Peter Cronau: A month ago, the Australian intelligence community took a direct hit. The detonation, a series of leaks to the media about a powerful pro-Indonesia bias in Australia's military intelligence and foreign affairs establishment. The missile was one of our top military intelligence officers.
Dear Prime Minister, ... I am writing to inform you about the failure of institutional controls over the Australian intelligence system.
Peter Cronau: This letter to the Prime Minister from Lieutenant Colonel Lance Collins was one of the leaked documents. The letter went on to say: It is clear that the Australian intelligence community is unable to identify reality in a timely manner, or convey its significance to Government. ... I strongly urge you, Prime Minister, to appoint an impartial, open and wide-ranging Royal Commission into Intelligence and the influences upon it.
Peter Cronau: The letter sets out a pattern of distortions that Lance Collins said has helped protect the military dictatorship in Indonesia for decades. And it itemises mercenary activity, coups, and terrorist bombings in our region that might have been prevented.
But Colonel Collins' prime allegation is that an undue influence of what's generally called the pro-Jakarta lobby has endangered Australia's national security. The letter continues: My concerns centred around three issues: the diligence with which some Australian officials attended to Indonesian foreign policy aims during the East Timor crisis, the conduct of the Mervyn Jenkins case, and the performance of the strategic intelligence system during the East Timor crisis.
Peter Cronau: This is Background Briefing on ABC Radio National. On this week's program, "Intelligence Wars", we will enter the shadowy corridors of power, knowledge, analysis and influence. I'm Peter Cronau.
Lieutenant Colonel Lance Collins himself has so far refused to speak to the media, however several senior military officers have backed his allegation of bias within the Defence Intelligence Organisation, the DIO. Naval Captain Martin Toohey.
Martin Toohey: The DIO has been politicised. That is a very sad situation. And indeed, a dangerous situation; if we have another East Timor, where the intelligence is of such a poor standard again, lives will be at risk.
Peter Cronau: At the heart of the controversy is the delicate balance between the lives of ordinary people, powerless people, that may be sacrificed in the name of a bigger game: national security and the national interest.
As early as 1998 Lance Collins had tried to alert to the Australian government about a likely violent reaction by Indonesia's military to independence moves in East Timor. He was ignored, and thousands died as a result; a nation was virtually burnt to the ground; our alliance with the US was compromised, and ironically, our "special relationship" with Indonesia bit the dust.
But Lance Collins has also been strongly criticised. It's been said his current allegations are not accurate, that he is naove, that there is no such thing as a Jakarta lobby.
Lecturer in International Relations at Deakin University, Scott Burchill, says the criticisms show that the revelations hit a nerve.
Scott Burchill: The reaction of people to the Lieutenant Colonel Collins revelations in the last month suggest that the Jakarta lobby and people who subscribe to their views, are still kicking and screaming in various quarters, not just the government bureaucracies but in the universities and in think-tanks and in consultancies. So it would seem that the broad view that had been in evidence I guess since Soeharto's rise to power in the mid-'60s continues today.
Peter Cronau: The view that was in evidence in the time of Soeharto was that Indonesia was a country we must at all costs be friends with. Australia's government needed Soeharto to stop the spread of communism; under Soeharto's iron-fisted stability, Indonesia became an important marketplace.
In forming a pragmatic alliance with Indonesia, we turned a blind eye to its military suppression of civilian opposition.
We were told there is an "Asian Way" of handling human rights; that the exploitation of the resources of the Timorese, the Acehnese, the West Papuans, is better for them in the long run. We were told that the military might be best to handle democracy in Indonesia.
It's a balance all countries must make between a deeply held view of universal human rights and the pragmatic assurances of decision makers, to decide what is to be the national interest. It's a hard-fought balance. Lance Collins and others say Australia did not get it right.
After first raising a formal complaint with the Defence Minister in 2000, Colonel Collins says he was subjected to rumour, harassment, threats and comments about his psychological state. It's a situation that others have had to face, too. Ten years ago a group of six intelligence officers had raised concerns about what was going on inside the intelligence establishment. One was former ASIS officer, Warren Reed.
