Ric Throssell (10 May 1922 – 20 April 1999) was an Australian diplomat and author whose writings included novels, plays, film and television scripts, and memoirs.

For most of his professional life as a diplomat his career was dogged by unproven allegations that he either leaked classified information to his mother, the writer and communist Katharine Susannah Prichard, or was himself a spy for the Soviet Union.

[citation needed] Ric Throssell enlisted in the Australian Army in World War II, and was promoted to lance corporal.

[citation needed] Due to these associations and the Cold War tensions of the time, Throssell became a person of interest to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

The Royal Commission eventually concurred in his vehement denials of any intentional espionage, although it stated that he may have inadvertently let drop classified information to people in the circles in which he moved.

On ASIO's advice he was repeatedly denied access to highly classified documents, and was refused promotion in the then Department of External Affairs.

[citation needed] However, he played an important role in administering the Colombo Plan, and in 1962 led the formation of the department's Cultural Relations Branch.

In 1998, Des Ball and David Horner published their book Breaking the Codes, which for the first time detailed the full extent of ASIO's case against Throssell.

[5]In 2012, further allegations against Throssell were made based on information from Coral Bell, who had been his junior colleague in the Department of External Affairs in 1947 and who believed he had attempted to recruit her to the spy ring.

In 1983, the newly elected Hawke Government had his case reconsidered and, on the advice of ASIO, declined to reveal its determination on the basis that the Venona decrypts still required "the highest level of protection".

[5] In 1983, to help fund the production of the film The Pursuit of Happiness, based on a book by his daughter Karen Throssell, he donated his father's Victoria Cross to People for Nuclear Disarmament.