MASTER CHEF / MASTER SPY

stock photo / wikipedia                                                        Trajkovski's Kebap diplomacy

by Sasha Uzunov

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup..a hidden bug in my kebap (cevapcici)...!

Dr Georgi Trajkovski, the Yugoslav diplomat believed to be the mastermind behind a dirty tricks campaign to discredit Australian-Croats and Macedonians during the 1970s loved to “entertain” his unsuspecting victims by getting them to come to one of his favourite restaurants in the city centre of Melbourne and hold impromptu interrogation sessions.

According to recently released files kept by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Trajkovski's favourite eatery was the Golden Grill restaurant in Exhibition Street, Melbourne.

Trajkovski, Yugoslav Consul General in Melbourne between 1975-79, would no doubt have tucked into the Golden Grill's offering of traditional Macedonian and Balkan cuisine of grilled meats known as kebapi (cevapcici), sarma (sauerkraut stuffed with rice and pork mince), corba (soup) and so on as he tried to squeeze information out of his guests.

The Yugoslav diplomat, originally an ethnic Macedonian from Aegean Macedonia, now in Greece, also liked his alcohol. ASIO documents reveal the Yugoslav Ambassador scolding Trajkovski over his consumption of too much duty free alcohol.

Both ASIO field agents and desk bound analysts were bamboozled by Trajkovski's bon vivant lifestyle, his uncouth peasant manner and underestimated his ability to infiltrate and undermine local Croat and Macedonian groups. Perhaps they are like the antagonists in the 1992 action film “Undersiege” starring martial artist Steven Seagal, who underestimated Seagal's character Casey Ryback, a Navy SEAL turned chef, by dismissing him as “he's only a cook!”

But Trajkovski, a married man with a son and a daughter, despite speaking haltingly in English, was fluent in Italian, the international language of   romance. ASIO documents reveal him trying to serenade an attractive Italian widow without much success but then asking a diplomatic colleague to find him a 30 year old female companion.

MILAN LOZANKOSKI – fellow gourmand & informer?

One of his alleged informers within the Macedonian community in Melbourne during the 1970s, according to the ASIO documents, was Milan Lozankoski (1932-2010), the then owner of New Europe (Nova Evropa) Restaurant in High Street, Preston, Melbourne, but now under new management.

An ASIO wiretap on the 18 April 1977 recorded this telephone conversation:

Milan from Nova Evropa asks to speak to Trajkovski. The secretary tells him he won't be back till Thursday. She asks Milan why he does not come to see them (at the Yugoslav Consulate in Hawthorn, Melbourne). Milan replied that it is in the interest of both sides that he is not seen entering the consulate...

...Milan invites Trajkovski to come to Nova Evropa, but to let him know beforehand, as he wants to be there personally – there are things which can be shown and others which cannot. Trajkovski wants to have a long talk with Milan soon.

ASIO notation on the transcribed phone wiretap reads: Milan seems to be an informer.

 Previous stories:

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/photos-of-yugo-spy-master.html
FRIDAY, JULY 27, 2012
PHOTOS OF YUGOSLAV SPY MASTER

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/asio-knew-yugoslav-spy-game-plan-in.html
SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2012
ASIO KNEW YUGOSLAV SPY GAME PLAN IN 1977

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/asio-files-released-powder-keg.html
FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2012ASIO FILES RELEASED - YUGO SPYING RAMPANT
YUGO SPY DREAM TEAM TAKES ON CROATS, MACEDONIANS

www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1107/S00270/who-was-the-croatian-six-mastermind.htm
Scoop - New Zealand news website - Who Was The Croatian Six Mastermind?
Monday, 25 July 2011

YUGOSLAVIA "IGNORED" ITS OWN SECURITY PLAN

1974 WHITLAM PAPER REVEALS:
YUGOSLAV GOVERNMENT "IGNORED" ITS OWN SECURITY PROPOSAL TO COMBAT "TERRORISM"

by Sasha Uzunov

In more twists and turns than a John Le Carre Cold War espionage novel and what would drive conspiracy theorists into an orgasmic delight including Aussie Hollywood star Mel Gibson, the Yugoslav Communist government in the early 1970s did not follow through on its own security proposal to combat "Croatian terrorism" on Australian soil, despite Australia agreeing to the proposal.