Warren Reed: A blowtorch is put on the individual. They're ostracised, they're in many ways cast out from the community. It's made known to them that not only are their career prospects seriously jeopardised but they'll be cut out of meetings, there'll be deliberate chit-chat behind their backs, innuendo, slurs, a lot of muck-raking, disinformation, and the ultimate hope quite actively entertained on the part of some people, particularly with Mervyn Jenkins, to push the person to the point where they'll either suicide or have a nervous or psychological breakdown.
Peter Cronau: Warren Reed is a former senior intelligence officer and former head of the Indonesia desk with ASIS, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. He has a special interest in the Lance Collins case: he too was a dissenter. In the early '90s he and five fellow officers raised a raft of complaints about mismanagement, mistreatment and cover-ups inside ASIS. The responses led Reed and his fellow agents to take their case to the public.
Warren Reed: Well there were half a dozen of us who had similar cases. Almost all of the cases caused by intransigence on the part of Foreign Affairs, not that ASIS people are perfect, but problems over cover and whatnot. And we had all gone through the IGIS process, that's the Inspector General for Intelligence and Security, and all of our cases were effectively whitewashed.
Peter Cronau: More than two years after Lance Collins first raised his complaints, there was a response from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, concluding that Collins' allegations "do not stand up to objective scrutiny".
But by then, Collins had made a further complaint about how he was being treated. An independent military lawyer was appointed to investigate, but Collins was refused a copy of the completed report. Little wonder – it was dynamite. And it was this report that leaked to The Bulletin magazine a month ago.
Captain Martin Toohey interviewed the key players, reviewed all the documents, and earlier reports. Here is a reading from Toohey's report: I find as a fact that a pro-Jakarta lobby exists in DIO [the Defence Intelligence Organisation] which distorts intelligence estimates to the extent those estimates are heavily driven by government policy which overlooks (or attributes the blame to other factions) atrocities and terrorist activities committed by TNI [the Indonesian military]. In other words, DIO reports what the government wants to hear.
Peter Cronau: The Defence Department declared Toohey's report "fatally flawed" and commissioned another report. But it too supported Collins. They then sought yet another; it concluded Toohey's finding about the Jakarta lobby was outside his terms of reference.
The preparation of so many reports shows that there has been an attempt to find one that would dump on Collins and bolster the government.
Immediately after the leaks last month, a Defence Security Authority investigation was launched. This is no perfunctory inquiry; Background Briefing has learned the investigators have questioned some ten Defence personnel, both in Australia and overseas, and that one officer was questioned, interrogated, for six hours straight. The investigation is still under way.
Colonel Collins had written to the Prime Minister in March, and had received a polite, but final reply from the PM. Here is a reading of part of that letter: Dear Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, ... On the basis of the advice I have received, I cannot share your overall judgement about the performance of the Australian intelligence system. ... I should emphasise that I continue to have the fullest confidence in the integrity and competence of Australia's intelligence community. I believe Australia's intelligence community performs admirably under great pressures, and does a fine job in providing balanced and independent assessments to government.
Peter Cronau: The Prime Minister wrote that he would not call a Royal Commission, and he reminded Lance Collins that there is already an inquiry under way into Australian intelligence agencies. This Inquiry was set up in March after a Senate Committee found errors in the intelligence system leading up to the Iraq War.
However, that Inquiry is already dogged by allegations it will not be impartial. It's chaired by Phillip Flood, who has close ties to the government, and has headed an intelligence agency, was Ambassador to Indonesia, and now heads the Foreign Affairs-funded Australia-Indonesia Institute. It will be hard for Flood to be seen as independent. His report will be submitted, in secret, to the Prime Minister by the end of June.
Central to the allegations raised by Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, is the existence of what's been called the Jakarta Lobby. Some deny it exists, others have no doubt of its importance and influence in setting government policy. At Deakin University, Scott Burchill.
Scott Burchill: The Jakarta Lobby is an informal group of like-minded people who regard Indonesia as being a special case, requiring a different standard of behaviour to the way other countries should be expected to behave. So it's made up of people in the university sector, in journalism, in the bureaucracy, in the Foreign Affairs bureaucracy and the Aid bureaucracy, think-tanks, and consultancies. People who have a view that Indonesia should not be judged by the same standard that is applied to other countries around the world.
Peter Cronau: Scott Burchill has seen DFAT from the inside as a junior officer, and has since made the study of the Jakarta Lobby a focus of his research at Deakin University. He sees the origins of the lobby going back to Cold War fears of communism.
