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ASIO - Anti-terrorism

On this page: Joan Coxsedge; Geraldine Robertson; Zelda D'Aprano; Pamela Curr

Submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee Reviewing ASIO, ASIS and DSD's Questioning and Detention Powers
Parliament House, Canberra, ACT 2600
By Joan Coxsedge and Gerry Harant
March 2005

2,400 words

... we warn that true security will never be achieved with harsh laws - or bombing runs.

We are responding to this 'review' of ASIO's questioning and detention regime only because of our deep concern at the escalating onslaught on our basic civil rights which, in the wake of September 11 and the Bali bombings, are being eroded at an alarming rate. This is happening despite the strong laws already in place to deal with violent acts against the state.

In the past three years alone, at least 20 new complex and detailed laws giving ASIO unprecedented tough powers to secretly investigate, detain and interview people - including four at the end of 2004 - have been passed by the federal parliament with minimal debate and almost no media coverage, giving Australia the dubious distinction of having one of the most draconian raft of anti-terrorist laws in the western world.

Some might argue we need strong laws, but surely not at the expense of the very freedoms we are claiming to protect and which, in the long term, will permanently damage our society as a whole.

Although the legislation purports to provide checks and balances for Australian citizens caught up in these powers, it clearly does not. Justice and fairness don't get a look in.

The dubious nature of this belated parliamentary exercise is exemplified by the fact that according to a quote from ASIO's report, three warrants were issued during 2003-2004, but that is the only information we are given.

We do not know whether the detention of the three individuals was justified or not, considering they were detained on the highly subjective basis that there were 'reasonable grounds' that they 'may' alert someone involved in a terrorism offence. An obvious question is who decides what are 'reasonable' grounds'? Who defines what is a 'terrorism offence'?

The leadership of a covert body which sets its own budgets and guidelines and which, through a range of secret international agreements, is an appendage of the US security network?

Hardly politically neutral nor a source to inspire confidence considering that these same people relied on a plethora of distortions and straight-out lies regarding 'weapons of mass destruction' to provide the justification for an invasion and war against the citizens of a sovereign nation. In any case, how on earth can an outsider judge whether the grounds are 'reasonable' when there is no mechanism to ensure that even minimal safeguards are being observed, bearing in mind the total secrecy that surrounds such decisions.

Perhaps the committee should heed the words of Justice Hope in his first Royal Commission on Security and Intelligence, when he found that:
- ASIO's management was not as good as it should be.
- Information from ASIO proved to be neither the quality or reliability one might have wished.
- There was 'little evidence in ASIO that the qualities of mind and expertise needed were recognised or available in any large measure'.
- There were departures by ASIO from principles of propriety and legality.

Justice Hope repeated his concerns years later during his inquiry into the Combe/Ivanov debacle, which once again revealed numerous cases of ASIO's cavalier attitude to the truth.

George Orwell would have got a laugh out of one ASIO dictum that truth, in ASIO's minds, is what it creates in its files!

Most of its 'errors' fell into this category.

For example:
- Combe and his wife's trip to the Soviet Union was incorrectly claimed by ASIO to have been paid for in total by the USSR government (transcript page 626). ASIO hadn't bothered to check. - ASIO Director-General Barnett asserted in evidence that the film 'Allies' had input from the KGB and was financed from the Soviet Union (transcript page 425).
He was later forced to retrace this statement, which was not a 'mistake' but was a typical ASIO surmise based on pure bias (transcript page 3518-3519).
ASIO hadn't bothered to check.

- Barnett made other wild accusations against unspecified ALP members whose association with Ivanov 'may have been quite legitimate but ...' ASIO again had no facts to back up its allegation (transcript page 619).

- Former Attorney-General Gareth Evans was forced to admit that Barnett's presentation had 'an element of dramatisation'. For instance, Barnett claimed that Paul Everingham, Northern Territory Chief Minister, had been 'visibly shaken' when confronted with the awful news of Coombe's association with Ivanov when in fact he was 'about as shaken as the desk (transcript page 3436}.

