The downfall of an Aussie spy

By BILLY ADAMS

Simon Lappas seemed destined for a brilliant career. After graduating from university he was awarded a prestigious Australian science prize. The word "genius" was thrown his way.

It wasn't long before those abilities were recognised by a secretive Government agency which collected and analysed information on foreign powers.

But like the young maths genius in one of his favourite movies, Good Will Hunting, Lappas, 26, is also said to have long harboured a deeply troubled soul.

Just three months after entering the shadowy world of spies and espionage, a darker side emerged in the character of one of its newest recruits.

His fall from grace began on a cold Canberra night last July when he walked into a massage parlour seeking the company of a prostitute. He met Sherryll Ellen Dowling, who said she was on the game to raise enough money to regain the custody of her children.

Lappas, who was engaged, was smitten by the attractive 25-year-old brunette. They went back to his flat, and she returned again the following Sunday.

Dowling stayed with him until Wednesday - four days that would spark a good-old-fashioned spy scandal, ending in a trial this week where the pair faced charges of endangering Australia's security.

Lappas, a brilliant physics PhD student, received the Australian Institute of Physics prize in 1997 for best honours student.

His desire to work in acoustics was fulfilled when early last year he secured a position analysing sound data at the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO).

The agency deals with the most secretive and sensitive information. It analyses military intelligence collected by the Defence Signals Directorate, the nation's electronic eavesdropping agency, and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, which gathers intelligence from agents overseas.

But the organisation's newest recruit was also in a poor state of mind.

At the trial, his counsel, Paul Willee, QC, said Lappas had been depressed and lonely for a long time, and had trouble sleeping. He had gone through school "completely friendless" and attempted suicide twice.

After joining the DIO, Willee said the newcomer was ridiculed and humiliated.

During the four days they spent together Lappas and Dowling confided in each other.

"I did not have sex with him," she said in a police interview, which was played to the jury. "We just talked every day ... He had been through a lot of stuff and abuse as a child. I don't think I have ever felt so sorry for another human being ... I didn't care about the fact that I hadn't been paid. He was so lonely he just wanted that unrealistic girlfriend."

The court heard that Lappas was infatuated by his new companion. Rather than pay her, he allegedly hatched a plan to free Dowling from her financial woes.

Prosecutor Des Fagan alleged that Lappas gave documents marked "top secret" and "Australian eyes only" to Dowling, and encouraged her to sell them. Highlighting passages he believed would be of interest to foreign operatives, he provided her with a phone number for a person at a foreign embassy in Canberra.

Fagan said Dowling made a call after receiving the first document but had trouble getting her message over because she had used a faulty public phone.

Dowling said Lappas told her it was common practice to sell top secret information. But she said she made no gain from the documents and had no intention of doing so.

"I'm not going to lie, I was tempted," she said. "He had given me a number to call and say that I have information that might be valuable to them and they will offer me money. I thought I might get in some shit but he said, 'No, this can only come back on me'."

A few days later Lappas confessed to two colleagues and a superior.

Willee described the events as "pathetic and bizarre."

"He felt like a robot, and he was not even conscious of the rightness or wrongness in his actions."

Lappas had taken the documents purely to assist Dowling, he told the court. Dowling said she had been mentally exhausted from her time spent with Lappas, whom she feared was about to commit suicide.

At the trial which started last week at the ACT Supreme Court, Lappas admitted two charges of giving three secret documents to the prostitute. But he pleaded not guilty to charges that he handed over documents intending them to be "directly or indirectly useful to a foreign power".

Dowling, now 26, pleaded not guilty to receiving documents for a purpose intended to prejudice Australia's defence by making them useful to a foreign power.

On Monday the saga took another twist when the trial suddenly collapsed. Earlier bids for the case to be heard in private on "national defence" grounds had failed.

At the start of the trial the prosecution said the contents of two of the secret documents would not to be offered in evidence.

When the Lappas team tried to tender copies, the prosecution lodged a claim for public interest immunity.

Justice Gray agreed to their application, saying it was "the prerogative of the executive government, to take steps to preserve the secrecy and confidentiality of documents or information where it is in the public interest".

But he said that meant Lappas could no longer have a fair trial, as proving the usefulness of the documents contents to a foreign power was at the heart of the prosecution's case.

Ordering the charge relating to the affected documents be stayed, Justice Gray ordered a retrial.

Lappas and Dowling are now likely to face a new trial on the remaining charges on April 29 next year.