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Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO files
Well-known Australians - mavericks, activists, movers and shakers - reflect on their own ASIO files. In this moving, funny and sometimes chilling book, leading Australians open their ASIO files and read what the state's security apparatus said about them. Writers from across the political spectrum including David Stratton, Phillip Adams, Peter Cundall, Michael Kirby, Gary Foley and Anne Summers confront - and in some cases reclaim - their pasts. Reflecting on the interpretations, observations and proclamations that anonymous officials make about your personal life is not easy - at least for some. Yet we see outrage mixed with humour and writers reflect on the way their political views have - or haven't - changed. Surrounded by influential Australians and piles of paper from our recent past, activist, politician and writer Meredith Burgmann has produced a book where those being watched look right back.
384 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 2, 2014
'ASIO’s ability to influence people’s lives without them even being aware of its actions should be a concern for all Australians.'
In 1970 or 1971, my father was horrified when I told him I intended to march in a Vietnam moratorium rally. He advised me to reconsider (I didn’t) on the basis that ASIO would photograph all protestors, and I’d never be able to work for government as a consequence. Was his concern justified, or was he being paranoid? As it happens, I went on to work for over thirty years for the government with appropriate levels of security clearance. But my father’s concern was not unfounded and was a consequence of the fact that members of his family were active in the Communist Party from the 1920s onwards. And ASIO was keenly interested in members of the Communist Party: I see 15 volumes of security and intelligence files listed against my late great-uncle’s name between 1950 and 1978 alone.
‘It is rather scary to realise that those who took different views from the government on issues of human rights, and on the independence and democracy of other countries or colonies, were regarded with suspicion as possibly subversive.’
This book, edited by Meredith Burgmann, covers the period from the early 1950s to the 1990s, when the New South Wales Special Branch was closed down by the Carr Labor Government. ASIO’s main focus for much of this period was on the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Given that ASIO’s main role ‘ is to gather information and produce intelligence that will enable it to warn the government about activities or situations that might endanger Australia's national security.’, this focus is not surprising. It was suspected that CPA members might have strong links to the USSR, and could be spying for the KGB. AS the Petrov Affair in 1954 showed, there were Russian spies in Australia seeking access to UK and US intelligence shared with Australia.
In twenty-six chapters, the experiences of twenty-eight different people targeted by ASIO are shared. Some were members of the CPA, or had some involvement (however fleeting or nebulous) with a member of the CPA. But any movement for political or social change, anything that questioned the status quo seems to have also been viewed with suspicion: including anti-Vietnam movements and entities like Save Our Sons and the Moratorium marches; Aboriginal land rights and Indigenous equality platforms; feminist groups like WEL and women’s liberation; the Sydney Libertarians; the Worker Student Alliance; gay rights; and women’s refuges.
‘The young students, Christians, mothers, and unionists of the anti-Vietnam movement, land rights campaigns, gay rights action and so on, were never a danger to the government.’
From reading the various personal accounts in this book, it’s clear that ASIO’s ability to collect data was not equalled by its capacity to extract and analyse information. Quantity over quality.
I found this book interesting, both as a reflection of the intelligence gathering processes described and as an insight into the lives of those being scrutinised so closely. I found David McKnight’s chapter ‘How to Read Your ASIO File’ particularly helpful, and am tempted to spend more time on the National Archives site seeing just how many members of my own extended family might have security and intelligence related-files. No, actually, this form of voyeurism does not appeal. Any inaccuracy would irritate.
I’d recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the purpose and operations of a secret national security organisation. These records are historical (files are closed for thirty years, so records more recent than 1984 are not yet available). We may find some of what is described in the past as faintly ridiculous and some of the points of focus as amusing, but what level of surveillance is acceptable in a free, democratic society? If anything, security concerns have increased and, I assume, that surveillance in its various forms has as well. Surveillance may be, as many in the book have noted, ‘boring’ but surely to some degree it is necessary. Who is being watched these days? And has the definition of ‘subversive’ changed?
‘In the parallel world of spydom the distorting mirror is, it seems, the only reality.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In 1970 or 1971, my father was horrified when I told him I intended to march in a Vietnam moratorium rally. He advised me to reconsider (I didn’t) on the basis that ASIO would photograph all protestors, and I’d never be able to work for government as a consequence. Was his concern justified, or was he being paranoid? As it happens, I went on to work for over thirty years for the government with appropriate levels of security clearance. But my father’s concern was not unfounded and was a consequence of the fact that members of his family were active in the Communist Party from the 1920s onwards. And ASIO was keenly interested in members of the Communist Party: I see 15 volumes of security and intelligence files listed against my late great-uncle’s name between 1950 and 1978 alone.
‘It is rather scary to realise that those who took different views from the government on issues of human rights, and on the independence and democracy of other countries or colonies, were regarded with suspicion as possibly subversive.’