If ASIO operatives were behaving like that in a relatively benign political climate when there was no real threat to Australia's security, clearly they are now far more likely to be breaching the law and people's civil rights across the board in the current environment of manufactured fear and hysteria.

Before the security horse had completely bolted, there are a number of serious questions you should address as a matter of urgency, because as you say in your covering letter '...this review by the Committee may represent the only opportunity for detailed parliamentary scrutiny of these powers', and you then list seven isssues that the Committee might wish to examine.

But if you genuinely want a considered response, we want to know how we can respond so that you can respond to ASIO's demands when we - and that includes you, despite being the elected representatives of the people - do not have, and it seems can never have, the necessary and relevant information to do so.

We repeat, how can outsiders have the slightest idea about what was achieved when we don't even know who was arrested.
In fact, we are told, according to ASIO, that 'no-one was arrested'.
In reference to Point 3, we can only assume that 'any problems encountered in the use of the legislation' would be anyone questioning the validity of these powers.

And as we don't know what aspects of the legislation have been used, we can hardly comment on aspects that haven't yet been used!
And even if we did have such information, it would come from sources inside the agencies, which independent people would not consider reliable.

These are just a few of the fundamental contradictions and absurdities which arise when dealing with the actions of the secret intelligence establishment in a democratic society.

In a recent article, respected UK commentator on security matters, Phillip Knightly, makes the point that western agency spying is far more complicated than might appear.

Knightly had spoken with a long-time CIA agent who blew the whistle on the way his agency evaluates reports, probably mirroring the modus vivendi of our lot, with ABCD designated for reliability and 1234 for accuracy.

A1 meant the source was impeccable while D4 indicated the complete opposite. In nine times out of ten, the designation was C3, said the CIA agent, meaning the source was 'usually reliable' (dubious?) and the information ' possibly true'.

Logically this means that the usually reliable source was sometimes reliable and that the information described as possibly true could just as possibly be false.

On top of this, the 'source' can find themselves under pressure to present what their political masters want rather than what they believe to be true in an 'intelligence briefing'. Hardly grounds to inspire confidence in these agencies.

From Phillip Knightly: 'It is almost impossible in the intelligence game to blame anyone for anything. No matter what goes wrong, the intelligence community always has a plausible excuse ... Inquiries into the intelligence services produce little.

There are only two certainties about such inquiries: the services will emerge with larger staff and a bigger budget. Oh yes, and nobody will resign and some may even be promoted.

Confronted with all the shortcomings of the secret services, its supporters reply that it would be unthinkable not to have a secret service, forgetting that we (UK) did not have one until 1911.

. Anything is better than nothing. But is this true? According to a study by the Royal Institute for International Affairs, western intelligence success in predicting Soviet moves was no better that that of America's think tanks.

The intelligence community does everything it can to avoid assessment of its efficiency, usually by falling back on the unanswerable statement:

"We have had some marvellous successes but we can't talk about them because they're secret".

The reality is that the intelligence game is a vast confidence trick.

Sergei Kondrashov, a retired KGB chief of counter-intelligence, told me at a conference in Germany that if the KGB was forced to choose between a Russian mole in the US administration and a subscription to The New York Times, he would take the New York Times any day.

Apart from the issues listed for the committee to examine, we urge that it should also investigate a disturbing situation that has come to light about the extended use of questioning and detention powers not covered by any Australian legislation, but which are clearly in use and clearly relevant when passing judgement on this question.

Especially considering that Australian citizen Mamdough Habib, accused of training several of the 9/11 hijackers, was transferred to Egypt after being incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, where he suffered months of torture before being released without charge.

There have been a spate of recent articles in the US and UK press about this practice of 'rendition', which transporting abducted 'terror suspects' to third countries notorious for their brutal interrogation methods, a form of torture by proxy.

