By Gerry Harant
It's on again! In the run-up to the federal budget, ASIO is discovering sinister terrorists to justify its funding. Never mind how its much-publicised furphies stir up jingoism against Muslims; as far as ASIO is concerned, all paranoia is good paranoia. 'Twas ever thus.
In 1982, Joan Coxsedge, the late Ken Coldicutt and I co-authored a book on secret agencies, Rooted in Secrecy. Later, much of our material was used in Pilger's Secret Country, earning him further hatred and contempt of the establishment. However, that's another story; the question you may ask is: "How could three people in their spare time investigate — and expose — the 'work' of a supposedly secret organisation like ASIO?"
Much of this was done by sometimes illegal legwork, mainly by Joan; but to get a start, we had to make certain assumptions. Clearly, ASIO was not in the business of catching spies. With a payroll of perhaps thousands of permanents and goodness knows how many part-time informers and publicly known headquarters open to surveillance by all and sundry, the notion of "cover" was ludicrous. Besides, there weren't nearly enough potential spies to engage such a vast effort. Whatever secrets Australia had were likely to be in the numerous US bases dotting our landscape, and could hardly be "protected" from Melbourne, where most of the snoopers hung out. Looking after bases was and is the CIA's job.
The notion, pushed by apologists of major parties, as well as hack writers, that ASIO had no political bias, was ridiculous, not only from its behaviour but from its history. Contrary to the toadies' claims, ASIO was not imposed on Australia in 1949 because of a reported leakage from Australia's Soviet embassy of "important information" (suitably unspecified), which would have meant that it started off in response to some foreign bastardry. This lie neatly preserves the notion of an anti-fascist war leading to politically neutral postwar "spy-catchers".
Reality was different. For the Australian, British and US establishments, the war was not about eradicating fascism but about maintaining empires and hegemony. Political snooping in Australia started in earnest (we think) around 1917, when the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) were the targets. Right throughout World War II the Commonwealth Investigation Service (CIS), forerunner of ASIO, was concerned only about left-wingers and political non-conformists. As secretary of "Young Austria", I had personal experiences with the CIS during the war which showed that even in the allies' darkest hour, the only "threats" investigated by the CIS were from anti-fascists and communists.
The armed forces discriminated severely against people listed as having left leanings, denying them promotion and responsibilities. CIS, like British Intelligence, was solidly pro-fascist; at least until the arrival of Rudolf Hess in Scotland, the British establishment had hoped to make a deal with Hitler. They deported anti-fascist refugees under appalling conditions because they feared that in case of accommodation with German fascism these people would become a problem. There was no such thing as appeasement; it was a congress of like minds which turned sour only when Hitler threatened the imperialists' patch.
Churchill was rabidly anticommunist; he created the slogan "the Iron Curtain" and was the architect of the bloody war of intervention after the 1917 October Revolution, which led to the death of perhaps a million from slaughter and starvation and which contributed to the rise of Stalinism. Later, it was the British blockade of war materials for the legitimate government of Spain which deliberately delivered that democratic country to Hitler and Mussolini on a platter, to be followed by other bits of Europe which had "exhausted the Führer's patience".
In Australia, Menzies lauded Hitler's Germany; one of his mates called himself a "fascist without the shirt". A New Theatre play denouncing German fascism was banned, and every pro-Spanish government film had to be extracted from the censors because it might "offend the government of a friendly nation". After World War II, the British and US secret police took over the Gestapo files which are being used against progressive people to this day.
The installation of ASIO in Australia — and similar bodies elsewhere — was part of a pattern of demonisation of all things progressive, the Cold War answer to the high profile which communists had established amongst people almost everywhere as the main fighters against European fascism.
As usual, xenophobic paranoia was invoked against progressives. The notion of a "foreign ideology" was again trotted out. The czarist secret police had used it to claim socialism was German, the Germans had declared it Russian and so on, using the old motto, "When all else fails, appeal to patriotism". It certainly had worked well for Hitler. "Security" agencies were not the result of the Cold War; the Cold War was partly the result of security agencies which were created to foment it.
