Top secret papers sold by mistake recovered

Australian secret service officers yesterday secured thousands of classified documents that were sold with two secondhand filing cabinets and have been the basis of news reports by Australia’s national broadcaster.

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) officers entered Australian Broadcasting Corp bureaus in Parliament House in the capital of Canberra and in the city of Brisbane with safes in the early morning hours, ABC said.

Both ASIO and ABC have access to the safes that remain on ABC premises, said reporter Matthew Doran, who was in the Parliament House bureau when the safes arrived.

ABC revealed on Wednesday it had thousands of Cabinet documents that had been found in two filing cabinets sold from a Canberra second-hand furniture store. ABC has not identified the buyer who removed the locks with a drill and found thousands of mostly classified papers spanning almost a decade and four prime ministers.