Secret
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In the meantime, we should restore diplomacy to the pinnacle of our foreign relations, while maintaining forces to deter and, if necessary, defeat aggressive military action against the nation. As well as being able to defend the approaches to Australia through the island chains to its north, some of our forces should be able to operate beyond that barrier and defend against missile attacks that stop short of an attempted invasion. Australia is far from helpless. When its population was only seven million during World War II, there were a million people in uniform and many more in support roles. The population is now 25 million and the economy much bigger. Unlike the rapid Japanese advance in the Pacific War, modern surveillance technology should give Australia ample warning of hostile preparations to acquire the necessary forces for a major attack.
No prime minister should proclaim, as Malcolm Turnbull did in 2017, that Australia is militarily ‘joined at the hip’ to the US.26 During his February 2018 visit to Washington, he even claimed that Australia and US had been ‘mates’ ever since their armies fought together in a three-hour battle at Fromelles in 1916. But the two ‘mates’ didn’t even establish diplomatic relations until 8 January 1940. Instead of fumbling for a nonexistent security blanket, a little dignity wouldn’t go astray.
Australia is one of the most secure countries on earth. It doesn’t share land borders with any country, let alone any country with a history of ethnic, religious or other hatred stretching back centuries. It has not been invaded since 1788. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in January 2018, ‘We do not see Russia or China as posing a military threat to Australia.’27 It would be good if the US became less belligerent and China didn’t behave like the kind of hegemonic power it once decried. But we have to deal with the world as it is—a world with almost no threat to Australia but a genuine risk of a military conflict between the US and China.
To keep Australians safe, political leaders should avoid participating in wars that pose no direct threat to the nation. The exception might be to help respond if one country clearly invades another. However, the comforting policy assumption seems to be that not many Australian troops would be killed or maimed by participating in a conflict with China. Nothing is inevitable, but twelve of the last sixteen major occasions where a rising power has challenged a declining power have resulted in war.28 As cited above, a Congressional Research Service study shows that the US has used force 160 times since 1991. If war again erupts and Australian troops end up helping to invade China, they could be fed into the greatest human mincing machine the world has ever seen.
Alternatively, a full-scale nuclear war can’t be ruled out while the necessary weapons exist. If one occurs, a nuclear warhead could obliterate Sydney or Melbourne. Some people will become scorch marks etched into the pavement. The heat will vaporise others, leaving no trace. The blast will dismember many more, while the radioactive fallout slowly kills over decades.
Nuclear war is one of the great threats to human existence. Global warming is another, as is the severe loss of biodiversity threatening the world’s food supply. Avoiding catastrophe requires co-operation not mindless confrontation; dialogue not constant exploitation of unfounded fears. Fears spread by journalists in thrall to the national security state. This juggernaut has already shredded civil liberties in Australia. Now it is steering the country towards a cataclysmic, but unnecessary, war. All in the name of ‘making Australians safe’!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS
Many people and cultural institutions have helped with the research, writing and production of this book. The National Library, the NSW State Library and the Sydney City Council libraries provided essential support. The National Archives of Australia, especially its senior reference officer Andrew Cairns, made an invaluable contribution. Historian Philip Dorling pointed me towards helpful archival material. Unhappily, the archives are not easy to search.
The archives are more important to Australia’s history than the War Memorial, which covers only one aspect of the nation’s story. They should be funded at least as well as the War Memorial. Unfortunately, the way the archives are currently organised makes them difficult to use. A user, for example, can provide the name of an official report by a particular organisation, plus the date and other identification, but it can’t be found in the archives. Most archival documents should be digitised in a word searchable form and available online. The cost would be minor compared to the money wasted on defence equipment that is of little operational utility.
Paul Malone helped with research and read and improved all chapters, as did my wife Sue. Liz Tynan read the chapters on the British atomic tests, Scott Burchill read those on the intelligence organisations and Australia’s thirteen expeditionary wars, and Keiran Hardy read the ‘Liberty Lost’ chapters.
Louise Adler commissioned the book for MUP, whose executive publisher Sally Heath, senior editor Louise Stirling and the copy editor Katie Purvis were a joy to work with.