The proposal dating back to the late 1960s and repeated in early 1970s included the sending of a Yugoslav intelligence (UDBa) officer to Australia to exchange information on "Croatian terrorists" with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Commonwealth Police Force (the forerunner of the Australian Federal Police).

But incredulously the Yugoslav government could not find a suitable UDBa officer with English language skills !

Long forgotten documents that reveal the Yugoslav plan are now available at the National Archives of Australia, and were assembled by the Attorney General's Department led by Lionel Murphy in the lead up to Australia's Prime Minister Gough Whitlam visit to Yugoslavia in 1974.

In light of the attacks on Yugoslav diplomatic missions and businesses on Australian soil, the 1971 assassination of Vladimir Rolovic, the Yugoslav Ambassador to Sweden by Croat extremists, the failed 1972 Croat incursion-inspired rebellion into Yugoslavia, Belgrade's inability to find an intelligence officer who spoke English comes as something too hard to comprehend.

The Yugoslav government had complained long and hard and loudly to western governments to combat "international Croatian terrorism."  Many experts such as Dr John Schindler agree that UDBa rivalled the American CIA and the Soviet KGB in ruthless efficiency.

Was this simply bureaucratic incompetence, laziness or something more sinister? This revelation raises more questions than answers.

According to a 1976 ASIO report, an Australian government interpreter/translator overheard Yugoslav Consul General in Melbourne Georgi Trajkovski boasting to a visiting Yugoslav Parliamentary delegation:

“that none of the Croatian or anti-Yugoslav clubs or societies in Australia posed a serious threat to the security of Yugoslavia....the Consulate had successfully either infiltrated, undermined or obtained control of every society that had in the past been a threat.”

Below: The 1976 ASIO report of Trajkovski's boast of neutralising Croatian opposition.

 Previous stories:

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/photos-of-yugo-spy-master.html
FRIDAY, JULY 27, 2012
PHOTOS OF YUGOSLAV SPY MASTER

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/asio-knew-yugoslav-spy-game-plan-in.html
SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2012
ASIO KNEW YUGOSLAV SPY GAME PLAN IN 1977

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/asio-files-released-powder-keg.html
FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2012ASIO FILES RELEASED - YUGO SPYING RAMPANT
YUGO SPY DREAM TEAM TAKES ON CROATS, MACEDONIANS

www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1107/S00270/who-was-the-croatian-six-mastermind.htm
Scoop - New Zealand news website - Who Was The Croatian Six Mastermind?
Monday, 25 July 2011

PHOTOS OF YUGOSLAV SPY MASTER

by Sasha Uzunov

Responding to a request from TEAM UZUNOV, the National Archives of Australia (NAA) has released two photos of Dr George (Georgi) Trajkovski, the Yugoslav Consul General in Melbourne between 1975-79, believed to be the mastermind behind a successful campaign to infiltrate and discredit the local Croatian and Macedonian communities, as well as other groups opposed to then Communist Yugoslavia.

In both photos, taken in 1979, Trajkovski meets an unsuspecting Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (1975-83), after the Prime Minister donated a cheque for earthquake victims in then Yugoslavia.

The release of the photos follows in the footsteps of ASIO de-classifying its files on Trajkovski, once again at the request of TEAM UZUNOV.

This short man, who ASIO underestimated as a peasant, led one of the most succesful attempts at infiltration and destablisation of emigre and dissident groups !

The ASIO files on Trajkovski have been placed on the www.naa.gov.au website for public access.

It took me 6 months and a copying fee to get the hard copies. 2 volumes, over 300 pages. Some pages have been removed by ASIO and the years 1978-79 are missing.

But there is still so much explosive stuff in these files. The telephone wire taps of conversations, ASIO field agents surveillance notes etc. ASIO initially believed that Trajkovski was the front man with others in the background at the Yugoslav consulate in Melbourne pulling the strings. They couldnt accept the Joe Pesci-Robert de Niro (Taxi Driver) wise guy act put on by Trajkovski. 

