ASIO was forced to pay the Petrovs' price

THE Olympic Games were great news to most residents of Melbourne in 1956 but they were not welcomed by two new residents of the city.

THE Olympic Games were great news to most residents of Melbourne in 1956 but they were not welcomed by two new residents of the city.

The Russian defectors Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov were on edge after being warned by their British and Australian handlers that the games could be the death of them.

"ASIO are fully alive to the possibility of Russian Intelligence Service agents being introduced into Australia in the free-for-all conditions of the Olympic Games and the temporary relaxation of visa requirements," a British agent reported in MI5 documents that were opened to the public this week.

"There is no doubt therefore that the games period would offer a golden opportunity to the RIS [Russian intelligence service] to introduce an agent if they should decide to make an attempt on the Petrovs."

The MI5 man noted that "with Russia adopting a pose of peace-loving reasonableness" in diplomacy at the time, Moscow would not want to be publicly linked to an assassination but MI5 later confirmed that the Russians considered such an attack as late as the 1970s.

The half-century old documents show plans to move the Petrovs out of their normal home for two months "so that they should run no risks during the period of the Olympic Games when large contingents of Russians" would be in town.

The Petrovs were then put to work vetting photos and other details of hundreds of Olympic team members and other visitors from behind the Iron Curtain.

At that stage they were being paid a monthly retainer by the government to support them as they were pumped for Soviet secrets, but these lifelong communists soon fell into a bitter industrial dispute with their new capitalist employers.

Even when they took full-time jobs the Petrovs were told to be available on weekends and after work to answer questions and study photos of possible KGB agents across the world, but in May 1957 ASIO chief Charles Spry told them their retainers would be cut off from June 1.

The Petrovs responded with a lawyer's letter stating that "Mr Petrov [who had a full-time job] agreed to give information free of charge in his spare time [but] Mrs Petrov would do so only if she were paid a retainer fee equal to the basic wage."

ASIO countered by rejecting the retainer and saying that both Petrovs should be paid but strictly on the basis of performance.

ASIO proposed that "as a stimulus for the Petrovs to work" they should receive an hourly rate "for any information they give". MI5's reports show that ASIO thought it could get away with paying pound stg. 1 an hour, but the Petrovs withdrew their labour and did little work for more than 14 months.

"Recently, Mr Petrov went on strike and refused to work on ASIO briefs whilst Mrs Petrov on the other hand was quite agreeable to working," MI5 reported in June 1957.

A series of cables between London and Melbourne followed the progress of this stubborn labour dispute, with spy agencies across the world unable to have any questions answered by the Petrovs until ASIO eventually buckled and agreed to a handsome pay rate of pound stg. 5 an hour.

The Petrovs' hard stand was exacerbated by a piece of political point-scoring by then prime minister Robert Menzies, which angered the spy services and infuriated the Petrovs.

In October 1957 Menzies asked the intelligence officers if he could tell parliament how many spies the Petrovs had identified.

The answer was no, he should stick to generalities, but Menzies went ahead and announced the Petrovs had revealed 520 possible spies, adding many other defectors had been killed by the Soviets.

Not surprisingly, the statement left the Petrovs in no mood to keep working. Convinced they were in mortal danger and highly valuable to the West, they were more sure than ever that they were being underpaid.

The domestic political machinations of Menzies had "hardened the Petrovs in their present obduracy" and disrupted the flow of intelligence, MI5 concluded.

"Why on earth Menzies was allowed to say that Mr Petrov had put allied intelligence on to some 230 Soviet agents is beyond my comprehension," an exasperated British official noted in the MI5 files.