ILL-FATED ESTONIA FERRY USED FOR WEAPONS TRANSFERS Part I

By Christopher Bollyn Exclusive for ZeitenSchrift

The day after the Baltic ferry Estonia sank on September 28, 1994, Swedish newspapers reported that a "monster wave" was the likely cause of the ferry's sinking. Since then, the official explanations for Europe's worst maritime disaster since World War II have only gotten "curiouser and curiouser."

The Baltic ferry Estonia, en route from Tallinn to Stockholm with some 1,000 passengers and crew on board, sank on September 28, 1994. Shortly after midnight, two concussions rocked the ship. The ferry quickly listed to starboard and sank into the frigid Baltic Sea in less than 45 minutes under circumstances which can only be described as mysterious.

Although more than 500 Swedes were among the 852 reported dead, the Swedish government has blocked every effort to recover the bodies from the wreck. Even an early offer by a Norwegian diving company to retrieve the bodies at cost was rejected.

Despite repeated promises from two consecutive Swedish prime ministers that the bodies would be retrieved and the wreck would be salvaged, three months after Estonia sank the Swedish government announced that there would be no recovery operation whatsoever.

Instead of retrieving the bodies, the government of Sweden hired a Dutch marine salvage firm, Smit Tak BV, that specializes in neutralizing underwater nuclear waste, spending $350 million in a failed attempt to cover the ship in concrete. The wreck lies in soft mud at a depth of between 60-80 meters.

MILITARY SHIPMENTS CONFIRMED

Recent revelations in the Swedish mass media that the ferry was being used to smuggle Soviet military technology have confirmed long-held suspicions that the unexplained sinking of Estonia may have been connected to a secret space weapons cargo it was carrying.

Immediately before Estonia left Tallinn on its final voyage, Carl Övberg, a survivor and frequent passenger who had arrived at the last minute, reported that the harbor had been sealed off and that a military convoy had escorted two large trucks to the waiting ferry. As soon as the trucks were loaded, the ship's car ramp and bow visor were closed and the delayed ferry sailed for Stockholm.

Swedish state television (SVT 1) broadcast an investigative journalism program called Uppdrag Granskning on November 30, 2004, in which the former chief of customs in Stockholm confessed that Estonia had indeed been used to transport Soviet military technology to the West in September 1994.

According to former customs chief Lennart Henriksson, on two occasions shortly before Estonia sank, vehicles carrying Soviet military technology had been allowed to enter Sweden without any inspection.

"I have been walking around thinking about what happened for ten years," Lennart Henriksson, Stockholm's former customs chief said. "Each time Estonia's name came up I've thought the little I know should be brought into the light of day. I want to clear my conscience."

Henriksson had been ordered to allow certain vehicles carrying Soviet military contraband to pass Swedish customs without inspection on September 14 and 20, 1994, but was not working the day Estonia sank because he was on vacation.

Henriksson's confession sheds new light on the sinking of Estonia. The ferry was a joint venture between a private Swedish company, Nordström & Thulin, and Estline, a company owned by the Estonian government. Prior to the SVT 1 exposé, reports of Soviet military technology being smuggled on the ferry had been dismissed as "conspiracy theories."

Henriksson revealed that a secret agreement existed to allow military contraband cargo to enter Sweden without being inspected by customs. This arrangement was between Owe Wictorin, then supreme commander of Sweden's military and Ulf Larsson, then general director of Swedish customs. The arrangement was known at the highest level of the government as well as at the defense department.

Normally, Swedish customs searched every vehicle coming from Estonia. That a vehicle was to pass without inspection was something Henriksson had never seen in 38 years of service.

When the ferry arrived on Sept. 14, 1994, Henriksson spoke to the driver of the expected vehicle, a Volvo 745 station wagon driven by a Frank Larsson, a false identity.

When Henriksson told "Larsson" that customs was carrying out inspections, he "gave me a look, but I said the search would be faked," Henriksson said. "We opened a few boxes and as far as I could see it was military electronics in them."

The customs slip showed the car belonging to a non-existent company called "Ericsson Access AB," a fictitious subsidiary of AB LM Ericsson Finance. No address was given.

Henriksson discovered later that the vehicle was a rental car. There is no evidence that Ericsson was actually involved in the smuggling. Although the Swedish military authorized the smuggling, the final destination of the Soviet technology is not known.