Scott Burchill: The view of the Jakarta Lobby was that Indonesia was in a perilous state, that it was subject to centrifugal forces which if not contained by a strong man sitting in Jakarta, would result in the Balkanisation of Indonesia, its break-up into many parts. And so after the concerns of the Sukarno period and particularly Sukarno's relationship to the Indonesian Communist party, Soeharto's rise to power was seen to be a very positive development in the West.
Peter Cronau: The Australian government in the mid-'60s certainly saw the massacres of more than half a million Indonesians suspected of being communists, as a positive development. Prime Minister Harold Holt at the time visited America, and is quoted as saying: "With 500,000 to one-million communist sympathisers knocked off, I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place." Soeharto's dictatorship was to last 33 years, and overall, Australian policymakers were pleased.
Scott Burchill: Soeharto not only wiped out the Indonesian communists, but he led the country with a very large iron fist, wiping out dissent and ensuring that the country stayed intact, using the Army to repress dissidents and secessionist movements throughout the archipelago, in particular in the eastern and westernmost provinces. This was appreciated, and the West generally and Canberra in particular, believed that Soeharto's longevity was an important national interest for Australia. And if he was to be subject to criticism because of human rights violations that he was responsible for, that may result in his removal from power, and that's something that Canberra did not want to occur.
Peter Cronau: Weighing up the balance of the national interest – stability or democracy? Unity versus disintegration? The "Asian Way" or universal human rights – is at the heart of the questioning of the Australia-Indonesia relationships.
Richard Woolcott was at the epicentre of this debate during his time as Australia's man in Jakarta in the '70s. He was there when Indonesia invaded East Timor. No longer a diplomat, he now lives in active retirement in Canberra, but maintains a strong interest in Indonesia.
Richard Woolcott: It must always be a country of the greatest importance to Australia, simply because of its size and proximity and the importance to Australia of insecurity and other terms of having a stable Indonesia.
Peter Cronau: Richard Woolcott has also been Head of the Foreign Affairs Department and Chair of the Australia-Indonesia Institute, but he denies the existence of a "lobby".
Richard Woolcott: Let me say that I find the idea of a pro-Indonesia lobby in the former Department of Foreign Affairs, of which I was supposedly one of the leaders, offensive, if it means supporting that country, Indonesia's, interests. I mean having represented Australia for 40 years on all continents and at the United Nations, I'm not pro any country other than my own. And I think also the idea of an Indonesian lobby sort of running foreign policy, also misrepresents the role of officials, even an Ambassador.
Peter Cronau: Woolcott argues it's too simplistic to take the moral high ground in international politics.
Richard Woolcott: It is in Australia's national interest to develop as sound and co-operative a relationship as possible with major powers like China, Japan, Indonesia and of course the United States. We need to understand, not necessarily to approve, but to understand their policies, and that's only common diplomatic sense, it's not a matter of there being a lobby or there not being a lobby.
Peter Cronau: Another insider who denies the existence of a Jakarta Lobby, Alan Behm, was Head of the Defence Department's International Policy Division during the Timor crisis. He was responsible for the Defence Co-operation program with Indonesia, which included training of Indonesia's notorious Kopassus special forces.
Alan Behm, speaking in his home near the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, says the Jakarta Lobby criticism comes from people who don't have to make the hard decisions.
Alan Behm: I think that people who are, shall I say, in rather subordinate positions in the broad bureaucracy, may interpret decisions that are taken either by government or things that are said or written by former senior public servants, former diplomats, as representing too soft a line, with respect to Indonesia, and their personal preference might be for a much tougher line. But at the end of the day governments have got to weigh up toughness against effectiveness.
Peter Cronau: No-one denies that there has to be a sensitively crafted diplomacy, and a making of friends with countries in the region. What's in question is whether it is ever in the long term national interest to support brutal or corrupt governments, and whether we should be turning our backs on the human rights of people in those countries. The Jakarta Lobby is sensitive to having this raised, says Scott Burchill.
Scott Burchill: My observation of the media recently, in particular the response to Lieutenant-Colonel Collins' revelations and concerns, is that the only people who raise doubts about the existence of the Jakarta Lobby are people who I would regard as comprising it. Every other observer, in particular independent observers, have no doubt that there's a long-standing group of academics, journalists, bureaucrats and others who have informally lobbied for maintaining a good relationship with Jakarta at all costs over the last 40-odd years, regardless of the crimes committed by the government in Jakarta, crimes which in particular in relation to East Timor, Australia bears some moral complicity for. So it's not surprising that the people who make up the Lobby deny its existence.