Most authors make little money. The task for authors of general nonfiction books could be simplified by including sufficient information in the text to let readers themselves use search engines to look up some sources rather than referring to endnotes with lengthy URLs. No sane person would try to type some of the more convoluted URLs into a search engine. The existing rules for endnotes would not be out of place in the Glass Bead Game. (Google it!)
NOTES
Preface
1 Quoted in W. Macmahon Ball (ed.), Press, Radio and World Affairs: Australia’s Outlook, MUP, 1938, p. 157.
Chapter 1: The security scandal that the US hid from the newborn ASIO
1 David A. Hatch with Robert Louis Benson, The Korean War: The SIGINT Background, Center for Cryptologic History, NSA, 2000.
2 Some lack the full context because the messages were only partly deciphered or poorly translated. Code words still hid the real names of agents after decryption, making it hard to be sure of their true identities.
3 The transcripts can be found at https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/venona/.
4 These papers are items 13 and 14 in a large document in the UK National Archives at http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9191674.
5 Apostolia Papadopoulou, ‘Soviet intelligence on Barbarossa’, Institute of International Relations, Athens, 25 February 2015.
6 Items 13 and 14 in a large document in the UK National Archives at http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9191674.
7 Australian figures from National Archives of Australia, ‘Conflicts: World War II’.
8 David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, 1949–1963, Allen & Unwin, 2014, p. 60.
9 Adam Hughes Henry, email to the author, 29 June 2017.
10 The single abbreviation ‘KGB’ is used in this book to denote the various arms of Soviet intelligence in the 1940s.
11 Horner, p. 298.
12 Ibid., p. 299.
13 Brian Toohey, ‘The security scandal that led to ASIO’, NT, 26 April 1980.
14 Ibid.
15 Horner, p. 79.
16 Ibid., pp. 79–80.
17 Ibid., pp. 68, 76.
18 Hatch and Benson, ibid.
19 Horner, p. 87.
20 National Archives of Australia, email to the author, 10 August 2017.
Chapter 2: ASIO struggles with change
1 Harvey Barnett, post-retirement conversation with the author about the Combe affair.
2 Robert Manne, ‘ASIO’s hunt for spies and communists shows flawed intelligence’, SMH, 17 January 2015.
3 David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, 1949–1963, Allen & Unwin, 2014, p. 90.
4 Apart from a general concern with civil liberties, Evatt was defending the reputation of his private secretaries Alan Dalziel and Albert Grundeman, who had been widely accused of being Soviet agents. No supporting evidence was found by the Royal Commi
ssion on Intelligence and Security (RCIS) or ASIO.
5 George Brownbill, ‘The RCIS: An insider’s perspective’, speech notes, NAA, 27 May 2008.
6 Horner, p. 362.
7 Ibid., p. 203.
8 John Blaxland, The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO, 1963–1975, Allen & Unwin, 2015, p. 65.
9 Ibid.
10 NT, 19 March 1973.
11 Blaxland, p. 68.
12 John Blaxland and Reece Crawley, The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO, 1975–1989, Allen & Unwin, 2017, p. 183.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., p. 262.
16 Quoted in Brian Toohey, ‘Principles of liberty treated with disdain’, AFR, 21 December 2007.
17 Elly (Bill Pinwill), The Eye, September 1988, p. 23.
18 Gerard Walsh, ‘Threats to Australia’s security interests’, speech at a Canberra security conference, 1 November 1995.
19 Ibid.
20 Brian Toohey and William Pinwill, Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, William Heinemann Australia, 1989, p. 57.
21 Blaxland and Crawley, p. 412.
22 Wilderness of Mirrors is the title of David Martin’s 1980 book on James Angleton, the CIA’s long-term counterintelligence head who branded an ever-widening circle of patriotic Americans as Soviet agents.
