The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) is the Australian government intelligence agency responsible for collecting foreign intelligence, undertaking counter-intelligence activities and cooperation with other intelligence agencies overseas. ASIS is equivalent to the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) or the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
According to its website, the mission of ASIS is to:
Protect and promote Australia's vital interests through the provision of unique foreign intelligence services as directed by Government.
ASIS is part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio and is housed within DFAT's headquarters in Canberra. Its current Director-General is Nick Warner.
Read more about Australian Secret Intelligence Service: History, Royal Commissions Examining ASIS
Famous quotes containing the words australian, secret, intelligence and/or service:
“Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)
“The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.”
—Gail Sheehy (b. 1937)
“If woman alone had suffered under these mistaken traditions [of women’s subordination], if she could have borne the evil by herself, it would have been less pitiful, but her brother man, in the laws he created and ignorantly worshipped, has suffered with her. He has lost her highest help; he has crippled the intelligence he needed; he has belittled the very source of his own being and dwarfed the image of his Maker.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.”
—Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Wellington (1769–1852)