ASIO spy kid recounts life with secret agent parents and holidays with Cold War defectors
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FebFebruary 2021 at 3:37am
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The first rule of being in a spy family: don t share what you see, not even with each other.
From the outside, Dudley and Joan Doherty plus their three children appeared like any normal family of the 50s and 60s.
But behind closed doors, the pair worked for ASIO. They had been early recruits in the Australian spy agency; an integral part of organisation s first bugging operation, Operation Smile.
ASIO spy kid recounts life with secret agent parents and holidays with Cold War defectors - 03-Feb-2021 nzcity.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nzcity.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
âItâs just a little familyâ: the perfect cover for ASIO spies
By Sandra Hogan
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In late-1950, Joan and Dudley Doherty started to spend a little more time with each other when they began taking part in Operation Smile, ASIOâs first bugging operation.
ASIOâs work on the case began with collecting information on Australians who were passing information to Russia, but agents soon began looking at Russians based in Australia as well. One such person was Fedor Nosov, who represented Soviet news agency TASS in Australia, but who was thought to be a person identified in intelligence documents operating under the cover name of âTEKHNIKâ.
News by Leisa Scott
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Subscriber only Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to believe that tucked away in the perfectly ordinary Brisbane suburb of The Gap, lived a family of spies. Mum, Dad and the three kids. They went on holidays to the Gold Coast with Soviet defectors, the Petrovs. Dad did the books for Abe Saffron, one of Australia s most notorious underworld figures. They d pop into the city looking like an everyday family posing for happy snaps but that was a ruse; they were busy collecting intelligence on could-be Communists. If it s a mission too outlandish, too impossible for you, that s understandable. Even the woman who lived this story finds big chunks of her childhood hard to believe.