{"id":65728,"date":"2024-02-29T07:44:55","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T07:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/spy-row-erupts-in-australia-over-traitor-politician\/"},"modified":"2024-02-29T07:44:55","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T07:44:55","slug":"spy-row-erupts-in-australia-over-traitor-politician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/spy-row-erupts-in-australia-over-traitor-politician\/","title":{"rendered":"Spy row erupts in Australia over \u2018traitor\u2019 politician"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Australia\u2019s government faced angry demands on Thursday to name a \u201ctraitor\u201d former politician accused by Canberra\u2019s top spy of having \u201csold out\u201d the country to a foreign power.<\/p>\n

In an extraordinary public revelation, Australia\u2019s director general of security Mike Burgess said a spy team from an unidentified country had cultivated and recruited a former Australian politician.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis politician sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests of the foreign regime,\u201d the spy chief said in a speech in Canberra on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Australia is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group that includes the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand \u2014 making it a juicy target for operatives from countries such as China and Russia.<\/p>\n

Burgess, who runs the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), said the unidentified former politician had been recruited \u201cseveral years ago\u201d.<\/p>\n

The person had even proposed bringing a prime minister\u2019s family member into the \u201cspies\u2019 orbit\u201d, a plan that did not proceed, he said.<\/p>\n

The former politician did, however, organise an overseas conference at which spies posing as bureaucrats targeted participants for recruitment, eventually obtaining security and defence information from an academic, Burgess said.<\/p>\n

The remarks unleashed speculation in the media and demands for the former politician to be identified.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trouble is, if he does not indicate the name then there is a cloud hanging over everybody else,\u201d conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton told Sydney radio station 2GB<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are putting that detail out there as Mr Burgess has done, I think it is incumbent to either give a little bit more criteria or a little bit more of a hint as to who the person might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Absolutely absurd\u2019<\/h2>\n

Former Australian conservative treasurer Joe Hockey said all lawmakers had been tainted by the revelation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe former politician is a traitor,\u201d he told national broadcaster ABC<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It is \u201cinconceivable\u201d that the politician could be allowed to \u201cwalk off into the sunset without having their name, or their reputation revealed\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Burgess\u2019s revelation had \u201cbesmirched\u201d all politicians, said Hockey, who was also Australia\u2019s ambassador to the United States for four years until 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe should not do that if he is not going to name that person \u2014 it\u2019s absurd, it\u2019s absolutely absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defence Minister Richard Marles said he did not know the name of the former politician.<\/p>\n

\u201cI respect what ASIO have done here in terms of putting this story into the public domain but also maintaining the confidentiality of the facts around this, and there could be a whole lot of reasons why that should happen,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he would not \u201csecond guess\u201d the ASIO boss.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know Mike Burgess, I work with Mike Burgess, and I know that he wouldn\u2019t have said this without good reason, and he wouldn\u2019t have couched it this way if he didn\u2019t think that was absolutely necessary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In his Canberra address, Burgess said a foreign intelligence service unit, dubbed \u201cthe A-Team\u201d, had made Australia its \u201cpriority target\u201d.<\/p>\n

The unit had targeted Australians with access to \u201cprivileged information\u201d on social networking sites using \u201cfalse, anglicised personas\u201d and promising cash rewards, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe spies pose as consultants, head-hunters, local government officials, academics and think tank researchers, claiming to be from fictional companies such as Data 31,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a target takes the bait, the spies try to move the conversation onto an encrypted messaging app. A further step might involve the offer of an overseas trip to meet in person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burgess said he wanted to let the other country know that its spies had been rumbled and that the unit\u2019s team leader had been confronted by Australia\u2019s own spies.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia\u2019s government faced angry demands on Thursday to name a \u201ctraitor\u201d former politician accused by Canberra\u2019s top spy of having \u201csold out\u201d the country to a foreign power. In an extraordinary public revelation, Australia\u2019s director general of security Mike Burgess said a spy team from an unidentified country had cultivated and recruited a former Australian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2024\/02\/29123016175d336.jpg?r=123056","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islamabad-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}