The presence in society of people who secretly supply information to a domestic state security agency is seen as a necessary evil by some, while others question whether the potential benefit to society of this suspicionless investigation outweighs its cost. In modern history, successfully upheld contracts between governments and silent citizen majorities have inclined the latter to accept what their national press often insists is the true state of affairs – that while such things may indeed go on there, they do not as a rule go on here. When something altogether out of the ordinary then does come to light, perceptions of it are managed meaningfully with the help of a framework of interpretation that sees uncomfortable facts merely as the exception that ‘proves the rule’. Perhaps the best-known example from the Cold War Anglosphere are the extrajudicial disruptions that in 1971 became the FBI COINTELPRO scandal. In Sweden, the so-called Information Bureau Affair of 1973 exposed a similar programme of covert agent infiltration of leftist, but entirely legal, NGOs and communist labour activity, on behalf of Sweden’s ruling Social Democratic Party leadership and armed forces.