Autobiography
Friedrich was writing an autobiography with the assistance of Richard Flanagan at the time of his death. It was published posthumously. In it he claimed to have been born in South Australia in 1945 to German parents, attended boarding school in West Germany and studied engineering at the Technische Hochschule. He also claimed that while working for an American construction company he was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency and under the codename "Iago" worked in Laos, Vietnam, Egypt, New Zealand and West Germany against far left-wing extremists before returning to Australia in 1975. Simon Caterson, writing in The Australian, described it as "one of the least reliable but most fascinating memoirs in the annals of Australian publishing".
Read more about this topic: John Friedrich (fraudster)