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Verk av Brian Toohey

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I think this is actually a really important book. Yes....rather self-serving as Toohey describes himself at the very centre of most of the action ......but nevertheless really important. The underlying theme of the book is that secrecy has increased with the Australian Government and heavy-handed laws have been enacted to enforce the secrecy. And secrecy in government has not served us well. In fact one might argue that it has been disastrous in many circumstances.
Toohey covers a lot of ground ...or a lot of situations where secrecy hasn't served the nation well. Gareth Evans said that in his thirteen years in Cabinet ‘very little of any of the stuff that was … gleaned [by ASIO or ASIS] added much value to our understanding of what was going on let alone vital to our security interests’. Keith Waller (head of DFAT) said about intelligence from Indonesia ‘Much of the ASIS reporting was over-classified and given to trivia, or simply retailed gossip that was “endemic” in any capital like Jakarta.’ And Malcolm Fraser recalls that ‘Through the seven and a half years in which I was prime minister, I can’t recall a single decision of government that was significantly influenced or altered as a result of defence signals intelligence'. The benefit from exchange of ‘intelligence’ is also open to question, as much of what the US supplies to Australia is irrelevant. Political leaders such as Malcolm Fraser and Gareth Evans have stated that they did not find intelligence information particularly useful when they were in office. Paul Keating, said a few days ago, that when he was Prime Minister if he wanted to know what was going on in SE Asia he'd read the New Straits Times....not the rubbish from ASIO or ASIS. I occasionally saw this sort of intelligence in my role as a diplomat/trade commissioner and concur. I could generally get better information by openly going direct to the head of an organisation and asking them about their plans etc.,...or reading the local newspapers.
Toohey covers such things as: The formation of ASIO and ASIS ....the first volume of the official ASIO history is called "The Spy Catchers", though the organisation never caught any Australians working for foreign intelligence services and Toohey comments on the kind of ill-disciplined thinking that flourishes in a culture of secrecy. I was personally much amused how ASIO and ASIS virtually lost their reason for existing when the Berlin wall came down and suddenly the Soviets were our "friends". Overnight diplomats no longer had to report any contacts ....no matter how innocuous....to ASIO. Much of the so-called intelligence coups seemed to be about sexual liaisons or that somebody was compromised because they were gay. The acceptance of the LBTQIA communities as mainstream, has, presumably, totally undermined this sort of "intelligence" or ability to blackmail individuals. Prime Minister Howard saved ASIO by taking Australia into a war in Iraq and thus ensuring that Australians became targets for Islamic terrorism and created massive conflicts of interest for our local muslim population. And, in the process our security agencies targeted local muslims, wrongly arresting and ill treating a number of decent people in Australia and totally failing with a white supremacist who murdered 50 people in Christchurch NZ in March 2019..
Toohey also draws attention to the fact that the ANZUS treaty does not commit the USA to come to the rescue of Australia if attacked...it is merely a commitment to consult and on previous occasions (such as disturbances in Indonesia and East Timor and Malaysia, the US has made it clear that Australia was on its own. Despite this, our politicians regularly trot out the line that the ANZUS treaty is our safety net and the general public is totally deceived. Though the USA has regularly made it clear to Australian Defence and to our politicians that if Taiwan is attacked and the US goes in to defend that they expect us to be there too. Doesn't seem to be in our interests to get involved as far as I can see and NZ has survived quite well despite bullying from the USA and without the "vital" intelligence. Certainly, the CIA didn't warn NZ about the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by the French. [An aside here.... a good friend of mine who lived for a considerable time in France was amazed at the nonchalance of the French people to the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior AND to the nuclear tests in the atmosphere in Tahiti. Clearly public opinion is a very poor guide to morality ....or is easily manipulated by propaganda and jingoism}.
I was not really aware of all the subtleties of the the US listening (and signalling) posts in Australia. Not surprising really because the USA takes pains not to tell Australians what they are up to. But it seems that the NW Cape site is used for communicating with US Submarines and monitoring space satellites and Pine Gap is a major listening post for scooping up ALL communications (including all the phone calls made on my iphone). It seems we can thank Edward Snowdon for informing us about this. And having these American "assets" in Australia clearly makes us a target in a situation where there is conflict between China and the USA ....or probably the USA and any other country.
In exchange for hosting these secret "assets"..... which are controlled by Americans we are supposed to be consulted etc., (often hasn't happened) and we are parties to the five eyes swapping of military intelligence. It seems that, under the guise of secrecy, that the secret services of the 5 eyes often have more in common with each other than they do with their own governments. They have conspired to withhold information from Governments (eg Whitlam's Labour Govt.) and taken political stances when they should be totally a-political. And, of course, when secrecy is valued above all, the participants lose sight of reality and where their loyalties should lie. They are often driven (or managed) by people with serious personality defects ...who thrive on excessive secrecy.
