Russia has long had an active intelligence interest in Australia, mainly because of the defence activities here of our allies: at one time Britain and later the United States. A particular Russian concern since 1970 has been the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap because of its relevance to Russia's national security.

One of my early military intelligence postings, in 1968, was to MI11, the army's counterintelligence organisation, with branches in every state. Our investigations related mainly to the involvement of defence members with communist organisations and to people of interest who had come to security notice for other reasons.

At the time, there were three communist organisations active in Australia: the pro-Russia Communist Party of Australia, the pro-China Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), and the Eureka Youth League, which was the pro-Russia communists' youth wing. The Russian KGB and GRU intelligence services took a keen interest in any defence personnel attracted to the Community Party, hence our interest in its members, too. We worked closely with police special branches and ASIO, and had unmarked vehicles for surveillance work.

Fast forward to 1998, when I was director of security intelligence in Defence. We were clearing out files before a move of the Defence Security Authority when I came across a set of files related to one of our espionage cases in South Australia in 1958, and managed to save it from being put in the classified waste. At the time, the Soviets were interested in British missile trials at Woomera. We came across the spy activity by chance, which meant we were never able to run the case with ASIO and make a firm connection to the Soviet embassy in Canberra.