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Ric Throssell | |
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Born | Richard Prichard Throssell 10 May 1922 Perth, Australia |
Died | 20 April 1999 76) Canberra, Australia | (aged
Spouses |
Dorothy "Dodie" Jordan (m. 1947;died 1999) |
Parents |
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Ric Throssell (10 May 1922 –20 April 1999) was an Australian diplomat and author whose writings included novels, plays, film and television scripts, and memoirs. For most of his professional life as a diplomat his career was dogged by unproven allegations that he either leaked classified information to his mother, the writer and communist Katharine Susannah Prichard, or was himself a spy for the Soviet Union.
Richard Prichard Throssell was born in 1922 in Western Australia, in the Perth suburb of Greenmount. His father was Hugo Throssell, a winner of the Victoria Cross [1] at Gallipoli in 1915, and son of a former Premier of Western Australia, George Throssell. His mother was the writer Katharine Susannah Prichard. Ric was their only child. He was nicknamed after his father's late brother Frank Erick "Ric" Cottrell Throssell, who was killed at the 2nd Battle of Gaza in 1917. [2] He attended Wesley College, Perth, and was a founding member of the Wesley Hundred, a charitable organisation that worked with the poor.
On 19 November 1933, while his mother was on a six-month visit to the Soviet Union, his father Hugo committed suicide. [3] [2] His business ventures had failed in the Great Depression, and he had been offered just ten shillings ($1) by a pawnbroker for his Victoria Cross. In his suicide note he entertained the hope that his wife would now qualify for a war widow's pension, which was approved.[ citation needed ]
Ric Throssell enlisted in the Australian Army in World War II, and was promoted to lance corporal. He was offered the opportunity of officer training on the basis of being the son of a VC winner, but declined on principle. He served in New Guinea. In 1943, he joined the diplomatic service, his first posting being to Moscow in 1945, as Third Secretary. His first wife, Elwyn Hague "Bea" ( née Gallacher), a stenographer in the Attorney-General's Office in Canberra, died suddenly in 1946 while they were in Moscow. After returning to Canberra, he met and married Dorothy "Dodie" Jordan in 1947. Like his mother Katharine, Dodie was born in Fiji. In the late 1940s he was an adviser to H. V. Evatt in the latter's capacity as President of the United Nations General Assembly. From 1949 to 1951 he was posted at the Australian Embassy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[ citation needed ]
His mother was a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia in 1919, and remained a member for the rest of her life. Dodie was never formally a member of the party, but had participated in guerrilla training in the Dandenong Ranges as a member of its youth arm, the Eureka Youth League.[ citation needed ]
Due to these associations and the Cold War tensions of the time, Throssell became a person of interest to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). In 1954, the Soviet defector Vladimir Petrov named him as a spy, alleging he had given information to Walter Seddon Clayton (who was later proven to be a Soviet agent with the codename 'KLOD') and he was questioned for a week by the Royal Commission on Espionage, created soon after the Petrov affair. The questioning concerned his contact with Russians in Australia, and whether he had told his mother anything about his work. The Royal Commission eventually concurred in his vehement denials of any intentional espionage, although it stated that he may have inadvertently let drop classified information to people in the circles in which he moved. For example, one of his close friends was Jim Hill (also named by Petrov), brother of the Victorian Communist Party leader Ted Hill, who later broke away to form a Maoist group.[ citation needed ]
Although Throssell was officially exonerated, his career was stymied from that point onwards. On ASIO's advice he was repeatedly denied access to highly classified documents, and was refused promotion in the then Department of External Affairs. In 1955, the Secretary of the Department, Arthur Tange, even wrote to the Solicitor-General asking if there were grounds for having Throssell dismissed from the Public Service; the reply said that "no charge against Throssell could possibly succeed". Nevertheless, the smears and suspicion continued unabated and Tange maintained a correspondence with ASIO about Throssell.[ citation needed ]
However, he played an important role in administering the Colombo Plan, and in 1962 led the formation of the department's Cultural Relations Branch. In 1974, the new departmental head, Alan Renouf, sought to use his influence to have Throssell security cleared to a higher level, but the CIA threatened to cut security ties with the Whitlam government and the plan foundered. [4]
In 1980 he was appointed Director of the Commonwealth Foundation in London, an Assistant Secretary-level position. That post required the unanimous concurrence of all Commonwealth prime ministers. He remained there until ill health forced his retirement in 1983.[ citation needed ]
In 1996, certain transcripts of secret Soviet diplomatic communications known as the Venona decrypts were released in Washington. Before they were released in Australia, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade asked Throssell if he wanted his name deleted. He replied that he was as interested as anyone in finally discovering what had been said about him, and approved of the unredacted release. It proved to contain three innocuous references to him, the substance of which had all been canvassed in the Royal Commission 42 years earlier. Nevertheless, Throssell was re-branded a spy on the front page of the Brisbane Courier-Mail under the headline "Confirmed: Our Soviet Spies", along with a photo of him in the company of British traitors Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. The paper later issued an apology.
