From: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 94 10:18:36 PST
To: ianf@sydney.sgi.com (Ian Farquhar)
Subject: Re: Security Services
In-Reply-To: <9411301438.ZM9135@wiley.sydney.sgi.com>
Message-ID: <199411301817.KAA21274@netcom8.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Ian Farquhar writes
> 
> "Hundreds of top-secret documents relevant to the Federal
> Government's inquiry into the Australian Secret Intelligence
> Service were destroyed by a fire that swept through the ASIS
> headquarters in Canberra at the weekend."
> 
> "The fire has erased highly sensitive ASIS files and archives
> that detailed the activities and operations of the troubled
> spy agency over the past decade."

Convenient fires are a rather common in Australia.

Rupert Murdoch used to keep his records in old uninsured
wooden buildings.  These burnt down with the utmost regularity.


Was the DFAT building also old, wooden, and uninsured?

(Oh, I forgot, it is only taxpayer money, so I guess the
building was probably new, expensive and uninsured.)

> BTW, this was the same TLA which I mentioned some weeks ago in connection
> with the bungled raid on the Sheraton Wentworth Hotel.

As I recall it was ASIO, not ASIS, that bombed the Sheraton, not
raided it -- (one hopes that they intended to "discover" the bomb,
but failed to "discover" it in time) -- or am I mixing up 
two different incidents?


-- 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our
property, because of the kind of animals that we        James A. Donald
are.  True law derives from this right, not from
the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.            jamesd@acm.org