Suchergebnisse

This is the untold stories of espionage in Australia. In the wake of the Second World War and the realisation that the Soviet Union had set up extensive espionage networks around the world, Australia responded by establishing its own spy-hunting agency- ASIO. By the 1950s its counterespionage activities were increasingly supplemented by attempts at countersubversion-identifying individuals and organisations suspected of activities that threatened national security. In doing so, it crossed the boundary from being a professional agency that collected, evaluated and transmitted intelligence, to a sometimes politicised but always shadowy presence, monitoring not just communists but also peace activists, scientists, academics, journalists and writers. The human cost of ASIO's monitoring of domestic dissenters is difficult to measure. It is only through recovering the hidden histories of personal damage inflicted by ASIO on both lawful protesters and, in some cases, its own agents, that the extent can be revealed. By interrogating the roles of eight individuals intimately involved in the conduct of the Cold War, and drawing on many years of research, this book shines a powerful new light on the history of ASIO and raises important and enduring questions about the nature and impact of a state's surveillance of its citizens

This is the untold stories of espionage in Australia. In the wake of the Second World War and the realisation that the Soviet Union had set up extensive espionage networks around the world, Australia responded by establishing its own spy-hunting agency- ASIO. By the 1950s its counterespionage activities were increasingly supplemented by attempts at countersubversion-identifying individuals and organisations suspected of activities that threatened national security. In doing so, it crossed the boundary from being a professional agency that collected, evaluated and transmitted intelligence, to a sometimes politicised but always shadowy presence, monitoring not just communists but also peace activists, scientists, academics, journalists and writers. The human cost of ASIO's monitoring of domestic dissenters is difficult to measure. It is only through recovering the hidden histories of personal damage inflicted by ASIO on both lawful protesters and, in some cases, its own agents, that the extent can be revealed. By interrogating the roles of eight individuals intimately involved in the conduct of the Cold War, and drawing on many years of research, this book shines a powerful new light on the history of ASIO and raises important and enduring questions about the nature and impact of a state's surveillance of its citizens.

"Set against a backdrop of mounting anti-communism, Red Apple documents the personal, physical, and mental effects of McCarthyism on six political activists with ties to New York City. From the late 1940s through the 1950s, McCarthyism disfigured the American political landscape. Under the altar of anticommunism, domestic Cold War crusaders undermined civil liberties, curtailed equality before the law, and tarnished the ideals of American democracy. In order to preserve freedom, they jettisoned some of its tenets. Congressional committees worked in tandem, although not necessarily in collusion, with the FBI, law firms, university administrations, publishing houses, television networks, movie studios, and a legion of government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels to target "subversive" individuals. Exploring the human consequences of the widespread paranoia that gripped a nation, Red Apple presents the international and domestic context for the experiences of these individuals: the House Un-American Activities Committee, hearings of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, resulting in the incarceration of its chairman, Dr. Edward Barsky, and its executive board; the academic freedom cases of two New York University professors, Lyman Bradley and Edwin Burgum, culminating in their dismissal from the university; the blacklisting of the communist writer Howard Fast and his defection from American communism; the visit of an anguished Dimitri Shostakovich to New York in the spring of 1949; and the attempts by O. John Rogge, the Committee's lawyer, to find a "third way" in the quest for peace, which led detractors to question which side he was on. Examining real-life experiences at the "ground level," Deery explores how these six individuals experienced, responded to, and suffered from one of the most savage assaults on civil liberties in American history. Their collective stories illuminate the personal costs of holding dissident political beliefs in the face of intolerance and moral panic that is as relevant today as it was seventy years ago"--

During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critical importance. They exposed and neutralised hundreds of Soviet agents who had penetrated government departments and democratic institutions. Stretching from Anatoli Granovsky in 1946 to Oleg Gordievsky in 1985, these Soviet defectors were highly prized for the intelligence they provided to security services. Ranked amongst the most valuable at the time was Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov, who defected in Sydney in 1954. Yet he, almost alone, has overwhelmingly been cast by commentators and historians as lazy, inefficient, and incompetent. This article will offer an alternative interpretation of Petrov. My argument has three prongs. First, Petrov's contact with Russian individuals and pro‐Soviet political organisations in Australia was far more extensive than generally assumed. Second, contrary to the historiographical consensus, he withheld intelligence about his contacts and informants from his security service debriefers. Third, rather than Petrov seeing espionage as too dangerous, as suggested, he was a committed and active Soviet intelligence cadre. By reappraising Petrov, the article seeks to provide a fresh understanding of this key episode, the Petrov Affair, in Australia's Cold War history.

This historical note examines the role of a witness-informer at the 1954–55 Royal Commission on Espionage. That witness was Clarence William Dakin, an individual overlooked by historians, and his background, testimony and motivations are discussed. As with ex-communists in the USA during McCarthyism, who successfully incriminated their former comrades, ASIO expected his evidence would prove explosive. However, he dashed the hopes of ASIO, disappointed the royal commissioners and discredited himself. This note provides an insight into the rare use of witness-informers during Australia's Cold War.

The Cold War: A World History. By Odd Arne Westad (London: Allen Lane, 2017), pp. 710. £30.00.

Red Professor: The Cold War Life of Fred Rose. By Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2015), pp.ix + 368. AU$39.95 (pb).