This book, edited by Meredith Burgmann, covers the period from the early 1950s to the 1990s, when the New South Wales Special Branch was closed down by the Carr Labor Government. ASIO’s main focus for much of this period was on the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Given that ASIO’s main role ‘ is to gather information and produce intelligence that will enable it to warn the government about activities or situations that might endanger Australia's national security.’, this focus is not surprising. It was suspected that CPA members might have strong links to the USSR, and could be spying for the KGB. AS the Petrov Affair in 1954 showed, there were Russian spies in Australia seeking access to UK and US intelligence shared with Australia.
In twenty-six chapters, the experiences of twenty-eight different people targeted by ASIO are shared. Some were members of the CPA, or had some involvement (however fleeting or nebulous) with a member of the CPA. But any movement for political or social change, anything that questioned the status quo seems to have also been viewed with suspicion: including anti-Vietnam movements and entities like Save Our Sons and the Moratorium marches; Aboriginal land rights and Indigenous equality platforms; feminist groups like WEL and women’s liberation; the Sydney Libertarians; the Worker Student Alliance; gay rights; and women’s refuges.
‘The young students, Christians, mothers, and unionists of the anti-Vietnam movement, land rights campaigns, gay rights action and so on, were never a danger to the government.’
From reading the various personal accounts in this book, it’s clear that ASIO’s ability to collect data was not equalled by its capacity to extract and analyse information. Quantity over quality.
I found this book interesting, both as a reflection of the intelligence gathering processes described and as an insight into the lives of those being scrutinised so closely. I found David McKnight’s chapter ‘How to Read Your ASIO File’ particularly helpful, and am tempted to spend more time on the National Archives site seeing just how many members of my own extended family might have security and intelligence related-files. No, actually, this form of voyeurism does not appeal. Any inaccuracy would irritate.
I’d recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the purpose and operations of a secret national security organisation. These records are historical (files are closed for thirty years, so records more recent than 1984 are not yet available). We may find some of what is described in the past as faintly ridiculous and some of the points of focus as amusing, but what level of surveillance is acceptable in a free, democratic society? If anything, security concerns have increased and, I assume, that surveillance in its various forms has as well. Surveillance may be, as many in the book have noted, ‘boring’ but surely to some degree it is necessary. Who is being watched these days? And has the definition of ‘subversive’ changed?
‘In the parallel world of spydom the distorting mirror is, it seems, the only reality.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
April 21, 2024
Interesting personal stories of left-wing Australians spied on by ASIO. Some of the contributors are well-known and it was exciting to hear their stories, though at times there was a bit much repetition between stories. While I enjoyed the personal stories, I found what each person chose to criticise about ASIO more fascinating. While many took the opportunity to oppose ASIO and their work outright, different contributors criticised the agent's discrepancies, choice of language (at times funny), choice to focus on some politics rather than other, slimness of their file, or lack of file, etc.
November 12, 2014
I must admit the title drew me into reading this book but one should never judge a book by it's cover. We all suspect ASIO of many misdeeds and futile pointless investigations so an honest insight would be appreciated. All this book offers is a list of people who are in the ASIO files as "commies" and "trouble makers". Most of them due to their political history or that they are associated with people who are also suspects. Given the time frame covered is during the lunacy of the "Cold War" we must understand the tensions and "jumping at shadows" that occurred. However for me all that this book does is allow those who were hounded by ASIO to return the favour.
All in all I found this to be a very audacious attempt at petty revenge and really not worth the time spent reading it
All in all I found this to be a very audacious attempt at petty revenge and really not worth the time spent reading it
July 24, 2024
I stumbled on this book while doing research into the early days of ASIO in 40s/50s Australia and found it a funny, informative, and often very scary look at the amount of state surveillance imposed upon left-wing Australians during the Cold War. Over 200 phones were tapped between 1949 and 1960, and over 40,000 pages of transcript generated; people were stalked, filmed, informed on, and recorded without their consent. The fact that these subjects themselves now get the chance to read and "speak back" to their own files is a fantastic reversal of power and information; their reflections on ASIO's recordkeeping are sometimes witty, sometimes sad, and wholly fascinating.
The mind boggles at both ASIO's painfully detailed reporting on the often very mundane lives of its targets and the incredible reaches they made to justify their surveillance. One favourite moment for me was when the four-year-old son of teacher, trade unionist and feminist Lucy Woodcock was described on file as 'an active school propagandist' who 'actively organised groups away from the teacher's grasp' (too busy talking about the reds under the beds, the Australian secret service had obviously forgotten to monitor the ongoing politicisation of the kindergarteners in the sandpits.) Movie Show host David Stratton came under fire in his file for the sins of screening Eastern European films and wearing a red tie (ANARCHY!); Michael Kirby first appears on file, aged twelve, because his communist step-grandfather took him to the zoo (the giraffe enclosure: a deeply radical place).
