In 1995 the ABC and the Sydney Morning Herald revealed a highly sophisticated joint US-Australian operation to bug the newly constructed Chinese Embassy in Canberra.
Australian intelligence officers and NSA technicians had covertly installed an elaborate system of fibre optic bugging devices throughout the embassy during its construction in the late 1980s.
Within the 'Five Eyes' club this operation was quietly proclaimed as an electronic intelligence gathering triumph – but some spies had reservations.
Former Australian intelligence officers alleged that Australians had taken all the risks, yet once listening devices were operational, the US assumed control of the bugging and selectively withheld diplomatic and economic intelligence gleaned from the operation.
The former Australian spies claimed that in withholding information, the US gained a competitive edge over Australia in trade deals with China.
By early 1995, the operation and the allegations of the disgruntled officers were common knowledge in Canberra’s defence, political and media communities. It seemed everyone was in on the secret except the public.
Despite the operation being clearly compromised by this time – the Australian government went to extraordinary lengths to prevent further embarrassing public disclosure of the bugging and the equally damaging allegations of mistrust within the highly valued UKUSA intelligence sharing club.
So sensitive was this spying mission that foreign minister Gareth Evans issued a suppression order via a Federal Court injunction, blocking publication of the story by the Sydney Morning Herald, resulting in a five week legal battle with the newspaper's lawyers.
Any further public leaks were also swiftly suppressed. After briefly discussing this freedom-of-speech tussle on talk back radio, broadcaster Alan Jones and Sydney radio station 2UE were also served with an injunction.
On May 25, 1995, an ABC TV News lead story on the bugging and suppression controversy was pulled, 30 minutes before broadcast by managing director Brian Johns who feared a breach of a 'D Notice', a voluntary, but by then largely dormant agreement between media and government not to publish sensitive intelligence information - an informal arrangement that dated back to the Second World War.
The item was pulled despite ABC legal advice that broadcast did not breach the law.
The inevitable "ABC pulls ASIO item" headlines led the next morning's newspapers. The following night, despite legal threats from the Federal Attorney General’s Department, the ABC report finally aired and the suppression order on the Sydney Morning Herald was lifted, allowing publication of the original story.
With the D Notice system clearly ineffective, then foreign minister senator Evans publicly threatened to jail journalists involved in any future intelligence exposes. Laws were toughened to prevent primary or secondary disclosure of sensitive intelligence information, regardless of motivation or public interest.
Today, the digital information age transcends national boundaries, and such tactics in suppressing public disclosure have been rendered largely redundant, but the Chinese Embassy story highlighted other highly sensitive elements yet to be explored in the analysis of the Snowden revelations.
To what extent do members of the UKUSA 'Five Eyes' intelligence club benefit from this electronic eavesdropping treasure trove when negotiating international trade deals worth billions of dollars?
Do major national corporations deemed by government to be working in 'the national interest' get access – directly or indirectly - to this inside information when doing business overseas? And if they do – who selects the recipients?
And what happens to the intelligence when the 'Five Eyes' members are in direct economic competition with each other? Do friends fall out?
As the Snowden-NSA document treasure trove just keeps on giving, no doubt a few anxious 'Five Eyes' security officials will be recalling the old spy industry adage that "there's no such thing as a friendly foreign intelligence agency, just the intelligence agencies of friendly countries".