Philip Dorling – The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has declassified hundreds of secret intelligence reports relating to the President of East Timor and Nobel Peace laureate Jose Ramos-Horta. In a diplomatic faux pas, ASIO and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade did not consult with or forewarn the East Timorese President about the release of the secret papers relating to his political activities and personal affairs.

The highly sensitive intelligence papers document ASIO's surveillance of Dr Ramos Horta and Australian supporters of East Timorese independence in the months prior to and following the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975. Much of the ASIO's reporting on Dr Ramos Horta was summarised and forwarded to the Joint Intelligence Organisation, predecessor to Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation.

Significantly, the files reveal that in May 1975 ASIO briefed BAKIN, the Indonesian State Intelligence Coordination Agency, on Dr Ramos Horta's contact with members of the Australian Committee for an Independent East Timor and the Communist Party of Australia.

Australian intelligence on Dr Ramos Horta's international communist connections would have reinforced Indonesian military concerns that an independent East Timor would be communist-controlled.

Intelligence files were excluded from the official release seven years ago of Australian diplomatic papers relating to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. ASIO has now declassified four intelligence files concerning Dr Ramos Horta that total more than 550 pages with five folios still withheld on national security grounds. The files which cover Dr Ramos Horta's visits to Australia and his activities overseas were made publicly available at the National Archives earlier this month.

In response to questions from the Canberra Times, the National Archives said it was "not normal practice" for it to consult with the subjects of Commonwealth files before records are released for public access. In a number of other cases, the subjects of ASIO files have been consulted before records have been released to the public. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade failed to respond to inquiries as to whether Dr Ramos Horta had been consulted or forewarned about the release of the ASIO files. The East Timorese Embassy in Canberra was not contacted by the department before the release of the files.

Senior Lecturer at the University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy, and a leading expert on East Timor, Dr Clinton Fernandes said the release of secret intelligence files on the serving head of state of a neighbouring country was "unprecedented". "... The release of these documents should have been better handled by ASIO and Foreign Affairs," Dr Fernandes said.

"First Australia spies the living daylights out of Ramos Horta, then our government betrays his country to the Indonesian military, and three decades later our officials release the files without so much as a telephone call to tell him what's happening."