Paul Monk was head of China analysis for the Defence Intelligence Organisation in 1994-95 and is the author of Thunder from the Silent Zone: Rethinking China (2005) and The West in a Nutshell: Foundations, Fragilities, Futures (2009). He wrote on “China, America, and the Danger to World Order” in the May issue.As several serious, well-informed and responsible individuals have exclaimed to me since that piece came out, the silence in response to it was deafening. There was not a word of retort from Michael Cook, Paul Keating, Michael Lavarch, the AFP, ASIO or anyone else in a position to state that I was in error in any particular. Disconcertingly, there was no response, either, from the conservative side of politics. In the weeks following, I met with both the Inspector General for Intelligence and Security, Ian Carnell, and the Director General of ASIO, David Irvine, and neither gave me any ground for believing that I was in error in what I had claimed. Well before I had written it, I met with Cook and asked him whether the claim put to me that he had identified four Soviet moles in ASIO was correct. In a conversation that had been perfectly serious and cordial, his only response to this question was to say that he would not be divulging any information on that subject. Since then, I have been informed that, in fact, Cook’s report was based on Operation Liver and was not a separate inquiry; that up to ten suspected moles were quietly retired and that one of these individuals had worked inside ASIO from 1952 until 1985, ending up as head of security vetting. Moreover, ASIO was not the only part of the Australian government penetrated and, while some of those who spied back in the 1940s have been exposed, virtually nothing has come to light since the Petrov defection in 1954.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/iss ... l-interest
Now in light of Kevin Rudd having officially opened ASIO's new central office on the 23 July 2013, whereby only months before, Chinese hackers were accused of stealing secret ASIO blueprints ... files re- ASIO's building's security and communications systems, its floor plan, etc.... should we be concerned?
