Our security services - ASIO, ASIS, and the AFP - have expanded a great deal recently, and we essentially have to take it on trust that this is a) a good use of money, b) being used to perform the intended goal - no more and no less, and c) being done in such a way that it doesn’t impede everybody else’s rights to be left alone.
In this context, an insight into how the intelligence agencies functioned over 30 years ago is still worth thinking deeply about, and the insights from the just-released reports of the Hope Royal Commission of the mid-70’s remain disturbing today:
During a three-year inquiry, conducted largely in secret from 1974, Justice Robert Hope identified a litany of problems in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, leading him to conclude that it “may be, or may have been, penetrated by a hostile intelligence service”.
The fresh volumes of classified material released yesterday paint a damning picture of ASIO, from its formation in 1949 by Labor prime minister Ben Chifley, through to the mid-1970s.
According to Justice Hope, record-keeping at ASIO was shambolic, staff morale was low and agents spent more time digging dirt on left-wing sympathisers than looking into the greater threat posed by Soviet bloc spies operating in Australia.
“ASIO could not be taken seriously as an efficient organisation, still less an effective security organisation,” he wrote.
The speech by ASIO’s director general at the release expresses the belief that future generations of Australians will be able to look back - notably through the reports of ASIO’s watchdog - the Inspector-General, and determine that it was doing its job properly in 2008, unlike those perusing Hope’s findings.
We’ll wait and see. My bet - in 2038 we’ll be reading about hundreds of naive new ASIO staff chasing supposed terrorists who never existed in the first place.
Update: As The Age editorializes, there’s plenty of more recent history of the intelligence services that deserves a close look.
For a bit of comedy, chuck the search terms “ASIO” and “surveillance” into the National Archives’ photo search.
Here’s a suspicious looking individual. Just look at that beard.
I often wonder how hilariously inaccurate my ASIO file would be - in view of my past political associations and activities I’m virtually certain to have a reasonably fat one.
The findings of the Hope Royal Commission are entirely in keeping with what we already know about the behaviour of State Special Branches which maintained extensive and intensive surveillance of peace activists, environmentalists, trade unionists, artists, authors, Labor Party members, members of various ethnic groups, Aborigines and their supporters, Christians who took seriously the injunctions of their religion’s Founder and His precursors amongst the Old Testament prophets of social justice, harmless Trots, harmless anarchists, etc., etc.
When I was employed by the national office of an organisation with which ASIO was preoccupied (and Graeme Bird still is) I found a copy of the report of an inquiry into the NSW Special Branch which stated that the Branch’s surveillance activities included, amongst other things, photographing the number plates of cars parked outside the NSW Labour Council building on nights when the Council was meeting, conducting surveillance of truck hire companies which hired out trucks for use as the speakers’ platform at the May Day rally, failing to detect or prevent the bombing of the Hilton Hotel in early 1978, and pursuing a vexatious campaign to prosecute an innocent person over the said bombing.
This brings to mind an incident from 1982. Michael Danby, now a Federal Labor MP and at that time a vigorous young pro-Israel activist, had been asked to speak at La Trobe University about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon at a meeting organised by the Jewish Students Society . The event was advertised in the daily campus newssheet, which was typed and duplicated by a well-known left-wing activist who took it upon himself to type, underneath the notice of the Jewish Students function, a comment to the effect that Michael Danby was an ASIO agent. After the function, an irate Danby stormed upstairs to the Student Union Activities Office, loudly stating in the presence of myself, Fran Kelly (now of ABC fame) and various Union staff that he would hit the Union with the biggest libel writ it had ever seen. This threat was also conveyed to the Union General Manager, who sought the advice of the University’s Legal Officer. She informed him that any such suit would probably fail in court because referring to someone as an ASIO agent would not be considered defamatory as it would not diminish their reputation in the eyes of ordinary right-thinking citizens who didn’t hold lefty prejudices about the intelligence agencies. Danby must have received similar advice, as the threatened suit never eventuated.
Now that Justice Hope’s findings about the incompetence and stupidity of ASIO agents has come to light, one imagines that Michael Danby would have a much stronger case today!
