Australian Intelligence: Confronting the Past for a Safer Future

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments; he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. ... Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC). (1) The release a few months ago of declassified papers from Australia's Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security (1974-77) (2) attracted only the most superficial commentary in the media and, as usual, the opportunity was used to berate the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). We await with anticipation a thoroughgoing examination of the Royal Commission papers by scholars and writers in the intelligence field, especially in academia. Regrettably, however, the intelligence community as a whole has been let down in this regard in the past, often suffering unwarranted criticism while garnering little in the way of public support. It is our opinion that the findings of the commissioner, the late Justice Robert Hope, deserve much closer scrutiny, especially with respect to the problems he encountered in conducting his inquiry and against the backdrop of remarkably strong statements of concern that he received about Australian security from overseas agencies with which ASIO had close contact.