One of the take-aways that I have from the book is that there is actually a real cost to secrecy and the scanty benefits may just not be worth the downsides. One practical issue that I recall from my days in Govt was that if somebody classified a document as secret (nearly always an over-classification) it had to be filed in a massive safe and not kept on the normal correspondence file.(Or the whole file had to be marketd secret ...with 99.9% of the material not being secret. So that if you read the normal correspondence you would be unaware of this other secret document .......and would not have the full picture. And the ratio of unclassified to classified where I worked was about 1000:1. (Maybe much higher). So a classified document was almost guaranteed not to be remembered or have any impact. I imagine that in other organisations such as ASIO that they "classify" all their correspondence as a matter of course ...so it would be on the relevant subject file but at the cost of 95% of the correspondence being administrivia or stuff that was in the "New Straits Times" or equivalent. Not sure how they are storing classified emails etc., today....presumably with passwords or face images but the basic issue remains the same.
And then you start to run into the issue that Daniel Ellsberg warned Henry Kissinger about:....once you have access to the secret briefings you believe that you have greater knowledge than every body else (despite the information being inaccurate and omitting much of relevance) and you become incapable of learning from people with great knowledge and experience. (Kissinger fell into the trap).
Toohey deals in depth with the British use of Australian sites for nuclear testing and for testing of missiles. The take-aways here are that The British and our own politicians and defence personnel were ignorant, deceptive, and complicit in covering up the problems of fall-out when it became known. And Australia was regarded with contempt by the British despite the attempts to curry favour with them (the British) by our officials.
There is some discussion about the role of the CIA in bringing down Whitlam ....and certainly John Kerr was briefed on a a CIA threat to withdraw intelligence information from Australia in the days before Kerr sacked Whitlam. One thing I found interesting was Toohey's comment that that "the United States could have used another clandestine agency such as Naval Intelligence Unit Task Force 157, which John Walker told me was doing something in Sydney and Melbourne while he was CIA station chief in Australia, but he didn’t know what it was". So another clandestine US organisation where even the CIA were out of the picture. And I haven't heard much about this particular organisation.
The author clearly has a low opinion of Sir Arthur Tange the notoriously self-important and abrasive head of Defence (and, for a long while the Secretary of the Department of External Affairs). He clearly had an exaggerated view of the importance of the intelligence feed from the USA; he mislead or lied to Whitlam about the Pentagon running Pine Gap (instead of the CIA), and certainly had the view that the Mandarins in the public service were more important than the elected politicians. (This view extended right through the ranks of the public service, as I recall. We were there for the long haul whilst the 'pollies' would probably be out of office in 3 years time). Though, in fairness to Tange, he managed to draw the various independent (and feuding) arms of the services together under the one management....presumably critical to our defence but no easy task with the myopic leadership and rank and file of the defence organisations. Toohey also has a low opinion of Julia Gillard's contributions ...and her kow-towing to the USA, her apparent belief that the ANZUS treaty meant the USA was obliged to defend Australia. I'm inclined to agree with Toohey on this and would add that Gillard's disastrous "give-away" of Australian gas and energy resources to multinationals hardly adds to her lustre. I was also always mystified at her over-the top support for Israel and can only attribute it to the power of the local/international lobby groups...but maybe she had access to some "secret" intelligence!
I think Toohey does us a good service when he draws attention to the over-reactions to the 11th Sept incident in the USA ....both with the invasion of Afghanistan and the passing of wholly unnecessary repressive laws to (supposedly) aid in the "war" against terrorism. As Toohey points out we now have 75 new laws against murder. We didn't need these. As Saul Eslake is quoted as saying: ‘I’m old enough to remember that one of the reasons why we could be sure during the Cold War that the Soviets were the “bad guys” was because they were the ones who tapped their citizens’ phones and read their mail, who could arrest their citizens without charge and detain them indefinitely without needing to prove them guilty of any crime—and “we”, by contrast, did not do any of those things … Now we do.’
And former MI5 head, Eliza Manningham-Buller said in her Reith Lectures, ‘I have never thought it helpful to refer to a “war” on terror, any more than to a war on drugs. For one thing that legitimises the terrorists as warriors … What happened was a crime and needs to be thought of as such.’ It is ironic that John Howard enthusiastically signed up to George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’, while simultaneously curtailing freedom in Australia.
I rather like the comments by Melbourne Academic Chris Berg:...."the debate over national security powers is always held under a veil of ignorance...and western governments have repeatedly lied about their own national security actions and have kept hidden evidence of their own wrongdoing". He argued that ‘Any proposal by the government to increase its own power should be treated with scepticism. Double that scepticism when the government is vague about why it needs extra powers. Double again when those powers are for law and order. And double again every time the words “national security” are used.’ As Toohey comments: Many politicians and journalists simply assume that a ‘Top Secret’ stamp always transforms dross into gold. Respected economist Saul Eslake says, ‘When it comes to matters of “security” any idea of close scrutiny or proper appraisal seems to go entirely out the window.’
