Gerard Henderson, Charles Spry, and the lights are getting dumber ...

(Above: Charles Spry looking spry. Head off to The name's Spry, Charles Spry to read how Spry and his driver were pissed as parrots when their car crashed into a hedge near Sydney airport. Pip pip, wot wot).

Ladies and gentlemen, in the event of an emergency, the crew will ask you to step out on to the wung. And for take off the lights will be dumbed.

And of course when reading Gerard Henderson, we must ask you to put on the right wung blunkers, as it's the only way to get through yet another bout of cold war warrior action in Cold War secrets and the spies who came out of Canberra.

Yes, it's yet another re-run of the Petrov affair and Sir Charles Spry and Bert Evatt, and the next time someone accuses you of navel-gazing, just look them in the eye and say 'well, at least I'm not as bad as Gerard Henderson'.

It is of course vital to pump up the volume when doing hagiography, especially when dealing with the fifties. Henderson leads with this notion:

It is one of the many myths of Australian history that the 1950s was a boring decade in which nothing much happened. Yet the 1950s remain in the news today - confirming that the theory is very much fiction.

Yep, one genuine certified spy drama and defection in an entire decade in the antipodes, and the joint was jumping and jiving at the hop.

But then Henderson really pushes the envelope:

... Australia was no backwater but rather an important part of the Western alliance.

Having just visited a backwater which writhes under its perception of itself as an isolated, struggling, lonely backwater, can we at least grant Australia in the nineteen fifties its status as a backwater?

Nope, sorry:

... it is now acknowledged that Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov (who was an expert on codes) were among the most important Soviet defectors in the 1950s ...

Lordy, lordy.

If there's one thing you can say about the Petrov affair, its meaning and impact has been vastly exaggerated by both sides because ... well because nothing much else happened of this kind in the nineteen fifties and that's all we've got, and so we clutch it to our bosom and nurture it.

Mention the Petrov affair outside Australia and you'll get a blank look of incomprehension - hardly surprising up against the cold war and the Korean war and the Suez crisis and the Algerian war, and the Cuban revolution and the Mau Mau and dozens of other events in other countries, all handily signposted by the wiki 1950s.

But really man, stay hep, stay cool hipster dudes, as the beat generation prepared the way for the sixties in a country where things truly were happening, what was going down in the antipodes was just a bit of spilled beer on a pub coaster in the eyes of the rest of the world. (And please don't confuse this kind of coaster with the kinds of rough hewn wild eyed coasters you find in New Zealand, or for that matter the incredible radio offerings of timeless music played all the time on Coast Radio).

Mention the Petrov affair to anyone inside Australia, and except for cold war warriors still fighting their battles, or watching I, Spry, and you'll get glazed looked of incomprehension.

Naturally Henderson took an intense dislike to I, Spry's version of events (Scott needs to take control to ensure ABC represents diverse views - which is to say Henderson's views), but how many times can you wander off to the Petrov affair, and take a deep drink of the kool aid and assure us that everything was absolutely spiffing and wonderful under Spry and Bob 'Ming the Merciless' Menzies and the joint was jumping?

For Henderson, it's how many years have you got ...

Spry and Menzies never had to put their plans into effect. That they acted in accordance with their perception of the national interest, and not for party political reasons, is evident from the fact that it took over half a century for their decisions to become public. And then the relevant documents were released by the British.

Well if you can follow that logic, you're a better colonialist than the pond, Gunga Din. Ain't it grand the way national interest and party political interest seemed to coincide with such impeccable good taste? And so regularly ...

Oh okay, you can tell that I'm bored by Henderson, who is if nothing else, completely, totally and utterly predictable, and imagines he's somehow arriving at a centred conclusion when as always he's steering the ship of state towards the rocks on the right.

Naturally butter wouldn't melt in the mouth of his version of Charles Spry, and naturally everybody did everything for the best in the wildly exciting nineteen fifties (did you know Madame Petrov was an expert in codes, and so Australia was suddenly transformed into a state of the art centre for spy codes), but since Henderson takes the time to quote Mark Aarons about the affair, how about we quote a little bit of Aarons from Top spy was a man of extremes that Henderson seems to have overlooked:

I have read tens of thousands of pages of declassified ASIO files during the past quarter of a century, demonstrating that Spry's ASIO was involved in unprofessional, even odious operations. For example, ASIO closely co-operated with central and eastern European Nazi collaborators, including known mass killers, recruiting some as agents and turning a blind eye to a Croatian terrorist network.

