{"id":17872,"date":"2015-01-19T06:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T19:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=17872"},"modified":"2015-01-20T08:27:46","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T21:27:46","slug":"asio-1-the-intelligence-jewels-and-the-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asio-1-the-intelligence-jewels-and-the-alliance\/","title":{"rendered":"ASIO (1): \u00a0the intelligence jewels and the alliance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/iframewidth=560height=315src=\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/50SC5M5aJf8frameborder=0allowfullscreen\/iframe\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/50SC5M5aJf8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Australia set up a domestic security and spy-catching service to secure intelligence access to the US and Britain. Without the service\u2014the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation\u2014the formal alliance with the US might not have happened. If the crown jewels of Australian defence are the intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US, then ASIO was created to protect the jewels.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, ASIO\u2019s creation story (1948-49) is founded on the growing panic in Canberra that the US and Britain were refusing to pass confidential information to Australia. Washington and London had discovered, via signals intercepts, that secrets given to Canberra flowed to the Soviet Union. The Brits thought that if Australia didn\u2019t act on security London would have to \u2018watch our secrets pour down the drain\u2019 in Canberra.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As the flow of US and British intelligence shut down in 1948, Australia\u2019s top Defence Committee predicted that \u2018the whole basis of Australian Defence Policy will be radically weakened\u2019 unless classified access could be restored. America\u2019s ambassador to Canberra bluntly warned that \u2018the only conditions under which the US would pass material to Australia would be when the new Security Service had been formed.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The irony and the duality in ASIO\u2019s birth in 1949 is that Australia created a domestic security service for a set of international reasons. ASIO was the price paid for intelligence access. ASIO\u2019s existence was one element in the achievement of the formal alliance with the US. And ASIO\u2019s birth was a key moment when Australia enlisted in the Cold War.<\/p>\n<p>The former Labor Leader and Defence Minister, now ambassador to Washington, Kim Beazley, thinks ASIO was decisive for Australia\u2019s alliance and alignment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Not many Australians realise that the most important single government action aligning Australia with the West in the post-World War II Cold War power distribution was the decision by the Chifley [Labor] Government to create ASIO. It was a defensive step. It demonstrated our willingness, in an environment of intense intelligence attacks on various elements of our and our allies\u2019 national security capabilities, to be a trustworthy player. A capable protector of our and other secrets.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>All these quotes and thoughts are drawn from <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.allenandunwin.com\/default.aspx?page=94&amp;book=9781743319666\" target=\"_blank\">The Spy Catchers<\/a><\/em>, the first of a three-volume Official History of ASIO by Professor David Horner. He writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Signals intelligence was at the heart of American and British concerns about security in Australia in 1948, and led directly to the establishment of ASIO in March, 1949. These concerns focused on two areas. First, information from decrypted Soviet cables [codenamed Venona] revealed unequivocally that Australian citizens in key government departments such as External Affairs were spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. Second, as a result of this spying Britain and the US cut off Australia from access to Allied Sigint, thus damaging Australia\u2019s standing as a reliable defence partner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In July 1948 the Australian Naval Attach\u00e9 in Washington was told Australia had \u2018a security grading equivalent to that of India or Pakistan, and was in the lowest category of any foreign power having representation in the US\u2019. Consider the turnaround: in September, 1951, the US, Australia and New Zealand signed the ANZUS treaty in San Francisco.<\/p>\n<p>In the first of four interviews with Professor Horner, we started with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nsa.gov\/about\/_files\/cryptologic_heritage\/publications\/coldwar\/venona_story.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">the Venona program<\/a>, the decrypted cables between Moscow and 26 cities around the world, including Canberra, New York and Washington. Venona cryptanalysts read more than 200 cables between Canberra and Moscow, revealing the names or cover names of about a dozen Australians who provided information to the Soviet embassy. Venona led to ASIO and that, in turn, played a signal part (in several senses) in the development of Australia\u2019s alignment and alliance.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/about-aspi\/aspi-staff\/fellows\/graeme-dobell\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Graeme Dobell<\/em><\/a><em> is the ASPI journalist fellow. Video produced by Luke Wilson.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australia set up a domestic security and spy-catching service to secure intelligence access to the US and Britain. Without the service\u2014the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation\u2014the formal alliance with the US might not have happened. If &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":17890,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[131,1031,343,342,624,170,932,141,31],"class_list":["post-17872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-anzus","tag-asio","tag-australian-intelligence-community","tag-canberra","tag-espionage","tag-intelligence","tag-security","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>ASIO (1): \u00a0the intelligence jewels and the alliance | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asio-1-the-intelligence-jewels-and-the-alliance\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ASIO (1): \u00a0the intelligence jewels and the alliance | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Australia set up a domestic security and spy-catching service to secure intelligence access to the US and Britain. 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