Chapter 3: An information gatherer mutates into a secret police agency
1 Judgment in R v Ul-Haque [2007] NSWSC 1251.
2 George Brownbill, ‘The RCIS: An insider’s perspective’, speech notes, NAA, 27 May 2008.
3 Judgment in R v Ul-Haque [2007] NSWSC 1251.
4 See Brian Toohey, ‘Our very own police state’, in Eric Beecher (ed.), Best Australian Political Writing, MUP, 2009.
5 Brian Toohey, AFR, 23 July 2011.
6 Paul O’Farrell, ‘ASIO “special intelligence operation” not reported to the watchdog for 10 days’, The Guardian, 4 November 2016.
Chapter 4: ASIS: The government agency you pay to break the law
1 Justice Robert Hope, Royal Commission into Intelligence and Security: Fifth Report, 1976. NAA Series A8908.
2 Unless otherwise stated, what follows is from Brian Toohey and William Pinwill, Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, William Heinemann Australia, 1989, p. 15.
3 Christopher Moran, Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 122.
4 Ibid., p. 125.
5 Cited in John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, Pantheon, 1980, p. 51.
6 Hope, op. cit.
7 Smith wrote a three-part series for the Canberra Times, the SMH and The Age starting on 14 January 1989.
8 Hope, op. cit. See also Toohey and Pinwill, ch. 11.
9 Report on the Sheraton Hotel Incident, Australian Government Publishing Service, February 1984. This report was the basis for much of Toohey and Pinwill’s Chapter 11 on the raid.
10 Toohey and Pinwill, p. 248.
11 Bill Pinwill, ‘This costly toy’, The Eye, March Quarter, 1990, p. 11.
12 Alan Fewster, ‘We must be careful to avoid seeking intelligence simply for its own sake’, Inside Story, 1 August 2014.
13 Brian Toohey, AFR, 18 February 2006.
14 Leonie Wood and Michelle Grattan, ‘Cole report urges criminal charges’, The Age, 28 November 2006. (AWB claimed the payments were unwitting.)
15 See Chapter 54 in this book.
16 Mark Thomson, The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence Budget Brief 2017–18, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2017, p. 37.
17 Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, ‘The Afghan Files: Defence leak exposes deadly secrets of Australia’s special forces’, ABC News, 11 July 2017.
18 Email from Dreyfus to the author, 22 August 2018.
19 Tony Eastley, ‘Brandis orders ASIO raids related to East Timor spying case’, AM, ABC Radio, 4 December 2013.
Chapter 5: ASD/NSA: The Five Eyes club shows the Stasi how it’s done
1 James Glanz, ‘US can spy on Britons despite pact, N50 memo says’, NYT, 20 November 2013.
2 Martin Brady was an honourable exception. While DSD head, he gave substantive written answers to questions from Mark Coulthart for the Nine Network’s Sunday program episode called ‘Big Brother Is Listening’, which aired on 23 May 1999. ASD’s 2019 head, Mike Burgess, is committed to further openness,
3 Paul Farrell, ‘History of 5-Eyes: Explainer’, The Guardian, 2 December 2013.
4 Gwen Robinson and Gina Schien, ‘Australia in spy pact, but leaders not told’, NT, 6 November 1982.
5 Peter Cronau, ‘The Base: Pine Gap’s role in US war fighting’, Background Briefing, ABC Radio National, 20 August 2017; attachment ‘NSA intelligence relationship with Australia’, Top Secret, April 2013.
6 ‘NSA’s foreign partnerships’, electrospaces.net, 4 September 2014.
7 See Chapter 15 in this book.
8 Brian Toohey, ‘The Austeo Papers: Listening in—DSD’s illegal activities in Australia’, NT, 20 May 1983.
9 Ibid.
10 Brian Toohey and Marian Wilkinson, The Book of Leaks: Exposés in Defence of the Public’s Right to Know, Angus & Robertson, 1987, p. 140.
11 Toohey, ‘The Austeo Papers’, op. cit.
12 Ibid.
13 Brian Toohey, ‘Huawei ban won’t stop hackers’, AFR, 31 March 2012.
14 For details see p. 319 of this book.
15 A Canadian public interest group has compiled a database of everything the media published about Snowden’s revelations as well as the documents. See Snowden Surveillance Archive, https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/cgi-bin/library.cgi.