'Rendition' was originally carried out on a limited basis against a discrete group of suspects, a practice begun during the Clinton administration, but after September 11, the programme extended beyond recognition to include a wide and ill-defined body of 'illegal enemy combatants', many of whom have never been charged with any crime.

New York's University School has estimated that a hundred and fifty people have been 'rendered' since 2001, the most common destinations being Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, all allied with the US in the fight against terror and all cited for gross human rights abuses, prepared to ride roughshod over the UN Convention Against Torture and all international norms.

It has also been claimed that UK airports are operational bases for executive jets to carry out 'renditions' of terror suspects. As a close ally of the United States, is Australia also involved?

A question for the committee.A parliamentary investigation in Sweden found that the CIA had seized two Egyptian nationals from that country in December 2001.
The two men - Ahmed Agaza and Al Zery - were grabbed by CIA agents wearing black masks and taken to the police station at Sweden's Bromma airport where, while shackled hand and foot, they had their clothes cut off in pieces and

'suppositories of an unknown kind inserted into their rectums'.

Dressed in diapers and dark overalls, blindfolded and hooded, the men were flown to Cairo in a Gulfstream 5 jet.While all this was going on, Swedish police were kept apart in the outer public section of their own station, powerless to intervene.

The Sunday Times (UK) gave even more details about the mystery Gulfstream 5 jet, registration number N379P, after obtaining the logs of some 300 flights showing its movements.

'Leased by agents from the US Defence Department and the CIA', the jet 'always' departs from Washington and 'has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and other US military bases'.

The Gulfstream made at least seven trips to Uzbekistan where, the Times stated: 'the secret police are notorious for their interrogation metnods, including the alleged boiling of prisoners'.

The article quoted Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who stated on Swedish television:

'I have come across many cases of rape in front of family members who they wish to extract information from and I have post mortem photos of a corpse. These show that the person was boiled to death.'

And so clearly, as an entire system has been devised to bypass normal safeguards of detention and interrogation, where does that leave your inquiry?
The entire edifice relies on the assumption that secret agent personnel are people of integrity with the well-being of our country at heart.

But the war in Iraq and the practice of 'rendition' show the very opposite.
Belief in the integrity of secret agencies, such as it was, now lies at the bottom of the sea, along with the children who were thrown overboard by their parents. Instead of expanding their powers and turning a blind eye to their abuses, now might be a good time to close the spook industry down. And yes, we know that's about as likely as the Pope building minarets in Vatican City.

PS: For the umpteenth time, we warn that true security will never be achieved with harsh laws - or bombing runs. They only make things worse, as we can see from the expanding horror of Iraq.
Unless we address the growing poverty and gross inequalities bedevilling our world, then we will continue to reap the consequences.
Before rushing ahead to accept legislation which is turning this country into a police state, we urge you to heed the words of eleven Nobel laureates who attended a Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium in Oslo in December 2001. They stated: 'The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem, not from the irrational acts of individuals, but from the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed.'
The sad irony is that thirty years ago, the world's richest nations pledged 0.7% of their GDP to help the world's poorest. It has now slumped to 0.22%.
And Australia?
We rest our case.
Joan Coxsedge Joancoxs@tpg.com.au
Gerry Harant Gharant@primus.com.au
March 2005

Joan Coxsedge

I reckon that powerful media moguls and the security establishment (who warble from the same song sheet) learned a hell of a lot during the Vietnam War. They learned how to 'manage' dissent; how to cut us down and ignore us as if we weren't there. Not as savage as the treatment meted out to the 'disappeared' in Latin America, but the intent was the same. We are being 'disappeared' in a media blackout to deny us the oxygen of publicity.

My Balwyn election campaign coincided with a far more important political initiative when a few of us from the anti-war movement who had suffered at the hands of the snoops kicked off the Committee for the Abolition of Political Police (CAPP). In March 1973, our small group started campaigning outside ASIO's former HQ in St Kilda Road, by photographing the snoops as they went in and out of the building.

