Latest news with #MikePritchard
ABC News
05-07-2025
- ABC News
Cold War spycraft to infamous Enigma machine: Inside an espionage expert's spy collection
For spy enthusiasts and collectors, World War II's infamous Enigma machine is one of the most sought-after historical artefacts — with only about 300 left worldwide. But for Sydneysider Mike Pritchard, he happens to have three in his storage. These cipher devices were developed and used mainly by Nazi Germany to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. "It's actually not my favourite machine, but it's the one that everybody knows. When I take these sorts of machines out to show people, they're fascinated," Mr Pritchard said. The work of cryptanalysts to break the Enigma code is credited with turning the tide of the war and saving a significant number of lives. So how does an everyday Aussie like Mr Pritchard have two Swiss Enigma machines and one German Enigma machine on hand? Mr Pritchard said he gathered the artefacts across many years from at least 20 countries and a variety of methods. "Some [are] from public and private auctions, others from private collectors — like the cipher machines. It's a small club of people that are serious collectors." After decades working in IT and cybersecurity in the private sector, Mr Pritchard now spends his time talking at cyber conferences and university seminars — opening the lid on his spycraft collection. With over 1,600 artefacts to his name, it's hard to choose a favourite. The Stasi East German camera concealed in a flower box. The carved statue ornament that would sit on a mantelpiece for 'decoration', only to record those in the room. Even the small Ajax cameras that were built into a variety of items — purses, belts, cigarette packets, thermos flasks, jerry cans, and more. Nowadays concealment technology can be miniaturised down to the size of a pinhead. "They are very interesting relics from the Cold War and nicely executed," Mr Pritchard said of his covert devices, acknowledging the prowess of this era's espionage. "Usually this technology is developed in secret, used in secret and destroyed at the end of its life. Mr Pritchard said tertiary students he speaks to are always intrigued by women in espionage throughout history and any associated gadgets. The idea for a bra concealment camera came from a group of young women working in a Stasi subdivision, which designed much of the state security service's surveillance technology. During the Cold War period, the Stasi played a key role in maintaining the authority of the East German state — heavily monitoring citizens. "The women took a spring-powered camera, the Ajax camera, and mounted it inside a bra, and it was a success," Mr Pritchard said. The concealments were then created under Project Meadow and used by female Stasi agents. As for a well-known woman associated with the spy realm, Mata Hari, real name Margaretha "Gretha" MacLeod, was a Dutch exotic dancer who was suspected by the French of selling secrets to the enemy. "She's really a tragic figure because she was not professionally trained to be an intelligence officer," Mr Pritchard said. "She was sort of used by both sides in World War I. Mata, a courtesan, was networking between these powerful men of various countries and clumsily passing on information," Mr Pritchard said. The original letter Mr Pritchard has from Hari is written on letterhead from Hotel Metropol in Paris, offering a peek into her life. Another original letter in Mr Pritchard's collection is from Ian Fleming, a British writer best known for his post-war James Bond spy novel series. Prior to his author success, Fleming served in Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during World War II. "The letter is from his time in Berlin, and in guarded language he is writing about how someone has to meet certain 'criteria' to come and work for his organisation," Mr Pritchard said. "It's a very nice rare item to have." Ultimately, for Mr Pritchard, he said his dream is to open a spy museum in Sydney, given it can be "an extraordinary form of entertainment and education". "The plan is to open an independent public museum — a home to protect these artefacts, display them in context and deliver educational programs. "I think in the early days my kids were saying of my interest in espionage, 'Oh, Dad is going off on one', but now they've come to see me talk at conferences, and I think the penny has dropped for them. "I want to bring this history to the world."
The Guardian
21-06-2025
- The Guardian
From a rectal kit to a Berlin Wall-era transmitter: the artefacts of Australia's spy museum which doesn't exist
Every morning Mike Pritchard eats breakfast next to a Stasi surveillance rack. The machine, sitting on a couple of milk crates near his dining room table, is composed of colour-coded buttons, switches and dials. It contains a surveillance receiver, a controller for up to 10 receivers, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and a numbers-station broadcast box. 'The equipment in this rack can be seen in the German film The Lives of Others,' the Sydney man says. 'It's absolutely been used. They used this stuff every day. Remember, this was a police state – they are using this stuff to listen to everybody. This is not a once-a-month thing, it's your day job.' The artefact is not the only piece of espionage history in his home. He has spy cameras once favoured by intelligences services such as the CIA and KGB and a field radio used in the second world war by US women parachuted in behind enemy lines. The really interesting things he keeps off-site in a facility that is packed to the brim – like cipher devices used by the French intelligence services during the Algerian civil war and in Indochina that were once uncrackable; several working enigma machines; a briefcase built to conceal a compact automatic firearm; a bra built to conceal a hidden camera; a rubber stamp from a Berlin Wall checkpoint; and a nameless device built to detect invisible writing. 'The truth is, I think I am a complete nerd,' he says. