Venona in Australia and its Long-term Ramifications

In: Journal of contemporary history, Volume 35, Issue 2, p. 231-248

Abstract

In March 1948, Sir Percy Sillitoe, Director-General of M15, flew to Australia to inform its Prime Minister, J.B. Chifley, that a spy ring had been detected operating out of the Soviet embassy in Canberra. The details Sillitoe produced were vague and no suspect could be arrested. Then chaos broke out. The Pentagon banned all information flowing to Australia: Australian/British/US relations became strained: the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) was established under the aegis of M15, but it failed to placate the USA; and the Chifley government lost the subsequent elections. What was behind these espionage sensations? The defection of the KGB man in Canberra, Vladimir Petrov, in 1954 was expected to produce the insider's exposé on local spying and although suspected spies were paraded, nothing happened. Then in 1996, everything was made clear. The US National Security Agency (NSA) released the Australian Venona papers, comprising the decrypted Soviet cables detailing the operation of this 1940s spy ring. They had been sealed in the NSA's most secret archives for 50 years to avoid compromising all Sigint (Signal intelligence) work. The exploration of these events by Australian historians has hitherto been handicapped by a lack of knowledge about the detail of this missing intelligence dimension. The revealing of that secret now provides the opportunity for these disjointed events to be viewed in their proper Cold War perspective. This article analyses the events from the aspect of what was known before the Venona releases and what can now be known of those same events.