Global articles on espionage, spying, bugs, and other interesting topics.

ASIO Secrets Uncovered In Cold War Documentary

Courtesy of Throng…

I, SPRY, the dramatised documentary from the award-winning filmmaker of The Prime Minister is Missing and WhoKilled Dr Bogle and Mrs Chandler? uncovers ASIO’s intriguing history during the Cold War under enigmatic spymaster, Charles Spry.

In 1949, with a nuclear arms race set to escalate the Cold War, Prime Minister Menzies appoints Colonel Charles Spry to take charge of the fledgling Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, ASIO. The staunchly anti- communist, fifth-generation soldier recruits new officers to fight a covert war against a cunning enemy. Their primary task is to investigate Australians spying for the Soviets and infiltrate Communist Party branches with undercover agents.

The sensational 1954 defection of Soviet Embassy official, Vladimir Petrov, delivers Spry a great intelligence victory. But when a former ASIO officer appears in surveillance photographs, Spry soon finds himself in a place spies call, ‘the wilderness of mirrors’. Security threats appear to be everywhere – from the highest office in the land to within ASIO itself.

I, SPRY is based on recently declassified information, including Spry’s secret testimony at the 1974 Royal Commission into Intelligence and Security. It delivers a fresh, critical eye to ASIO’s early history – from its first fumbling counter-espionage operations to its evolution beyond government scrutiny and ultimately subversion of the democratic principles it is charged with defending.

A large cast, many of them Russian expatriates, brings to life the central events in this Australian spy history, like the exotic Russian Social Club in Sydney where Petrov first met undercover ASIO agent, Dr Michael Bialoguski.

Some scenes were filmed in the locations where they took place, including the ASIO apartment in Potts Point where Petrov was dined on oysters and beer before finally agreeing to defect.

The film uncovers previously untold stories in Australia’s political history, including Spry’s obsession with a group of former ASIO and Russian intelligence officers who meet regularly in the office of the Leader of the Opposition, Dr Herbert Evatt. The most surprising ASIO investigation centres on Liberal Prime Minister John Gorton at the height of the Vietnam War.

I, SPRY blends candid interviews of former intelligence officers with ASIO surveillance films. The most extraordinary footage documents a major counter-espionage investigation in the early 1960s that leads to the British Atomic Test site in South Australia. The subsequent expulsion of a senior Soviet official was sold as an ASIO success to both the government and the Australian public. But now is revealed as one of a string of security failures, failures that Spry discovers are due to KGB infiltration of ASIO. This marks the beginning of the master spy’s downfall.