In 1998, Des Ball and David Horner published their book Breaking the Codes, which for the first time detailed the full extent of ASIO's case against Throssell. This included a claim that he actively cooperated with the KGB when he was representing Australia in Brazil in the late 1940s. David Horner went on to publish the Official History of ASIO as its lead author and editor. The first volume, the Spy Catchers (2014), discusses Throssell's case:
By the 1960s additional Venona intercepts had been deciphered and they had revealed more information, confirming that Throssell was [codename] Ferro and that his mother, Katherine Susannah Prichard... had discussed how his career might be of use to the Soviets. The intercepts suggested that Prichard might have passed information from her son to Clayton without her son's knowledge... The Throssell case was never resolved. [5]
In 2012, further allegations against Throssell were made based on information from Coral Bell, who had been his junior colleague in the Department of External Affairs in 1947 and who believed he had attempted to recruit her to the spy ring. [6]
Under Freedom of Information laws that had been introduced in 1982, Throssell was now able to gain access to some ASIO documents previously denied him. These painted what he called "another self, a secret person portrayed by the anonymous men of the Australian intelligence services". He also had considerable dealings with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on these matters. In 1983, the newly elected Hawke Government had his case reconsidered and, on the advice of ASIO, declined to reveal its determination on the basis that the Venona decrypts still required "the highest level of protection". [5]
In 1983, to help fund the production of the film The Pursuit of Happiness , based on a book by his daughter Karen Throssell, he donated his father's Victoria Cross to People for Nuclear Disarmament. The Returned and Services League of Australia bought the medal and presented it to the Australian War Memorial, where it is displayed.[ citation needed ]
Throssell was an active member of Canberra Repertory Theatre as a director, writer and actor. [7]
His wife Dodie died on 20 April 1999 after a long illness, and he committed suicide later the same day. [7] They were survived by three of their children and five grandchildren.
He also edited two collections of his mother's writings:
This week a great Australian, Ric Throssell, passed away in very sad circumstances along with his dear wife
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation is the domestic intelligence and national security agency of the Commonwealth of Australia, responsible for the protection of the country and its citizens from espionage, sabotage, acts of foreign interference, politically motivated violence, terrorism and attacks on the national defence system. ASIO is a primary entity of the Australian Intelligence Community.
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy.
The Petrov Affair was a Cold War spy incident in Australia, concerning the defection of Vladimir Petrov, a KGB officer, from the Soviet embassy in Canberra in 1954. The defection led to a Royal Commission and the resulting controversy contributed to the Australian Labor Party split of 1955.
Hugo Vivian Hope Throssell, VC was an Australian soldier in the First World War who was the first Western Australian and only Australian light horseman to receive the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for valour in battle that could be awarded to a member of the Australian armed forces at the time.
Vladimir Mikhaylovich Petrov was a Soviet spy who defected to Australia in 1954 with his wife Evdokia, in what became known as the Petrov Affair.
Evdokia Alexeyevna Petrova was a Soviet spy in Australia in the 1950s. She was the wife of Vladimir Petrov, and came to prominence with him during the Petrov Affair.
Katharine Susannah Prichard was an Australian author and co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia.
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Harvey David Mathew Combe was National Secretary of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), a political consultant and lobbyist, an Australian Trade Commissioner, a Senior Vice-President International of Southcorp Wines, and a consultant to the Australian wine industry. He achieved a degree of unwanted prominence through the Combe-Ivanov affair of 1983.
Brigadier Sir Charles Chambers Fowell Spry was an Australian soldier and public servant. From 1950 to 1970 he was the second Director-General of Security, the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
George Sadil is a former Russian analyst and translator who worked with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) for nearly 25 years including during the height of the Cold War. After it had been revealed the ASIO had been compromised by a Russian KGB 'mole', investigations were held and after internal audits conducted by both ASIO (Jabaroo) and the Australian Federal Police, Sadil was accused of being the mole. After raids on the homes of many of their analysts and translators, the authorities found highly classified documents in Sadil's home, he was then charged with possessing classified federal documents under the Crimes Act 1914. In 1994 the case against him collapsed. Sadil's profile did not match that of the mole in question, and prosecutors were unable to establish any kind of money trail between Sadil and the KGB.
Michael Bialoguski was a Polish-Australian medical practitioner, musician and intelligence agent, who played a significant part in the 1954 Petrov Affair.
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Desmond John Ball was an Australian academic and expert on defence and security. He was credited with successfully advising the United States against nuclear escalation in the 1970s.
Peter Robert Woolnough Barbour was an Australian intelligence officer and diplomat. He was also the Director-General of Security leading the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) from 1970 to 1975.
Walter Seddon Clayton was a key organiser of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in the 1930s and 1940s and suspected of being the Australian-based Soviet spymaster code-named 'KLOD', although the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Britains' MI5 were not able to provide any conclusive evidence of this for fear of tipping off the Soviets that their cable traffic was being deciphered and read by Western intelligence agencies.
George Ronald Richards was a British-born Australian police officer and intelligence operative. In 1953 he was closely involved in Operation Cabin 12, arranging the defection of Vladimir Petrov from the Soviet Union to Australia. In 1954, he was appointed Deputy Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), roughly equivalent to the FBI and MI5. He received the Order of the British Empire in 1957.
Arnott Street Railway Bridge was a small, isolated railway bridge in Canberra, most famously used by soviet agent Vladimir Petrov in 1954 as a dead drop location for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The bridge was used as part of the Bombala railway line before it was demolished in 2018.
The Royal Commission on Espionage was a royal commission established on 13 April 1954 by the Australian government pursuant to the Royal Commissions Act 1902 to inquire into and report on Soviet espionage in Australia. The establishment of the commission followed the defection of Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov. Officially titled Third Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, it was revealed that Petrov was in fact a lieutenant colonel in the KGB and in charge of espionage in Australia.
For Valour is a 1960 Australian stage play by Ric Throssell.