ABC Four Corners "The Mole(s) That Must Not Be Named" - Four Corners has confirmed that Russian moles ceased to be a threat more than 20 years ago , but refuse to identify present day moles

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

            Who is the Traitor who must not be named 

On 19 June 2023 ABC Four Corners presented a story about a Russian mole in ASIO. The advertising blurb read:

Traitor - Australia's greatest untold spy story
Four Corners reveals one of Australia's best kept secrets. The program will expose how a senior officer at our national spy agency stole and sold highly classified intelligence to Russia's KGB for at least six years.

However "this greatest untold spy story" has in fact been told, and told by ABC Four Corners in 2004, in a story reported by Andrew Fowler. Fowler's  story in 2004  did not name the mole but  the reporters in the 2023 story, veteran Walkley Award winners Sally Neighbour and Margot O'Neil did. Apart from that new bit of information, the two stories are in substance similar. The mole died in 2006,so he could have been namded without fear of a defamation action more than 15 years ago. 

In the 2023 story reporters  Sally Neighbour and Margot O'Neil tell us that there are no other Russian moles in ASIO (and one presumes, ASIS), which then raises the question as to why this story from almost 20 years ago  has been rehashed and presented as something "untold" .Presenting as new an old story raises the presumption that there are still moles in the system, but who are  not Russian. Four Corners seems not to want to identify the present day threat, let alone name them.  The Neighbour-O'Neil  story ought to have been titled "The Mole(s) That Must Not  Be Named".

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