Breaking the Codes

In December 1944 General Blamey, the Commander in Chief of the Australian Military Forces, was handed a file. It contained decrypted radio intercepts which proved that the Imperial Japanese Army was receiving top secret information - US and Australian war plans. Material that could lead to the death of Allied servicemen in the Pacific. The most likely source: Canberra. So began a hunt which took five years, involved the world's most secret intelligence organizations and resulted in the exposure of neutralization of a Soviet espionage network in Australia. "Breaking the Codes" is a story of international counter-esionage and signals intelligence. It tells of a secret war which sowed the seeds of suspicion in Moscow, Washington and London, seeds which flowered in the Cold War and led to the creation of ASIO. This ground-breaking study shows how signals intelligence helped uncover the KGB's activities in wartime Australia. It tells how counter-intelligence, through a partnership with MI5, provided the details - the names and roles of members of a network of informants run by the Soviet Embassy in Canberra.
Australians who, whatever their motives, were playing a dangerous game as a World War was being fought and a Cold War was being born.