At this time, Australia was hosting nuclear tests as well as the trials of delivery rockets. If you were looking for spies, that's where you would start, not in the Soviet embassy in Canberra. Nor would you look amongst communists: professional agents generally shy clear of such compromised rabble. Yet, clearly, from anecdotal evidence and personal experience, ASIO, like its predecessor CIS, was concentrating on the left — proof positive that spy-hunting was not a priority.
In its nearly 50 years of existence, ASIO or ASIO-supplied information has never caught a spy, saboteur or terrorist. Instead, from our direct experience, it stopped the naturalisation of Italian and Greek anti-fascists, stopped communists from getting jobs, however lowly, in the public service and chased activists around with cameras. Several microphones were found hidden in walls in Communist Party of Australia rooms etc.
There was treason in Australia, but it was treason by ASIO. The refusal of US visas to people on the left and other overseas experiences showed that ASIO routinely supplied information about Australian nationals to the CIA and other agencies; conversely, the way Australia's immigration program brought in fascists and war criminals — they are still here if they aren't dead — and tagged Greek and Italian progressives showed that they were in cahoots with reactionary "security" services overseas; this included the openly fascist colonels' regime in Greece.
So it didn't take a James Bond to understand ASIO's raison d'être. Nor did you have to be a genius to predict their mentality. Like other large organisations, particularly those with a military background, their hierarchical and male-centred structure would be bumbling and inefficient; infighting would be rampant; they would be humourless and stodgy. All this was predictable; and by organising various stunts to ridicule them, and using surveillance to expose them, we found it was all true. Not for nothing did someone refer to "military intelligence" as a contradiction in terms.
These insights found their way into Rooted in Secrecy, which sold some 4500 copies. The outrage shown by right-wing reviewers whom we knew to be connected with the spooks showed us that we had hit the mark; but even some of those friendly to us often treated our findings as surmise because there was little documentation. ASIO-inspired books continued to hit the market and continued the lies about ASIO's work in the "national interest", right up to the present.
The veil is lifted
In recent years ASIO fought hard to prevent the release of documents after 30 years had expired, citing everything from the "national interest" to the work involved in vetting documents for release. It is to the credit of the inquiry into this release that it didn't accept these "arguments" and made ASIO and its dossiers subject to the same rules which apply to other official documents.
Those of us who had looked for Victoria Police Special Branch documents after these were supposedly released could only ever get a few heavily blacked-out pages. We had no expectation that material wrung from ASIO would be any different. I am glad to say we were wrong.
Hal Alexander was — and still is — a Communist who rose to prominence first in the Australian Labour League of Youth, which he joined willingly after being directed there ("wherever the party needs me, comrade"). The ALLY later became the Eureka Youth League. Having been sacked in '49 by CPA leaders Jack Blake and Jack Henry, after having been EYL secretary for a couple of years, Hal worked in a heavy railways job till '54. He became a Sydney CPA organiser, and was then transferred in '63 to South Australia as organiser when John Sendy, state secretary of the South Australian CPA, went to Victoria.
After a long delay, partly caused by ASIO's shyness, Hal recently retrieved nearly 300 pages of his dossier from the National Archives in Canberra. These cover a period into the early '60s and turn out to be a gold mine for historians. They also evoke fear and loathing, as well as laughter in people like myself who were there — even more so, since they show in precise detail the operations we described, sight unseen, in Rooted in Secrecy, operations which are sinister as well as laughable in their ineptitude.
We owe this to ASIO's system, which was aimed at maximising the bureaucracy. If you or I were to document a meeting attended by 150 people, we would have a master file which contained details of the meeting and a list of those who attended. We would then place in the personal files of the attendees a reference to the master file.
Not so with ASIO. They placed in each personal file a copy of nearly every page of the master file where the subject's name occurred; this at a time when there were no photocopiers, but each document had to be laboriously photostated, a process taking perhaps a minute per page! The mind boggles; but this crazy modus operandi now allows us remarkable insights into the spooks on the basis of studying just one dossier.
