ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service), Australia
Unlike other agencies on this list, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) does not have a centuries old pedigree, or a birth messy enough to appall the most experienced midwife. There is no story of an individual single-handed fathering the organization, nor an earthshaking event that spurred their creation. What the agency does have, however, is the absolute blackest beginnings of all.
Intelligence services and clandestine operations go hand in hand, but when Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies established ASIS in on May 13, 1952, he might have gone a bit too far. Modeled after the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, the organization’s charter empowered the new agency “to obtain and distribute secret intelligence, and to plan for and conduct special operations as may be required,” alongside the specific requirement to, “operate outside Australian territory.” This was neither earthshaking or unusual in a Western-style democracy.
Menzies, however, decided that Secret Intelligence Service meant exactly that: secret. No public announcement followed. But, hey, spy agency, right? Maybe the smart thing is concealment? Apparently, Menzies agreed and decided not to inform most of the government either. This continued for twenty years.
ASIS’s quiet existence ended abruptly in 1972. A story published in The Daily Telegraph asserted the shadowy agency not existed, it recruited agents from Australian Universities through clandestine means. Somewhat predictably, bedlam followed. Official inquiries formed, and in 1974 the Prime Minister launched an investigation into the country’s intelligence agencies. Two years later, the commission completed its investigation, and Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser finally acknowledged the existence of ASIS in 1977, twenty-five years after the organization began.