A week later, on September 20, 1994, a much larger shipment of contraband technology arrived and was allowed to pass without inspection. This time it was a van and, once again, Henriksson merely glanced into the boxes.

"What were you thinking this second time?" reporter Lars Borgnäs asked.

"I thought it was a strange procedure," Henriksson said. "But orders are orders and you don't reflect too much on why."

On December 2, 2004, two days after the SVT 1 exposé, the Swedish military confirmed on Ekot radio that this secret agreement existed and is still in effect.

The following day, Sweden's Prime Minister Göran Persson appointed Johan Hirschfeldt, presiding judge of the high court of Svea District, to investigate the secret smuggling arrangement between the military and customs.

Hirschfeldt's report did not allow enough time for a proper investigation, Gregg Bemis, a member of the Marine Forensics Panel, a subgroup of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, is an American who conducted a dive to the wreck with German journalist and Estonia researcher Jutta Rabe. Bemis also owns the wreck of Lusitania.

"I certainly hope that Judge Hirschfeldt will realize that he has been given an opportunity to make a substantive contribution to the families of the victims," Bemis said. "It is an opportunity to determine whether or not these activities contributed to the tragic sinking of Estonia. Since it is well established that the JAIC [official] report was full of errors, Hirschfeldt should take this chance to obtain a proper forensic examination of the whole crime scene."

Independent sea safety expert and naval architect Anders Björkman, author of several books on the Estonia catastrophe, calls the seriously flawed JAIC report "the biggest fraud in maritime history" adding that "every essential piece of information in the final report is false or misleading."

Immediately after the accident – before it was even admitted that the wreck had been found – Swedish authorities and media seized on one theory for the sinking. The blame was put on ship's bow visor and car ramp construction, which they said had opened due to the force of the waves. This had allowed seawater to flood the car deck, they said, causing the vessel to capsize and sink. No other causes were ever investigated.

"There is no evidence that this allegation is true," Björkman says. "The vessel never capsized. It sank without capsizing.

"The public was told that underwater filming of the wreck had confirmed that the visor was missing," he said, and that this had caused the ferry to sink.

"There is no way that waves of 4 meters could have knocked off Estonia's visor," Björkman wrote. "This is the central lie of the whole cover-up.

"The visor had nothing to do with the accident," Björkman, who was a naval engineer with the Swedish navy says, "but was simply removed from the wreck under water by the Swedish navy after the accident - so the sinking could be blamed on the visor."

For a week after Estonia sank, Swedish authorities said they could not locate the wreck, although extensive rescue operations had been conducted at the site. Later it was learned that the only ships at the correct wreck position at that time were from the Swedish navy. A blue buoy meant to indicate the wreck's position was intentionally misplaced to mislead the media and others.

Unfortunately, "a proper forensic investigation" from Hirschfeldt was not what the Swedish government had in mind. Hirschfeldt was given an extremely limited assignment, in both scope and time. He had but a few working weeks until January 21, 2005, to complete his investigation, which was restricted to consideration of military transfers on Estonia during the month of September 1994, and whether the military shipments were explosive.

The question of whether the contraband was explosive seems designed to protect the military from criticism that these military shipments put Estonia and its passengers at risk.

Hirschfeldt's report sheds no light on what was being transported. He writes that such covert transports are usually carried out with very little documentation and that because the transfers he was asked to investigate occurred more than ten years ago, the relevant documents have been destroyed – according to regulations.

Furthermore, Hirschfeldt reports that defense material imports and intelligence activities are protected by secrecy laws for up to seventy years. There is also a law that prohibits and punishes any discussion of such covert activities by those who have information. Hirschfeldt claims this law even prevents him from revealing what he has learned about the transfers.

"A masterpiece," Björkman said about Hirschfeldt's report. "Defense material? What was it? How much? Volume? Weight? Origin? Value? Owner? Stolen goods? How was it declared? How did it pass Estonian customs? What vehicle was used? Was the captain and ship owner informed?

"We know nothing," Björkman said.

THE PENTAGON'S "SHOPPING LIST"

In Die Estonia, Rabe's book on the catastrophe, she suggests that on its final voyage, Estonia carried specimens of Soviet space technology.

Although Rabe does not speculate about what was being transported, she points to a "shopping list" of found in a New York Times article by William J. Broad from Nov. 4, 1991.

Broad described the technology Pentagon officials were interested in obtaining from the Soviet space program. Russell Seitz from the Olin Center for Strategic Studies at Harvard University called it "the yard sale at the end of history."

