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Some questions about ‘The Boy from Poowong”

hiroshima-poowong-journalism — Image: Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945. Wikimedia.org, public domain

Bob’s taking a week off as we are booked to perform at a folk festival this weekend. More about that next week. It seemed the right time to give this contribution a run. Norm originally presented this as a talk to a U3A group in Brisbane. We thought it merited wider exposure as the subject is a journalist who reported vital news from the frontline yet was suspected of being a spy. This should remind us that the McCarthy era was alive and well in Australian in the 1950s.

By guest writer NORM BONIFACE

Who was the Australian journalist who married a German Jewess in London in 1938, had one child but was divorced after 10 years? He married again and had three more children who were refused Australian citizenship by Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

He was known for being the first western journalist to report from Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb, and for his reporting from “the other side” during the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

He began his journalism at the start of WW2, during which he reported from China, Burma and Japan and covered the war in the Pacific. After the war, he reported on the trials in Hungary, and later the Korean War, the Vietnam War and on Cambodia under Pol Pot.

The Australian national security department (Commonwealth Security Service, which became Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) in 1949), opened a file on his whole family in the 1940s. Australian security was concerned by his father’s interest in helping Jewish refugees in Melbourne, and his views on the Soviet Union and republican China. A document on his own file dated February 1944 noted:

“This man is a native of Poowong (a small dairy farming town in South Gippsland, Victoria) and his past life has been such that his activities are worth watching closely. He is an expert linguist and has travelled extensively. A comparatively young man who married a German Jewess with a grown family, he seldom misses an opportunity to speak and act against the interests of Britain and Australia.”

Other documents on his file show ASIO was concerned by his “scathing criticism of American imperialism”.*

* Described in Wikipedia these days as: “American imperialism consists of policies aimed at extending the political, economic and

cultural influence of the United States over areas beyond its boundaries. Depending on the commentator, it may include military conquest, gunboat diplomacy, unequal treaties, subsidization of preferred factions, economic penetration through private companies followed by intervention when those interests are threatened, or regime change.”

He is in the Melbourne Press Club’s Hall of Fame, principally because he was the first correspondent to file from Hiroshima after the dropping of the atom bomb and described the effects of radiation sickness and death for the first time. His reports from Hiroshima were heavily censored in the United States, but they helped set the mood for a global era of nuclear deterrence.

The Australian government sent ASIO agents to Japan and Korea to collect evidence, but in early 1954, conceded it could not prosecute him.

In 1955 while overseas, he lost his passport (reported stolen). The Australian government refused to issue a replacement. Though born in Melbourne, Victoria he was refused re-entry to Australia and as a consequence became stateless. Successive Conservative Australian governments between 1949 and

1970 tried to construct a case to prosecute him, but were unable to do so. Cuba came to the rescue and provided him with a passport to permit international travel.

Around 1967, ABC journalist Tony Ferguson filmed an interview with him in Phnom Penh. It is reported that Ferguson said that the general manager of the ABC, Talbot Duckmanton, ordered its destruction.

The Australian government still refused him re-entry for his father’s (in 1969) and later his brother’s (in 1970) funerals. In 1970, attorney-general Tom Hughes admitted to prime minister John Gorton, that the government had no evidence against him. Hughes said that a prosecution for treason under the Crimes Act “cannot be mounted unless the war is a proclaimed war and there is a proclaimed enemy”, and the Australian government had not declared war in Korea or in Vietnam. (NB: Could a similar argument apply in Iraq and Afghanistan in relation to Julian Assange?)

It was not until the Whitlam government came to power in 1972 that he was permitted to return home. A documentary film including interviews with this journalist, entitled “Public Enemy Number One” by David Bradbury, was released in 1981. At the time the ABC refused to show the film. The film expressed the journalist’s views and was criticised in Australia for the coverage of “the other side” in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and posed the questions: “Can a democracy tolerate opinions it considers subversive to its national interest? How far can freedom of the press be extended in wartime?”

From a legal standpoint his lawyers argued that both of these wars were “undeclared”. In fact the former (civil war) remains an open conflict even today (2021).

“He will be remembered by many during the Cold War years as one of the more remarkable ‘agents of influence’ of the times, but by his Australian and other admirers as a folk hero.” – Dennis Warner, war correspondent and historian.

In 2011 Vietnam celebrated his 100th birthday with an exhibition of his work in the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi.