16 Morgan Marquis-Boire, Glenn Greenwald and Micah Lee, ‘XKEYSCORE: NSA’s Google for the world’s private communications’, The Intercept, 2 July 2015.
17 Glenn Greenwald, ‘NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily’, The Guardian, 6 June 2013.
18 Michael Brissenden, ‘Australia spied on Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, leaked Edward Snowden documents reveal’, ABC News, 5 December 2014.
19 Philip Dorling, ‘Edward Snowden leak: Australia spied on Indonesian phones and data’, SMH, 17 February 2014.
20 ‘UK mass interception violates human rights’, Privacy International, 13 September 2018.
21 James Ball, ‘US and UK struck secret deal to allow NSA to “unmask” Britons’ personal data’, The Guardian, 21 November 2013.
22 Glanz, op. cit.
23 Laurel Poitras et al., ‘How the NSA helped Turkey kill Kurdish rebels’, The Intercept, 31 August 2014.
24 Although it’s unclear how the SIGINT was obtained, Pine Gap and its UK counter-part, Menwith Hill, have the leading role in intercepting mobile phone conversations, emails and texts for targeting purposes.
25 Matt Burgess, ‘Hacking the hackers: Everything you need to know about Shadow Brokers’ attack on the NSA’, Wired, 18 April 2017.
26 See for example Costas Pitas and Alistair Smout, ‘“Massive ransomware attack” hits companies, hospitals, schools’, SMH, 13 May 2017.
27 ‘Vault 7: CIA hacking tools revealed’, WikiLeaks press release, 7 March 2017.
28 Reuters/AP, ‘CIA aware in 2016 of Vault 7 leak that led to WikiLeaks release’, ABC News, 9 March 2017.
Chapter 6: The uses and abuses of intelligence
1 Malcolm Fraser with Cain Roberts, Dangerous Allies, MUP, 2014, p. 283.
2 Jann S. Wenner, ‘Daniel Ellsberg: The Rolling Stone interview’, Rolling Stone, 8 November 1973.
3 Fraser, op. cit.
4 Brian Toohey, ‘Assessing the intelligence of nations’, AFR, 8 October 1996.
5 Andrew Fowler, Shooting the Messenger, Routledge, 2019, p. 147.
6 Nicky Hager, Secret Power, Craig Potton Publishing, 1996, p. 24.
7 Michael Burgess, ‘Offensive cyber and the people who
do it’, Speech, Lowy Institute, 27 March 2019.
8 Frank Snepp, Decent Interval, Vintage Books, 1978, p. 13.
9 Rod Barton, The Weapons Detective, Black Inc., 2006, pp. 22–42.
10 For further details see Brian Toohey, ‘Arms aid adds to Timor terror’, West Australian, 6 September 1999; John Lyons, ‘The secret Timor dossier’, The Bulletin, 12 October 1999, p. 27; Final Report, East Timor: Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, Parliament of Australia, December 2000, pp. 174–94; ‘Companion to East Timor: Leaks’, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNSW; ‘The death of Mervyn Jenkins’, Nautilus Institute, 11 May 2009.
11 Submission by W.B. Pritchett to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence, 13 August 2003.
12 John Howard, Lazarus Rising, HarperCollins, 2010, p. 447.
13 Richard Smith, ‘The secret Downing Street memo’, The Times, 1 May 2005.
14 Bob Drogin, Curveball, Ebury Press, 2007, p. 279.
15 Michael Wesley, ‘Spying scandal: A little snooping is actually a good thing’, SMH, 19 November 2013.
16 ‘OPCW issues Fact-Finding Mission reports on chemical weapons use allegations in Douma, Syria in 2018 and in Al-Hamadaniya and Karm Al-Tarrab in 2016’, OPCW, 6 July 2018.
17 ‘Opening statement by the Director-General to the Executive Council at its Eighty-Seventh Session’, OPCW, 13–16 March 2018, Paragraph 8.
18 Danielle Ryan, ‘WikiLeaks’ CIA dump makes the Russian hacking story even murkier—if that’s possible’, Salon, 13 March 2017.