Peter Charlton – What did Prime Minister Gough Whitlam know about the deaths of the so-called Balibo Five in East Timor in October 1975?

This has been the question exercising the Glebe Coroner's Court in Sydney this week as the inquest into the death of one of the five, cameraman Brian Peters, resumed.

The head of the Joint Intelligence Organisation at the time, Gordon Jockel, told the court that he and his analysts knew, from intercepted and translated Indonesian army radio messages, that the Indonesians were aware the Australian journalists were near the border.

Jockel said he thought it unusual that raw intelligence in the form of intercepts of Indonesian military communiques was being transmitted directly to the Prime Minister's office. "It was our job to evaluate intelligence reports," he said.

He also said the intercepts did not confirm the journalists had been killed under orders, but both he and his staff had assumed from the circumstances, their own experience and other information that this was the case.

"We really had no doubt," he said. "My assumption was they had been deliberately killed. "I find it very hard to conceive that they were killed accidentally."

He said the nature of the circumstances and the fact none of them had escaped added to his assumption the journalists had been killed under orders. "The Indonesians were engaged in a clandestine operation and the journalists... could expose that."

Jockel told the court that in subsequent months the Indonesian policy of being unresponsive to Australian government efforts to determine the fate of the journalists amounted to a cover-up of the fact they had been deliberately killed.

Jockel informed his minister, Bill Morrison, himself a former diplomat. Morrison told the court this week that his government kept secret its knowledge of the deaths for five days for fear of upsetting its intelligence network in Indonesia.

Under cross-examination, Morrison said he was briefed on October 16, 1975, by Jockel "that Balibo had been overrun".

"There had been heavy fighting and that four Australian journalists were missing or had not been accounted for. That was a shock to me because that was the first I had heard of Australian journalists being in Timor, let alone in Balibo," he said.

Morrison decided not to take the information to Whitlam because the Prime Minister was consumed with a crisis in domestic politics. On October 14, 1975, Rex Connor, then Minister for Minerals and Energy, was forced to resign, and, a day later, Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser threatened to block Supply.

When his turn to give evidence came Whitlam said he knew nothing about the deaths of the journalists until five days after they were killed. He said he was not informed of the deaths in Balibo until a meeting with Defence and Foreign Affairs officials on the morning of October 21, 1975.

The 90-year-old former prime minister said he could not remember seeing several intelligence cables that had been brought up as evidence earlier in the inquest. He told the court he did not recall seeing cables that indicated the Indonesian military was planning an incursion into East Timor or that the newsmen had been executed on government orders.

He said he expected to be given all the cables received and sent by Australia's then ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, and said there was no reason for intelligence officers to withhold information.

"I believe I got all the cables," he said. "If anything came into my office or my department, they certainly would give it to me."

He said he did not recall seeing a cable sent to the embassy in Jakarta on October 13 indicating an Indonesian operation was to begin on October 15, including Balibo. He also said he did not recollect seeing a cable from Woolcott on October 15 indicating 4000 Indonesian troops dressed as anti-Fretilin forces would be used in the operation.

However, Whitlam did say that he had warned one of the journalists, Greg Shackleton, not to go to East Timor, in a conversation some weeks before at Channel 7's Melbourne studio. "I made it very plain to him that he and his colleagues should not go ... I warned him twice and he didn't seem to be deterred," he said.

Whitlam said that it was only after Shackleton's death, as well as those of Peters, Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie and Tony Stewart, that he learnt the journalist had ignored his advice.

"I assumed that Shackleton would take notice of my warnings to him. I assumed he would tell his colleagues. It would be very irresponsible of him if he did not and he would be culpable," Whitlam said.

This evidence angered Shirley Shackleton, Greg's widow. Speaking outside the court, she described the evidence as "despicable" and accused Whitlam of attempting to discredit her late husband.

She said Shackleton had received no such warning not to visit East Timor. "This is an attempt to make Greg look like an idiot," she said. "It's so extraordinary that half the time I think I must have made it up."