Historical Australian intel documents to be released
Updated
More than a thousand previously secret records about the activities of Australia's intelligence agencies during the 1960s and 1970s are due to be made public in Canberra.
During the 1960s and early 1970s, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation operated with almost unfettered power.
The conservative government of the day used ASIO to gather information on its opponents - particularly union leaders, anti-Vietnam War protestors and other Labor party allies.
When the ALP assumed government in 1972 there was a mood of political payback towards ASIO, but also a genuine desire to make its activities more accountable.
The government called a Royal Commission into all Australia's intelligence agencies, headed by Justice Robert Hope, and today the National Archives will make public much of the evidence gathered during the inquiry.
