Just to answer your question FG. No I never worked for ASIO, but I had a couple of mates who did. Had I worked there I would have been sworn to secrecy and could not have repeated what I did.
And to put you on the right track, ASIO never set out to record roots. They just set out to listen to what people had to say. It just turned out that the people who got into their beds were sometimes very interesting.
Not all bugging was under beds. Remember David Coombe's conversation with the Russian "diplomat" which was picked up through the front window of a restaurant.
Incidenatlly it was the same David Coombe who, with Bill Hartley and "Leader" Whitlam, tried to raise a loan from the Iraqi governmant to pay the ALP's debts. So it was no wonder that someone had to be out there keeping an eye on dickheads like Coombe.
It is also very instructive to remember that Ben Chifley initiated the setting up of ASIO. Subsequent Labor governments considered it a tool of the conservatives and each time threatened to disband it, throttle it, whatever, when they came to power. The funny thing was that when they did come to power, each one found ASIO to be indispensable and retained it without question.