For the record let me also state that, whatever my ASIO file says, I was not one of the people throwing eggs, fruit and vegetables at Malcolm Fraser during the Great Nicholson Street Riot of 1980. This is not simply a matter of avoiding incrimination. Most of those involved in the produce-chucking had such lousy throwing arms that for every egg, tomato, potato, etc., which landed anywhere near Mal, 20 more landed on the heads of other protesters (I know because an egg whacked me behind the right ear) and/or the police and/or their horses, considerably worsening people’s mood all round and contributing to the temper of the ensuing riot.
“My bet - in 2038 we’ll be reading about hundreds of naive new ASIO staff chasing supposed terrorists who never existed in the first place.”
Agreed. I find it hard to believe that the culture of the place has been completely and totally changed in thirty years, especially in light of the Haneef case. Yes, yes I know that was AFP but surely some of our ’spooks’ had a look in?
Did anyone see the documentary on the Weather Underground on SBS last week? Basically, even though they’d spent several years bombing buildings, most of them didn’t go to gaol. Why? Because the FBI had broken so many laws in their investigation, they couldn’t make the charges stick.
Is ASIO a threat to our civil liberties any more?
Have the Australian Federal Police become a greater threat as they are not accountable and are protected by the draconian sedition laws passed in the wake of Sept 11, 2001?
Billie: any secret police service remains a potential threat to civil liberties. Particularly one that’s just hired a bunch of new recruits whom, I suspect, will have to invent enemies to chase down to justify their own continued employment before too long.
Wow Liam @1 those historians are a dangerous bunch.
If subversive beards are not bad enough white sox are totally unforgivable.
A great link and as for those surfy chicks…
Hey Paul, I once made the imputation in a student newspaper that a particular person was so paranoid and unstable that they had been sacked from the intelligence services. We settled and apologised: it was clearly defamatory to say that someone was too paranoid even to hold down a job in ASIO.
Oh, and I was wrong anyway: in true public service style they hadn’t, of course, been ’sacked’ but had been ‘invalided out’.
a bunch of new recruits whom, I suspect, will have to invent enemies to chase down to justify their own continued employment before too long.
Tsk, Robert, Performance indicators! Productivity!
A few weeks ago there was a show on Radio National about a bunch of Australian folk musicians, including John Manifold. Apparently, most of them were pretty bolshie. One of them remarked that if anyone wanted to write a history of the Aust. folk movement, the best place to start looking for source documents would be through FOI requests to ASIO. At a recent Greens branch meeting I attended, when the secretary was a bit concerned about the accuracy of the Minutes I suggested, to much hilarity, that we adopt the same approach.
I don’t think the leopards have significantly changed their spots.
Wonder if they ever found out who lobbed an egg at Prince Charles in Elizabeth st Melbourne was?
Could have been a grenade…
Then there was the time the old South African Airlines office windows in Collins st were smashed as if by an airgun of some sort…thank fuck for the thin spook line.
I think the major problem here is when one of the consumers of the intelligence start to demand what we’d call politicised intelligence, e.g. reports on ALP members of parliament. At this point, those who collect and analyse the intelligence start tailoring their product to their consumers (this is how the intelligence cycle is managed, by separating consumers, analysis and collection). So if you’ve got a political class demanding intelligence on other aspects of the political class, that of course is what you’ll get, and the counterintelligence and other capabilities get severely degraded. You’ll note the Age reports that Hope found that Defence Sig Int and ASIS were ‘well managed’, because their policy inputs and product output will be harder to politicise just because it engages less with the government’s political “enemies”. A major concern would be how much ASIO’s ineffectiveness and potential hostile penetration affects the operations of ASIS and DFAT, but that information would never be made public anyway.
I raise this point because you can well imagine the extent to which Howard and co would seek to politicise intelligence collection and analysis.
Additionally, the requirements of intelligence-gathering and police work are frequently at odds, and the move by Howard to merge and align the two organisations (AFP and ASIO) could well end up in the compromise of both. For example, with police work you generally want to measure its success by successful court operations, which requires you to reveal your methods and sources in court. It is rarely in the interests of an intelligence agency to give up their sources where ever possible, court prosecutions are not the aim, but information gathering and reporting is, and ongoing operations require that your sources are protected - usually forever.
