At this time the Foreign Minister was H. V. Evatt and Bell believed that he tolerated the lax security she observed in the department.

As a junior there she worked alongside colleagues who were subsequently alleged to be members of a Soviet spy ring, notably Jim Hill and Ric Throssell, who she believed had tried unsuccessfully to recruit her in 1947.

This allowed her to meet a number of key figures who were formulating US foreign policy, including Paul Nitze and Robert Oppenheimer, with whom she discussed the still-secret National Security Council policy paper, NSC 68, written by Nitze.

From 1977 to her formal retirement in 1988 she was a Senior Research Fellow in the department of International Relations at the Australian National University.

[7][8][9] Denis Healey acknowledged that "from the middle fifties Australia has contributed more to international understanding of defence problems than any country of similar size" in reference to Hedley Bull, Larry Martin and Bell.