If you read the ASIO notes they were expecting a tall, quiet KGB guy straight out of a Hollywood Cold War movie...

BACKGROUND - 

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/asio-knew-yugoslav-spy-game-plan-in.html

SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2012

ASIO KNEW YUGOSLAV SPY GAME PLAN IN 1977

By Sasha Uzunov

A 1977 ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) assessment paper, heavily redacted, found in a newly de-classified file on Yugoslav diplomat, Dr George Trajkovski, reveals that Communist Yugoslavia threatened to step up its campaign to silence Croatian dissent on Australian soil and the consequence would lead to violence.

The conclusion reached in the ASIO paper is startling in light of the fact that in 1979-80 six Australian Croats were set up by a Yugoslav agent provocateur and sent to prison as as "terrorists." 

"Yugoslav national security is seen as being as being threatened by internal dissension perhaps encouraged...

"The likelihood of (Croatian extremist violence) this occurring depends very much upon the determination of the Yugoslav government to destroy Croatian extremist bodies in Australia once it is realised that their diplomatic offensive at the most can have only partial success."

In other words, if Yugoslavia could not get Australia to clamp down on Croatian dissent it would take the law into its own hands. It sounds like a threat.

The rationale for all this was the fear Yugoslavia would disintegrate after the expected death of Marshal Tito, then in his 80s, the ruler of the country. The irony is that Yugoslavia did fall apart in 1991, eleven years after Tito's death but it was ethnic Albanian and Serb tensions in the then Yugoslav province of Kosovo which lead a spooked Slovenia, regarded as a prosperous Republic with no violent extremists abroad, to leave the Yugoslav Federation.

ASIO is Australia's counter-intelligence and domestic spy agency.

------------------------------------------------

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/asio-files-released-powder-keg.html

FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2012

ASIO FILES RELEASED - YUGO SPYING RAMPANT

YUGO SPY DREAM TEAM TAKES ON CROATS, MACEDONIANS 

– newly released ASIO files reveal a clever Yugoslav spy plan and a powder keg of information from the mid 1970s. These revelations could put pressure on the New South Wales government for a judicial review of the 1980 Croatian Six set up.

By Sasha Uzunov

In one of the cleverest Good Cop, Bad Cop, Worse Cop Routines used, a three man Yugoslav diplomatic spy team lulled ASIO into a false sense of security and managed to create mayhem within Australia's Croat and Macedonian communities as well as other Yugoslav emigre groups in the mid 1970s.

After a six month wait and a false start, ASIO has released two volumes on Yugoslav Consul General in Melbourne Dr Georgi (George) Trajkovski. The files cover the 1975-77 period.

The ASIO files reveal a three man team made of Trajkovski, playing the part of loud-mouth, uncouth peasant; Petar “Pero” Lombardic, faithfull Trajkovski hatchet man and man-servant, and a third member, Anastas “Aco” Stojanovski, as the quiet back room plotter.

There is a veritable goldmine of information, an intelligence powder keg, revealing names of local people passing on information to the Yugoslav consulate in Hawthorn, Melbourne; ASIO wiretaps of telephone conversations; and surveillance of Trajkovski's every move.

According to a 1976 ASIO report, an Australian government interpreter/translator heard Trajkovski boasting to a visiting Yugoslav Parliamentary delegation:

“that none of the Croatian or anti-Yugoslav clubs or societies in Australia posed a serious threat to the security of Yugolavia....the Consulate had successfully either infiltrated, undermined or obtained control of every society that had in the past been a threat.”

Other explosive revelations include:

An unsuccessful attempt to win over Canberra Croat leader Mario Despoja, father of future politician Natasha Stott-Despoja;

Trajkovski's bullying of Melbourne Macedonian Orthodox Church leaders into coming under Yugoslav Communist control in 1976.

The bullying and physical intimidation was so bad that the leader of the St George (Sveti Georgi) Macedonian Church, Christos Pandelis Altis (aka Risto Altin, Chris Altis), a former brother in law to Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner, Paul Deliannis, went straight to ASIO headquarters to lodge a complaint.

