by Brian Toohey
‘Brian Toohey’s book is a deeply troubling history of the Australian government’s love affair with secrecy and state power. We present ourselves as one of the world’s great liberal democracies, yet Toohey’s research shows that our security agencies have so many of the powers that our governments rightly condemn authoritarian dictatorships for. This book should serve as a wakeup call for anybody who cares about the fundamental principles of human rights, transparency and accountability in Australia.’
Peter Greste
‘Brian Toohey brings half a century of reporting on national security issues to the task of framing our modern discussion—powerfully documenting the layers upon layers of apparently small, incremental policy changes that have led us to where we are today: an often fearful nation that has given away many of its citizens’ rights.’
Laura Tingle
‘As the recent AFP raids on national newspapers demonstrate all too clearly, an obsessive over-reach by politicians and bureaucrats in their definitions of “national security” denies the Australian public its right to hold intelligence agencies accountable for lack of intelligence. Brian Toohey’s rambunctious account of 70 years of cock up and cover up illustrates how unnecessary much secrecy is, how it conduces to foreign policy failures and feeds political paranoia—a problem today when our traditional allies are discombobulated—the US by the unpredictability of Trump and whilst the UK is constipated by Brexit. Some secrets must be kept whilst others should be exposed: the recent avalanche of anti-terrorism legislation fails to make the distinction.’
Geoffrey Robertson
‘Toohey’s insights into this new age of surveillance are scary (but it’s a book that demands to be read).’
Kerry O’Brien
SECRET
THE MAKING
OF AUSTRALIA’S
SECURITY STATE
BRIAN TOOHEY
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS
An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited
Level 1, 715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
[email protected]
www.mup.com.au
First published 2019
Text © Brian Toohey, 2019
Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2019
This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.
Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.
Typeset in 11/13.5 pt Bembo by Cannon Typesetting
Cover design by Phil Campbell Design
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
9780522872804 (paperback)
9780522872828 (ebook)