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Every so often he extracts these items to photograph them for the Australian Spy Museum's social media feed – an institution which doesn't yet exist but which the 59-year-old is working to make real. Currently, Washington DC and Berlin host the biggest public spy museums in the world, with smaller collections on display in Spain, Latvia and Finland; a private collection of mainly KGB equipment in France that occasionally tours; and some good cryptography museums including in Bletchley Park in the UK and in Moscow. No such institution exists in Australia – something Pritchard wants to change. Australia's intelligence agencies maintain their own in-house 'captive' collections, and a spy camera museum exists outside Cairns. Pritchard is thinking bigger. His museum would span the history of espionage from the Renaissance to recent times, with exhibitions organised around the pillars of spy-craft: cryptography, mass surveillance, covert communications, tradecraft equipment and modern threats. Within each one of those, a collection would track the development of events and technologies over time, from old clockwork devices through to the digital age. Pritchard's collection, which started in 2011 and is now 'well north of 1,500 artefacts' is enough to get started, he says. He won't say what it's worth – 'its value is: 'I don't want my wife to see that in print'' – but it includes artefacts from the intelligence services of the UK, US, France, Russia, Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Finland, Peru, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Czech Republic and more, all across different eras. He has also sourced like-models for equipment issued by Australian intelligence services but says agencies such as Asis and Asio have been 'notably scrupulous' at policing their kit and destroying it at end of life. 'We've also never had a big dramatic event like a government collapse or a civil war in our contemporary history that would have allowed some of this stuff to get out,' he says. James Bond may have glamorised espionage, but Pritchard says the franchise is a fantasy that is a 'powerful marketing vehicle for watches and cars', a world away from the reality – which can be less glamorous. Within his collection is a rectal conceal kit, a capsule about the size of a thumb, that contains diamond wire that could be used to cut metal as part of an escape. Another example is a Tochka – a spy camera about the size of a finger – built to be hidden behind a necktie. The Romanian man who sold it to him, he says, was among those who raided the Securitate building, headquarters of a brutal secret police, at the fall of the regime. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion His favourite artefacts, however, demonstrate an extraordinary blend of prowess and deviousness – like a device used by the Stasi to speak to its operatives across the Berlin Wall using infrared. Unless you were standing inside the beam of light, there was no way to know a conversation was being had – and no way to eavesdrop. 'I can hold in the palm of my hand this tiny object, and it's built with this craftsmanship, this jeweller-like precision that goes into this tiny camera,' Pritchard says. 'And to think about the effort and the work that went into it is extraordinary. And it has its own life as just this beautiful little example of precision engineering, which is then overlaid with its story, its place in history, of these monumental changes in our world.' Any future spy museum, Pritchard says, could also serve as something of a Trojan horse to educate people about modern threats – such as climate change. Among his most prized items are rare, first-edition books and publications charting the development of the theory behind the greenhouse effect. The materials begin with Joseph Fourier, who in 1827 first used the term 'greenhouse effect', and Eunice Foote, who in 1856 performed experiments that demonstrated the greenhouse effect. There are also artefacts once belonging to Guy Callendar, who confirmed the Earth's temperature was rising in 1938, and Roger Revelle, who warned of 'radical climate changes' way back in 1958. 'It's about rebuilding that story on a timeline that ordinary people can walk into and can see, and then go, 'Oh my God, this is what we knew at this point. This is what we knew at this time.'' Governments and intelligence agencies tend to have a particular view about how the past gets told, so Pritchard's preference is a privately owned open museum in Sydney, with its vibrant tourism market. Think of it as 'educational espionage', he says. 'A museum where the Get Smart gadgets are on the surface and everyone goes, 'Wow, a telephone hiding in a shoe!' but then, as they walk through the galleries, they learn about cryptography, or they learn about the security aspects of climate change and they go, 'OK, I never really thought about that before.' 'It's learning by stealth.'
BBC News
30-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Vietnamese orphan celebrates 50 years in Oxfordshire
A family is marking the 50th year since a personal tragedy led to them adopting a baby from officer Mike Pritchard and his wife Jacquie - from Chalgrove in Oxfordshire - lost their baby son Steven to cot death while they were in Singapore in a tragic twist, Mrs Pritchard had been to hospital that same day for a sterilisation operation. During the grief that followed they decided to do something positive. Knowing that the war in Vietnam had created many orphans, they made enquiries about adoption."A photograph was sent to us saying 'this is the baby you can have'," said Mrs Pritchard. Mr Pritchard flew to Saigon to collect the boy, who they named Matthew. "I held Matthew for the first time. His little eyes, I said 'you're the one for us'. Great, rubber stamped, done," explained Mr Pritchard. But there was a snag. The paperwork would take six weeks, so Mr Pritchard had to fly back to Singapore without Matthew and wait. Shortly afterwards, the couple heard news that a transport plane carrying orphan babies to America for safety had crashed with great loss of life. They feared Matthew might have been on board. Mr Pritchard flew back to Saigon and learned that Matthew was safe. But he had been flown on a different plane to Sydney, Australia. It was then that Mr Pritchard saw another opportunity. "I said 'look I know I'll get out of here somehow. Do you want me to take some babies?" he said. "I was asked, would I also take a 10-year-old blind boy?"I said yes of course! We headed for Hong Kong. All my babies in front of me in cardboard boxes. "A lot of people say I was very brave to do that. I just think I did what I needed to do." The babies were eventually flown to Britain where they were collected by their new parents. "Once I knew that these babies were safe with their adoptive families I thought 'this is where you step back'," said Mr Pritchard. Back in Singapore, the couple waited for the plane that brought Matthew to them. "We saw this woman walking along carrying this baby, she popped him in my arms and it was amazing," said Mrs Philip and Matthew grew up together, attending boarding school and university in England. Matthew remembers that as a child he attracted some attention. "Looking back, I can understand people's curiosity. I'm Vietnamese and I've got British parents. But I just felt like a normal child that was loved and brought up", he said. "The aspect of being rescued from a war zone never really crossed my mind. I feel very British. But I'm also very proud of my heritage and culture."Matthews parents reflect with mixed emotions on the events of 1974. "The tragedy of Steven dying. He didn't die in vain," said Mr Pritchard. "Good always comes out of bad."
