'A Sea of Billionaires & Millionaires'

And "two prime ministers in heated agreement."
"A sea of billionaires & millionaires"
And "two prime ministers in heated agreement."
"A sea of billionaires & millionaires"
And "two prime ministers in heated agreement."

"In front of six billionaires and 450 of Australia's business and political elite, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday heralded a new era of closeness between Israel and Australia... Six billionaires - Gina Rinehart, Harry Triguboff, Solomon Lew, John Gandel, Jeanne Pratt and her daughter Fiona Geminder - watched the leaders plight their troth commit to closer relations between the two countries.

"But somewhere among the sea of billionaires and millionaires there was an elephant in the room. The concept of a two-state solution was barely mentioned - Mr Netanyahu did not refer to it at all, while Mr Turnbull made only a passing reference to it... At the top table Mr Netanyahu was flanked on one side by Mr Turnbull and on the other by former PM John Howard. Mr Turnbull showed some cross-party magnanimity to usher Labor's justice spokesman Mark Dreyfus to meet Mr Netanyahu. Opposite Mr Netanyahu were Scott Morrison, businessman David Gonski, Ms Geminder and Mark Leibler, the national chairman of the Australia-Israel & Jewish Affairs Council [AIJAC], who was the event's master of ceremonies... 'This is not happening in the US or Europe, [he said], where leaders hop in and out - it's happening in Australia.'

"Bill Shorten was present, seated between [AIJAC's] Colin Rubenstein and Mr Lew. The head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation [ASIS], Nick Warner, was also a guest... Others present included businessmen Albert Dadon, David Gonski and Barry Smorgon, NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and Sam Lipski... the chief executive of the Pratt Foundation. Key leaders of the Jewish community were present, including Peter Wertheim from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry [ECAJ] and Danny Lamm from the Zionist Federation of Australia [ZFA]... The two prime ministers were on heat in heated agreement." (Colour me Aussie, leader tells the faithful, John Lyons, The Australian, 23/2/17)

"This is not happening in the US or Europe... it's happening in Australia."
"This is not happening in the US or Europe... it's happening in Australia."
"This is not happening in the US or Europe... it's happening in Australia."

Unlovable Rogues

Monday's 7.30 Report:

Leigh Sales, Presenter: The furore over Australia's spying activities overseas has taken a new turn today with revelations of potential domestic spying here at home on Australian soil. A new document dating from 2008, purportedly from American whistleblower Edward Snowden, appears to show Australia's surveillance agency, then known as the Defence Signals Directorate, discussing the idea of sharing data collected about Australian citizens with its overseas counterparts.

Carl Ungerer, Security Analyst: Australians have to understand that the Australian Signals Directorate is operating within Australian law and doing so for the direct benefit of Australia's national security. The idea that they're a rogue agency out there collecting in inappropriate ways should be anathema to anyone who understands national security.

Tuesday's 7.30 Report:

Leigh Sales: As we go to air tonight, there are reports that ASIO has raided the office of the Canberra-based lawyer who claims Australia bugged the East Timorese cabinet during sensitive negotiations about a billion-dollar gas deal. For the first time there's a hint as to who provided the information that's the basis for that case, with the East Timor lobby claiming a retired Australian spy who acted as a whistleblower was arrested today.

Frank Brennan, Law Faculty, Aust. Catholic Uni: It seems that yesterday, 15 ASIO agents descended on the home and office of Bernard Collaery... conducted a very ruthless search... and took away everything which is germane to this case. There was also a visit made to the home of the prime witness for the Timorese and these proceedings, a retired ASIS agent. He and his wife were detained and he was questioned for some time. Whether or not he was arrested, I am not apprised of that information. But I can tell you that on Thursday these proceedings were to begin at the Hague with the arbitration. And the understanding was that the parties were to determine how to deal with the witnesses, particularly this key whistleblower, the allegation of the Timorese being that this whistleblower is able to provide credible, direct evidence of the bugging of the cabinet room and that that was done for commercial gain and would require the approval not only of the Director-General of Intelligence but of the requisite Australian Minister.

Today's 7.30 Report:

Conor Duffy, Reporter: Under the guise of an aid program for the impoverished country, a spy from the ASIS slipped into Dili. Far from helping out, he was there to bug the East Timorese cabinet, the room where the negotiating team talked tactics... The spy has now revealed all and is the star witness for an East Timorese legal action in The Hague to have the billion-dollar treaty scrapped... 7.30 has part of his crucial affidavit, which says that the then head of ASIS instructed him to plant a listening device in East Timor on the orders of then ASIS head and now ASIO boss, David Irvine... Yesterday, ASIO launched a pre-emptive strike, raiding Mr Collaery's home and office just before the hearings in The Hague, which start on Thursday... They also raided the ASIS whistleblower, seizing his passport and cancelling it, effectively stopping him from backing up his affidavit with oral evidence... Today, Attorney-General George Brandis rejected suggestions the raids were designed to hobble East Timor's case.

