The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS ) is the foreign intelligence agency of Australia, tasked with the covert collection of information overseas through personal contacts and other means of human intelligence. It is part of the Australian Intelligence Community and is also responsible for counter-intelligence and liaising with the intelligence agencies of other countries. ASIS was formed in 1952 but its existence remained secret within much of the government until 1972. ASIS is comparable to the American CIA and the British MI6. ASIS is part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) portfolio and has its headquarters in Canberra. Its director-general, currently Paul Symon, reports to the minister for foreign affairs. History On 13 May 1952, in a meeting of the Executive Council, Prime Minister Robert Menzies established ASIS by executive order under s 61 of the Constitution, appointing Alfred Deakin Brookes as the first director-general of ASIS. The existence of ASIS remained secret even within the Government until 1972. Its Charter of 15 December 1954 described ASIS's role as 'to obtain and distribute secret intelligence, and to plan for and conduct special operations as may be required'. ASIS was expressly required to 'operate outside Australian territory'. A Ministerial Directive of 15 August 1958 indicated that its special operations role included conducting 'special political action'. It also indicated that the organisation would come under the control and supervision of the Minister for External Affairs rather than the Minister for Defence. At the time, ASIS was substantially modelled on the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6. ASIS was at one time referred to as MO9. On 1 November 1972, the existence of ASIS was sensationally exposed by The Daily Telegraph which ran an exposé regarding recruitment of ASIS agents from Australian universities for espionage activities in Asia. Soon after The Australian Financial Review published a more in-depth piece on ASIS, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), and the then Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO), Defence Signals Division (DSD) and Office of National Assessments (ONA). It stated that '[t]he ASIS role is to collect and disseminate facts only. It is not supposed to be in the analytical or policy advising business though this is clearly difficult to avoid at times'. The Ministerial Statement of 1977 stated that the 'main function' of ASIS was to 'obtain, by such means and subject to such conditions as are prescribed by the