8 June 2005

Mostly offtopic - China spy scandal

| johnboy
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Allow me to indulge myself for a moment but a lot of people here in Canberra appear to have been caught screwing the pooch.

The ongoing China spy scandal should be no surprise. It’s well known that the Chinese government conducts extensive operations in every country in which it can. I say this as a self-proclaimed Friend Of China.

But if any sort of competence existed in our security services, DIMIA, or DFAT, we would never have heard of any of this. All of those involved would have been in safe houses, undergoing de-briefing and in a few years would have been given a false passport.

But now the incompetence of those mentioned above are going to force this country to make decision we really don’t want to make.

As a society we deserve credit. No-where else in the world have members of the chinese diaspora been willing to grass on the motherland. It’s a screaming tragedy that our government lacked the wit or ability to deal with it properly.

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As a former DIMIA employee, may I say the Department does a tough job and isn’t loved by the rest of the APS (but we don’t swan about overseas and oogle the local lads, either)but most of the time came along ?)The Minister is a total pro, she’s tough and she doesn’t buckle whatever thrown at her (sometimes literally as when she had the Education portfolio (IMHO) – she was good in Justice and Customs and she’s doing her best with DIMIA. As for paterfamilias Cheng – how do we know he’s all that vaulable ? Does anyone remember Hawkie weeping in Parliament House after Tiananmen and the many many sons and daughters of CP cadres (in no danger at all if they went home) who decided to stay in Australia as “refugees”.

Given his position it would have needed months of de-briefing to decide on the validity of his information.

that obviously has not been done.

Media know what they are doing; but just don;t give a damn.

Don’t forget that this ‘secret agent’ went public at some sort of activists march in Sydney after DFAT had shown little interest in his story. If he’s f*cked now (from China/Australia; it really doesn’t matter)he only has himself to blame.

No sympathy at all.

As somebody who used to work on the ‘Command and Conquer’ side of the lake opposed to the ‘Simcity’ side, the reason he would have been john wested is cause they most probably already know about them..

Otherwise he would have been given a green card, possibly a housing commision house since they’re going cheap nowdays and a dictaphone ages ago..

It’s scary how our own media are the ones being allowed to f^ck us over though..

I bet they have no idea how much internal damage they’ve done already..

I agree. These defectors are hugely optimistic if they think the Australian Government will show them some sympathy.

Bigger interests are involved.

do not accept claims at face value.

there are sometimes reasons that defectors arent welcome.

these cases are analysed quite coldly.

big boys rules.

Absent Diane9:54 am 09 Jun 05

You are suprised that our government departments are failing???!!! I will agree that there is a far better work ethic – but due to all the protocol/red tape, ‘new found professional attitudes’ coupled with pseudo intellects – still very little actually happens and when it does it so hamstrung by all this above crap it is not done properly!!!

Its naive to think the Australian Government has not been assisting the Chinese spy network to some degree.

Samuel Gordon-Stewart11:34 pm 08 Jun 05

They must be the twisted, back-to-front, topsy turvey and around the other way spies (I guess I’m trying to say “Double agents who aren’t actually employed by the second party”…hmmm, both ways make very little sense…I need more coffee)

Samuel

Yeah, but the rare thing is guys who like your country so much they’ll tell you about thier own dudes.

exceedingly rare.

Samuel Gordon-Stewart11:23 pm 08 Jun 05

Spies shouldn’t be a suprise, I’m sure we have plenty of them overseas, in fact I’m sure that just about every country has at least one spy in just about every other country…big deal!

Samuel

For those who don’t live in spook-world the problem (one of many) is that now that it’s in the media everything these sources know is being degraded. As the chinese alter their procedures to avoid whater pitiful counter-intelligence we have left.

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