E.g. consider the case of Valery Plame. After Rove/Rumsfeld/Cheney exposed her as a CIA agent, you can image that foreign agencies started to review every report they had involving her and her contacts, and I’d bet quite a few networks were blown wide open but Cheney’s politically motivated breach of security. Consider also the case of counter-survelliance operations. All you want to do is foil the target surveillance, or expose the target’s methods and contacts, find out the target’s target if that’s unknown to you, feed the target false information, disrupt the target’s network, disable completely their capability to either gather information and/or trust and/or ability to act upon it, and all the while hopefully keeping even the fact of your own counter-surveillance operation completely unknown to the target, and usually not, for example, prosecute the target diplomats or other assets in an open court. You might even leave their operation running, to give them the false sense of security. All of which requires politicians grand-standing on TV, or gun-waving AFP officers, to stay the hell away.
Would ASIO have been monitoring AWB while it was aiding and abetting the enemy?
Everyone:
Can hardly wait for 2010 to find out exactly how the Vietnam Veterans’ Action Association had a direct telephone line to the Kremlin and how they imperiled daylight saving, decimal currency, our flag, the koala, HMAS Invincible, pumpkin scones, Magna Carta and Jessie the Elephant. Wonder what nefarious plans they had to wear suits in colours other than navy-blue or charcoal or to wear T-shirts with naughty things written on them.
At a time when the Soviet Union did have real secret operators creating real mischief in The West and when real Middle-Eastern hijackers were active, it makes you wonder just what was being smoked by those who ordered the priorities of Australia’s security and counter-intelligence effort in those days.
Tyro Rex [13]:
Very good point about the inefficiencies of melding AFP and ASIO. Still, if such melding proved successful then maybe we could extend that concept to relieve the shortage - in remote and rural communities - of plumbers, teachers, electricians, doctors and builders. Gee, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?
L=O=L!
Mug Punter: nope, that would be ASIS, the foreign intelligence mob. Possibly also DSD, the signals-intelligence mob, in their arrangements with the American NSA.
And, yes, there’s almost certainly a tale to be told there, given that the only economic activity Australia had in Iraq was selling wheat. There’s an excellent chance the intelligence agencies knew exactly what was going on.
A friend’s father worked at Woomera back in the ’60s. He was also a member of the Communist Party (how he got to work at Woomera at the time is an interesting question in itself!). There was about one shop in Woomera back then, and every time this man bought something, the ASIO man would rush in a few minutes later to find out what it was fropm the shop-keeper. Everyone knew who the ASIO man was and everyone thought he was a joke.
There’s a post up on Feministe (sorry, no time to find the link) about the FBI infiltrating … vegan potluck dinners in … Minnesota!
Oh, they might look very innocent in those cable sweaters and those birkenstocks, but it’s all a front you know…
Everyone:
IMHO, the most valuable intelligence is always right out there in the open just waiting to be processed by the astute, the clever, the experienced, the observant, the open-minded and the well-trained. And yes, I’m sure that spying and other forms of covert intelligence has a place - a very small but useful place - in the scheme of things.
So who then are the political hand-rapers who assign extraordinarily high value to gossip that comes from covert sources and yet who despise and ignore rock-solid intelligence that comes from quite open sources?
The bulk of the blame for the ridiculous waste of intelligence resources must be laid on the political ratbags who ordered such waste.
“Hand-rapers”??????
Yes, that jumped out at me too. Did you mean “hand wringers”?
They could be reading this right now (looks furtively around while typing furiously)!
“Did you mean “hand wringers”?”
Methinks what is being wrung isn’t the hand.
I think you’re correct, Graham Bell.
During the Whitlam govt, “The Bulletin” ran a story claing senior Ministers (ALP) had been asking ASIO to keep an eye on groups to their left, and report back. Presumably to supplement standard sources such as union gossip, general gossip, tiny publications, student politics etc.
I thought, “ah, it’s not just Menzies and Liberal Govts who misuse ASIO…” At that time, “The Bulletin” occasionally ran stories seemingly sourced from intelligence organisations. Peter Samuels was a journalist with that kind of interest. Whether the sources or the magazine ever revealed the full story in such a case, is another matter of course.
A rumour from Lionel Murphy’s “ASIO raid”: some of the boys in Melbourne were tipped off that he was on his way, so the files on Murphy & Cairns were put into a large envelope and taken outside and posted into the letterbox on the wall of the building [I have no idea if such a letterbox existed]. The rumour said that the files therefore lay safely, out of the way of Lionel’s prying eyes, during the raid. Or perhaps they were posted to the Tassie office?