Prisoner X 3: How Dumb Are We?

Apart from the inevitable fascination with the reason for Prisoner X's incarceration and suicide/murder in Israel's top security prison, at least 4 other aspects of the case should give us pause for thought. In this post I'll discuss the two I consider to be of lesser importance, leaving the other two for the next post.

To begin with the least important, consider this extract from Fairfax Middle East correspondent Ruth Pollard's 14/2/13 report Strange fate of Benji, the suspected spy:

"It is believed Mr Zygier travelled back to Australia in 2009 to attend Monash University, where he was doing an MBA... A source observed him over several days sitting with a group of students from Saudi Arabia and Iran at the university's Caulfield campus. The source said: '[Australian Taxation Office] records from 2008 show that he applied for and was approved a HECS loan for postgraduate studies at Monash University where he is currently [November 2009] studying."

In light of the current HECS debt of $6.2 billion dollars* it's appropriate to ask whether Ben Zygier, or whatever name he'd been using at the time, had discharged his debt to the Australian taxpayer before returning to Israel. If not, the Australian taxpayer surely has a right to know that he/she is unwittingly funding the education/work of Mossad operatives and to ask the classic question: How dumb are we then?

[*See Lost HECS debt $6.2bn, & rising, Andrew Trounson & Christian Kerr, The Australian, 21/1/13.]

Next, consider the following data from the same report:

"Each of the men had travelled back to Australia separately to change their names and obtain a new passport, two intelligence sources said... One man had changed his name 3 times, with others having changed theirs twice, the source said, from names that identified them as European-Jewish to ones that were Anglo-Australian. The men had used the new passports to travel to Iran, Syria and Lebanon..." 

Now that was back in the last decade when ASIO, which, according to Pollard, "won't comment," was supposedly "investigating" these 3 dual Australian-Israeli citizens.

So what, if anything, has been the result of ASIO's investigation? Is any member of the government aware of its findings? If not, why not? If so, what steps have been taken/are being taken to ensure that this blatant abuse of our passport system by foreign agents does not continue?

And beyond that, there's the question of whether, in light of this, it is really in the national interest for our intelligence agencies - ASIO and ASIS - to be in bed with Mossad, a matter dealt with in my 29/5/10 post All the Way With Mossad?

Surely too, this particular aspect of the Prisoner X case, warrants a reiteration of the above classic question: How dumb are we?

Prisoner X 2

The latest developments:

"An Australian diplomat knew that Melbourne man Ben Zygier was being held in an Israeli prison before he died in his cell, the government has admitted amid explosive reports that Mr Zygier was a Mossad agent known as 'Prisoner X'. Foreign Minister Bob Carr was forced into an embarrassing backflip on Wednesday as he ordered his department to investigate the Zygier case. His office was forced to correct earlier claims that the Australian embassy in Tel Aviv knew nothing of the case until after Mr Zygier died in prison in December 2010 when his family - a prominent Jewish family in Melbourne - asked for his body to be repatriated. In a revelation that raises questions about the extent of the Australian government's knowledge, Senator Carr's spokesman said an Australian diplomat - who was not the ambassador - was aware that Mr Zygier, 34, was being held by Israeli authorities... His father, Geoffrey Zygier, executive director for B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission, did not comment on Wednesday... Zygier's death in 2010 was met with more than a dozen condolence notices in the Australian Jewish News. These included notices from Monash University, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, the Beth Weizmann Community Centre, the Jewish Holocaust Centre, and the National Council of Jewish Women. None would comment yesterday." (Australian diplomat 'aware Zygier being held', David Wroe & Ruth Pollard, The Age, 14/2/13)

"When Ben Zygier died in a maximum-security prison in Israel he was under investigation by the spy agency ASIO, which suspected him of using his Australian passport to spy for Israel, Fairfax Media can reveal. Benji, as he was known by those close to him in Jerusalem's Jewish community, reacted angrily when Fairfax Media confronted him in early 2010 with allegations that he was working for the Israeli security agency Mossad. 'Who the f..k are you?' an incredulous Mr Zygier told Fairfax's then Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis. 'What is this total bullshit you are telling me?' He expressed shock at the suggestion he was under any kind of surveillance and said that he had also changed his name for personal reasons. 'I have never been to any of those countries that you say I have been to,' Mr Zygier said. 'I am not involved in any kind of spying. That is ridiculous.' 'He was at first angry, then exasperated that I wouldn't accept his denials at what I was putting to him,' Koutsoukis said. 'He told me that he was like any other Australian who had made aliyah and was trying to make a life in Israel.'

