David Lague – Four key government intelligence experts on East Timor were named in the warrant police used on Saturday to search a Federal Opposition staff member's home in an inquiry into official leaks that last year embarrassed the Howard Government.
The intelligence specialists are two Army officers and two civilian analysts. One of the Army officers is a highly regarded analyst who is believed to have played an important role in preparing intelligence assessments of the situation in East Timor last year.
The warrant to search the home of Mr Philip Dorling, an adviser to the Opposition foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Laurie Brereton, shows that the Australian Federal Police was seeking evidence that public servants and journalists from The Bulletin, The Age and ABC Television's The 7.30 Report and 4 Corners had unlawfully disclosed government information between January last year and June this year.
It also shows that the AFP is investigating what appears to be a serious security lapse, with 79 classified documents listed, many of them secret or top secret, from key intelligence, defence and security agencies, along with notes to government ministers.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, last year implied that people in the middle or junior ranks of the Defence Department were responsible for the embarrassing leaks.
The Saturday morning raid on Mr Dorling's Canberra home has angered the Labor leader, Mr Beazley, who yesterday wrote to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Neil Andrew, complaining of a "grave breach of parliamentary privilege".
The letter said the raid was an improper interference in the performance of an MP's duties and could be a contempt of Parliament. It called for the House Privileges Committee to consider the complaint.
Mr Brereton yesterday wrote to the AFP Commissioner, Mr Mick Palmer, complaining that the search was an "outrageous and disgraceful trespass" on his parliamentary privilege.
Earlier the Opposition had won a court order forcing the AFP to hand over the small amount of material reportedly collected from Mr Dorling's home, but this restriction on the police lapsed yesterday.
Some of the documents listed in the warrant were intelligence assessments from the controversial period last year when the Howard Government was engaged in high-level international diplomacy over East Timor's move to independence from Indonesian occupation, and the deployment of an Australian-led multinational peacekeeping force.
A number of media outlets last year published material from a range of classified government documents showing that the Indonesian military was involved in inciting militia violence before East Timor's independence vote.
Despite these warnings, the Government and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had insisted that Indonesia would be responsible for security during the referendum. Mr Brereton exploited the publication of this material to attack the Government on its handling of the East Timor crisis.
Mr Downer late last year confirmed that the Government was pursuing the leakers. "I think we are pretty much tracking down where this material is coming from now," he said.
The warrant served on Mr Dorling showed the AFP was seeking documents from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Defence Intelligence Organisation, the Defence Signals Directorate, the Office of National Assessments, the Australian Theatre Joint Intelligence Centre, the Australian Defence Force Intelligence Centre and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.