Other operations saw ASIO cross the line from professional intelligence agency to participant in domestic politics, including the relationship with Bob Santamaria's Movement (and later with the National Civic Council). On other occasions, intelligence was inappropriately provided to the government for narrow political purposes.

Well you won't read any of that in Henderson's blinkered account, but ain't it grand to know that as a result of Spry endeavours we became the code centre of the known universe. And if you believe that, I can buy back the Sydney Harbour Bridge I sold to the New Zealand government, and sell it to you:

Most damning is the level of unwarranted and illegal surveillance of legitimate dissent and the improper use of such intelligence. The evidence is clear that a number of ASIO's targets suffered real consequences for their political views and activism around racism, indigenous rights, trade unionism, feminism, environmental issues and other causes that in 2010 are mainstream. Indeed, such legitimate campaigns of the 1950s, 60s and 70s contributed in important ways to modern Australian democracy.

Uh huh. But of course Henderson also sips at the cup of conservatism when it comes to such matters, and constantly bemoans how the world has changed from the noble and dull days of the fifties.

Many of these negative aspects of Spry's ASIO were confirmed by Robert Hope's royal commissions in the 70s and 80s. The material publicly released in recent years from the first of these is a powerful element of I, Spry.

Butt's purported revelations of a drunken and twisted head of ASIO are unpalatable for Spry's admirers and an affirmation of his critics' worst fears. There is no doubt that, like others, Spry became slightly unhinged by the thunderbolt that he received towards the end of his career: the revelation of the KGB's successful penetration of ASIO from the early 60s.

Oops. You see there's Henderson rabbiting on about how Evatt and the Labor party and sundry others were hopelessly compromised by Soviet infiltration, and there's the goose Spry and his organisation - battling away with hippies and malcontents - getting infiltrated by the Ruskies.

Butt's dramatised version of this part of Spry's career gilds the lily. Spry was certainly a rather blinkered man who viewed the world of intelligence through the narrow eyes of a professional military officer and instinctively distrusted intellectuals.

Yep indoody. Spry reminds me somewhat in manner and temperament of SA Police Commissioner Harold Salisbury, who was sacked by Don Dunstan for the activities of the police Special Branch (more here and here).

As Aarons points out, Spry recruited from the constricted world of the armed forces and the police special branches, and kept alive the hunt for 'traiterous reds' way beyond its use-by date, yet even when the treacherous reds got inside ASIO, it did no major damage ... because after all Australia is a small pond, not up to the ratbaggery of either a J. Edgar Hoover, or the Cambridge Five.

In the end, the times had changed, and Spry had become a conservative dodo.

A bit like Gerard Henderson really ...

And now, briefly, time to award Niki Savva the prize for 'silliest column and stupidest advice' for her effort in PM should divorce the Greens.

Her suggestion? Julia Gillard follow up on her words by putting the Greens last in every possible way. Surely it would be a lot simpler for Gillard to trot off to the Governor General, tend her government's resignation, and call a general election.

As the capper, Savva wants former Chairman Rudd to do a Costello a la Hanson and One Nation, and put the Greens last in Griffith ...

I suppose it passes for political commentary, but only if you firmly believe commentary should be full of wunker funtasies.

Never mind, I see the lights are getting dumber ... it must be time to land.

(Below: for more on Spry putting party political interests above national interests or serving the government of the day, head off to ASIO head Charles Spry warned Britian's MI5 over Labor leader Herbert Evatt in wake of Petrov Affair, but for a bit of genuine exotica how about this cartoon, found here, which shows John 'Black Jack' McKewen - during the short time he was PM after the death of Harold Holt by Chinese communist spies who landed in the country by submarine - asking Spry for information about Maxwell Newton, a journalist affiliated with McEven's rival Bill McMahon. Talk about a rogues gallery in one political cartoon).