Surveillance gone mad
It wasn't hard to be aware of ASIO snooping, if you went to CPA meetings, demonstrations or other "political" activities in the wider sense. However, I, for one, felt some of our comrades went overboard in their "paranoid" assumption that everything was under surveillance, from union picnics to having a Chinese dinner with your mates. How wrong I was!
Take, for example, the CPA 19th National Congress, June 10-12, 1961.
Throughout the congress, three methods of surveillance were used simultaneously: observation (inside and outside the venue), cine film and still camera. The results are summarised in three sheets, of which we have only the first, in which Hal Alexander figures. Each identification relating to one particular day's attendance is marked with a cross for each medium of identification. This page contains 40 names and about 200 crosses. The total on three sheets would be about 600 crosses, each relating to several identifications, because many still and cine frames would have duplicated faces.
Of course, each person is cross-referenced by their file number, except Laurie Carmichael — makes you wonder, doesn't it? Other details show that there were, as you would expect, informers in the hall, as the CPA security arrangements are described in detail, including a double verification on registration. Other vital information on this unspeakably subversive CPA exercise includes a photocopy of a blank speakers' form; weren't ASIO spies allowed to speak? No doubt there was a complete transcript, but it wasn't included in Hal's file.
Consider the mind-numbing exercise involved in this one effort! If I multiply this by the number of meetings over the years which were given the same treatment in all states and in both city and country locations, it makes me proud to have been a taxpayer at the time.
So far what you would have expected, except for the massive and obviously unnecessary duplication. But would you have thought that, in standing for a parliamentary election, everyone of your scrutineers would be placed on file — assuming they weren't already listed? In the 1958 federal election, the CPA stood a handful of candidates. Hal was one. A file number is entered against each in a complete list of scrutineers, the source of the information being coyly blacked out. In a couple of cases, the addresses of the individuals concerned were apparently unavailable even after the case officer searched residential and electoral records, a fact he duly notes in case someone called him (not a her, surely) a slacker.
By the end of the available period, about 1964, file numbers are in the high 7000s. All are prefaced "SPF". PF surely stands for "Personal File". Could the S stand for subversive? I wouldn't be at all surprised — subversion was the in-word with ASIO at the time.
Telephone taps ("intercepts") figure largely in the routine surveillance records. At various times, CPA offices were at 40 Market Street and in Sussex Street. In Sussex Street, where a number of trade unions also had their offices, ASIO had installed an entire floor of recording equipment. When the CPA moved to Dixon Street, ASIO got the PMG to install a 20-pair tie-line to this tapping HQ, as I know from having personally checked it one fine Saturday afternoon, while two streets away an Ustasha bomb blew off someone's leg at the Adriatic Travel Agency which was run by Yugoslavs. ASIO said it was not the work of any organised political group. But that's another story.
Certainly every call that went in and out of 40 Market Street was monitored; so were union calls, which also figure in the record. Matters of vital interest to the nation's security were certainly established, e.g. a note on February 6, 1964, refers to the fact (marked secret) that Ida Louise Alice Sherden (working at CPA offices) had noted that "Marie is 'over' with the baby", Marie — (it said) "probably Marie Alexander (Pearl Marie Hesse) wife of Hal (Harold John Alexander)". Surely a vital link in the forthcoming revolution!
Personal surveillance was equally important: one file note reports that Hal was seen "carrying camping gear into 40 Market St", identified by his vehicle registration, which is duly noted as having been checked. How proud the ASIO snoops must feel in carrying out such absorbing tasks!
ASIO input into mainstream media is documented by a Bulletin article included in the file, dated May 25, 1963. Headed "The Reds Catch Up with Playford", it is by-lined "From a South Australian Correspondent", and clearly compiled from ASIO's files.