Peter Cronau: It's this weighing up of the national interests, the line to take, to be soft, or tough, to protest a massacre, or explain it away, that determines the state of working relationships between countries. In this way our "official" national interest is determined.
Richard Woolcott: It's very difficult to pursue a foreign policy entirely based on morality. A bilateral relationship with a country like Indonesia, it's a bit like a rope, it's made up of many strands. Now one or two of those strands relate to the issues of human rights and the treatment of peoples, but there are other strands too, and one has to try and find the best possible balance in a total relationship. The Howard government's doing that right now with China, it's downplayed certain problems with China because of the commercial opportunities there, for example, and I have no problems with that, as I've always argued that relationships, particularly with major countries of great interest to Australia, you have to try and find the best balance.
Peter Cronau: It was in 1975, when Indonesia invaded East Timor that Ambassador Woolcott wrote what is now considered the classical representation of the pro-Jakarta line. In August '75, a few months before the invasion, he sent a secret cable from the Embassy in Jakarta to his boss, the Head of Foreign Affairs in Canberra. Here's a reading of part of that cable.
Policies should be based on disengaging ourselves as far as possible from the Timor situation. We should leave events to take their course; and if and when Indonesia does intervene, act in a way which would be designed to minimise the public impact in Australia and show privately understanding to Indonesia of their problems. ... I know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled stand, but that is what national interest and foreign policy is all about.
Peter Cronau: Richard Woolcott says the policy towards Indonesia was not a single issue policy, and that the cable must be seen in the context of the time.
Richard Woolcott: The situation in 1975 at the height of the Cold War, with Saigon just having fallen to the Viet Cong, it was an entirely different situation, and they seem very fanciful now, but Indonesia was seriously afraid that if an independent East Timor were to emerge at that time it might be recognised by the Soviet Union or China and actually the phrase was quite commonly used, it would become a South East Asian Cuba, by which they meant that the Russians might put missiles in there and point it at Jakarta. Now this all seems very fanciful now but at the time it was a real thought.
Peter Cronau: Richard Woolcott's cable also referred to the importance of the oil under the Timor Sea, and Scott Burchill says that cable showed a hardline self-interest by Australia.
Scott Burchill: He regarded it would be a better scenario if Jakarta took control of East Timor because of the oil and gas reserves that were known to be under the Timor Sea. So rather than having to deal with an independent East Timor government, which may be a leftist government, and rather than having to deal with Portugal, it was much better that we deal with Jakarta on those issues.
Peter Cronau: Much later, the Labor government under Paul Keating and Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, continued the old pragmatic relationship with Indonesia.
Jose Ramos Horta, now East Timor's Foreign Minister, says both major political parties found the same balance.
Jose Ramos Horta: We had Labor, we had Liberal, Conservative; they had almost exactly the same position. Maybe one wanted to be more pleasing, placating Indonesia than the other. Remember Paul Keating, he then called Soeharto his "father"; remember Tim Fischer, a good man, a very decent man, he said Soeharto was "the man of the century". So Labor and Liberals were trying to outdo each other in the competition to get Soeharto's affection, Soeharto's attention. So that was far more important to them than little East Timor.
Peter Cronau: In 1995, just months before he lost office, Keating signed a mystifying and secret Security Agreement with Indonesia. It was so secret, Prime Minister Keating said at the time, "If there had been a more public process, there probably wouldn't have been a treaty".
The agreement would have Indonesia and Australia help each other in times of trouble and security problems. Critics feared this would mean co-operation in the repression of Indonesia's separatist movements. The Howard government ratified the Agreement, not long after the Coalition gained power in 1996.
But ahead lay a tectonic shift in the Asian landscape. In 1997, the Asian financial crisis destabilised economies across the entire region. In Jakarta, President Soeharto's dictatorship was losing its grip on power, and within a year, he was forced aside by a renewed democracy movement, and replaced by President Habibie.