"Fairfax Media spoke to Mr Zygier after learning that ASIO was investigating at least 3 dual Australian-Israeli citizens who had all emigrated to Israel in the previous decade. ASIO would not comment. On Wednesday the agency again refused to comment. Each of the men had travelled back to Australia separately to change their names and obtain a new passport, two intelligence sources said at the time in Koutsoukis's story... The man had changed his name 3 times, with others having changed theirs twice, the source said, from names that identified them as European-Jewish to ones that were Anglo-Australian. The men had used the new passports to travel to Iran, Syria and Lebanon - all countries that do not recognise Israel and do not allow entry to Israelis, or anyone else with an Israeli stamp in their passport... It is believed Mr Zygier travelled back to Australia in 2009 to attend Monash University... along with his Ben Zygier identity, he also used Ben Alon, Ben Allen and Benjamin Burrows... Since 2006, Monash University has been involved in education in Middle Eastern countries... It is well known that Israel approached immigrants to assist Israel by handing over their passports, an Israeli intelligence expert told Fairfax Media in 2010. It is understood the ASIO investigation into Mr Zygier and the other 2 men began at least 6 months before the January 10, 2010 assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, widely believed to have been carried out by Mossad using passports obtained from Australia and Europe." (Strange fate of Benji, the suspected spy, Ruth Pollard, Sydney Morning Herald, 14/2/13)

The Sixth Eye

These are the two opening paragraphs of Fairfax scoop Intelligence world rocked by charge against Canadian:

"An alleged Canadian spy compromised Australian intelligence information in an espionage case that has sent shock waves through Western security agencies. The alleged sale of top secret intelligence to Russian agents by naval officer Jeffrey Paul Delisle has been the subject of high-level consultation between the Australian and Canadian governments and was discussed at a secret international conference of Western security agencies in New Zealand this year." (Philip Dorling, Sydney Morning Herald, 25/7/12)

OK, but what interested me most about Dorling's "exclusive" were these words:

"Sub-lieutenant Delisle worked at the Royal Canadian Navy's Trinity intelligence and communications centre at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Much of the information he allegedly sold was much more highly classified than the WikiLeaks cables and included top secret intelligence collected by the 'Five Eyes' intelligence community of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand."

Only 5 eyes, Philip?

Not according to Israeli intelligence expert and Haaretz journalist, Yosi Melman:

"A third role [of Mossad] was to maintain secret, clandestine but very vital and useful contacts with its counterparts, whether it's... ASIO or... the CIA or...M16... And they have developed over the years very, very intimate relations, sharing information and... assessments and even, nowadays, going into the field, enjoying the operations in the war against global terrorism." (The Mossad, Rear Vision, 24/3/10)

You can read the full excerpt in my 28/3/10 post Up To Our Necks. See also my 29/5/10 post All the Way With Mossad?)

Those Were the Days My Friend

"Australia's foreign spy agency has closed 6 of its international intelligence stations in 8 months, including the crucial Baghdad post, despite pleas from the US to keep it open... In recent years Baghdad has been [the] Australian Secret Intelligence Service's largest station and has played a vital role in the collection of foreign intelligence... ASIS was formed in 1952 with a staff of 9 and a budget of 218,000 [pounds]. It collects overseas intelligence through the cultivation of foreign sources - 'agents' - and other forms of espionage. But in recent years some of the agency's stations have done less spying and more liaising between the government and the American and British intelligence agencies, which run many agents in the Middle East. Like the other 5 intelligence agencies in Australia, ASIS was rescued from gradual decline by the events of September 11, 2001. It has grown by 344% since then from a budget of $54 million in 2001-2002 to $240 million in 2010-2011, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute." (Spy bases shut down to 'save money', Dylan Welch, Sydney Morning Herald, 20/11/10)

Ah, yes, the Baghdad post, shit... the liaising! What a buzz. Maaate, will we ever see its like again?:

"For a few wild months, the HVT Bar served as the secret social hub for American spies in Iraq. It opened without fanfare late one night in early May 2003, shortly after the American-led invasion, in a distant corner of the newly captured Saddam Hussein International Airport. The saloon was dark and dingy, hidden in a grubby two-room guardhouse. Inside, a brace of captured Iraqi grenade launchers and assault rifles adorned one world, like souvenir hockey sticks in a sports bar. Lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows, and hard rock pounded from speakers. The air buzzed with backslapping camaraderie and whispers of intrigue; it smelled of rank sweat and cigarette smoke. The liquor was cheap, the beer ice-cold, and the white wine, by all accounts, the color and taste of camel piss. It was a dive of distinction.

