Tim Byrne replies:

Dennis Altman accuses me of ‘badly misreading’ his complaints about his ASIO record, which is curious because I didn’t provide a reading of his complaints or even mention his reaction to his file. My point focused on ASIO’s interest in Altman and Gary Foley on the basis of their civil rights work, and the paranoia about communism that underpinned it. As for his objection to my use of the word ‘intimate’, perhaps this could be explained by interpretative differences. If someone recorded papers I wrote, spied on meetings I attended, and documented my movements in and out of the country, I would feel I was being intimately tracked. Altman must clearly be made of sterner stuff.