The Archives Marked Army's Vietnam Herbicide Files Ready for Public Release in 2014. A 1997 Certificate on the Back Cover Sends Them Home to Defence Whenever Anyone Asks.
A National Archives release shows five files of Army research into its own use of herbicide in Vietnam being examined, decided open, and stamped ready for release over Christmas 2014. It also shows the standing instruction, written in June 1997 and pasted inside the back cover, that returns each file to the Department of Defence on receipt of an access request.
Between 1962 and 1972 the Australian Army used herbicides in Vietnam. What was used, where, and in what quantity has been the subject of a Royal Commission, decades of veterans’ claims, and a long argument about records. Somewhere in that argument sit five files, held by the National Archives of Australia, titled File Research by DGCO Army Into Australian Army Use of Herbicide In Vietnam.
On 16 December 2025 the Archives published thirty-eight pages on its FOI disclosure log describing what happened to those files when someone asked to see them. The documents are not about herbicide. They are about the machinery of access — and the machinery is the finding.
What was released#
Sixteen documents across thirty-eight pages, released in part, in one 27.2 MB PDF. The release is a scan; most pages have no text layer, so every quotation below was read from the rendered page image rather than from an extraction.
The material dates mostly from December 2014 and January 2015: internal Archives emails, correspondence between the Archives and the Department of Defence, and two completed Access Examination Tracking Checksheets. Staff names throughout are withheld under s 47E(c) of the Freedom of Information Act 1982, so no individual officer is identifiable, and this article names none.
The files themselves are Parts 1 to 5 of item A419/1/140 in Series A4090, with the controlling agency recorded on the checksheets as DEFENCE.
The certificate on the back cover#
The central fact is recorded almost in passing, in an email of 15 December 2014 from an Archives access examiner to Defence, setting out the five files and asking how they should be handled:
Each of Parts 1 to 4 (inclusive) carries an Access Status Certificate on the rear cover, dated June 1997, stating that the file is to be returned to Defence on receipt of a Section 40 request and Part 4 (at least) includes material discussing a 1982-83 review of material prior to public release.
A section 40 request is an application for access to a record under the Archives Act 1983 — the ordinary way a member of the public asks to see something in the national collection. The certificate does not withhold the files. It routes them: the act of asking sends the file back to the department that created it.
The instruction was written in June 1997. It was still on the back cover in December 2014, when an examiner picked the files up and noticed it.
The same email records that Part 4 contains material about a “1982-83 review of material prior to public release” — that is, a still earlier round of deciding what the public would be allowed to see.
What Defence said#
The Archives asked Defence to choose between three approaches: a formal referral of the files to Defence, an initial examination by Defence conducted at the Archives, or examination by the Archives itself with referral to Defence where it seemed warranted.
Defence’s information access examiner — described on the signature block as a contractor to the department, in the Ministerial and Executive Coordination and Communication Division — replied the same day:
Option C is the way to go.
It is unlikely there will be anything of continuing sensitivity from a national security perspective. There was a Royal Comminson into herbicides in Vietnam and maost records were released at the time.
The two misspellings are in the original. Defence’s position, in its own words, was that the Archives should do the examination itself, and that national security was unlikely to be an obstacle, because the Royal Commission had already been through this ground.
What the examiners decided#
Two Access Examination Tracking Checksheets are in the release, and they are the clearest documents in it because they are forms.
Part 5, application 2014/690299, was received by the examiner on 24 December 2014. The form has three boxes for the access decision — OPEN, OWE, CLOSED. OPEN is ticked. Beside “RESTRICTIONS:” the examiner has written “Nil.” The examination was completed the same day, 24 December 2014, by an officer at the APS 6 level. The box for Examiner 2 is marked “NOT REQUIRED”. At the bottom, under FILING, “FILE IS READY FOR PUBLIC RELEASE” is ticked.
Part 1, application 2014/690297, was received on 17 December 2014. Here OWE — open with exception — is ticked, and the restriction recorded is “s. 33(1)(g)”, the Archives Act exemption for information whose disclosure would be an unreasonable disclosure of personal information. That examination was completed on 5 January 2015, again at APS 6, again with the second examiner not required, and again with “FILE IS READY FOR PUBLIC RELEASE” ticked.
So: one file open with no restrictions at all, one file open but for personal information, both stamped ready for the public, over the Christmas of 2014.
The queue they came out of#
An internal Archives email of 8 December 2014 shows what else was in the same pile. An examiner sought guidance on
the examination of 9 files in the ‘Section 40’ queue, each of which is likely to deal with highly technical details about the testing and/or effects of chemicals as well as the potential for possible s33(1)g material about individuals.
Alongside the five Defence files were four Health Department files from Series A1851, each recorded as classified Commercial-In-Confidence: on 2-4-5T veterinary and agricultural chemicals, and on carbofuran, decamethrin and cypermethrin. 2,4,5-T is one of the two herbicides that, blended, made Agent Orange.
The same email records a gap in the Archives’ own knowledge of the files’ history:
Tags attached to Parts 1 and 2 indicate that these files have been subject to (incomplete) examination within AES, but I cannot identify which examiner has done this work.
A supervisor replied on 15 December agreeing with the approach, and adding:
If you come across anything technical that we cannot interpret or determine if it is sensitive or not, we should refer the records.
The line at the bottom of the form#
The Access Examination Tracking Checksheet is a standard Archives form, and the last line of it is printed, not written:
NOTE: If the subject matter of this file is likely to attract media interest, please notify the Director, AES.
It is a routine media-awareness instruction of a kind many agencies use. It is also, on this form, attached to a file about the Army’s use of herbicide in Vietnam, and it sits directly beneath the tick confirming the file is ready for public release. The form itself also lists the five agencies to which a file may be referred: DFAT, Defence, ASIO, PM&C and the AFP.
What the documents do not say#
Whether the files are accessible now. This is the most important gap. The release shows decisions taken in December 2014 and January 2015 and a certificate written in 1997. It does not show what happened next, whether the 1997 certificate was ever removed, or what a person asking for these files today would receive. We have not assumed an answer.
Why the 1997 certificate was made. The instruction is quoted in a 2014 email. The certificate itself, and whatever decision produced it, is not in this release.
What is in the files. Nothing here describes the content of the Army’s herbicide research beyond the file title.
What the 1982-83 review decided. Part 4 is said to include material discussing it. The review is not described.
Who asked. The release concerns access applications made by a member of the public. We have not identified the applicant, and the client identifiers that appear in the documents are not reproduced here.
One claimed quotation we could not stand up. In preparing this article we checked every passage against the rendered page. One passage attributed to Document 14 during our earlier reading could not be reproduced from the page as claimed, and it has been dropped rather than repaired. Nothing in this article rests on it.
How to check this#
The single PDF is linked at the top of this page. The agency has stamped a document number in the top right of each page — “FOI 229 - Document 12”, “Document 13.1” and so on — and the quotations above are cited by that number. Because the file is a scan, text extraction returns little or nothing for most pages; the quotations were read from images rendered at 150 dpi. Where a passage is handwritten on a form, we have said so.
Thirty-eight pages is small enough to read in full, and we did.
Sources
- FOI 229 — Documents 1–16, released in part — National Archives of Australia (accessed 2 Aug 2026)
- National Archives FOI disclosure log — National Archives of Australia (accessed 2 Aug 2026)
- Archives Act 1983 — ss 33, 35, 40 — Federal Register of Legislation (accessed 2 Aug 2026)