A FORMER Scotland Yard detective now exposed as a Soviet spy has told how he helped the KGB set up fake identities for sleeper agents in Australia's government and intelligence agencies. John Symonds worked for the Soviet spy agency for eight years during the 1970s before being jailed in Britain for corruption. His claims to have been a KGB agent were backed up in secret papers smuggled to the UK by a Soviet defector in 1992 and published recently. More revelations are to be released soon, including details of the KGB's work in Australia. Speaking from his home in England, Symonds said that he set up a string of fake identities in Australia using birth certificates from dead people. He said many of the agents — "my boys" — may still be living in Australia and working in key posts, possibly in intelligence. For years, rumours have persisted that the KGB had a mole in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. "They had spies everywhere, everywhere. Believe me," Symonds said. "Wherever I went there was always someone there to go back to if I needed help, put me up, or get me out of the country, whatever. They were brilliant."
Symonds was one of the KGB's top "Romeo" agents, who seduced female diplomats and Defence Department employees. He said a mole in the US State Department had provided a list of vulnerable diplomats to target. The KGB gave him a small fortune to bankroll his cover as a playboy sports fan in Australia to watch rugby and the Ashes cricket tour. In the summer of 1978-79 he lived in Melbourne and obtained fake passports and identity documents based on people buried in local cemeteries. He told how he loved his time spent watching cricket at the MCG and carousing in the city's bars and restaurants while attempting to seduce female employees of the Defence Department. He claims to have attended diplomatic cocktail parties in Melbourne and Canberra under the noses of ASIO. But his primary job was to pave the way for the KGB to place their best sleeper agents into the English-speaking world.