Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Foreign spy 'stole' Australian secrets

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. 

Australian security sources have privately acknowledged that the massive security breach compromised intelligence information and capabilities in Western intelligence agencies, especially the US and Canada but including Australia's top secret Defence Signals Directorate and Defence Intelligence Organisation. 

Information released under Australian freedom of information legislation shows the high commissioner to Canada, Louise Hand, discussed the case with Stephen Rigby, the national security adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, soon after Sub-Lieutenant Delisle's arrest on January 14. 

Her cabled report, classified "secret - sensitive" and sent to Canberra on January 30, has been redacted in full on security grounds. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was briefed on the case through liaison with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. 

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 signals intelligence collected by the ''Five Eyes'' intelligence community of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 

Sub-Lieutenant Delisle was arrested after the Canadian Security Intelligence Service concluded he was passing classified information to operatives, believed to be members of the Russian military intelligence service. 

The Canadian government has, for diplomatic reasons, avoided publicly identifying Russia as the foreign power involved but several Russian diplomats were recalled to Moscow before the end of their postings. 

Precisely what type of information was allegedly passed has not been publicly disclosed. But intelligence sources in Canada and the US have been reported as privately confirming it involved top secret signals intelligence. 

Sub-Lieutenant Delisle's access reportedly covered signals intelligence produced by the US National Security Agency, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, Canada's Communications Security Establishment, Australia's Defence Signals and New Zealand's Communications Security Bureau.
Australian security sources told the Herald his access was "apparently very wide" and that "Australian reporting was inevitably compromised". 

"The signals intelligence community is very close. We share our intelligence overwhelmingly with the US, UK and Canada - often more people read Australian reporting overseas than here in Australia," one former Defence Signals Directorate officer said. "So it's perhaps no surprise that a junior officer in faraway Halifax can compromise our material.'' 

Australian security sources have suggested the Russians would have been interested in a wide range of material, not only relating to the US and Canada, but to China, North Korea, Pakistan and Afghanistan - ''all areas that DSD makes a contribution towards covering". 

Australia has said it will not comment on the case and it is its usual practice not to do so.
Sub-Lieutenant Delisle will appear before the Nova Scotia Supreme Court for a preliminary hearing in October. He is charged with communicating classified information to an unnamed foreign entity over nearly five years - between July 6, 2007, and January 13, 2012, when he was arrested. He faces possible life imprisonment if convicted.