ASIS in Chile 1973 An ASIS station was established in Chile out of the Australian embassy in July 1971 at the request of the CIA and authorised by then Liberal Party Foreign Minister
William McMahon. New Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was informed of the operation in February 1973 and signed a document ordering the closure of the operation several weeks later. On 1 July 1973, the ASIS station in Chile reported that it had shut down and destroyed all records. The incident was one of two that caused a confrontation between Whitlam and
Bill Robertson, the director-general of ASIS, which culminated in Robertson's sacking on 21 October 1975, with effect from 7 November, just four days before Whitlam's own dismissal in the
1975 Australian constitutional crisis. Whitlam said Robertson had disobeyed instructions by delaying the closure of the ASIS station in Chile in 1973 and not informing Whitlam that ASIS had an active agent in East Timor in 1975. Robertson disputed the details in a personal statement lodged with the National Archives in 2009. The
National Archives of Australia holds documents related to ASIS operations to help the
CIA undermine the government of Allende in the years 1971-1974. In 2021, the archives refused a request from
Clinton Fernandes, professor of International and Political Studies at the
University of New South Wales, to access records relating to ASIS operations in Chile. In November 2021, the
Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) upheld the decision to reject Fernandes's request for access to the documents. The AAT said the release of documents would "cause damage to the security, defence or international relations of the Commonwealth". Most of the AAT hearing was held behind closed doors, because
Attorney-General Michaelia Cash issued a public interest certificate, suppressing the disclosure of evidence provided by ASIS,
ASIO and the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The Favaro affair During the lead-up to
Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975, ASIS paid a Dili-based Australian businessman, Frank Favaro, for information on local political developments. The leaking of his identity in late 1975 was another factor in the confrontation between Whitlam and Robertson. Bill Robertson disputed the reason for his dismissal in documents lodged with the National Archives in 2009. The training operation involved junior officers who had undergone three weeks' prior training and who were given considerable leeway in planning and executing the operation. The mock hostage rescue was staged on the 10th floor of the hotel without the permission of the hotel's owner or staff. When ASIS operators were refused entry into a hotel room, they broke down the door with sledgehammers. The hotel manager, Nick Rice, was notified of a disturbance on the 10th floor by a hotel guest. When he went to investigate, he was forced back into the
lift by an ASIS operator who rode the lift down to the ground floor and forcibly ejected Rice into the lobby. Believing a robbery was in progress, Rice called the police. When the lift started returning to the ground floor, ASIS operators emerged wearing masks and openly brandishing
9mm Browning pistols and
Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, two of them with silencers. They forced their way through the lobby to the kitchen, where two getaway cars were waiting outside the kitchen door. Police stopped one of the cars and arrested the occupants – two ASIS officers and three ASIS civilian trainees – who refused to produce any form of identification. Within two days, the minister for foreign affairs,
Bill Hayden announced that an "immediate and full" investigation would be conducted under the auspices of the second Hope Royal Commission, which was still in progress. A report was prepared and tabled by February 1984. It described the exercise as being "poorly planned, poorly supervised and poorly run", and recommended that measures be taken in training to improve planning and eliminate adverse impacts on the public.
Victoria Police conducted their own investigation but were frustrated because ASIS Director-General
John Ryan refused to cooperate. Bill Hayden offered to provide the real names of the seven officers involved, in confidence.
Premier of Victoria John Cain told Hayden that "as far as the police were concerned, there was no such thing as information in confidence". Following the incident,
The Sunday Age disclosed the names, or the assumed names, of five of the operators involved. The journalist noted that "according to legal advice taken by
The Sunday Age there is no provision that prevents the naming of an ASIS agent". Although not included within the public version of the report, the Hope Royal Commission prepared an appendix that would appear to have dealt with the security and foreign relations consequences of
The Sunday Ages disclosure of participants' names. Subsequently, in
A v Hayden, the High Court held that the Commonwealth owed no enforceable duty to ASIS officers to maintain confidentiality of their names or activities. At the time of the Sheraton Hotel incident, the extant Ministerial Directive permitted ASIS to undertake "covert action", including "special operations" which, roughly described, comprised "unorthodox, possibly para-military activity, designed to be used in case of war or some other crisis". Following the incident and the recommendations of the Royal Commission, the covert action function was apparently abolished. The functions of ASIS can be found in section 6 of the Intelligence Services Act, as can those functions which are proscribed by the act. Ultimately, in executing the operation, the operators were found to have used considerable force, menacing a number of the staff and guests with weapons and physically assaulting the hotel manager. Hope found Ryan to be at fault for authorising the training operation in a public place using concealed weapons. Ryan resigned in February 1984. Hope said it was not part of his terms of reference to make findings or recommendations on whether any individual had committed any offence. However, he did note that the individuals could potentially be prosecuted by the State of Victoria with a long list of criminal offences, including possession of firearms without a licence, possession of prohibited implements (including machine guns, silencers and housebreaking tools), aggravated burglary in possession of a firearm, common assault, wilful damage to property, possession of a disguise without lawful excuse and numerous motor vehicle offences. More than a year after the raid, the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions concluded that while certain offences had been committed, including criminal damage and assault with a weapon, there was insufficient evidence to charge any person with a specific offence. Victorian Holdings Ltd, the company managing the hotel, subsequently took legal action against the Commonwealth on behalf of itself and 14 hotel staff. The matter was settled out of court; the hotel was offered $300,000 in damages. The total payout to the hotel and staff was $365,400.
