Former Labor Party leader a likely Soviet spy

But Leftist historians deny it, of course. Calling Robert Manne a conservative historian is a joke. He was Rightish for a while but now leans so far Left it's wonder he doesn't fall over. So I have omitted his and other such judgments below.

Evatt did some good work for Israel in his earler years but did go mad eventually. His Soviet involvement may have been an early sign of his mental deterioration. That such a man could lead the Labor Party for so long is however disquieting. He was even retained as leader after he provoked a breakaway party (the DLP) from the Labor party

ONE of Australia's leading intelligence experts, Des Ball, says newly released MI5 documents have convinced him to express publicly for the first time his belief that former Labor leader Herbert Evatt secretly worked for the Soviet Union against Australian interests.

Dr Ball, a Labor Party supporter, said he had previously held back from expressing his long-held suspicion that Evatt was a Soviet agent.

"But I have got to the point now where I would be surprised if Evatt was not working for the other side," he said yesterday.

The MI5 files that were released in London this week did not include any clear evidence that Evatt was a Soviet agent and most historians say there is no firm proof of the theory, which is one of the longest-running controversies in Australian political history.

But they do reveal that then prime minister Robert Menzies was so concerned Evatt would win the 1958 election he handed top-secret ASIO documents to US and British spy agencies for fear Evatt would destroy them if he won.

Dr Ball, a co-author of Breaking the Codes, a 1998 book on the Venona code-breaking affair, said the documents "show the amazing extent to which Menzies and the people running the intelligence services were utterly convinced that Evatt could not be trusted".

"I think Menzies was clearly being told by ASIO that Evatt was a serious threat and my research has led me to believe now that they were right."

While other historians were sceptical of Dr Ball's claims, he said he had become even more confident of his view after being told by The Weekend Australian that the newly released MI5 files had revealed an unusual last-minute decision by Menzies just before the 1958 federal election.

Spooked by signs that Evatt might win the November 22 election, Menzies secretly ordered ASIO to hand sets of top-secret documents to Britain and the US for safe-keeping because of his fear that Evatt would bury or destroy the material if he became prime minister. Until then the Australian government had refused for four years to give the British and US governments full access to the material, a pile of Russian documents handed over by former KGB man Vladimir Petrov when he defected in 1954.

But two days before the election Menzies suddenly decreed that Britain's spy services MI5 and MI6 should each be given a complete copy of the documents and two more sets should go to the CIA. The originals were held in the PM's office. The copy given to MI5 filled nine envelopes and was among the material released on Monday by the spy service.

"There is some concern that true copies of these documents are preserved as there is no knowing what Evatt would do if he regained the premiership," an MI5 agent reported from Canberra after being briefed by ASIO chief Charles Spry.

Dr Ball said his research on the 1940s spy scandals while writing Breaking the Codes had convinced him that either Evatt or John Burton, Evatt's department chief when he was minister for external affairs, must have supported a group of officials in the department who have since been found to have fed material to the Soviets.

"It was not logistically possible for them to get away with providing the Russians with material every week for several years without somebody at the top providing cover, and the only two possibilities are Evatt or Burton," Dr Ball said. "I don't think there is any question that at least one of them was involved."

Dr Ball said the only previous time he had expressed this view was in a draft of Breaking the Codes, which was published when Burton was still alive, but the reference was removed on legal advice. Burton died last year at the age of 95.

The Australian reported this week that the MI5 files show that just before the 1954 election Spry showed a similar distrust in Evatt by warning MI5 that if Evatt was elected the British "should seriously consider withholding important secrets" from Australia.

The MI5 files show that the KGB defectors Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov and their secret service handlers shared the distrust of Evatt, fearing that if he was elected he would even send them to their deaths in Russia.

In March 1955 during the Petrov Royal Commission, one of the MI5 agents helping to deal with the Petrovs reported to London that "the evident animosity of Dr Evatt is seriously disturbing the Petrovs. He in particular fears for his future if Dr Evatt should ever become PM."

On October 12, 1956 the Petrovs were delighted to become Australian citizens. "This must have come as a great relief to them for now they know that they are safe against arbitrary deportation or extradition to the USSR, even in the event of Dr Evatt being returned to power," the MI5 man wrote to London.

Evatt troubled many Labor Party members with his non-confrontational approach to the Communist Party.

It was an approach that helped to split the ALP and spawn the Democratic Labor Party which helped to keep the conservatives in power until the 1970s.

Evatt courted controversy by defending several of his staff members who were found to have links to Russian agents, and telling parliament that he was sure there were no Russian spies in Australia because he had contacted then Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and asked him.

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