Australian intelligence: confronting the past for a safer future.

• Author: Reed, Warren
• Pages: 31(12)

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments; he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. ... Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC). (1)

The release a few months ago of declassified papers from Australia's Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security (1974-77) (2) attracted only the most superficial commentary in the media and, as usual, the opportunity was used to berate the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). We await with anticipation a thoroughgoing examination of the Royal Commission papers by scholars and writers in the intelligence field, especially in academia. Regrettably, however, the intelligence community as a whole has been let down in this regard in the past, often suffering unwarranted criticism while garnering little in the way of public support. It is our opinion that the findings of the commissioner, the late Justice Robert Hope, deserve much closer scrutiny, especially with respect to the problems he encountered in conducting his inquiry and against the backdrop of remarkably strong statements of concern that he received about Australian security from overseas agencies with which ASIO had close contact.

As co-authors with a background at either end of the intelligence spectrum--intelligence-gathering and counter-intelligence/counter-espionage (3)--we will attempt to bring a broad-ranging perspective to our examination of this matter from, if you like, a combined team of the poacher and the gamekeeper.

We believe that this needs to be done because of the great changes that have occurred in the global community since the Hope Royal Commission took place. The rise of China and its impact on Australia are possibly the major challenge. But that posed by a wealthy energy giant in the form of a resurgent Russia, whose levels of espionage in the West have increased exponentially since the end of the Cold War, and the continuing threat of Islamic fundamentalism, are also likely to be of the highest priority. For Australia to survive in this new era, with anything like the destiny to which it believes and assumes it is entitled, it will have to be able to cleanse its intelligence agencies of bad elements. Mateship, cronyism and the political wish to avoid embarrassment over serious cases of disloyalty should no longer be indulged at the expense of the nation's well-being. In the same way that a woman can't be half pregnant, a country's national interest can't be protected if betrayal is tolerated within. And ASIO is--or was intended to be--Australia's prime cleansing agency by virtue of its counter-intelligence function.

These issues should have been dealt with responsibly and effectively decades ago, and the reasons why they haven't reveal an unflattering psychological profile of Australia that most people would prefer not to confront. It is not a classical conspiracy theory that is involved here. Rather, there is a disposition that, over long years, has led to individual cases being buried as they occur, with each regarded as an ad hoc, unrelated challenge to the government of the day. With time, an accretion of events has formed into a pattern of behaviour that is almost impossible to eradicate without major surgery. To a degree, it has given rise to an ongoing network of contacts, which coalesces whenever things need to be covered up. Call it what you will, the result is devastating. And it manifests itself in behaviour that is unacceptable from a national security viewpoint.

Opposition to the establishment of ASIO

To go back to Justice Hope's report, the most startling observation, at a first reading of his recently released papers, is his assertion that the United Kingdom and United States authorities, in particular, were concerned in the mid-1970s about penetration of various Australian government agencies, including ASIO, by hostile foreign powers. In the main, the then USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies (known in the intelligence world as the satellite states) had carried out the penetration. Several times, Justice Hope stated that he was not empowered to investigate these claims. There is an eerie resemblance here to the years after World War II, when these same two allied powers, the UK and the US, were urging the establishment in Australia of a security service. The then Chifley Labor Government, however, faced great hostility in doing so from within the labour movement, the ALP and especially from the Minister of External Affairs, Dr H.V. Evatt, and the then head of the Department of External Affairs, Dr John Wear Burton, Jnr. Both the implicit and explicit threat from our allies was that, unless Australia got its house in order and weeded out those who had succumbed to Soviet espionage, there would be no information exchange with the UK and US.

Desmond Ball and David Horner have covered these aspects exhaustively in their book, Breaking the Codes, which is basically the Venona story, (4) and Andrew Campbell has carried out extensive research into the personalities involved in the anti-ASIO drive. (5)

In his introduction describing the establishment of ASIO in 1949, Hope set out the original reasons for setting up the organisation, citing the words of Prime Minister Ben Chifley who said, "A great increase in Australian security tasks and responsibilities has made it necessary to re-establish a separate security service." In his speech to parliament at the time, Chifley announced that Justice Geoffrey Reed of South Australia would be the body's first Director-General. Hope referred to two separate ASIO charters, one given to Reed and the other to his successor, Colonel (later Brigadier Sir) Charles Spry, who became Director-General in 1950.

ASIO's objectives

It is important to note that these charters were subsumed by the ASIO Act of 1956-76 and that the Hope Royal Commission was called by the Whitlam Government in 1974 after a raid on ASIO's national headquarters, then in Melbourne, by the then Attorney-General Lionel Murphy QC and the dismissal of ASIO's Director-General Peter Barbour by the Prime Minister. The objective of the Royal Commission was to examine the effectiveness of Australia's intelligence services, especially ASIO. According to the terms of reference, as cited in the Royal Commission's Fourth Report (para.7), the purpose of the inquiry was:

in light of past experience, and having regard to the security of Australia as a nation, the rights and responsibilities of individual persons and future as well as present needs, to make recommendations on the intelligence and security services which the nation should have available to it and on the...