"Few outsiders knew of the HVT Bar and, given the location, fewer still could get in. This was no surprise. It was the Central Intelligence Agency's private nightspot. The speakeasy pulsed in the heart of the Baghdad station, the CIA's newest overseas base and the center of a surreal secret world.

"The agency had decided to build the station, as it called its major outposts, in the airport compound previously reserved only for 'Very, Very Important Persons', meaning Saddam Hussein. The tyrant had not dared leave Iraq during his reign. But he built a majestic domed reception hall and opulent marble outbuildings to mark rare visits from Arab royalty and heads of state. The CIA, unchallenged rulers of the global intelligence netherworld, chose the regal VVIP complex as the spoils of a war for which it was largely responsible.

"Work bustled on all sides those first few weeks. Looters still ran free elsewhere in Iraq, ransacking ministries and pillaging factories. But inside the guarded CIA compound, technicians planted a lush high-tech jungle of antennas and satellite dishes. They uncoiled power lines and communications cables like tendrils across the gravel. Crews rushed to renovate offices and warehouses, kicking up thick clouds of dust. Late one afternoon, Army demolition experts destroyed a cache of Iraqi munitions discovered in concrete bunkers down the road. But they miscalculated badly and the deafening explosions shattered the panoramic windows in the VVIP lounge and sent people diving for cover. The plate glass was quickly replaced, but a week or two later, overeager engineers blew the CIA windows into shards again. Such was the price of progress...

"The US intelligence budget is classified, but presumably somewhere in the estimated $45 billion that Washington spent that year on spying on its friends and enemies - far more than Germany, say, allocated for its entire national defense...

"The HVT Bar rarely opened before 11 pm. but several dozen hardworking spooks usually packed the after-hours saloon: case officers, weapons analysts, code breakers, safe-crackers, linguists, British and Australian operatives, and of course, the CIA's covert ops teams. Known as Secret Squirrels, they had roared around Iraq in pickup trucks before and during the invasion, scouting targets, causing havoc, and having a swell time.

"According to 'rumint', or rumors intelligence, more than one affair caught fire in the gloom at the HVT (far more salacious rumint focused on a senior CIA official spotted flagrante delicto in the executive garage back home; it was the talk of the agency). Most HVT regulars simply let off steam around a football table, liberated from somewhere in Baghdad, which appeared one night in the back room. It proved so exhilarating that a loaded football fan fired his loaded Glock pistol in the excitement, puncturing the wall and nearly another player...

"Contract security guys known as knuckle-draggers served as volunteer bartenders. Many were retired former field operatives who earned their chops and their pensions in the squalid streets of Somalia or Kosovo or a hundred other places. Some had even survived the cutthroat corridors of CIA headquarters back in Langley, Virginia. The agency had surged for the war in Iraq - alarms clanged battle stations, all hands on deck - and veteran troopers heeded the call. A CIA bar was an honored ritual in the agency's cultish lore, a trophy in every war. In Afghanistan, after CIA paramilitary forces helped oust the Taliban, the new Kabul station proudly partied at 'The Talibar'.

"The HVT stood for High Value Target, the video game euphemism that US authorities bestowed on those they most sought to capture or kill. In time, one could even buy a souvenir T-shirt at the bar. It read HVT BAR in bold black letters on the front and showed Saddam and 3 of his top aides, their grizzled faces fanned out as 4 aces, on the back. Pentagon wags had listed the 52 most wanted Iraqis like cards in a deck. But the joke quickly lost its punch. Most of the key cards, including Saddam, the Ace of Spades, still roamed at large.

"By early summer, hundreds of American, British, and Australian intelligence officers were swarming into Baghdad. The majority set up shop at Camp Slayer, a bizarre sprawl of Arabian nights palaces and Hieronymus Bosch bunkers across the airport from the CIA station. It was a wondrous place. Intelligence teams moved into marble guesthouses, lakeside cabanas, and a fabulous former whorehouse. They hauled in plush carpets, garish paintings, and gilded thrones, plundered from the dictator's former digs. Most of the hooches had no electricity, air-conditioning, or running water, and a creepy colony of bats blackened the sky at dusk. But early post-Saddam Iraq felt like a carnival, and it was grand." (Curveball: Spies, Lies, & the Man Behind Them: The Real Reason America Went to War in Iraq, Bob Drogin, 2007, pp xvii -xx)