Trajkovski's gatecrashing, uninvited, to a Slovenian community function in Eltham;

Monitoring of the Muslim Bosnian community;

The setting up of a rival “Croatian” group, the Croatian Brotherhood Union of Australia, as a front for Yugoslav government activities;

Trajkovski's mysterious disappearance, and losing his ASIO surveillance team, in Adelaide and missing a meeting with flamboyant South Australian Premier Don Dunstan in 1976;

ASIO confirmation of the existence of Victoria Police officer and counter-terrorism expert, Geoff Gardiner, who I wrote about in previous articles as being my source for Yugoslav spying activities in Australia.

Link to Geoff Gardiner story:
www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1105/S00247/brave-cop-who-kept-victoria-safe.htm

Brave Cop Who Kept Victoria Safe
Tuesday, 31 May 2011

SCHINDLER'S LIST !

An excellent blog on security and intelligence matters run by well respected US academic Dr John Schindler.

Dr Schindler has done some remarkable work in examining the activities of the former Yugoslav Communist spy service (UDBa).

His blog is the 20 Committee (XX Committee) . link:

http://20committee.com/

      

About

John R. Schindler is professor of national security affairs at 
the U.S. Naval War College, where he’s been since 2005, and 
where he teaches courses on security, strategy, intelligence, 
terrorism, and occasionally military history. Before joining 
the NWC faculty, he spent nearly a decade with the 
National Security Agency as an intelligence analyst and
counterintelligence officer.

 There’s not much he can say about that, except that he 
worked problems in Eastern Europe and the Middle East with a counterespionage 
flavor, and he collaborated closely with other government agencies who would 
probably prefer he didn’t mention them. He’s also served as an officer specializing in
cryptology (now called information warfare for no particular reason) in the U.S. Navy Reserve.

He is a senior fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University and 
is chairman of the Partnership for Peace Consortium‘s Combating Terrorism 
Working Group, a unique body which brings together scholars and practitioners 
from more than two dozen countries across Eurasia to tackle problems of terrorism, 
extremism, and political violence. He has lectured on terrorism and security in over 
twenty countries.

He is a historian by background, with a B.A. and M.A. from the 
University of Massachusetts and a Ph.D. from McMaster University. 
His books deal with topics like the Italian front in World War I, 
Islamist extremism in the Balkans, and an insider’s look at how Al-Qa’ida 
thinks and operates. He’s currently writing a couple books on cool stuff.

John speaks several languages, lives on the water in lovely Newport, RI, and 
enjoys good food and wine, traveling to the Alps, and spy stories.

ASIO KNEW YUGOSLAV SPY GAME PLAN IN 1977

By Sasha Uzunov

A 1977 ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) assessment paper, heavily redacted, found in a newly de-classified file on Yugoslav diplomat, Dr George Trajkovski, reveals that Communist Yugoslavia threatened to step up its campaign to silence Croatian dissent on Australian soil and the consequence would lead to violence.

The conclusion reached in the ASIO paper is startling in light of the fact that in 1979-80 six Australian Croats were set up by a Yugoslav agent provocateur and sent to prison as as "terrorists." 

"Yugoslav national security is seen as being as being threatened by internal dissension perhaps encouraged...

"The likelihood of (Croatian extremist violence) this occurring depends very much upon the determination of the Yugoslav government to destroy Croatian extremist bodies in Australia once it is realised that their diplomatic offensive at the most can have only partial success."

In other words, if Yugoslavia could not get Australia to clamp down on Croatian dissent it would take the law into its own hands. It sounds like a threat.

The rationale for all this was the fear Yugoslavia would disintegrate after the expected death of Marshal Tito, then in his 80s, the ruler of the country. The irony is that Yugoslavia did fall apart in 1991, eleven years after Tito's death but it was ethnic Albanian and Serb tensions in the then Yugoslav province of Kosovo which lead a spooked Slovenia, regarded as a prosperous Republic with no violent extremists abroad, to leave the Yugoslav Federation.

ASIO is Australia's counter-intelligence and domestic spy agency.

ASIO FILES RELEASED - YUGO SPYING RAMPANT

An ASIO report detailing the Yugoslav communist government interference into the affairs of the Macedonian Orthodox Church in Australia.