During these tumultuous months in Indonesia, Lieutenant-Colonel Lance Collins was at the Headquarters Australian Theatre, the planning centre for all Australian military operations in harbourside Potts Point, in Sydney. Collins had seen the storm clouds gathering over East Timor's future. An authority on Indonesian military strategy, Collins had served on the Indonesia Desk of the DIO.
Colonel Collins and his colleagues were asked by his Commander to write a report on possible implications for the Defence Force. Not just any report, but what's called an Intelligence Estimate. It goes way beyond normal intelligence analysis, by examining the whole picture of historical information and recent events to predict what intentions and plans an adversary may be making.
His report was finished in July 1998 and it had three main findings: Firstly, that East Timor would continue to push for independence. Secondly, the Indonesian military would violently oppose any moves to independence. And finally, Lance Collins said Australia may be called upon to provide a UN peacekeeping force.
Such a scenario had huge implications for defence planning. If Colonel Collins was right, the Australian and Indonesian military might soon be in open conflict.
His Intelligence Estimate is still classified Top Secret, but Colonel Collins outlined the Estimate and the reasoning behind it, in evidence he gave to Captain Martin Toohey, which later leaked to The Bulletin magazine. Here's a reading from Collins' statement.
In the middle months of '98, I with two other people, and I was the team leader, completed an Estimate on the situation in East Timor which was then becoming destabilised in the wake of the trouble Indonesia had with its currency, financial regulations, the fall of Soeharto, and so on. ... The Estimate pointed to the situation in East Timor becoming very unstable in the future, and a peacekeeping force being deployed, and in some aspects of the Estimate, it pointed to the role of the Jakarta Lobby in policy formulation and so on. ...
Under the direction of the Commander, Australian Theatre, that was sent to DIO for their comment. ... I got a phone call from [an analyst in the South East Asia section of DIO] who pointed out that there were still many people of the "Woolcott School" around the system who would be unhappy with the Estimate.
Peter Cronau: Collins received sharp criticism for having written the Estimate from both the DIO and the Defence Department. But unhappy or not, Defence had now received an early warning.
At the Australian Defence College in Canberra. Professor Carl Thayer.
Carl Thayer: Colonel Collins really has to be congratulated for firming up an assessment that early. Because again, by my recollection, it would have been towards '99 that very firm reports or intelligence estimates or briefings that one was aware of, were indicating that there was a growing linkage between the Indonesian military and forming up militia groups, and focus on who was in the chain of command, how high up did this go.
Peter Cronau: Lance Collins' predictions, as we now know, turned out to be accurate. Still, to this day, there are senior insiders who deny that Lance Collins had had anything much of importance to say. Hugh White.
Hugh White: I'm unpersuaded that there was in fact an Intelligence Estimate that made those judgements. It's worth bearing in mind that there was very little evidence around that the issue of independence was at all on the cards. And such an assessment at that stage would have proved very hypothetical.
Peter Cronau: Hugh White, Head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which is funded by the Defence Department.
The International Policy Division of the Defence Department was very critical of the Collins Estimate. Alan Behm was the Division Head. He says he has never seen the document, but he does remember that his staff thought such matters should be left to the policy-makers.
Alan Behm: Certainly one of the Assistant Secretaries in my Division, communicated with Headquarters Australian Theatre at the time, suggesting that they might be better off keeping their Intelligence assessments within the boundaries of the sort of operational needs and operational demands of the Australian Defence Force, and leave the business of policy to the government.
Peter Cronau: After Keating lost government, Labor's new Shadow Foreign Minister, Laurie Brereton, took on the party's 30-year policy of support for Jakarta to push through a new policy of support for the Timorese. The Coalition government was faced with how to counter Labor's new policy and regain the initiative. In December 1998, Prime Minister John Howard wrote to President Habibie.
Here's a reading of part of that letter My dear President, ... I want to emphasise that Australia's support for Indonesia's sovereignty is unchanged. It has been a long-standing Australian position that the interests of Australia, Indonesia and East Timor are best served by East Timor remaining part of Indonesia. ... It might be worth considering a means of addressing the East Timorese desire for an act of self-determination in a manner that avoids an early and final decision on the future status of the province. ... [This] would allow time to convince the East Timorese of the benefits of autonomy within the Indonesian republic.
Peter Cronau: The letter was a bold attempt to help Indonesia retain its hold on East Timor. It was an attempt to head off moves for an immediate vote on self-determination, to give Indonesia breathing space from the mounting international pressure.
