ASIS has been on the brink of closure; had three of its heads sacked; lost all its agents in Indochina and two more elsewhere; and helped with the CIA's dirty work in Chile.
It has breached its own charter by spying on Australians in Australia; it has done a deal with an Australian public relations firm, giving the company an unfair commercial advantage and deceiving its clients; and it has put the delicate relationship with Papua New Guinea at risk by spying on university students.
It was illegally funded for almost three decades, with successive ministers wilfully misleading Parliament about its budget allocations. It bolstered the corrupt Marcos regime; failed to warn of coups and revolutions in our region; let masked men terrorise the public in Melbourne with silenced machine guns; and apparently failed to prevent one of its officers being suborned by the Indonesians.
That it has done all this and survived stronger than ever is a telling tribute to the continuing mystique of intelligence.
Oyster tells the story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) from its birth to the present day. Its revelations are often shocking, occasionally amusing, but most of all essential reading for anyone wanting to know the secret role of Australia's own spy service.