29. Retrieved on 2007-02-05. 
^ "Petty criminal killed Palme", News24.com, 2007-02-04. Retrieved on 2007-02-05. 
^ Dagens Nyheter, March 12, 2006
^ Swedish Police official site
^ Swedish Police official site
^ Cleveland Film Society
^ Variety

 Literature
Blood on the snow : The killing of Olof Palme Jan Bondeson, Cornell University Press, 2005
Inuti labyrinten (Within the labyrinth) Kari and Pertti Poutiainen, Grimur, 1994

Sven Olof Joachim Palme (Olof Palme (help·info)) (January 30, 1927 – February 28, 1986) was a Swedish politician.

Palme was the leader of the Social Democratic Party from 1969 to 1986 and was the Prime Minister of Sweden with a Privy Council Government from 1969 to 1976 and a cabinet government from 1982 until his assassination in 1986. Palme's murder was the first of its kind in modern Swedish history and had an impact across Scandinavia similar to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the United States.[1]

 Early life and education
Palme was born in Östermalm, Stockholm, Sweden. He came from an upper-class background. In time, his political orientation came to be influenced by Social Democratic ideas and ideals. This was mainly the effect of his travels in Third World, as well as his travels in the United States where he saw the huge class differences and racial segregation of the 1940s.

On a scholarship, he studied at Kenyon College, Ohio 1947–1948, graduating with a B.A. in less than a year.[2] Inspired by the radical debate in the student community, he wrote a critical essay on Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. After hitchhiking through the U.S., he returned to Sweden to study law at Stockholm University. During his time at university, Palme became involved in student politics, working with the Swedish National Union of Students. In 1951, he became a member of the social democratic student association in Stockholm, although it is asserted he did not attend their political meetings at the time. The following year he was elected President of the Swedish National Union of Students, a position making it necessary to tone down party loyalties.[citation needed]

Palme attributed his becoming a socialist to three major influences:

In 1947, he attended a debate on taxes between the Social Democrat Ernst Wigforss, the conservative Jarl Hjalmarsson and the liberal Elon Andersson
The time he spent in the United States in the 1940s made him realise how wide the class divide was in America, and the extent of racism against blacks
A trip in Asia in 1953 had opened his eyes to the perceived consequences of colonialism and imperialism.

 Political career
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Cuban poster by Rafael Enriquez (1986).In 1953, Palme was recruited by social democratic prime minister Tage Erlander to work in his secretariat.[citation needed] From 1955 he was a board member of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League. In 1958 he was elected as an MP.[citation needed]

Olof Palme held several cabinet posts from 1963 and onwards. In 1967 he became Minister of Education, and the following year he was the target of strong criticism from left-wing students protesting against the government's plans for university reform. When party leader Tage Erlander stepped down in 1969, Palme was unanimously elected as the new leader by the Social Democratic party congress and succeeded Erlander as Prime Minister.[citation needed]

Palme's subsequent 125-month tenure as Prime Minister, and his untimely death, made him the most internationally-known Swedish politician of the 20th century (with the possible exception of the two humanitarians Raoul Wallenberg and Dag Hammarskjöld).

His protégé and political ally, Bernt Carlsson, who was appointed UN Commissioner for Namibia in July 1987, also suffered an untimely death. Carlsson was killed in the Pan Am Flight 103 crash on December 21, 1988 en route to the UN signing ceremony in New York the following day, whereby apartheid South Africa granted a much-delayed independence to Namibia.

 Policies
Olof Palme became the leader of a new generation of Swedish Social Democrats perceived to have stood further to the left of their predecessors. He has sometimes been described as a "revolutionary reformist".[3][4]

Palme was a controversial political figure on the international scene: his outspoken criticism of the United States for the Vietnam War; his vocal opposition to the Soviets crushing the Prague Spring; campaigning against nuclear weapons proliferation; criticism of the Franco Regime in Spain; opposition to apartheid and support for economic sanctions against South Africa; his support—both political and financial—for the African National Congress (ANC) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); meeting with Fidel Castro of Cuba, all ensured that Palme had much opposition abroad, as well as friends in many countries. Palme was also a friend of Robert Mugabe, who later became the President of Zimbabwe.[5]

Domestically, too, his political views engendered a great deal of hostility among the Swedish right, especially the Social Democrat drive to expand the Labour Union influence over business. At the time of his death, Palme had been accused of being pro-Soviet and not safeguarding Sweden's interests. Arrangements had therefore been made for him to go to Moscow to discuss a number of contentious issues, including alleged Soviet submarine incursions into Swedish waters (see U 137).

Palme's views on the disabled were characteristic of his social philosophy. Speaking at the Stanford University Law School in the 1970s, he summed up the difference between U.S and Swedish attitudes toward disabilities:

Americans regarded the able-bodied and the disabled as two separate species.
Swedes regard them as humans in different life stages: all babies are helpless, cared for by parents; sick people are cared for by those who are well; elderly people are cared for by those younger and healthier. Healthy, young people are able to help those who need it, because they know their turn will come.
Palme maintained that if it cost the country $US 40,000 per year to enable a disabled person to work at a job that paid $40,000, the society gained a net benefit, because the society benefited by allowing this worker to participate cooperatively rather than being a drain on other people's energies.[citation needed]

Expressing support for the PLO and the national liberation movements in Latin America,[citation needed] Palme was wary of the struggles for independence inside the USSR, in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. While Swedish right-wing opposition supported Baltic national liberation movements, Palme accused the members of the Moderate Party of "returning to that crusading spirit aiming to 'liberate' Eastern Europe that prevailed in conservative groups in the West during the Cold War" and also accused the Moderates of creating a "danger to the safety of the Swedish security policy" (see report to Jarl Hjalmarson Foundation seminar on April 13, 1999).[2]Despite such statements by Palme and completely contrary to official policy, Sweden had in fact secretly maintained far-reaching military co-operation with the West over a long period, and was even under the protection of a U.S. military security guarantee (see Swedish neutrality during the Cold War).

