John Blaxland is a Senior Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University and a former Director of Joint Intelligence Operations at Headquarters Joint Operations Command.

He is also co-author of the third volume in the Official History of ASIO series, The Secret Cold War.

Rhys Crawley works at the Australian War Memorial where he is an author of the official history of Australian military operations in Afghanistan.

Prior to this, while working on all three volumes of The Official History of ASIO, he was a Research Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.