What ethics should be employed by researchers when gathering information?
Australian author Val Wake has attacked the ethics employed by some academic researchers when researching his father's story as one of Australia's first spymasters and founding director with the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO.)
The author of No Ribbons or Medals: the story of 'Hereward' an Australian counter espionage officer, Val Wake, maintains that some researchers have employed dirty tricks when working on his father's story.
In a letter to the Australian Book Review (ABR) Val Wake says"
" The Australian intelligence community has become something of a cottage industry for academic researchers who apparently see themselves as super sleuths revealing the strengths and weaknesses of people and organisations in charge of our national secuity."
Val Wake's comment was prompted by an
ABR review of a new book by Frank Cain titled Terrorism and Intelligence in Australia. Although Val Wake defended Cain's reputation as an academic spy writer. He was not so generous with other academics in this field.
" For many of these researchers the official record is holy writ ignoring the fact that spies, like journalists, rarely reveal their sources, and more importantly the controllers of these spies only record information that best services their interests," said Val Wake.
Val Wake goes on to make the point that spying is a dirty business and some researchers have used dirty tricks in researching their stories.
Wake cites the example of two academic researchers who interviewed his mother who was frail and in her declining years and pumped her for all the information they could get when his mother knew very little about her husband's work. These researchers then went away and wrote a book that ignored certain aspects of his father's story and libelled him.
Val Wake concludes his letter by saying:
"It is as I said before a dirty business. The toilers that work in this field should tread carefully."
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