Palme was said to have had a profound impact on people's emotions; he was very popular among many on the left, but equally hated by some of his enemies on the right.[6] This was due in part to his international activities, especially those directed against the United States, and in part to his aggressive and outspoken debating style.[7][8]

 Assassination
Main article: Olof Palme assassination
Olof Palme could often be seen without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from a movie theater with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on February 28, 1986, the couple were attacked by a gunman. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range 23:21 CET. A second shot wounded Lisbet Palme.

Police said that a taxi-driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm. Two young girls sitting in a car close to the scene of the shooting also tried to help the prime minister. He was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival at 00:06 CET on March 1, 1986. Mrs Palme's wound was treated and she recovered.

Deputy prime minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties as prime minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party.

 Memorials
 
Plaque commemorating exact spot of Palme's murder
Palme's grave and monument at nearby Adolf Fredriks kyrka's cemeteryOn April 23, 1986, a part of the street Tunnelgatan in Stockholm was renamed Olof Palmes gata.
There is also an Olof Palmes gata in Gothenburg, as well as in numerous other Swedish cities.
Both Örebro, Västerås and Sundsvall have squares called Olof Palmes torg.
Uppsala and Södertälje have squares called Olof Palmes plats.
A street in northern part of Århus, Denmark is named "Olof Palmes Allé"
Olof Palme sétány (lit. "esplanade") is one of the central streets in the Budapest City Park. It also has a memorial stone for Anna Lindh.
In central Berlin there is a small square named Olof-Palme-Platz, close to Zoologischer Garten Berlin.
Nicaragua National Conventions Center is called Olof Palme.
In south New Delhi there is a road called Olof Palme Marg.
In Hiddenhausen, Germany, there is a school named after Olof Palme, the Olof-Palme-Gesamtschule.
In Kiel, Germany, there is a street (the B76) called Olof-Palme-Damm.
In Messestadt Riem, Germany the site of the old Munich-Riem airport, there is a street named Olof-Palme-Straße [3]
In Delft, Netherlands, there is a street named Olof Palmestraat which houses an IKEA shopping center.
In Moscow, Russia, there is a street named Ulofa Pal'me. The Swedish embassy is located there.
In Athens, Greece, in the traditionally left wing municipality of Kaisargianni there is a small street as well as a large road called Olof Palme.
In Thessaloniki, Greece, in the municipality of Kalamaria there is a park called "Olof Palme". The name was given in 1996. At that time a statue was also created and placed in the park.
In Puglia, Italy, there is a circular road named Via Sven Olof Palme that encircles the town of Bitonto.
In Chiaravalle, an Italian town near Ancona, there's a road called Via Olof Palme.
The main street of Kulu, a subprovince of Konya, Turkey, is named after Olof Palme. There is also a park with the same name.
In İzmir, Turkey, there is a park called Olof Palme Parkı.
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the neighbourhood of Saavedra, there is a short street called Olof Palme.
At Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, one of Palme's alma maters, the Anthropology and Sociology building is named Palme House in his honor.
In Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, there is a street called Olof Palme , in the Los Prados sector. It has been often mislabeled as Olaf Palmer or Oloff Palme.
In Valencia, Spain, there is a square named Olof Palme.
In Silémaní, Iraqi Kurdistan, there is a garden named after Olof Palme.
In Windhoek, Namibia, there is a street named Olof Palme.
In Maputo, capital of Mozambique there is a street named after Olof Palme in the very center of the city behind the cathedral.
In Belgrade, Serbia, in the residential quarter of Zvezdara there is a street named Ulofa Palmea.
In Havana, Cuba, in the La Lisa quarter there is a school named Escuela Olof Palme
The hip hop group The Latin Kings has put music to one of Olof Palme's speeches.

 

Lawrence E. Spivak (1900–March 9, 1994, Washington, D.C.) was an American publisher and journalist who was best known as the producer and moderator of NBC's Meet the Press, a position which he held from the program's inception in the 1940s until his retirement in 1975. During the program's early years he appeared alongside pioneering female journalist Martha Rountree.

When the program premiered, Spivak was already fairly well-known as the publisher of The American Mercury, which was then a still relatively mainstream conservative publication best known as the literary home of H. L. Mencken rather than the radically racialist publication it was to become during its final, dying years. He also published Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Spivak was well-known for his rather dapper appearance, his wardrobe usually consisting of a bowtie and heavy-rimmed glasses. He asked the first question of the Meet the Press guest and then handed off to the other journalists on the panel, which usually totalled four during his tenure on the program. He sold Meet the Press to NBC in 1955, keeping his roles as panelist and producer at a salary of more than $75,000 a year.

Spivak and his wife Charlotte lived at the Sheraton-Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. He died of congestive heart failure at Washington's Sibley Memorial Hospital on March 9, 1994.

 

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On May-24-07 at 10:35:48 PDT, seller added the following information:

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On Jul-17-08 at 07:50:39 PDT, seller added the following information: