Unclassified, official histories of secret intelligence organisations for public readership seem a contradiction in terms. The official works are commissioned by the agencies in question and directly informed by the agencies’ records, thus distinguishing them from outsider historical accounts.
But while such histories are relatively new, sometimes controversial, and often challenging for historians and agencies alike, the experiences of the Australian and British intelligence communities suggest they’re a promising development for scholarship, maintaining public trust and informed public discourse, and the functioning of national security agencies. Furthermore, these histories remain an ongoing project for Australia’s National Intelligence Community (NIC).
In May 2023 John Blaxland and Clare Birgin published Revealing Secrets, a project commissioned by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), cancelled in 2020 amid controversy, and continued without official backing by the authors. Less heralded was the publication three months earlier of the first volume of the original project’s replacement: John Fahey’s The Factory.
The ASD history was the latest in a string of single and multi-volume unclassified histories of Australian and British intelligence agencies published over the past two decades. The three-volume history of ASIO was released between 2014 and 2016.
The British experience with official intelligence histories began in the late 1970s, focused on World War II. This was a response to looming proliferation of (sometimes lurid and usually critical) unofficial histories of British intelligence, culminating in the spectacle of British government legal action to restrain publication of the book Spycatcher by former Security Service officer Peter Wright. Britain has now published official histories of the Security Service (MI5), Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, ASD’s counterpart), as well as a history of the interagency assessments and community leadership body, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
The latest report from ASPI’s Statecraft & Intelligence Centre, released today, analyses the experiences of the Australian and British intelligence communities in contemplating, planning for and executing these official history projects, with a view to informing future decision making, especially within Australia’s NIC.
Many challenges are identified, including inherent sensitivity of the subject matter, accentuation of typical historiographical challenges (not least due to the state of records held by operational agencies), the recent seismic shift to electronic generation and storage, and the critical question of trust (between agencies and partners who have shared sensitive secrets with them, between official historians and agencies who have engaged them, and within the history profession).
Also identified and weighed are various mitigations and techniques adopted to address these challenges—including particular approaches to information access, careful selection of what’s in and out (both topics and periods), defined review processes and use of intermediaries, and deployment of supporting historical materials.
The report concludes that these histories have proven valuable for explaining and building social licence for intelligence agencies’ work, honing and improving actual intelligence practice, recording social histories of these unique organisations, contributing positively to staff morale, and advancing historical scholarship on an important but previously obscured element of democratic statecraft.
There is also a broader point about history’s role in professionalisation of intelligence work, akin to that provided by professional military education.
There remain missing pieces in Australian official intelligence history: namely, accounts of the Australian Geospatial-intelligence Organisation (AGO), principal assessment agencies (Office of National Intelligence [ONI] and Defence Intelligence Organisation [DIO]) and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). In addition, there is a strong case for a fourth volume of ASIO’s history, to cover the 35 years since the third volume’s conclusion—especially given ASIO’s role in Australian security since the Sydney Olympic Games and the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.
The second volume of ASD’s official history is expected soon.
Official histories would bring AGO and the assessment agencies out of the shadows of their more prominent peers. For ASIS, publication of an official history, building on public statements and appearances made by successive directors-general since 2012, would be a chance to address persistent misunderstandings about this most secretive of organisations.
Moving forward, Australia’s intelligence agencies should engage proactively with the prospect of future official histories. As a first step, they should start scoping studies and engagement with professional historians (including on specific historical elements of agency activities more conducive to future release). A prime candidate to be the first mover would be ONI, since 2027 will be the 50th anniversary of the establishment of its predecessor, the Office of National Assessments. Furthermore, in its NIC leadership role ONI can marshal both classified and non-classified lessons learned in preparation of British and Australian intelligence histories so far (and in other government commissioned historical projects) and provide the space for a coordinated and supportive multi-agency approach to the future of Australia’s intelligence past.