MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian spy agency boss told an inquiry on Monday he had pivoted resources away from counterterrorism to espionage and foreign interference investigations a few years before two gunmen massacred 15 people at a Sydney Hanukkah celebration.Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the nation’s main domestic spy agency known as ASIO, was testifying at a wide-ranging government inquiry into the spread of antisemitism in Australia ahead of the attack at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14.ASIO reduced Australia’s National Terrorism Threat Level from “probable” to “possible” — the second-safest level on a five-tier scale -- in November 2022, after the Islamic State group in the Middle East had been defeated and was no longer recruiting fighters.ASIO then shifted to increase its focus on foreign interference and espionage investigations, but did leave the organization’s “counterterrorism mission” with not enough resources, Burgess said.
“Because terrorism has the potential to cause people to lose their lives or get harmed, it always remained a priority for us. There was just less activity that we were investigating because the nature of the environment had changed and the number of tasks we were looking at had reduced,” Burgess said.“At the same time, every rock we lifted up we found espionage or foreign interference that needed to be inquired and investigated and so resources were moved over there,” Burgess added.