There is so much delicious detail here that you don't find in the history books: the Eureka Youth League campagined against night-time training for apprentices under the slogan "the nights were made for love". Alan Hardy was described as "[living] with another boy in Kings Cross and VERY interested in theatrics". Phillip Adams was considered as a potential recruit but ruled out, the ASIO agent writes, due to his lack of "proper seriousness" and likelihood to treat it as "a huge joke". A particularly drunken Communist meeting in 1973 was attended by an ASIO spy, who, after the night's revelry, found it difficult to "remember all the names" of the people he was meant to be monitoring.
Due to the essay format and multiple contributors, we get a wide range of perspectives and files, stretching from the 1940s to the 1980s, and showing the intersection of ASIO surveillance with the queer, feminist, anti-war, and Indigenous liberation movements in Australia. As someone who was born post-Cold War and only learned about it from a US/USSR perspective at school, it was fascinating to read about the effects in my own country, and their ongoing ramifications in our political landscape today.
Great read, great resource!
The mind boggles at both ASIO's painfully detailed reporting on the often very mundane lives of its targets and the incredible reaches they made to justify their surveillance. One favourite moment for me was when the four-year-old son of teacher, trade unionist and feminist Lucy Woodcock was described on file as 'an active school propagandist' who 'actively organised groups away from the teacher's grasp' (too busy talking about the reds under the beds, the Australian secret service had obviously forgotten to monitor the ongoing politicisation of the kindergarteners in the sandpits.) Movie Show host David Stratton came under fire in his file for the sins of screening Eastern European films and wearing a red tie (ANARCHY!); Michael Kirby first appears on file, aged twelve, because his communist step-grandfather took him to the zoo (the giraffe enclosure: a deeply radical place).
There is so much delicious detail here that you don't find in the history books: the Eureka Youth League campagined against night-time training for apprentices under the slogan "the nights were made for love". Alan Hardy was described as "[living] with another boy in Kings Cross and VERY interested in theatrics". Phillip Adams was considered as a potential recruit but ruled out, the ASIO agent writes, due to his lack of "proper seriousness" and likelihood to treat it as "a huge joke". A particularly drunken Communist meeting in 1973 was attended by an ASIO spy, who, after the night's revelry, found it difficult to "remember all the names" of the people he was meant to be monitoring.
Due to the essay format and multiple contributors, we get a wide range of perspectives and files, stretching from the 1940s to the 1980s, and showing the intersection of ASIO surveillance with the queer, feminist, anti-war, and Indigenous liberation movements in Australia. As someone who was born post-Cold War and only learned about it from a US/USSR perspective at school, it was fascinating to read about the effects in my own country, and their ongoing ramifications in our political landscape today.
Great read, great resource!
October 12, 2019
Some interesting perspectives on the pervasive nature of ASIO surveillance of left-wing activists during the Cold War. I appreciated the book, though I think it could have been shorter - after a while you notice that the stories of many of the contributors are fundamentally the same. This work is an anthology of personal essays, and as such there's no overarching commentary or analysis on ASIO's work past the introduction; the focus here is purely on the stories of individual targets and how they reacted to receiving their files. Best read alongside some ASIO histories, I think.
March 2, 2015
Less of a review / more of a comment but I cannot tell you how "relieved" we should all be to know that regardless of the potential (or lack thereof) of threat to Australia, we have organisations like ASIO. Who in most examples of the files discussed in this book seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time obsessed with what women were wearing or how they styled their hair, and who was going out with whom.
A variety of reactions from a variety of people who, for the first time mostly, were able to read their own ASIO files, it's astounding how sanguine many of them are. And not surprising that many more were offended, annoyed, offended, astounded or simply flabbergasted by the contents of those files. When you consider the long-term, wide-reaching ramifications of the existence of these files, you can't help but wonder about the damage to people's lives. Which leaves you with the very real question of current day activities of the security services. Highly recommended read for anybody who thinks that those in "power" are to be blindly trusted, believed and never scrutinised.
http://www.austcrimefiction.org/revie...
A variety of reactions from a variety of people who, for the first time mostly, were able to read their own ASIO files, it's astounding how sanguine many of them are. And not surprising that many more were offended, annoyed, offended, astounded or simply flabbergasted by the contents of those files. When you consider the long-term, wide-reaching ramifications of the existence of these files, you can't help but wonder about the damage to people's lives. Which leaves you with the very real question of current day activities of the security services. Highly recommended read for anybody who thinks that those in "power" are to be blindly trusted, believed and never scrutinised.
http://www.austcrimefiction.org/revie...
September 22, 2015
Fascinating read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews