Summary heading

Function and purpose

 This series consists of briefing material gathered for or during three separate overseas visits of the Commissioner. The material relates mostly to aims, structure and personalities of each intelligence community he visited, but also includes general printed and published information about each country. Sources of the briefing material included Australian intelligence agencies, the Department of Foreign Affairs and documents provided to the Commissioner by overseas agencies in the course of his visits.

Details about the travel itineraries are in correspondence files in the EO/3/ … sequence in CRS A12386. Some of the items in this series have been registered as documents in series CRS A12389.

In some cases documents which might have been filed in this series have been placed in files in series CRS A12384 and CRS A12386. This collection is identified in the Inventory of Records (CRS A12396) as series HD5. Part 4 of the inventory contains a listing of the documents under a numeric control system.

Physical characteristics

 At the time of transfer to the custody of the National Archives, the documents were contained in paper envelopes.  The documents have now been secured in acid-free folders annotated with National Archives’ identification and the envelopes discarded.

System of arrangement and control

 The envelopes were arranged alphabetically by the name of the country; in most cases there were multiple envelopes for each country. The present control for the folders follows the arrangement of the envelopes, however  ‘Part’ numbers have been imposed to distinguish the multiple folders for each country. In some cases a folder contains only one document; in other cases it may contain several.

Custodial history

 Following the closure of the Royal Commission in 1977 the records were transferred to the custody of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (in Canberra) where they remained until transferred to National Archives of Australia in 2001.