Any critical analysis of Australia's role in wars risks strong reprisals. I've noticed that ANZAC day has become more sacred than Christmas day and the RSL and the services are spending huge amounts of money ensuring that school kids are aware of the sacrifices their forebears made in defending our "freedom". Kids are being taken, fully-funded, to commemoration ceremonies at Gallipoli and scholarships being handed out to commemorate the battle of Long Tan in Vietnam. The reality, as Toohey bravely points out is that since around 1885 Australians have had contingents fighting in 13 wars...only one, a war of necessity: (presumably the war against the Japanese in WWII...though even here one can argue that Australia adopted hostile, clumsy and rarely coherent policies towards Japan after WWI... and PM Billy Hughes publicly humiliated the Japanese representative at the postwar Paris peace conference). And kids today have been raised to be proud of the roles their forebears played at Gallipoli in defending Australia; As Toohey says: "They weren’t defending Australia: they were helping to invade Turkey, a country that posed no threat to us". But Julia Gillard (again), in a speech in 2011 called our participation in the colonial wars a ‘test of wartime courage and character’ that had helped define our nation. She said in the same speech, ‘We live in a free country, and in a largely free world, only because the Australian people answered the call when the time of decision came.’ The extravagance of Gillard’s rhetoric was rivalled only by her ignorance. Behind the scenes, governments in Australia routinely conspired to get involved in various overseas conflicts (Iraq, Vietnam, etc., because a "khaki-election" helped their chances of being elected. Ok blame the ignorance of the general population but what were our press and our leaders doing........generally falling over themselves to get involved in a war......that has always ended up with a very bitter price paid in those killed and injured and post war trauma. Also, the actual behaviour of our troops in the various wars has not been exemplary.
Of course, Toohey just starts to come to grips with the current rhetoric about the rise of China and the threat that this poses to Australian Sovereignty ....and riding on the back of this rhetoric....the narrative that we need to embrace the USA even more fervently and imbed our staff in their vessels (and submarines)...and equip ourselves with American "assets" and combat systems....ensuring that we have no independence to choose. No prime minister should proclaim, as Malcolm Turnbull did in 2017, that Australia is militarily ‘joined at the hip’ to the US.
The rise of China is inevitable but, as Toohey says," Australia’s national security establishment, however, refuses to welcome China’s rise. It wants to damage China’s economy, although this would make Australia worse off economically but no safer. Australia’s two-way trade with China was worth over $ 183 billion in 2017—more than the total with Japan, the US and India. The most likely outcome is that China will be the dominant power in its immediate region, and India and Indonesia will be increasingly powerful in their neighbourhoods. China will have no motive to invade Australia and probably not the military capability for decades. It won’t be able to dominate Europe or North America".
As for relying on the USA, it's worth noting that Congressional Research Service study shows that the US has used force [against another country] 160 times since 1991. And the CIA [was involved] in some 900 foreign interventions over the past two decades according to US journalist and historian, Taylor Branch.
I must say that I'm with Toohey when he says that "To keep Australians safe, political leaders should avoid participating in wars that pose no direct threat to the nation". And also his suggestion. "In the meantime, we should restore diplomacy to the pinnacle of our foreign relations, while maintaining forces to deter and, if necessary, defeat aggressive military action against the nation".
Just one other observation on secrecy. I've read a few books recently on secret societies and secret wisdom. It seems to me that the modus operandi of all of these sort of organisations is for the leaders to claim that they have access to secret information. (The Mason, Rosicrucians, Alchemists, and the Scientologists are just two examples.....and as you get promoted up the structure (based on loyalty etc) you are given access to increasing levels of these secrets. But the testimony of people who have risen to the highest levels is that these esoteric secrets are rubbish or just crazy...yet people continue to get sucked in.....after all..."maybe they do have this information"...How would you know otherwise. Other secret societies like the Mafia, the thugees, Triads and Tongs all seem to operate on a similar pyramidal structure where the information is maybe not esoteric but loyalty is always upwards and instructions are to be carried out through violence or other means and discipline is enforced by violence. A lot of secret societies seem to rely on clan or family or racial ties. But secrecy protects them from the law...and, in many instances, from each other. But they are rarely forces for the good of the larger community.
As I said at the beginning of this review, I think this is an important book. And I've only skimmed the contents here. I suspect Toohey might be embellishing his role in some of the exchanges described ....though he's undoubtedly been in the box seat to observe what's been going on in Government and Defence-Security circles in Australia for many years. And you don't have to rely on Toohey to observe that our freedoms have been massively circumscribed by anti-terrorism laws, and see the erosion of our independence as our leaders have embraced and enthused about AUKUS and nuclear submarines for Australia.
Easily worth five stars. I hope that it garners a wide readership because I know that even many of my very well read and informed friends actually believe that the secret intelligence the govt has access to is "gold" and that China is a threat (meaning...likely to invade us). And we actually need to embrace the USA for our defence. All, untrue.
… (mer)
 
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booktsunami | Apr 1, 2023 |

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