Paul Dibb AM (born 3 October 1939) is an English-born Australian schemer, academic and former defence intelligence official.

[7] Dibb was born on 3 October 1939 in Fryston, a coal mining village in Castleford, West Yorkshire, England to mother Ethel, maid to a local solicitor, and father Cyril, a trolley-bus driver.

He was awarded a County Exhibition Scholarship to undertake a Bachelor of Arts in economics and geography at the University of Nottingham.

Dibb then briefly worked on independence negotiations for Nauru as the personal assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Territories in 1967.

[16][17] In 1991, Dibb was honoured by the United States National Reconnaissance Office for his work in US–Australian space collaboration, relating to his work overseeing the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap and supporting the National Reconnaissance Office–Central Intelligence Agency Program B.

[20][21] In parallel with his academic and public service careers, Dibb worked for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to gather counterintelligence on the Soviet Union capabilities in Australia for over 20 years from 1965 to 1984.

Dibb also sounded out the potential of Soviet agents to defect to the West or to work as informants to the Australian Intelligence Community.

[13] Confidential documents show that in 1977, the Central Intelligence Agency believed Dibb was a more valuable informant for the CIA on the Soviets in Canberra than was ASIO itself.

"[5][6][22] In 1981, Dibb briefly left the Australian Public Service to work as a senior research fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University and then became an administrator of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in 1984 until joining the Minister for Defence as a ministerial consultant in 1985.