This series contains copies of reports created by the Research Services Office within SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organisation). These records are the copies received by the Department of Defence SEATO sub-registry in Australia. In addition, copies of SEATO documents controlled by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade from A4311, 'Cumpston Collection' of documents relating to the history of Australian foreign policy, have been combined with the Defence SEATO holdings to form this and related series.

The Research Services Office, initially referred to as the Research Services Committee and later called the Research Office, was one of six original offices established under the civil organisation of SEATO in 1956. Overall administration of the civil organisation was the responsibility of the Secretary-General.

The Research Services Office was responsible for disseminating reports on Communist activites. These reports took the form of the short papers held in series A10022 and the documents held in this series.

The Secretariat to the Secretary-General was responsible for maintaining the SEATO central registry which issued, controlled and listed all the records produced by SEATO using an alpha-numeric system modelled on those of other international organisations. Each member country was expected to maintain a separate SEATO registry which received copies of documents distributed from the Secretariat's registry. The Department of Defence provided Australia's main registry in Bangkok and established sub-registries in both Bangkok and Australia.

The system of arrangement imposed on these records once received by the Department of Defence sub-registry in Australia has not been established. The records in this series have consequently been arranged alphabetically by infix denoting the type of report and then by single number suffix, to facilitate transfer to the Australian Archives and subsequent retrieval. The infixes used are:

                 BB    Background Brief
                 CC    Communist Chronology
                 TH    Trends and Highlights
                 THI   Trends and Highlights Index

The reports are held in stapled booklets with coloured covers. It is apparent that they were originally produced in English and Thai although only English versions are held in this series.

No evidence has been found of control records used by the Australian SEATO registry or sub-registries. Series A9948, Booklets entitled 'SEATO Document Lists', chronological series, while prepared retrospectively by the SEATO Secretariat, can be used to identify individual items under the current system of arrangement.

The consignment list for this series is composed of copies of the entries for the reports in the SEATO Document Lists. The entries have been annotated to show where the reports are no longer extant or are held in the consignment.