To Sue
CONTENTS
Abbreviations
Preface
PART 1: THE CLANDESTINE AGENCIES
1 The security scandal that the US hid from the newborn ASIO
2 ASIO struggles with change
3 An information gatherer mutates into a secret police agency
4 ASIS: The government agency you pay to break the law
5 ASD/NSA: The Five Eyes club shows the Stasi how it’s done
6 The uses and abuses of intelligence
PART 2: AN IDEAL PLACE FOR DANGEROUS TESTS AND DANGEROUS BASES
7 Medical support for trials to keep the Asian hordes at bay
8 The best place to test the deadliest nerve agents
9 Fighting the good fight against chemical and biological warfare
10 Menzies’ gift
11 The deceptively named minor trials
12 British perfidy, Australian timidity
13 The struggle to reveal Maralinga’s malign secrets
14 A wise mandarin ignores leaks
15 How Australia joined the nuclear war club
16 Dangerous advice from ignorant Australian officials
17 Bluster and belligerence
18 North West Cape: More dangerous than ever
19 The man who thought he owned the secrets
20 The man who thought he owned a prime minister
21 The men who spread the fairytale about arms control
22 The men seduced by the secrets
PART 3: ANZUS: THE TREATY WITHOUT A SECURITY GUARANTEE
23 The difficult birth and early years of a treaty
24 Foreign bases and foreign political interference
25 Enduring faith in a guarantee that doesn’t exist
26 How New Zealand has survived without ANZUS
27 The lonely death of a good policy
28 What to do about a bellicose ally
PART 4: THE WHITLAM ERA
29 The irrational US hatred of Whitlam
30 Punishing an innocent ally
31 Fraser’s narrow escape
32 Some distinguished gentlemen from the CIA
33 Embracing ignorance
PART 5: AUSTRALIA’S SOVEREIGNTY CLAIMS—THE AMBITIOUS TO THE SUPINE
34 Australia’s expansionist ambitions
35 Chained to the chariot wheels of the Pentagon
36 Surrendering judicial sovereignty
PART 6: TRYING TO PLUG THE LEAKS
37 Inspector Tange investigates
38 Labor goes to court
39 Embarrassing the government, informing the public
40 Evans: A vexatious litigant undone
PART 7: LIBERTY LOST
41 Dismantling the Menzies legacy
42 Seventy-five new laws against murder
43 Australia’s own national security state
44 Fighting a phantom called foreign influence and the encryption demons
45 The national security supremo
PART 8: THIRTEEN WARS—ONLY ONE A WAR OF NECESSITY FOR AUSTRALIA
46 The foundation myth of our four colonial wars
47 World War I: Labor’s secret plans for an expeditionary force
48 World War II: No sovereign interest in the integrity of Australia
49 Korea: Barbarism unleashed
50 Off to war again: Malaya and Indonesia
51 Vietnam: Stopping an election, then losing an unnecessary war
52 Testimony from those who were there
53 A defeat born of secrecy, ignorance, arrogance and brutality
54 Australian troops should have left Afghanistan within a few months
55 Howard and Iraq: Knave or naif?
PART 9: NUCLEAR RISKS ARE EVER PRESENT
56 The depravity of nuclear war planning
57 The West’s reckless Russian policies
58 Destruction is only a tantrum away
PART 10: THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD
59 The rise of China, India and Indonesia
60 Going to war against China
Acknowledgements and Observations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ABBREVIATIONS
ABM Treaty Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
ADF Australian Defence Force
AFP Australian Federal Police
AFR Australian Financial Review
AIRAC Australian Ionising Radiation Advisory Council
AJA Australian Journalists’ Association
ALIS autonomic logistics information system
ANU Australian National University
ARL Australian Radiation Laboratory
ASD Australian Signals Directorate
ASIO Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
ASIS Australian
Secret Intelligence Service
ATO Australian Taxation Office
AUSMIN Australia–US Ministerial Consultations
AUSTRAC Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre
AWM Australian War Memorial
AWRE Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (UK)
BWC Biological Weapons Convention
CBW chemical and biological warfare
CGS chief of the general staff
CNE computer network exploitation
DFAT Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
DGSE General Directorate for External Security (France)
DIO Defence Intelligence Organisation
DPP Director of Public Prosecutions
DSB Defence Signals Bureau
DSD Defence Signals Directorate/Division (name changed to Directorate in 1978)
DSL Defence Standards Laboratories
DSP Defense Support Program (USA)
EEZ exclusive economic zone
FITS Bill Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill
FOI freedom of information
FPDA Five Power Defence Arrangement
GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters (UK)
GCSB Government Communications Security Bureau (NZ)
HF high frequency
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile
IMF International Monetary Fund
IS Islamic State
ISDS investor-state dispute settlement
ISI Inter-Services Intelligence (Pakistan)
JIC Joint Intelligence Committee
JIO Joint Intelligence Organisation
MEAA Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance
MIRV multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle
NAA National Archives of Australia
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NBN National Broadband Network
NCC National Civic Council
NIC National Intelligence Committee
NID National Intelligence Daily
NPT Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
NSA National Security Agency (US)
NT National Times
NWC North West Cape
NYT New York Times
ONA Office of National Assessments
OPCW Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
PAT Political Action Team (CIA)
RCIS Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security
SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
SANAAC State, Army, Navy, Air Force Coordinating Committee (US)
SAS Special Air Service
SDI Strategic Defense Initiative (US)
SEATO Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
SIGINT signals intelligence
SIO Special Intelligence Operation
SIOP Single Integrated Operational Plan (US)
SIS Secret Intelligence Service (UK)
SLBM submarine-launched ballistic missile
SMH Sydney Morning Herald
SOLAS Safety of Life at Sea
SOTG Special Operations Task Group
SPA Special Political Action
TAG technical assessment group
UCS Union of Concerned Scientists
UNCLOS United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
VLF very low frequency
WMD weapon of mass destruction
PREFACE
‘We the Government have vital information which we cannot disclose. It is upon this knowledge that we make decisions. You, who are merely private citizens, have no access to this information. Any criticism you make of our policy, any controversy about it in which you may indulge, will therefore be uninformed and valueless. If, in spite of your ignorance, you persist in questioning our policy, we can only conclude that you are disloyal.’
Harold Thorby, Minister for Defence, Australia, 19381
Step by step, a succession of new laws and policies have provided the building blocks for Australia to become a country in which secretive officials and ministers wield unprecedented levels of peacetime power. Secrecy, ignorance and fear are being used to deprive Australians of basic liberties and increase the risk of being dragged into a devastating war that could escalate into a full-scale nuclear catastrophe.