The stool pigeon was none other than the husband of a woman who was close friends with Hal's bride and with his best man's wife. All were at Hal's wedding. We know it, because Hal's picture which heads the scurrilous piece is cut out of a group wedding photo in which Fred, the informer, actually appeared. Hal tells me that Fred was a seaman and although a CPA member, was a bludger whom nobody aboard ship trusted; one of his workmates actually told Hal that with people like Fred in the CPA, he wouldn't join.
The Bulletin diatribe, in true ASIO-McCarthy style, names as many names as possible, even though few of them would have been known to ordinary readers. It refers to Hal as "the completely humourless dogmatic Communist"; Hal now says that some of that may have been true at the time. To me he is what in the old days we referred to as "a character"; and shit-stirring characters then, as now, don't get on too well with the establishment, or, for that matter, with some who claim to be against it. What the episode does prove is ASIO's direct link with right-wing media.
Industrial spying
ASIO had the misfortune that there was another prominent comrade called Hal Alexander (his real name was Robert Alexander Williams), long-term secretary of Actors' Equity. ASIO snoops were forever getting them mixed up. This is not surprising; it happened to some of us too. However, some of the ASIO mix-ups were ludicrous; some material in Hal's file referred to activities amongst artists which were totally outside our Hal's party work. Bureaucratic exasperation at the mix-ups pervades Hal's file.
At one stage, a petulant memo from Victorian head office insists that better checks be made before filing reports, referring to the latest "Q" (informer's) file note. Nothing peculiar about that, but you would expect such a trivial matter to be handled by underlings, not, as was the case, by a note from the director general himself to the regional director, NSW. When did these top bureaucrats find the time to concern themselves with spies, saboteurs and terrorists, one wonders? David McKnight, still riding his Petrov hobby horse, might like to answer that one.
The sinister aspects are highlighted in the reports on industrial spying, such as four pages detailing a meeting of South Sydney/Botany, listing all the industrial cells. If we ever doubted it, here is the reason for all the unexplained sackings, the destruction of years of proletarian work. The effect on workers and their families takes the comedy out of ASIO's bumbling.
Unfortunately, while during and after the CPA's period of illegality great care was taken to keep spies and agents provocateurs out of the party, from the '60s on the CPA structure sometimes made infiltration simple. While there was an induction period for new members, this was often administered by gullible comrades. In fact, there was really no way at this later stage in which we could reject people who were obvious plants.
Because of my involvement in work against ASIO, the CPA branch of which I was member was infiltrated twice by snoops; one left smartly, when he found there were no easy pickings; the other left and then appeared on TV, against a background of fancy weaponry, as an anti-terrorist private protection agent, claiming he had a background knowledge of terrorism, which tickled me no end.
Another obviously mentally disturbed blow-in wanted photos of ASIO agents "so he could recognise those following him around". Of course, I said I had none. He was finally institutionalised after parading outside the Lonsdale Street Victorian CPA offices with a rifle, but not before spilling his guts about his ASIO experiences to an ever-receptive yellow press.
In any case, these infiltrations had little effect, because the leadership of the "revolutionary" CPA was, by and large, shit-scared of participating in anything illegal; it was called "left adventurism". National Committee members wouldn't even let me remove a couple of fibro roof sheets from the premises next to their Dixon Street HQ to examine ASIO's illegal bugging equipment!
In practice, some individuals didn't take the leadership's insistence on legalism too seriously; by working outside the party framework, you could avoid both the leaders' censure and ASIO's snooping. As Hal says: "The little ASIO did know is dwarfed by what they didn't".
Where does this leave us now? Not far from where we came in. Along with Hal's file came an explanation for the blacking out, and I quote from amongst the Reasons for Decision: (One reason for withholding information is) "The public disclosure of information concerning the procedures and techniques used by ASIO in the management of its operations, most of which are still in use". As the French say: the more it changes, the more it remains the same beast. And remember: Just because they are following you around, it doesn't mean you are paranoid!
P.S. Many thanks to Hal for the use of his material and his notes.