{"id":60301,"date":"2020-11-08T13:00:25","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T02:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=60301"},"modified":"2020-11-08T11:56:46","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T00:56:46","slug":"the-australian-secret-intelligence-service-spying-for-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-australian-secret-intelligence-service-spying-for-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Australian Secret Intelligence Service: spying for Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"688\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-59970\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/symonasis2310-scaled-e1603430691104.jpg\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Spies are prey to principle, pride, passion and payment. Betrayal is driven by everything from cause to cash.<\/p>\n<p>In a history of espionage, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehistorypress.co.uk\/publication\/the-anatomy-of-a-spy\/9780750992572\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The anatomy of a spy<\/em><\/a>, Michael Smith writes that spies spy for sex, money, patriotism, revenge or because it\u2019s \u2018the right thing to do\u2019; spies can be \u2018unconscious agents\u2019 or \u2018adventurers, fantasists and psychopaths\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Behold the world of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.asis.gov.au\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Australian Secret Intelligence Service<\/a> and its director-general, Paul Symon.<\/p>\n<p>In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/report\/asis-interviews\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ASIS interviews with ASPI<\/a>, Australia\u2019s chief spy has covered the formation of the service and its purposes and principles. In the third interview, Symon talks about spies and espionage, discussing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">how ASIS recruits foreigners to spy for Australia, emphasising the safety and security of those agents<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the qualities ASIS looks for in recruiting its Australian officers<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the tradecraft and ethics of spying<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the growth of ASIS from a small firm to a mid-sized corporation.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NabevojO_Kk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Symon says some spies just walk in and volunteer: \u2018History is replete with spies both good and bad who have literally been a walk-in and wanted to have that relationship.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Seeking agents, ASIS considers datasets as it ponders people, \u2018looking at profiles, thinking about the intelligence questions that we\u2019re trying to answer, who might assist us and might be interested in assisting us answer those questions\u2019<em>. <\/em>Then the careful work of \u2018cultivation, potentially recruitment, and validation\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The process, Symon remarks, isn\u2019t that different to the way journalists cultivate sources. My response is that journos, like spies, want to get at the secrets, to understand what\u2019s going on and who\u2019s making it happen.<\/p>\n<p>Yet while hacks and spies <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-foreign-correspondent-spy-or-opportunist\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">track across the same terrain<\/a>, their purposes are different. What matters to hacks is what they can publish and make public; what matters to spies is what they can keep secret. Symon responds:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>That\u2019s very true. But at its very heart, your contacts are relying on your skills and your tradecraft, in some cases to project their voice if that\u2019s what they want, or in some cases to protect their voice. In our case it\u2019s not to project a voice but, if you like, the sanctity of the relationship, the trust, the care that we put into securing that relationship and making sure that their personal safety and security is uppermost in our mind. It\u2019s a very key component of what we do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A foreign correspondent axiom is that you can usually pick the spies masquerading as journalists: they never have deadline fever, rushing off to file; and spies are more willing to pay for all the booze, unlike hacks who must align thirst with expense account (the anatomy of a spy needs a category devoted to alcohol).<\/p>\n<p>Note a nomenclature point in Oz spying: the usage of <em>officers<\/em> or <em>agents<\/em>; both are spies, but different.<\/p>\n<p>ASIS recruits and trains Australian <em>officers<\/em> to send overseas, where their job is to cultivate and run <em>agents.<\/em> Agents can be those adventurers, fantasists and psychopaths\u2014as long as they produce the goods. Being a narcissist with a giant ego might make you the perfect <em>agent<\/em>; the same traits in an Australian <em>officer<\/em> would set off alarm bells in Canberra.<\/p>\n<p>In hiring Australians to serve as its officers, Symon says, ASIS wants a diversity of profiles because there\u2019s no such thing as a typical spy:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We used to have a banner for ASIS which was \u2018IQ + EQ = ASIS\u2019. It\u2019s not a bad banner. There are some parts of the intelligence organisation where you can accommodate a higher IQ [intelligence quotient] and a lower EQ [emotional intelligence quotient]. In ASIS, it has got to be pretty balanced, so ultimately they\u2019re the qualities that we\u2019re after. Someone, individuals who are intelligent but also have a very good emotional quotient and can read a situation, can read relationships. I need people with a really good antenna, because at the end of the day a lot of judgements are pushed down to the individual\u2014they\u2019ve got to make some very fine judgements.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The ASIS officer serving overseas must work to a strict set of rules of tradecraft, Symon observes, and \u2018a strong internal discipline to the way we do the work that we do\u2019. But that disciplined, rule-obeying Australian officer must find foreign citizens ready to break the rules. To a question about the tension and the dissonance of that officer\u2013agent relationship, Symon responds:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The agents that they are dealing with, they are breaking the laws of their country, that is true. There is no tension in the eyes of our officers as to what is being asked of in that relationship\u2014there\u2019s a lot of work goes into making sure that both sides are comfortable and that there\u2019s an understanding. We would never ask an agent to do something that is improper or illegal in the sense of undertaking violent activities or anything like that. We are acquiring intelligence. So, I don\u2019t see that there is a contradiction or a problem there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Symon says ASIS has strengthened its ethical framework, especially when it comes to seeking to penetrate terrorist groups or recruit people inside terrorist organisations. An officer has avenues to \u2018opt out\u2019 or to have a discussion \u2018about that relationship between ethics, morals and what they\u2019re being asked to do with an agent\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The total resourcing for ASIS in the 2020\u201321 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dfat.gov.au\/sites\/default\/files\/pbs-2020-21-australian-secret-intelligence-service-asis.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">budget<\/a> is $630 million. Approaching its 70th anniversary in 2022, Symon says the service has grown from a small entity to a mid-sized corporation.<\/p>\n<p>In its early decades, he says, ASIS was \u2018a small family unit in many ways. There was a kinship, there was a size that went with the organisation, [and] there was a budget that went with the organisation that meant it had all of the hallmarks of just being a big family. A small family and then a big family.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The Hope royal commissions in the 1970s and 1980s brought the intelligence community into the public spotlight and confirmed officially that ASIS existed.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, Symon says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>ASIS has stepped from being a big family to being a mid-sized corporation, quite frankly. And we\u2019re not a big corporation; we\u2019re a mid-sized corporation. We like to ensure that we have very flat structures, and we don\u2019t admire bureaucracy; we don\u2019t admire processes for processes\u2019 sake. We do the minimum necessary to do our job efficiently and effectively, knowing that processes and bureaucracy support rather than hinder good organisations. So, that\u2019s how we\u2019ve changed. And the path forward, given, I think, the successes we\u2019ve achieved, looks very promising to me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spies are prey to principle, pride, passion and payment. Betrayal is driven by everything from cause to cash. In a history of espionage, The anatomy of a spy, Michael Smith writes that spies spy for &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":59970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1032,624,170],"class_list":["post-60301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-asis","tag-espionage","tag-intelligence"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Australian Secret Intelligence Service: spying for Australia | 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\/the-australian-secret-intelligence-service-spying-for-australia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Australian Secret Intelligence Service: spying for Australia | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Spies are prey to principle, pride, passion and payment. 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