As a measure of just how far Australia has changed in recent decades, there are now seventy-five new laws to deal with terrorists who murder someone. Terrorists murdered people in earlier eras, but special laws were not considered necessary to cover those crimes. Secret shows how the tough provisions of these new laws have been extended to areas not remotely connected to terrorism. The national security juggernaut has reached the point where Australia is now chained to the chariot wheels of the Pentagon at a time when America has become an increasingly dangerous ally. The US-run bases in Australia secretly lock the nation into participating in the Pentagon’s plans for ‘full spectrum’ warfare ranging from outer space to the ocean depths. Australia’s leaders have let the US control so many critical components of the nation’s weapons systems that it would not be possible for Australia to defend itself, for example, in a future conflict with Indonesia against America’s wishes.
No major political party is offering to restore the values of an earlier era in which habeas corpus prevailed; the onus of proof was on the prosecution; the accused was allowed to see the evidence relied on by the Crown; and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation officials could not legally kidnap people or raid a lawyer’s offices and seize documents in a commercial case directly involving the government on the other side. No major party seems bothered by the use of new surveillance technology that allows governments to detect contact between journalists and their sources, effectively denying whistleblowers the opportunity to reveal abuses of power and criminal behaviour.
The past was by no means a golden era. A dean of medicine at Melbourne University in the 1960s advised the Defence Department on how to kill people with chemical and biological weapons. Labor governments in the 1980s fell for the fairytale that the US-run Pine Gap base in Central Australia was all about arms control.
State-enforced secrecy in the name of national security increasingly covers up war crimes, phoney intelligence, abuses of power, incompetence, folly and hugely wasteful spending. Too often new laws make it legal for governments to take actions that would be illegal if done by corporations or individuals, including breaking and entering, assault, electronic eavesdropping, and stealing computer hard drives.
Few deny there can be a legitimate role for government secrecy. For example, there is usually little justification for revealing the names of informers working for the police and intelligence agencies, or for publicising plans for lawful wartime operations such as the Normandy landing. But just as secrecy enabled the churches to conceal child sex abuse and the corporate sector to suppress evidence about the harmful effects of tobacco, asbestos, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, pollution, tax evasion and fraud, so too has secrecy encouraged governments to demolish longstanding freedoms and deny the public’s right to know what is being done in its name. Court suppression orders mock the notion that justice must be seen to be done.
I hope Secret provides a modest counter-narrative to the official accounts of Australia at war and the role of its intelligence services and the foreign-run bases. Although the book challenges some of the assumptions underpinning the mainstream interpretation of Australia’s recent history, I am indebted to the outstanding work done by many historians, commentators and journalists.
Secret draws in part on my fifty years as a journalist and, briefly, a political staff member. A posting to Washington gave an appreciation of the best and worst aspects of the American political system and the importance of its constitutional protection of free speech. Like many other journalists, my goal is to let people kno
w more about what governments do in their name, subject to the usual constraints of time and resources.
Over the years, massive efforts have been made to discover the sources of journalists’ revelations about government actions, information about which ought to have been publicly available. Governments have made repeated attempts in the courts to discover the sources and suppress publication. Along with other journalists, I have been taken to court a number of times over such matters. In my case, and in most others’, the courts didn’t find that publication harmed national security, and no sources were unmasked.
Today’s generation of journalists have a much tougher job. Governments have introduced new laws making it a criminal offence to receive a wide range of information. The June 2018 Espionage Act provides a glimpse of the future where it will be an offence to receive ‘information of any kind, whether true or false and whether in a material form or not, and includes (a) an opinion; and (b) a report of a conversation’. George Orwell could never have dreamt that one up.
PART 1
THE CLANDESTINE AGENCIES
1
THE SECURITY SCANDAL THAT THE US HID FROM THE NEWBORN ASIO
‘Perhaps the most significant intelligence loss in US history …’
US National Security Agency1
The birth of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation in 1949 is widely attributed to the discovery that two Australian diplomats, Ian Milner and Jim Hill, had spied for the Soviet Union in Canberra at the end of World War II. But there are three far more important, but rarely noticed, secrets behind the birth of ASIO.
One is that nothing Milner and Hill handed over mattered. Another is that the USA used highly classified nonsense to harm the Chifley Labor government. The third and most important is that the Americans harboured a much bigger traitor, William Weisband, but kept his genuinely damaging activities from ASIO on a ‘no need to know’ basis. Weisband was an American counterintelligence official who told the USSR in October 1948 how to stop the US deciphering its top-secret cables. ASIO was not informed about Weisband before the US National Security Agency (NSA) publicly revealed the secret in 2000. So much for the closeness of the US-Australia alliance.