Here at a taped Senate hearing in 1999, DFAT Deputy Secretary John Dauth, as an aside, confirms the letter was designed as an effort to strengthen Indonesia's hold on East Timor.
John Dauth: But you see, Senator, a very important part of our thinking at the time that the Prime Minister despatched his letter was that Indonesia really had only one last chance to keep East Timor as part of Indonesia.
Peter Cronau: By early 1999, the predictions by Colonel Collins were playing out. In January, the Habibe government surprisingly announced that the East Timorese could in effect have a referendum on independence. But the Indonesian military, the TNI, began to violently undermine steps for the referendum.
There were shootings and massacres, and Indonesia continued to fend off calls for UN peacekeepers in East Timor. And a steady trickle of leaked secret documents from the Defence Intelligence Organisation, with details of the TNI backing for the violent militias, flowed to journalists.
Beyond even the predictions of Colonel Collins, the Indonesian military had a very carefully laid out plan on how to retain their hold on East Timor. This outline of their plan, revealed here by Background Briefing, was put together following a review of much of the Indonesian military documents available through open-source channels. It was prepared by the Australian Intelligence Corps' former principal analyst for East Timor, Major Clinton Fernandes, now completing a PhD in History at Deakin University. He declined to comment on the report, but Background Briefing has extracted the following from his contribution to a university discussion list.
The Indonesian military terror campaign was carefully calibrated in intent, timing and location. For all its visceral, punitive aspects, the aim was to reverse the result of the ballot. It would have to be discredited as rigged, by suggesting that a majority of Timorese were voting with their feet. The Indonesian military needed to remove all foreigners in order to execute its plan without the impediment of outside attention. Therefore, for all its sensationalism and violent imagery, the execution of the terror campaign was carefully controlled.
The military campaign would work sequentially as follows: 1. Use the militia proxies to confine and remove foreign observers. 2. With foreigners gone, attack the local population and use logistics assets to move them across the border. 3. Provoke a desperate retaliation from Falantil [the Timorese fighters], thereby drawing it into a conventional war. 4. Announce that [the Indonesian military] the TNI, was forced to intervene between the "factions" and then, freed from restraints, attack and destroy Falantil in conventional warfare. 5. Create new demographic facts on the ground, ensuring that the results of the ballot were irreversibly overturned.
Peter Cronau: The arrival, three weeks after the August independence ballot, of the UN Interfet peacekeepers, ended that plan. And that arrival completed the third phase predicted by Colonel Collins.
Collins was enlisted as part of the Interfet peacekeeping force to East Timor, as Commander Major General Peter Cosgrove's top intelligence officer. It was to be the largest Australian-led overseas operation since World War II, and it was a dangerous one.
[Shooting sounds]
Peter Cronau: By December, shooting attacks by Indonesian troops on Interfet forces had become so intense that 100 troop reinforcements were helicoptered to the border.
By December 20, General Cosgrove had written to Indonesian military commanders expressing concern at the deteriorating security situation in the border area.
[Shooting sounds]
Soldier: Watch that bloke, get a feed on him, do not fire on him unless he points at you!
Peter Cronau: That same day, an extraordinary, and still unexplained event happened. Someone pulled the plug on the Australians' top secret intelligence database called TOPIC. For more than 24 hours, Australian troops on the ground and thousands of UN staff, Federal Police, aid workers and Timorese civilians were put at increased lethal risk.
Background Briefing has spoken with an army Intelligence officer who was with Interfet in Dili, and was working on the Intelligence database. He says Interfet had tactical communication systems to try to work around the blackout, but says it was just luck that lives were not lost. He spoke to us on condition we do not identify him; here is a part of his statement.
The loss was critical. While it was not real-time information, it was giving Intelligence information historically, including the previous day. It could have proved lethal. It was a major loss of capability. It was a major system. It was down more than 24 hours.
Peter Cronau: The officer says suggestions made recently that the loss of access was due to a technical problem, are simply not right.
I am 100 percent certain there were no technical issues that prevented the service from opening. I was initially called in to check the system, which I did, and assessed that it was not a technical problem. It could not be fixed. I reported this to Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, and then contacted the Project Office in Canberra, who also checked. The Project Office tested the system and found it was not a technical fault. They concluded the cause was "access withdrawn".
