A strange happening

A strange happening

Joan Coxsedge, long-time political activist and scourge of spooks, is no stranger to phone taps and sundry other ASIO tricks, which are generally hard to prove. But it seems our bumbling spies have tripped themselves up.

During recent trips to Cuba she drew many of the splendid old Spanish buildings that grace its major cities and is planning to hold exhibitions of her work in both Australia and Cuba. A few weeks ago, she was rung from Cuba by the chief historian of Havana, who is involved with the exhibition, seeking her fax number. When no fax arrived, she spent a few days trying to make a return fax, but the message refused to go through. Telecom was called and found the line was dead and the fault lay in the exchange.

When the line was finally restored, the machine's internal record registered an outgoing call to the Attorney-General's Office, a well-known pseudonym for ASIO, at a time when Joan was unable to make outgoing calls to anyone anywhere. It seems that Telecom's fiddling inadvertently triggered off some diverter mechanism, making ASIO's machine log on, giving its call sign. Another phantom call made two minutes earlier remains unidentified.

It seems that Maxwell Smart is alive and well and working for ASIO. Surely no-one else would be stupid enough to actually program their bugging machine with the agency's call sign.

From GLW issue 91