Involvement in Papua New Guinea Between 1989 and 1991, ASIS came under scrutiny following allegations relating to its role and activities in
Papua New Guinea. It was alleged that ASIS had been involved in training Papua New Guinean troops to suppress independence movements in
Irian Jaya and
Bougainville. In 1997 it was alleged that ASIS and DSD had failed to collect, or the Government had failed to act upon, intelligence regarding the role and presence of
Sandline contractors in relation to the independence movement in Bougainville.
Four Corners program Towards the end of 1993, ASIS became the subject of media attention after allegations were made by former ASIS officers that ASIS was unaccountable and out of control. The Sunday Telegraph alleged that "ASIS regularly flouted laws, kept dossiers on Australian citizens ... and hounded agents out of the service with little explanation". In particular, it alleged that agents were being targeted in a purge by being threatened with criminal charges relating to their official conduct, reflecting a pattern which suggested to some that ASIS or a senior ASIS officer had been "turned" by a foreign intelligence service. On 21 February 1994,
Four Corners ran a program which aired the key allegations. Two former ASIS officers made claims regarding cultural and operational tensions between ASIS and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. They claimed that embassy staff had maliciously or negligently compromised activities involving the running of foreign informants and agents and the defection of foreign agents to Australia. They claimed that their grievances had been ignored and that they were "deserted in the field" and made scapegoats by ASIS. The officers and the reporter, Ross Coulthart, also made claims regarding operational activities and priorities: the officers claimed that ASIS advice had been ignored by DFAT and the reporter repeated claims regarding ASIS operations aimed at destabilising the
Aquino Government in the Philippines. He also made claims regarding ASIS assistance to MI6 in the
Falklands War, in Hong Kong and in
Kuwait for the benefit of British interests, including commercial interests, and potentially to the detriment of Australian national interests. The bulk of the personal statements by the officers concerned their private grievances. They raised two issues of public interest regarding the effect of secrecy on the operation of grievance procedures and the extent to which the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade was aware of or in control of ASIS operations. The reporter directly raised the issue of the appropriateness of ASIS operations, particularly with respect to priority setting in overseas postings and operations, cooperation with foreign intelligence services, and the privacy of Australian persons and organisations. By implication, the program queried the extent to which ASIS was or should be accountable to the Minister, to Government and to Parliament. The following day, the
Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs called for an independent judicial inquiry into the allegations. He expressed particular concern about the nature of ASIS cooperation with foreign agencies and the defects in ASIS grievance procedures. He later called for the inquiry to examine the "poisoned relationship between ASIS and DFAT". A
Democrats spokesperson called for a standing parliamentary committee. Two days after the program aired, the Samuels and Codd Royal Commission was convened by Minister for Foreign Affairs Gareth Evans.
Ratih Hardjono, Bruce Grant and Gareth Evans On 19 February 2000, Singapore journalist Susan Sim accused Ratih Harjono of working for her uncle, a senior BAKIN (
Indonesian intelligence service) intelligence officer while working for the President of Indonesia. Earlier in her career as a journalist, Ratih was married to Bruce Grant, who during this period was senior policy adviser to Gareth Evans, co-authoring the book, ''Australia's foreign relations: in the world of the 1990s''. Gareth Evans was responsible for ASIS from 1988 to 1996.
Alleged management and staffing problems In 2005,
The Bulletin ran an article based on allegations by serving ASIS officers that alluded to gross mismanagement of intelligence operations, staff assignments, and taskings, particularly with respect to the war on terrorism. The unnamed officers pointed out various problems within the agency that were plaguing the organisation's ability to collect vital and timely intelligence. By this, they meant the recruitment of "...young mostly white university educated agents with limited language skills and little knowledge of Islam against poor, zealous extremists intent on becoming suicide bombers", the "inappropriate" assignment of "...young female IOs [intelligence officers] against Islamic targets...", in addition to poor
staff retention rates, and general lack of officers possessing significant practical field experience. The officers also cited a lack of proper support given to intelligence officers tasked against terrorist targets, and the doctoring of intelligence by ASIS management, as also contributing to the lack of progress of the agency in the war on terrorism. , December 2013
Australia–East Timor spying scandal It was revealed in 2013 that ASIS planted devices to listen to the
East Timorese government during negotiations over the Greater Sunrise oil and gasfields. ==See also==