13 - THE PETROV RESIDENCY

Abstract

When Petrov defected it must have appeared to Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) that many of the questions of most fundamental interest to it were on the point of being authoritatively answered. Almost, the first broad line of questioning that ASIO put to Petrov about his own residency was an extension of ‘the case’. ASIO was anxious to discover whether the leakages from external affairs that had occurred during the 1940s had been completely plugged. At once, Petrov assured ASIO that they had. In his initial debriefing, the stories Petrov told Ron Richards suggested that during his Residency the MVD had failed totally in its efforts to penetrate the department of external affairs. Petrov informed ASIO that during his residency, he had made the acquaintance of two other members of the department of external affairs but denied that he had derived any intelligence benefit from either.