The Pentagon had announced its intention in 1991 to spend $12 million to buy an advanced Soviet nuclear reactor for generating power in space. Leonard Caveny, deputy director of innovative science and technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) program at the Pentagon, traveled to Soviet space labs near Moscow, where a team of experts tested a tiny space engine that uses magnetic fields instead of fuel to move a spacecraft.

This amazing device, necessary for space-based programs fit in the palm of a hand and was available for less than $1 million.

"It's very moderately priced," Caveny told a reporter before his visit to Russia. The price included all associated flight hardware.

"This kind of engine has been kicking around on paper in this country for 30 years, but never in space," Richard Verga, from SDIO said. "The Soviets are actually flying these things."

The Soviets had plutonium-238 and heat-resistant alloys completely unknown in the West, including one made of palladium and osmium able to withstand temperatures to 3,600 degrees Celsius.

The Air Force was interested in the RD-170, reportedly the best liquid-fuel rocket engine in the world.

"The shopping spree, begun by the military" soon attracted a number of federal agencies who visited the Soviet Union in the early '90s "to evaluate a host of high technologies," Broad wrote.

In 1993, a retired U.S. Army colonel named Aleksander Einseln, came out of retirement to take command of the military forces in his native Estonia, which had regained independence in 1991.

Einseln reported to NATO command from his position in the former Soviet republic until early 1995.

On the very day Estonia sank, NATO's 10-day "Baltic Sea naval exercises" began with the militaries of 10 NATO allies and 10 Partnership for Peace nations, including Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic states. 14 of the 20 nations involved provided ships and aircraft for the "Cooperative Venture" exercise, which was a "peacekeeping, humanitarian and search and rescue operation" exercise reportedly centered at the western mouth of the Baltic Sea near Denmark's Skagerrak area. There has been, however, no discussion of NATO's role in or lack of response to the sinking of Estonia.

While Einseln probably knew about the technology shipment on Estonia and apparently provided troops to escort it to the harbor, Rabe said she does not think he was the author of the ill-fated transfer operation.

A high-ranking military attaché from the German Bundesmarine told Rabe that he visited Einseln in his office in Tallinn on the day of the disaster.

"That was an attack against us," Einseln said.

Later, Einseln, denied having been in Tallinn on Sept. 28 and told reporters, including Germany's Spiegel TV, that he had been in the United States.

Johannes Johanson, chief of Estline, co-owner of ferry said, "Estonia was sunk by assault."

Rabe explains how divers hired by the Swedish government spent hours breaking into cabins frantically searching for a black attaché case carried by a Russian space technology dealer, Aleksandr Voronin.

Voronin owned a company in Tallinn called "Kosmos Association" while his brother, Valeri, had a similar company in Moscow that traded weapons and space technology.

The official divers worked for Rockwater, a subsidiary of Brown & Root Energy Services (BRES), and had signed lifetime contracts obliging them to remain silent.

BRES is a subsidiary of Halliburton, formerly directed by Vice President Dick Cheney since 1995.

Rabe said that Rockwater was not the lowest bidder but had been awarded the contract by Johan Franson, head of the Swedish Maritime Administration.

Secrecy was of paramount importance, Rabe said.

According to Rabe, video footage from the official dive, taken during the first four days of December 1994, shows divers frantically searching the cabins looking for a black leather case.

Finally, the case was found in Cabin No. 6130, a cabin usually used by Captain Avo Piht. The diver read from the case: "It says Aleksandr Voronin. Does that ring any bells up there?"

Rabe points to a group of Russian nationalists from the Soviet intelligence agencies being behind the sinking of Estonia. According to Rabe's sources, the so-called Felix Group included Vladimir Putin and Igor Ivanov, who were strongly opposed to the wholesale looting of the Soviet arsenal.

The window of easy access to Soviet military secrets slammed shut in July 1998 when Putin was appointed director of Russia's Federal Security Service. The Voronin company was liquidated and the U.S. firms that dealt with them went out of business.

According to Rabe, the sinking of Estonia is summed up one sentence: "It was the perfect coup, which could have only been carried out by secret services or groups which include former members of the secret services as members, like the networks of terrorists, regardless of their origin or motivation."

Hirschfeldt's 7-page report provides no answers about what was being transported. The details are classified and likely to remain Swedish state secrets for 70 years, Hirschfeldt wrote.

