Malcolm Turnbull, let’s have the truth about our spycatchers

Supplied Editorial

One of the many reasons it is a relief to see Malcolm Turnbull now Prime Minister is that it was he who, as a young lawyer, took on the secrecy and hypocrisy of the British government in the Spycatcher trial, challenged the Offi­cial Secrets Act and successfully defended the publication of Peter Wright’s controversial book, ­Spycatcher.

That success marked him out as a bright man with a big future. He is now in pole position, at the pinnacle of his career, to crown his Spycatcher work with a major ­service to truth and justice in ­Australia — by releasing the Cook report on Soviet penetration of ASIO throughout the Cold War.

The Cook report was written in 1993 or 1994 for then prime minister Paul Keating by former ambassador to Washington and former head of the Office of National Assessments Michael Cook. It was commissioned by Keating to follow up Operation Liver, a highly secret Australian Federal Police investigation of ASIO. The conclusion Cook is said to have reached is that ASIO had been deeply penetrated across many years by at least four Soviet moles.

His report has never been released and senior Labor figures are reluctant to discuss it. Cook wrote to me that neither Keating nor anybody else instructed him to “give my report a high security classification. That I decided on my own for what I thought, and still think, were good reasons.”

He has declined to reveal what those reasons were or to defend them. It’s time the new Prime Minister, 20 years after those events, overrode Cook’s judgment and released this report so the vexed question of the extent of Soviet penetration of ASIO and the undermining of our security and intelligence operations during the Cold War can finally be told. If it was good enough for Wright’s speculative memoir to be published over the objections of Whitehall and MI5, it is surely acceptable for an official document that cuts to the heart of our intelligence failures and difficulties in the Cold War to be released over whatever political or organisational objections have for so long made it one of the most closely held secrets in Canberra.

The second volume of the official history of ASIO is released tomorrow yet we are none the wiser about the central challenge for which ASIO was created in the first place: hostile penetration of the Australian government and penetration of ASIO itself. Rumour has it the third and final volume will contain revelations, but don’t hold your breath. Given that penetration by the Soviets dates back to the 1940s in Canberra, why would we be made to wait for a volume covering the 80s for a serious reckoning with this subject? And what confidence can we have that the matter will be dealt with accurately and openly even there?

Demanding the release of the Cook report is not an act hostile to ASIO. It is a patriotic demand that truth be known and justice be done. ASIO has an important role to fulfil in our time and its current head, Duncan Lewis, is an admirable figure to lead it in that role.

There are, without doubt, serious threats to this country’s security and intelligence operations from the rising power of China, the rogue power of Russia, Islamist terror networks and organised criminal cartels. Each of these is as formidable an enemy as the Soviet Union ever was during the Cold War. And ASIO failed at its task during much of the Cold War because it was outwitted and hobbled by Soviet penetration.

It’s high time that story was out in the open, to point the blame where it belongs and to help ensure such failures do not occur now, when new enemies with new technologies pose risks to the integrity of ASIO’s work.

The anchor point for such an opening up of the secret records of the end of the Cold War is the knowledge, long since pieced together by historians, that Canberra was deeply penetrated in the 40s, when Soviet spies operated openly in the offices of HV Evatt, as external ­affairs minister, and John Burton, as secretary for external affairs.

Discovery of these spies was what led to the creation of ASIO. It seems clear that was insufficient and that ASIO itself was penetrated at various points and perhaps throughout its Cold War history, seriously compromising counterespionage operations and our intelligence rela­tionships with the US and Britain.

It is possible Cook’s findings were tentative and that he recommended his report not be released because he felt unable to prove beyond reasonable doubt who among the reported 10 suspect figures pensioned off from ASIO at that time had in fact been the moles in question. It is possible his report names foreign sources he felt then and still feels now should not be disclosed. It is possible his inquiry led him to the conclusion that the penetration of Canberra, well after the 40s, went beyond ASIO and that revealing the full extent of what had happened would truly set the proverbial cat among the pigeons.

Yet the film The Gatekeepers was made in Israel, a state under perennial siege and subject to endless controversy, and it is stunningly candid about the challenges and failures, tactical, moral and political, of Israeli counter-terrorism and counter-­intel­li­gence. Australia, a far more secure country, has no excuse for being less open or reflective about its security and intelligence past. The Cook report identified a canker at the heart of our national security establishment. That canker will not be removed by pretending it doesn’t exist. It is more important, Prime Minister, than Spycatcher. It is an official document written by a highly reputable civil servant. Remove this canker for us. Release the Cook report now.

Paul Monk’s latest book is Opinions and Reflections. He is a former senior intelligence analyst.