Espionage
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In light of the ongoing guessing game about the identity of the former politician ASIO chief Mike Burgess asserts was an intelligence asset of an unnamed foreign power -- widely assumed to be China -- Paul Monk's magisterial examination from 2012 of the Middle Kingdom's methods is well worth reprising
March 6, 2024
40 mins
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I had hoped Attorney-General Christian Porter might finally see fit to put his weight behind my efforts to bring into the open the long-concealed Cook Report into ASIO's deep penetration during the Cold War. The reply from his freshly washed hands might better have been signed 'Pontius Pilate on the Molonglo'
May 22, 2019
12 mins
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The nature of spying requires its operatives to commit the […]
May 31, 2018
36 mins
The latest
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The moles who operated in ASIO are living in quiet retirement, but the agency's official historians aren't allowed to tell us their names. As long as ASIO insists on protecting its 'reputation' from the truth it will anger and disconcert those whose trust it most needs
June 11, 2017
28 mins
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On the evening of April 8, 1971, some 24 Labor opposition parliamentarians enjoyed a politically seasoned meal in the Soviet embassy. Some 21 months later, when those guests were the government, Attorney-General Lionel Murphy told ASIO to drop its interception of the Soviet embassy’s phones
May 27, 2017
11 mins
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In the 1950s ASIO found itself with four agents in the Australian-China Society in Brisbane, none of whom were aware of the others -- a far greater coup than its triumph in obtaining one surveillance subject's entry forms for the 100- and 220-yard races at the young communists’ sports carnival
April 11, 2017
21 mins
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The third volume of ASIO's official history is finely produced and has the uncanny appearance of a serious, worthwhile book. Between the covers, the text brings to mind fingernails pulled along a blackboard -- and that is one of its better qualities
February 4, 2017
29 mins
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Espionage story, family story, incredible story -- that's the essence of Victor and Frances Metianen's journey from the cricket-club social scene of suburban Sydney in the 1930s to the dark world of what they believed in their fervent innocence to be Stalin's workers' paradise
January 14, 2017
15 mins
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In this, the third of three articles about Dr John […]
June 1, 2016
30 mins
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After the Second World War, the Americans and the British […]
January 1, 2016
26 mins