Peter Cronau: This officer says he has not been asked by anyone in authority tell what happened, but says he is prepared to do so if called before a properly instituted Inquiry.
This new evidence backs claims by Colonel Collins that DIO caused an intentional blackout of the critical Intelligence database which put Australian lives in increased danger. It challenges the recent statement on the incident by the Defence Force Chief, Peter Cosgrove, and the Defence Department head, Ric Smith. Here is a reading of part of their statement.
There was never any cut to the overall Intelligence flow to forces in East Timor, nor were the lives of Australian personnel endangered.
Peter Cronau: The Background Briefing website from Wednesday will contain links to this document and more.
Back in Australia, the leaks to the media continued. The government was infuriated and embarrassed that its statements playing down the TNI link to the violence were proving wrong.
Defence Security and the Federal Police launched an investigation; Australia's largest ever leaks investigation. It lasted more than 12 months, and involved officers from several agencies. There were break-ins, clandestine investigators, and bugging. There were rough interrogations, and raids on people's homes.
In September 2000, the homes of two people were raided: Phillip Dorling, Labor's Foreign Affairs adviser, and Clinton Fernandes, the Army's Timor analyst. A number of other people were named on the warrants. Lieutenant-Colonel Collins was named, and so was the ABC.
Another name included on the warrant was Bruce Haigh, who had been the Indonesia Desk officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs in the mid-'80s. He has never received an explanation.
Bruce Haigh: I can't explain it, except that I was writing a lot of stuff and saying a lot of stuff about what was happening in East Timor, and I actually said that I believed that the militia had been formed and were being supported by the TNI, by the military. And presumably they thought I got that information from a leak in Intelligence, whereas in fact it was just a deduction that I made, knowing how the TNI works. I think it was an attempt to discredit me because I'd been very, highly critical of the government, and the gutlessness that the government showed towards the need, as I saw it, to intervene in East Timor with a peacekeeping force before the vote.
Peter Cronau: Labor's Foreign Affairs advisor, Phillip Dorling, is also puzzled by the raid on his home. He thinks it resulted from his Minister's critical use of the information in the leaked documents. Phillip Dorling.
Philip Dorling: What stood out in this particular case was the scale of the investigation, the very large resources devoted to it, the commitment of the government and investigators to continue investigating over a period of many, many months. And then their decision to engage in a series of highly public but unsuccessful searches. Their purpose I think, in the end, was to attempt to intimidate people.
Peter Cronau: With an Inquiry into the Intelligence Agencies presently under way and talk of a Royal Commission, some say that Lance Collins' role is vastly over-played and that the Defence Intelligence Organisation was really doing a good job.
But there is one person who has reviewed every piece of DIO reporting of the time: that's the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, Bill Blick. Paradoxically, while he concluded that Colonel Collins' allegations about DIO did not stand up to objective scrutiny, in his report on Collins he did conclude there were examples of DIO assessments "adopting a pro-Jakarta line".
The presence of such assessments during 1999 adopting the pro-Jakarta line, meant there were a variety of views available, some believing TNI assurances in handling security and others with evidence against this. This would have left open the opportunity for a reader to cherry-pick the information they want.
This was also a testing time with our US ally. It's been Australia's job since 1997 to collect, and most importantly, analyse Intelligence on indonesia and South East Asia, and to share it with our allies. It's called in the business, "load sharing".
At the ANU's Strategic Studies Centre, Des Ball says the East Timor crisis was the first serious test of that arrangement.
Des Ball: This was probably the first major test case of just how good our particular intelligence capacity was, in an area which the Americans had left to us but which was now becoming of interest in Washington itself. And there were problems. I think the key problem which arose was a concern on America's part as events began to unfold in East Timor in 1999 about whether Australia was providing intelligence of sufficient detail and veracity to enable Washington to make its own policy conclusions.
Peter Cronau: In the Washington Embassy, Merv Jenkins was the DIO's liaison man, and he was in the hot-seat. While the Australian government was trying to limit what he shared with the Americans, Jenkins was being told by DIO to secretly pass on information to the Americans. Here's an email sent to Jenkins.
Secret: For Australian Eyes Only.
Timor issues: I have been asked ... to pass on to you that issues are becoming extremely sensitive as there are Foreign policy implications. It is imperative that extra care is taken with the passing of material to the US and Canada.
