12 June 2009

Old Moles with their feet up at the Commonwealth Club?

| johnboy
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Kiwi blog the New Zeal is having a poke and asking why the KGB files detailing their penetration of public servants here in Canberra remains suppressed when other countries have released the information and had a thorough clean out.

Mostly they’re sourcing an article by the cold warriors at The Australian:

    Voluminous KGB files were smuggled West in 1992 and published in two hefty volumes, totalling 1700 pages, by Allen Lane Penguin in 1999 and 2005. They deal with KGB operations in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as those behind the Iron Curtain. But there is a notable omission in these books: material dealing with KGB operations in Australia. Such material exists. It was sent by the British intelligence authorities to Canberra in September 1992 but has been suppressed.

    That should never have happened and should be remedied. What reason can there be for suppressing the entire file on Australia when so much was published about the rest of the world? Were the materials on Australia so bland and uninformative that they were deemed of no interest and consigned to the wastepaper bin? That would have been an absurd reason for suppressing them, but it plainly was not the case. Something quite substantial and unsettling is in the Australia file. That something must see the light of day.

So should we let sleeping dogs lie? Or do examples need to be made for the current generation of public servants?

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Oh, I thought they may have been, well, evil places. You know, where goblins and stuff live…

Are you referring to Tilleys?

Clown Killer2:46 pm 12 Jun 09

I’ve been in there. The KGB would run a much more interesting club I am sure.

You do know that they have targetted ‘young members’ functions. I understand that you have to be under 60 to get a look in.

I believe the evil, and slightly less evil locations on the map refer to a old thread about the potential location of a Data Centre [cough]powerstation[/cough].

I’ve been in there. The KGB would run a much more interesting club I am sure.

That said, I think that the reports were hidden so that they didn’t give away the Secret Bunker under LBG.

Clown Killer12:00 pm 12 Jun 09

Am I missing somthing. What’s this got to do with the Commonwealth Club? I’m worried now.

Hang em high!

David McKnight, in “Australian Spies and Their Secrets” (ISBN: 1863736611), painted the picture that if the KGB wanted copies of Western intelligence, they just needed to wait for either Britain or the US to share it with Australia.

AFAIK Australia never had any cleansing purge(admittedly it was both well before my time and in an apparatus I have no direct connection to).

Obviously, the people mentioned in the files are in charge of their release.

For efficiency reasons.

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