YUGO SPY DREAM TEAM TAKES ON CROATS, MACEDONIANS 

– newly released ASIO files reveal a clever Yugoslav spy plan and a powder keg of information from the mid 1970s. These revelations could put pressure on the New South Wales government for a judicial review of the 1980 Croatian Six set up.

By Sasha Uzunov

In one of the cleverest Good Cop, Bad Cop, Worse Cop Routines used, a three man Yugoslav diplomatic spy team lulled ASIO into a false sense of security and managed to create mayhem within Australia's Croat and Macedonian communities as well as other Yugoslav emigre groups in the mid 1970s.

After a six month wait and a false start, ASIO has released two volumes on Yugoslav Consul General in Melbourne Dr Georgi (George) Trajkovski. The files cover the 1975-77 period.

The ASIO files reveal a three man team made of Trajkovski, playing the part of loud-mouth, uncouth peasant; Petar “Pero” Lombardic, faithfull Trajkovski hatchet man and man-servant, and a third member, Anastas “Aco” Stojanovski, as the quiet back room plotter.

There is a veritable goldmine of information, an intelligence powder keg, revealing names of local people passing on information to the Yugoslav consulate in Hawthorn, Melbourne; ASIO wiretaps of telephone conversations; and surveillance of Trajkovski's every move.

According to a 1976 ASIO report, an Australian government interpreter/translator heard Trajkovski boasting to a visiting Yugoslav Parliamentary delegation:

“that none of the Croatian or anti-Yugoslav clubs or societies in Australia posed a serious threat to the security of Yugolavia....the Consulate had successfully either infiltrated, undermined or obtained control of every society that had in the past been a threat.”

Other explosive revelations include:

An unsuccessful attempt to win over Canberra Croat leader Mario Despoja, father of future politician Natasha Stott-Despoja;

Trajkovski's bullying of Melbourne Macedonian Orthodox Church leaders into coming under Yugoslav Communist control in 1976.

The bullying and physical intimidation was so bad that the leader of the St George (Sveti Georgi) Macedonian Church, Christos Pandelis Altis (aka Risto Altin, Chris Altis), a former brother in law to Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner, Paul Deliannis, went straight to ASIO headquarters to lodge a complaint.

Trajkovski's gatecrashing, uninvited, to a Slovenian community function in Eltham;

Monitoring of the Muslim Bosnian community;

The setting up of a rival “Croatian” group, the Croatian Brotherhood Union of Australia, as a front for Yugoslav government activities;

Trajkovski's mysterious disappearance, and losing his ASIO surveillance team, in Adelaide and missing a meeting with flamboyant South Australian Premier Don Dunstan in 1976;

ASIO confirmation of the existence of Victoria Police officer and counter-terrorism expert, Geoff Gardiner, who I wrote about in previous articles as being my source for Yugoslav spying activities in Australia.

Link to Geoff Gardiner story:
www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1105/S00247/brave-cop-who-kept-victoria-safe.htm

Brave Cop Who Kept Victoria Safe
Tuesday, 31 May 2011

ASIO RE-RELEASES SUSPENDED SPY FILE

ASIO RE-RELEASES SUSPENDED SPY FILE

by Sasha Uzunov

In another extraordinary twist, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has lifted a suspension on a de-classified file on a former Yugoslav diplomat, Dr Georgi (George) Trajkovski, believed to be the mastermind behind the 1979-80 Croatian Six set up, one of Australia's worst miscarriages of justice.

The file, which is a two volume set from 1975 and 1977, does not include any material from 1978 onwards.

I applied for access under the National Archives Act for access to the file. It took more than six months and a formal complaint to the Commonwealth Ombudsman before ASIO agreed to release the document relating to Trajkovski. Earlier this week, ASIO, without giving a reason, removed the file from public access at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra.

 Today the suspension has been lifted. Once again, no reason was given for the U-turn.

This document is a vital piece to my research for a documentary film, UDBa down under: (Yugoslav spying in Australia during the Cold War period), that I have been working on. Release date is 2013.

I am still wating to receive a copy of the file.

PREVIOUS STORY:

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/asio-withdraw-spy-file.html
Monday July 16, 2012
ASIO WITHDRAWS SPY FILE