Over a period of time, by devious means, we found out who they were and where they lived. I remember putting out our first ASIO recruiting poster with three names and addresses, with a general appeal to readers to contact the trio if they wanted to join, but we always backed up our stunts with hard information and argument.

Although we managed to get quite a lot of publicity for our stunts, we rarely did for our serious stuff. In 1974, we published a couple of booklets and God knows how many pamphlets and letters giving details about our spy agencies - who they were and who they were working for - and putting the abolition case.

I find it rather ironic that we were publishing material about these unknown secret agencies and secret treaties more than 30 years ago, raising issues that are still unresolved, and yet media commentators behave as if this information is new and fresh and has just come to light. A question for those who believe we live in a democracy.

If you have secret (and therefore unaccountable) agencies which hugely influence what goes on in our foreign and domestic affairs without anyone knowing who they are or what they do, how does that square with democratic ideals? Which was why we decided to pull all our material together in a book 'Rooted in Secrecy', which came out in 1982 and is still selling because the arguments we raise are fundamental and even more relevant today. We certainly managed to raise the hackles of the secret agency brigade.

We were continually attacked by these characters via letters and articles as being in the pay of Moscow and working for the KGB, when in reality we were against all secret agencies everywhere, which we reckoned represented the greatest threat to basic freedoms.The problem was we were ahead of our time.

... One day, Australians will wake up and find they haven't got any freedoms. Will they care? In Nazi Germany, people went on their way while people were shovelled into concentration camps. Guantanamo bay is a concentration camp, a torture centre, just one of many run by 'our' side. If our US allies can indiscriminately pluck people from their countries - as they continue to do - and then have the gall to say 'If they're found to be innocent, we won't release them', where are we heading? If that's not a fascist philosophy, then I'm hoot the flute.

In our troubled world, there must be a place for unstructured groups such as the Committee for the Abolition of Political Police. Despite our size, we managed to get under the skin of very powerful bodies, using ridicule and a sort of organised anarchy. We were small and flexible and able to act quickly with people we trusted. We didn't have to go through endless meetings, but went bingo!

We certainly took risks. After all, we weren't taking on a mother's club, but were still able to generate laughs against decidedly unfunny people. So perhaps activists should start working in less hierarchical ways.

It helps if you have good connections. We had strong links with trade unions and other activists, giving us the opportunity to distribute information to a much wider range of people. For many years, I managed to persuade the Victorian ALP to have the abolition of ASIO and Special Branch as its official policy. I would argue against 'reformers' like Gareth Evans and win out, because I put arguments that members understood.

Geraldine Robertson

EXTENDED ASIO POWERS TO COUNTER TERRORISM BILL

Hon. Simon Crean, Leader of the Opposition,
Parliament House, Canberra, ACT 2600,
7th February 2002

Dear Mr. Crean,
Re: Upgrading Counter-Terrorism Capabilities

There can be no acceptable alterations, there must be no fiddling with minor detail. These proposals must be voted down because no short-term emergency warrants the withdrawal of citizens rights.

The infrastructure of democracy:
- the right to privacy
- the right to immediate legal representation
- the right to remain silent
- the right to the assumption of innocence
- the right to freedom of assembly and organisation,
will be compromised by the enactment of this legislation.

These rights are our most potent defences against terrorism and totalitarianism from whatever quarter.

Acts of terrorism are already illegal in Australia and a perceived threat of terrorism is a bad excuse to diminish citizens' rights or to deem normal activities suspicious or necessitating surveillance.

The Government's response to perceived terrorists threats since the World Trade Centre bombing [much as we abhor those acts] is reminiscent of the 'reds under the bed' hysteria of the 1950's, when organisations or people advocating social or political change were assumed to be either fronts for the Communist Party or having been infiltrated by it [an assumption made about the U.A.W.].

