Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs
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DORCA, the '"Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs was a mysterious and difficult to categorise think tank and possibly intelligence organisation within the Australian Army in WWII.
Set up and headed by the charismatic Alf Conlon, the Directorate's alumni had a huge influence over Australia and the Pacific region post-WWII. Especially throught the Australian School of Pacific Adminitration (ASOPA).
DORCA hs been decribed as mysterious, odd ball, bohemian. It is difficult if not impossible to categorise, having clearly involved at leaast in some sense in intelligence work. That it morphed into ASOPA after the war gives no real insight into its wartime activities.
The Directorate figures in Australian culture in two significant ways, the Ern Malley affair, and as fuel for conspiracy theories about US influence on Sir John Kerr in relation to The Dimissal. Further fuel for conspiracy theorists is that none of the records of the Directorate survive.
[edit] "Alumni"
Commander Alf Conlon
2IC John Kerr (18th Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia)
- James McAuley
- Harold Stewart
- James Plimsoll (a Governor of Tasmania)
- Peter Ryan
- Bill Stanner (anthropologist)
- Camilla Wedgewood (anthropologist)
- Ida Leeson (Mitchell Librarian)
- Colonel J.K. Murray
- Julius Stone
- HIP "Ian" Hogbin
[edit] External links
- [www.news.com.au/couriermail/extras/ww2/shadowyorganisation.htm article] in the Courier Mail
- The ASOPA Controversy Journal of Pacific History, June 2000