It is in no doubt that he was a controversial figure during the Cold War years. Some hated him and some loved him. Some said he was a spy in the pay of the Soviet KGB, a secret agent for the

Communist Chinese, North Koreans or North Vietnamese, or a clandestine communist “fellow traveller”. Others said he was an “agent of influence” for one or all of the above.

Or was he just a journalist who had strong views, who saw injustice and hardship, and criticised those he believed responsible for it?

Writing in The Australian in 2008, journalist Greg Lockhart described the previous governments’ actions as “a remarkable breach of the human rights of an Australian citizen” in which it “simply exiled him for 17 years” without any legal reason.

He died in Bulgaria in 1983 at age 72 years.

Wilfred Burchett (1911-1983).

Fifty years of Cabinet secrets and media leaks

Cabinet-secrets-media-leaks — The magnet to the left of “Cabinet secrets — keep locked’ reads ‘The more people I meet the more I like my dog”.

The Australian Federal Police ‘raids’ on the ABC and a lone News Ltd journalist have been taken to signal a new era of scrutiny when confidential government files are leaked to the media. The media has gone overboard on the ‘journalism is not a crime’ front. As a former journo, I have adopted the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) Facebook frame in solidarity. But it is interesting to learn that that on June 5, the AFP was unable to rely on the much-feared espionage and foreign interference laws. An AFP spokesman confirmed that the revised secrecy offences inserted into the Criminal Code did not apply as the ‘alleged conduct’ occurred before the new law was enacted (in late 2018). The same can be said of a separate ‘raid’ on the home of News Ltd journalist Annika Smethurst.

The AFP said in a statement there was no link between the Smethurst and the ABC search warrants, which relate to separate allegations of publishing classified material ‘contrary to the provisions of the Crimes Act 1914’.

Barrister Gray Connolly, commenting in his blog Strategy Counsel, argues that the events of June 5 hardly constituted a ‘raid’. Much like the time on February 1, 2018, when ASIO visited ABC headquarters in Brisbane and Sydney to retrieve classified documents which had ‘accidently’ ended up there, the ABC knew the authorities were coming. On June 5, AFP officers signed in at the ABC front counter and the search was conducted peacefully.

Connolly also argues that just as the media claims it has rights to publish in the public interest, the government has rights and indeed a moral obligation to protect secrets, particularly those applying to Defence matters. And he exposes the folly of media calls for a US-style Bill of Rights to protect journalists, pointing to successive US governments pursuing whistleblowers, itself a threat to press freedom.

Law lecturer Rebecca Ananian-Welsh of the University of Queensland argues that the raids on Australian media present a ‘clear threat to democracy’. Ananian-Welsh, writing for The Conversation, said these developments were hardly a surprise, given the expansion of national security laws, notably enhanced data surveillance powers and the ‘secrecy’ offences introduced in late 2018.

“The crackdown of the past few days reveals that at least two of the core fears expressed by lawyers and the media industry were well-founded: first, the demise of source confidentiality and, secondly, a chilling effect on public interest journalism.”

Former head of ASIO Dennis Richardson told ABC Radio that (government) agencies needed to be “cautious” about referrals to the AFP.

“If you refer a matter to the AFP they take control of that, and it goes where it goes – they drop some, they pursue others,” he said.

Richardson understood the emotional reaction to the raids, but said it was “misplaced” to suggest the AFP was trying to intimidate the media.

“It might have had the consequence of that, but everything I know about the AFP would lead me to believe that the AFP is not in the space of deliberately setting out to intimidate the media.”

Nevertheless, the new secrecy laws have teeth, even if so far they have not bitten anyone. In an unprecedented display of bipartisan muscle, 15 competing media outlets and the journalists’ union last year lodged a submission to Parliament attempting to circumvent the espionage and foreign interference laws. Media publishers unsuccessfully sought an exemption for working journalists and now have to rely upon a ‘public interest’ defence. The new laws expanded the definition of espionage to include mere possession of classified documents, rather than the old offence of ‘communicating’ secrets.

This arguably makes working journalists, researchers and indeed anyone who physically handles leaked documents vulnerable to prosecution. Journalists are also fearful of controversial laws introduced last year which allow authorities to co-opt telecommunications companies to assist them in their investigations.

It’s a long way from the unruly 1970s, when Canberra leaked like Tim Finn’s lyrical boat. Political journalists made free with Cabinet secrets and leaked confidential information, earning the 1970s the sobriquet “the Xerox era”. This was because so many of the leaked documents were photocopied and furtively passed on.

