Australian Intelligence Service Betrayal
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Watching the 4 Corners expose on the Soviet mole in ASIO I was struck by how unimpressive the people featured in this were. The Australian intelligence service betrayal by this senior espionage supervisor in the 1970s and 1980s was done for cash. These tawdry people playing cloak and dagger in the shadows reflected badly on this state funded service. These operations grew out of the Second World War and brought that mindset to peacetime. Selling secrets to the Soviets for large amounts of cash and getting away with it for decades tells us just how ineffective these services are.
Inept Australian Intelligence Letting The Side Down
Apparently, this betrayal by a mole has been known to the service for a long time and yet has never been revealed to the Australian people. The Americans have known for decades and as it involved 5 eyes information, I imagine it has reflected badly on our perceived trustworthiness and soundness. Basically, Australia has been seen as a leaky boat when it comes to maintaining necessary secrets. Our ally has had good reason to question our ability to share in the top-secret stuff necessary to the spy business.
Australia has been regarded as a liability, thanks to the betrayal by Ian Peacock and the inept performance by ASIO.
ASIO & Surveiling Australian Citizens
The trouble with these services is that they do not just focus their paranoid eye on foreign actors but are used to ferret out information about domestic stuff. These secret services are always deeply conservative and right wing in their make-up. During the 1960s and 1970s in Australia ASIO was involved in infiltrating progressive movements within the country. Similarly, in America the FBI was used by Hoover to infiltrate and undermine groups like the Black Panthers, among many others. The Black Panthers were running a lot of social welfare programmes for African Americans. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Western democratic governments also use these services to spy on foreign countries to further the opportunities of their commercial interests. Australia did it in East Timor to facilitate oil exploration interests.
Colonialism may have ended but the same tentacles exist via corporate interests and the security services play their part. Developing countries continue to be seen as low hanging fruit for western powers and their commercial interests.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-19/traitor:-australias-greatest-untold-spy-story/102497814
Spies, as seen on the 4 Corners programme, always tell us that they are a necessary part of modern life.
They intimate that they make us safer and that without them we would be at risk of their brethren on the other side. They justify their low behaviour and absence of morals on the grounds of their necessity. However, these services are not purely involved in protecting us and the national interest. It is this definition of what is in the national interest, which seems to stretch to private corporations and conservative social policies. Espionage extends to the mining interests of powerful men who sit around the big table in gentlemen’s clubs.
These ASIO intelligence operatives were unable to perceive the rat within their ranks. They were blinded by their cultural biases and boozy rituals.
The 4 Corners programme revealed they were more comfortable pointing the finger at someone eastern and foreign. Russian devils are easier to spot than Aussie blokes on the north shore. The interpreter was more likely to be the mole than a chap who played golf and drank with them in their favourite watering hole. Selling out your country for cash is a very low bar and ASIO should be publicly pilloried, even though this occurred some 40 plus years ago.
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