Naming the perceived threat was used to justify limiting civil rights and thwarting careers in the name of the common good.

Then the perceived threat was labelled communism, now it is labelled terrorism. The Cold War and what was inflicted on citizens is now looked upon with shame by historians and public alike. But the same process is about to begin again.

There has been no declaration of war against another country. Declaring war on terrorism is not a sufficient reason for removing civil rights. Freedom must be preserved despite perceived threats to freedom or democracy.

We must not fight terror with terror. The modus operandi of a fascist state cannot preserve either democracy or freedom. Authoritarian governments never relinquish their powers once they are gained.

Naming organisations and individuals as threats to security, the society or the common good is how Jews and Socialists were marginalised through Goebbel's public relations campaigns in 1930's Germany. First they were named, then they were vilified, then removed, then liquidated.

The Proposed Legislation provides the groundwork to begin this process.

There are sufficient powers to detain and prosecute under existing laws. The proposals to be tabled are a gross over-reaction to events overseas.

Yours faithfully, Geraldine Robertson

Zelda D'Aprano

ASIO WATCHES ZELDA D'APRANO

THE AGE - MEMO TELLS OF WIRE TAPS - ASIO MAN'S SECRET REPORT IS CIRCULATED
A woman's liberation leader … had been based at the P.M.G.'s mail exchange branch in Spencer Street since September 1971. She was on three month's leave yesterday and could not be contacted.

ASIO MINUTE PAPER
Subject: Liaison: Attorney General -(19 October 1971) First Assistant Director-General (Int.)
Copies to: Deputy Director General Assistant Director-General, B.P.A. to Director General.

The Attorney-General asked to be advised on the following. 6. Is ASIO aware that "Zelda D'Aprano" has been employed at the Melbourne Mail Exchange?

I said she would not come into a vetting category. (The Attorney-General believed she could cause similar damage there - as has been caused at the Sydney Mail Exchange by agitators.

The Attorney General suggested P.M.G. Department should be advised of Zelda D'Aprano's record, if her employment is confirmed; he thought that she should be got rid of, even by promotion to some minor Post Office) Signature: C.I.O. Rupert, April 1976. (Underlining ours.)

The time had arrived for me to return to work and I was afraid. I knew that the vast majority of men and women at work would be curious and interested to know why the A.S.I.O. document said what it did about me, but there were a handful of men working there who hated my guts. Not only was I a Jew and a woman, but they were so warped and fanatical in their views that they were capable of thinking and believing that I was a communist spy. I feared these men for I knew they were capable of violence. My fears about returning to work were justified. Zelda D'Aprano, The Becoming of a Woman, Visa 1978 latest edition Spinifex Press

Pamela Curr

Another group I am involved with is the Civil Rights Network. This, I think, is a really important work.

What we are seeing in the reaction to terrorism is the Australian Government winding back our democratic rights. I believe it is a great excuse for them to curtail the rights of the population.

Increasingly they are introducing policies which are not to our benefit. They are to the benefit of corporations. That means people are going to respond - they are going to react.

A lot of the legislation being introduced at the moment is legislation curtailing people's rights. In effect, what they are doing is criminalizing dissent.

They are criminalizing protest. We activists need to remember that we will be the first to go!

Just one example. In the paper today the State Government has reacted with legislation to protect property developers. This is a group who, you would think, is doing well in a development driven state. But no, we have to protect them more.

It is almost laughable, really. We have reached the stage where people don't see the joke in it anymore. They are so used to seeing governments protecting corporations, private companies and finance.

If we think about it, and that is another issue for us as a community, who does the government have the strongest, deepest and most intimate relationship with?

It is not with the people.
It is not with the grassroots.
It is not with the community - it is with the corporations. The directors, the CEO's are the ones they sit down to lunch with. The are the ones they dine with at night and socialize with and whose interests are being protected.

Civil rights, human rights, workers' rights and the peace movement. They are the four areas I work in.

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