One notable leak was Mungo MacCallum’s detailed story in 1972 of Australia’s rising opposition to the Vietnam War. The story was based on highly classified cables recording the Whitlam government’s criticism of US bombing operations in Vietnam (and the US government’s response).

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Philip Dorling, in a 2013 feature about famous political leaks, explained how MacCallum was so careful to cover his tracks he flew from Canberra to Melbourne to deliver the story in person to his then employers, The Nation Review. As Dorling described it, the story was “the equivalent of a political and diplomatic hand grenade”. Dorling says MacCallum was interviewed by the Commonwealth Police (forerunner of the AFP), and asked to reveal his source and hand over the leaked documents. He did neither, telling Dorling the affair was investigated in a ‘desultory’ way. The source of the leak was never uncovered.

If there’s a point to this, MacCallum, 77, is still writing fearless commentary about Australian politics. Dorling, a senior writer who has himself been raided twice by Federal police, made this prophetic observation in April 2013:

“Given the pervasive use of electronic devices and the evidence they produce, it is probably only a matter of time before a journalist is prosecuted for the little-known federal offence of knowingly receiving an unauthorised disclosure of Commonwealth government information.”

There were no such constraints involved with the 20^th century’s biggest political scoop. In 1980, political journalist Laurie Oakes climbed his way to the top of the Canberra Gallery flagpole by publishing the entire Federal Budget, the day before PM John Howard was scheduled to table the document in Parliament. Oakes told The Drum how he delivered one of the biggest leaks in Australian media history.

“I had a copy in my hand for a total of 15 minutes and garbled into a tape and read the whole budget. Later I had to transcribe my own garble, which was quite difficult.”

Governments have themselves been to blame for unauthorised leaking. Last year secret Federal Cabinet files dating back 10 years were found in two old filing cabinets, bought from a second hand shop by an ACT farmer. The farmer handed the documents over to the ABC. After some judicious publication, ASIO ‘raided’ the ABC to secure the Cabinet secrets. The ABC subsequently negotiated the return of the documents.

An investigation by the AFP found there was no criminal or malicious intent involved as the department had simply ‘lost track of’ the files. While the AFP investigation was not made public, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Martin Parkinson reported the results of the AFP probe and released a review by former Defence Secretary Ric Smith, urging reforms to security measures.

Smith’s review, which seeks to prevent a repeat of accidental leaking, reveals much about the strengths and weaknesses of government protection of secret data. Not the least is difficulty in recruiting, retaining and training staff. Smith also warns of the potential for similar incidents to occur in every government department.

The more serious implications of accidental leaking are the risks for innocent outsiders being caught by the new secrecy laws. Consider this a warning, should you ever find confidential documents at the local tip.

FOMM back pages https://bobwords.com.au/keeping-cabinet-secrets-safe/

Keeping Cabinet secrets safe

Zounds, it’s only the ninth day of February and some records have been set, including the biggest ever accidental leaking of Cabinet secrets. In un-related news, the weather bureau said last Saturday (the 3^rd) was the coldest February day in 100 years. We didn’t have a fire on because we had no dry wood, but some Hinterland folks were better organised. BOM said it was 18 degrees but with the rain, fog and all-day and all night drizzle, it felt like 16.

Our New Zealand, Canadian and UK friends and relatives would no doubt scoff at 16-18 degrees being described as chilly. But this is the sub tropics after all, and a week earlier we were enduring temperatures in the mid-30s.

Although it was comparatively balmy in Canberra last weekend (25/10, 27/14), the atmosphere was decidedly chillier. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull turned up for the ABC’s Insiders programme on Sunday vowing that “heads would roll” over the accidental disposal of two filing cabinets full of Cabinet secrets.

The cabinets went to a Canberra second hand office furniture store and were purchased by a citizen who later drilled them open. The (Parliamentary) Cabinet papers dating back 10 years, many marked Top Secret or AUSTEO (Australian Eyes Only), were handed to the ABC. The national broadcaster published nine stories based on the Cabinet secrets over the following days before explaining how they came into the broadcaster’s possession. The ABC deemed some material too sensitive for publication because of national security issues.

In the meantime, Australia’s spy agency ASIO visited ABC headquarters in Sydney and Brisbane and negotiated secure storage for the documents and eventually reclaimed the Cabinet secrets.