"So our expectations came true," Bertil Calamnius, chairman of AgnEf, an organization of Estonia relatives, said. "This is but one further example of Swedish officialdom plugging leaks in the Estonia story."

DISAPPEARED ESTONIANS

The mystery of the sinking of Estonia, however, has affected some more than others.

While survivors recovered and the relatives and friends of those lost at sea mourned, a third group was left completely in limbo, where it is to this day.

To this third group belong a dozen, or more, Estonian crew members who were originally reported as having been rescued, only to have mysteriously disappeared in the days following the disaster. The disappearance of these 12 Estonia crew members points to a high-level cover-up of an international intrigue.

Recent revelations in the Swedish press of "enforced disappearances" of two Egyptian "terror suspects" carried out in Sweden in 2001 may shed light on the fate of missing Estonia survivors.

It was recently reported in the Swedish media that a private Gulfstream 5 executive jet, registered in the United States, played a role in the "extraordinary rendition" of two Egyptian "terror suspects" from Sweden in 2001.

According to Swedish journalist Sven Anér, enforced disappearances from Sweden are nothing new. There is a body of evidence that similar abductions occurred in Sweden in the days following the Estonia ferry disaster.

Shortly after Estonia sank, a dozen Estonian crewmembers, all evidently survivors of the catastrophe – disappeared without a trace.

Documents indicate that U.S. registered private jets were used in both the 1994 and 2001 disappearance cases.

Anér has documents from Sweden's civil aviation administration concerning two specific aircraft suspected of being involved in the abduction of the missing Estonians.

Enforced disappearance, according to the Rome Statute of 1998,

"means the arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or acquiescence of, a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time."

Enforced disappearance, a form of kidnapping, is considered a "crime against humanity," according to the Rome Statute, which Sweden ratified in June 2001.

As many as 12 Estonian crew members, which official survivor lists show having survived the sinking, disappeared in what appears to be a government-organized abduction and enforced disappearance.

While the original survivor lists contain the names of 146 individuals, the names of a dozen crew members who had been listed as survivors, were deleted without explanation from the lists maintained by the Swedish and Finnish authorities in the days following the disaster.

Anér has found 15 different original lists of survivors, all of which include the names of 11 Estonian crew members whose names were later deleted. In order for a name to appear on the list, a survivor was required to give his name, date of birth, status and nationality.

There is evidence that some surviving crewmembers were abducted and taken to Stockholm's Arlanda airport whence they were flown out of Sweden on two private aircraft.

The abductions removed key witnesses who would have been able to testify about the condition of the ship, the cargo, and the cause of the sinking. Chief among them were one of the ship's captains, Avo Piht, who was on board but not on duty that night, and Chief Engineer Lembit Leiger.

It is thought that the others were crewmembers who had shared the same life raft or been rescued with Piht and Leiger in the same helicopter: Y-64.

THE KIDNAPPED CAPTAIN

In the days after the sinking, it was widely reported that Captain Avo Piht had survived. The Swedish television news program Aktuellt, for example, in the evening of Sept. 28, 1994, reported that Ronald Bergman, director of Nordström & Thulin, the Swedish shipping firm that co-owned the vessel, had informed the media that the ship's captain had survived and was being treated in a hospital in Finland.

Bengt-Erik Stenmark, security chief at the Swedish Maritime Administration told Reuters that the international investigation committee had even interviewed Captain Avo Piht. Neither Stenmark nor Reuters has ever retracted this statement.

The German television network ZDF broadcast a video clip on September 28 of Avo Piht and other survivors arriving at Turku University Hospital in Finland. This video was later confiscated by German intelligence agents, according to Rabe.

Leiger's wife, Kairi, received a call from relatives in Sweden who told her that a Swedish police superintendent named Hans Strindlund had informed them that her husband had survived. Lembit Leiger was reportedly treated in Stockholm's Huddinge Hospital and released on September 29, 24 hours after being admitted.

The next day, Mrs. Leiger spoke to Strindlund herself. Strindlund informed her of the exact flight details for the plane on which Leiger was supposed to be returning to Tallinn – but he never arrived.

Along with Piht and Leiger, there are at least seven other "disappeared" crew members, whose names remained on survivor lists for days: The ship's doctor, Dr. Viktor Bogdanov, Kalev Vahtras, Kaimar Kikas, Agur Targama, Tiina Müür, and the twin sisters, Hannely and Hanka-Hannika Veide.

To be continued in Part II http://www.elaestonia.org/eng/index.php?module=lingid&link=163