Willing to Kill

 

ASIO Chief's Warning: Political Assassinations in Australia—Then and Now

 ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess warns of foreign assassination threats in Australia—reminiscent of the dangerous intelligence landscape of 1948 when the Somerton Man was found dead on Somerton Beach.

5 to 6 Minute Read

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Foreign Assassinations: A Clear and Present Danger

Australia faces active assassination threats from at least three foreign nations, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess revealed in a major speech at the Lowy Institute. In a stark warning, Burgess disclosed that hostile foreign actors have both the willingness and capability to carry out political killings on Australian soil. In some cases, they're willing to hire Australian criminals to do their dirty work.

While Burgess's briefing demonstrates that our security services are actively monitoring these threats, it raises an uncomfortable historical question: if such dangers exist today with all of ASIO's sophisticated modern capabilities, surveillance technology, and coordinated intelligence networks, what was Australia like in 1948?

The answer: far more vulnerable than most Australians realize.

Australia's Shadow Cold War: The Dangerous Landscape of 1948

The years between the end of World War II and 1948—the pre-ASIO era—were characterized by a fragmented and often dysfunctional security apparatus. Australia's intelligence and security operations were divided among several competing organizations, each with different priorities, jurisdictions, and loyalties.

These agencies sometimes cooperated. More often, they didn't. In fact, they were frequently locked in bureaucratic warfare with each other, working at cross-purposes while genuine threats went unmonitored or inadequately addressed.

Caught Between Extremes

Australia in this period was squeezed between two dangerous extremes:

On the right: Extreme right-wing organizations were re-emerging with alarming strength and organization. These groups, emboldened by post-war instability, were "literally on the march", conducting public demonstrations, recruiting members, and in some cases, engaging in political violence.

On the left: The Communist Party of Australia was receiving direct support and direction from the Soviet Union. Soviet influence operations were active, and the level of penetration into Australian institutions, from unions to government departments, was deeper than most people suspected at the time.

The result was that it was a powder keg. Political tensions regularly erupted into violence. Street battles between opposing factions were not uncommon. And beneath the surface, an intelligence war was being waged, and it was at a time when Australia was, politically and security-wise, poorly equipped to fight.

"A Dumping Ground for Dead Spies"

Years later, Senator Cavanagh would make a remarkable statement in Parliament, suggesting that Australia had become "a dumping ground for dead spies." It was quite a dramatic claim, but it was one rooted in the reality of the times: Australia's weaknesses made it an attractive location for foreign intelligence operations. Up to and including assassinations

In this environment, the appearance of an unidentified body on Somerton Beach in December 1948 would not have surprised those who understood the true nature of Australia's security situation.

The Somerton Man: Hallmarks of an Assassination

The circumstances surrounding the Somerton Man's death bear the unmistakable hallmarks of tradecraft, a professional intelligence operation:

Untraceable identity: Labels had been meticulously removed from his clothing, not carelessly cut off, but professionally removed to prevent identification. 

Suspected poisoning: At the 1949 inquest, the body of the man showed signs consistent with poisoning, yet no identifiable substance was found in his system. Pathologists noted the unusual condition of his organs and the manner of death, but lacked the sophisticated toxicology available today.

Coded message: A torn scrap of paper bearing the Persian phrase "Tamām Shud" (meaning "ended" or "finished" but with a possible alternate meaning based on local dialect) was found hidden in a secret pocket. Later, a book, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, containing an apparently coded message, was discovered, linked to the case through the Tamam Shud phrase.

Connections to intelligence circles: Research has revealed multiple connections between individuals associated with the case and known intelligence activities of the period, including proximity to weapons testing facilities and classified operations.

Professional tradecraft: The level of operational security demonstrated from the removed labels to the careful concealment of the torn slip of paper suggests training and methodology consistent with intelligence work.

In Senator Cavanagh's Australia, fragmented security services, political violence, and competing foreign intelligence operations, such an assassination would have been entirely plausible. Perhaps even inevitable.

Parallels 

Director-General Burgess's warning brings the Somerton Man case into sharp focus. The parallels between 1948 and 2024 are striking:

Then: Multiple foreign actors operating on Australian soil with minimal oversight
Now: At least three nations are actively willing to conduct assassination operations here

Then: Criminal elements potentially available for hire by foreign powers
Now: Burgess explicitly warns of foreign actors recruiting Australian criminals for operations

Then: Fragmented, competing security agencies struggling to coordinate
Now: A unified ASIO with sophisticated capabilities, yet still facing serious threats

If assassinations are a credible threat today despite ASIO's modern resources, how much more vulnerable was Australia in 1948, when security coordination was poor and capabilities were limited?

Re-examining the Evidence

The conventional narrative that the Somerton Man was a suicide or perhaps died of natural causes in mysterious circumstances has always been difficult to reconcile with the evidence. It requires us to believe:

• A suicidal man would meticulously remove the identifying labels from his clothing
• A man planning to die would carefully conceal a coded message
• The professional tradecraft observed was a mere coincidence
• The connections to intelligence activities were irrelevant
• The political and security context of 1948 played no role

This narrative asks us to ignore what the evidence actually shows: the Somerton Man case bears every indication of a calculated assassination in an era when Australia was, as Cavanagh suggested, a contested intelligence battleground.

Moving Forward: A Different Lens

Director-General Burgess's speech serves as a reminder that intelligence operations, including their darkest aspects, are not relics of history. They continue today, on Australian soil, despite vastly improved security capabilities.

The Somerton Man deserves to be re-examined through this lens: not as a mysterious suicide or an unexplained medical event, but as what the evidence consistently suggests, a victim of Australia's shadow Cold War, killed as part of an intelligence operation we're only now beginning to understand.

His death wasn't an anomaly. It was a symptom of his time, an era when Australia's shores were anything but safe, and when unidentified bodies appearing on our beaches and elsewhere told a story that authorities were often unable or unwilling to investigate fully.

Seventy-seven years later, we have the luxury of perspective, better investigative tools, and, thanks to research like that conducted on this blog, a clearer picture of what really happened on Somerton Beach in December 1948.

The evidence has always pointed in one direction. Perhaps it's time we stopped looking away.]

Source: ABC News Article on Mike Burgess' Speech

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About this research: This blog has been investigating the Somerton Man mystery since 2013, uncovering evidence of intelligence connections, coded messages, and the broader historical context that conventional theories have ignored. Follow our ongoing research for new discoveries and analysis.

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