Patrick Weller, Griffith University’s Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Governance and Public Policy, judged that the use of the papers by the ABC seemed random. “The ABC was probably aware they had limited time to play the story before it became public and everyone else jumped aboard,” he wrote in The Conversation.

“The story was more about the filing cabinets than the cabinet papers, about the carelessness rather than the content,” Prof. Weller said.

Prof. Weller argued that the leaking of (historical) Cabinet papers is not such a disaster for governments in that they are often time specific, advising about matters long forgotten and maybe even now seen as minor incidents.

As the rules go, historical Cabinet papers are made available after 30 years; once a year in January we get to see another batch. They make for interesting reading if you are a historian or a political academic, but rarely anything more than that. Prof Weller says most Cabinet papers could be released within five years. Only a few would matter.

International eyes on sloppy Aussies

Nevertheless, the story caught the attention of the world’s media and Australia’s international allies – the US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. The Washington Post commissioned a piece from Australian writer Richard Glover, who pithily summarised the Cabinet secrets affair as “Deep Drawers”.

As Glover observed, the key problem with the sale of unchecked government furniture is that anyone could have bought them, then handed their contents to a foreign agent or government.

He quoted Andrew Wilkie, a former intelligence analyst now sitting MP: “It sends a signal to our intelligence partners and allies that Australia might not be trustworthy when it comes to sharing information and intelligence with us.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Sunday the “shocking failure” would be fully investigated and the people responsible held accountable.

“The idea that public servants, entrusted with highly confidential documents, would put them in a safe, lock the safe, lose the keys, and then sell the safe without checking what was in it – it beggars belief,” he told Insiders

It’s not just governments. Forbes magazine guest writer Mark Emery, director of a document management company, cited examples of big organisations mishandling confidential data. They included paper documents from four hospitals in Massachusetts found un-shredded in a public dumping facility. Another hospital in the same state admitted that personal records of 800,000 people were “missing”.

In Dallas, Texas, prisoners on parole were allowed to work off community service hours by sorting and shredding confidential documents, such as birth certificates and medical records. The practice was scrapped in 2012.

Richard Glover mentions similar circumstances in the 1990s when diplomatic bags were sent to be laundered at Wandsworth prison in the UK. In 1991, Canada’s diplomatic bags (full of top-secret NATO documents) were mistakenly sent there too, and went missing soon after.

Mistakes happen, in business, in government and in our private lives. Who has not sent a sensitive email intended for one person to many people? The digital data system is just as prone to this kind of mishap as the traditional paper file system.

When computers first started becoming dominant in business (in the 1990s), we were sold the myth of the “paperless office”. Twenty years later, even a micro-business like mine goes through a couple of reams of paper per month. Most people I know who run any kind of consulting business buy a shredder and keep it working (don’t forget to take staples out first!)

Last year in Sydney and Melbourne there were reports of medical files and legal papers found dumped in unlocked kerbside recycling bins. When stories like this make it into the media, they should at least make individuals aware of the need for safeguarding sensitive information.

In the 1980s, I’d been court reporting in a country city for several years. I always archived my jumbo-size reporters’ notebooks – filled on both sides with untidy scrawl – a mix of shorthand and my unique form of notetaking. The second time we moved house, I looked at the four archive boxes full of musty notebooks and decided I had to get rid of them.

I found a waste recycling firm which offered “secure disposal”. They dropped off a big wheelie bin at my place, the lid secured with chains and a padlock. Once I’d filled it up, I called the firm and they picked up the bin. The firm assured me the notebooks would be “burned or pulped”. This exercise cost $75, but what a salve for my conscience. The majority of matters heard in court never make it into the news or are briefly summarised. More importantly, magistrates and judges may decide to supress reporting. There was an example of a district court trial where I took copious notes only to find out that the defendants’ and plaintiffs’ names could not be published. Later a blanket ban was issued and we couldn’t print anything. Notwithstanding, a good court reporter will write everything down – better to have too much than not enough.

So that’s why I was feeling suitably smug, all these years later, when the strange case of “Deep Drawers” hit the news. It’s hard enough to keep secrets secret in the era of digital ‘cloud’ storage, super hackers and whistle-blowers. But Richard Glover’s oblique reference to “Deep Throat” (nickname of the Watergate source), nevertheless reminds us that if we want to discard sensitive paper files, dispose of them as I did.

If that was all a little heavy for an early autumn Friday, here’s a few songs about February to help you cope with the cold (or the heat).

The list did not include February, a poignant tune by Dar Williams, but here it is anyway.