It’s a lovely story. Deserves to be true. A sign of intelligence (cunning) at Intelligence: egad!
Their recruitment practices can be a bit odd. I know of 2 academics who were approached to join (no names, no pack drill)both of whom declined. They were interested in their research capabilities. And not the slightest bit fazed that one of them had strong far left (anarchist and communist) connections. This was in the 1980s.At least one of them would have been a hopeless field operative, (and you have to do field as well as desk work). I have no further comments to make on the subject.
Graham mentioned
“by the astute, the clever, the experienced, the observant,”
let’s hope they still manage to recruit plenty of persons with those qualities…. I reckon you could summarise that list as
“persons of high and active intelligence, open-minded”.
We need an intelligence service and I’d prefer it not waste it’s time.
But I reckon sometimes they must have to follow strange persons down strange alleys, just to be sure by “ruling them off the list”. So the retrospective critique of following false leads may in part be a little unfair, if there were SOME grounds for concern, e.g. wasn’t the only genuine passer-of-documents-to-the-Soviets-in-Canberra associated with the Petrov hearings in fact a high CPA official? I don’t imply that every CPA member at that time was a spy or even a potential spy, mind.
General Soviet practice was generally not to use overt communists and other fellow travellers except as agents of influence (but such assets may be employed for exfiltration of an endangered clandestine asset in an emergency). If you think about it it makes logical sense. So the scrutiny of such people must only have stemmed from a) incompetence or b) a genuine fear of internal revolution, I always favour incompetence theories in these cases.
Helen [20] and Liam [21];
Off topic and into Aussie slang for a moment:
“Hand-raper’ is a synonym for masturbator,
]
Onanistonanist, wanker, gripper-of-the-dick and hence a foolish and easily befuddled person, one given running off on wild goose chases, a gullible follower of an off-beat political, artistic or religious cult; i.e., one who could be readily persuaded to buy, at a bargain price in hard cash, several thousand tonnes of scrap iron currently located between Milson’s Point and The Rocks. [FDB at 23 was right on the moneyAmbigulous [26]:
Fair enough. That’s what we pay them for. I suppose that would be a bit like a salesman [M or F
] following up leads after a trade show: most will lead nowhere but the more they follow up, the better chance they have of closing a worthwhile sale. It just comes with the territory.
Tyro Rex [27]:
Food for thought in that.
Rayedish [22]:
Thank you for letting us know you had left your fingerprints and DNA on the keyboard. The data has now been added to your file.
I used to go out with a woman who worked for ASIO, way back in the days when they still operated out of St Kilda Rd.
From what she told me, cheerfully ignoring every provision of whatever version of the Defence of Realm Act she signed off on, it sounded like a pretty dysfunctional organisation, less interested in hunting aging commies, strident peace activists and hard core greenies, DSTO staff with surprisingly large holiday homes, BHP coking coal mine planners with a second wife in Seoul and other threats to the Australian way of the life than in white-anting truly dangerous operations like ASIS and the NCA.
Anyway here’s a cheery thought for anyone that’s ever been screwed by ASIO. I’ve personally returned the favour.
Nabakov [30]:
I’m shocked! Surely you are not suggesting that anyone in our thoroughly respectable defence procurement or defence research establishment could have come by a whopping big palace at the beach by means other than thrifty saving of one’s loose change at the end of each day or by inheriting it from Great-Aunt Millicent. That’s a terrible slur. Naturally, you do have in your own possession infra-red photographs, unalterable videotapes and reams of affidavits of wrong-doing by such distinguished people …. sorry, I can’t go on …. there’s a limit even to my mock-horror and if I laugh any more I’ll fall off this chair.
Seriously though, had ASIO followed through on whiffs of corruption in Defence - they might have saved the Commonwealth Treasury enough money to fund the running of their own organization twice over.
the holiday house story really comes back to Graham Bell’s suggestion of ordinary alertness, using open sources (one’s own eyes, title search at Lands Office, etc)
Yes: it may not have been espionage-related, it may have been garden-variety corruption
then again, Aunt Millicent was a very generous old miser!
Nabs: White-anting ASIS and NCA??? You mean, “office politics”? Selfish empire-building? oh noes.