Peter Cronau: But Embassy security, run by the Department of Foreign Affairs, caught Merv Jenkins passing information, and launched an urgent investigation. Jenkins was in an impossible position, and DIO cut him adrift. He was interrogated. Shaken and depressed, he committed suicide. Exactly why his situation became so untenable has not yet been revealed.
Today in her Canberra home, Merv Jenkins' widow, Sandra Jenkins, says she feels Merv's struggle with DIO has been taken up by Lance Collins.
Sandra Jenkins: He's been victimised just like Merv was. And I just admire his courage; he's doing exactly what I'm sure Merv would have been able to do had he been given the opportunity. Lance doing what he's doing, I feel like Merv is not alone, as though Merv has got someone who's able to speak up for him, where he couldn't do it five years ago.
Peter Cronau: One of the immediate effects of tensions between the US and Australia was the death of Merv Jenkins. But there were other impacts.
Background Briefing has learned that at least some on the US side believed serious damage to the Alliance's trust relationship had occurred. Phillip Dorling details for the first time an approach he had from a nervous American.
Philip Dorling: A senior officer of the US Embassy indeed approached myself as Mr Brereton's advisor in circumstances of some considerable concern about the security of our conversation, and advised us that the US government was aware that Australia had been withholding or otherwise delaying the transmission of Intelligence relating to Indonesia and East Timor, and that certainly the US Intelligence community was very concerned about that.
Peter Cronau: It was the treatment of Merv Jenkins that had particularly concerned the Americans.
Philip Dorling: He did indeed make explicit reference to the Jenkins matter and used that to make the point, to say that the Americans had seen some things that they were no longer being provided with and that that had reinforced their concerns about what the Australian government was no longer sharing with them on East Timor and Indonesia.
Peter Cronau: The American wanted to expose that the fallout was being covered up by both governments.
Philip Dorling: He wished to make it clear to us that the public statements to the contrary, the public statements by the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, and indeed by the US State Department in conjunction with Mr Howard, that those statements were not accurate, and that the US Intelligence community did not at all agree with the statement that there was no problem in co-operation between Australia and the United States.
Peter Cronau: And the American revealed to Dorling why they thought the Australians were holding back on Timor.
Philip Dorling: They had a clear view that the Australian government placed a very great weight on its relations with Jakarta and with the Indonesian military, and that that was a very significant element in the Australian government's policy and that was influencing both the government's position on peacekeeping and they were also particularly concerned that it was in turn influencing the exchange of information through Intelligence channels.
Peter Cronau: The impact on the US Intelligence system of Australia's withholding of Intelligence on Indonesia was significant. Professor Carl Thayer was at the US Pacific Command in Hawaii for three years from 1999. He reveals to Background Briefing that the US was forced to beef up their own Intelligence collection capacity because they were concerned about the quality of information they were getting from Australia.
At the Australian Defence College, Carl Thayer.
Carl Thayer: It showed up US deficiencies. It indicated that another country can withhold information under its own AUSTEO, Australian Eyes Only classification, to the extent that a Liaison Officer in Washington had to be given authority to release information that Australia was withholding, but doing it on an unofficial basis so that information was not just passing it, because Australia thought it was timely and necessary.
Peter Cronau: It was differing national interests regarding Indonesia that had led to the problem between the US and Australia, says Professor Thayer.
Carl Thayer: The United States has taken a very anti, negative line about the Indonesian military in a way that Australia hasn't, and I think that the realisation that the two have differing national interests and that may colour the Intelligence collection effort, not necessarily the product which has been alleged, but when you have interests you set Intelligence collection to inform those interests. Now that is, you move into periods of instability in Indonesia, I think all countries would realise no-one has enough assets to fully understand what's going on, and the United States took steps to try to fill some of the gaps.
Peter Cronau: Professor Thayer explains what those steps were.
Carl Thayer: Well the increasing the analytic capacity in Pacific Command to begin with. But I would have imagined as you move into the CIA areas of operation, the need for more human Intelligence contacts. And as I say, with differing national interests, the United States would ask itself different questions and then go, "How do we get the information?" and task its Intelligence agencies to gather it.
Peter Cronau: Australia's decision to help protect the Indonesian regime, even from the scrutiny of our traditional main ally, the US, was a new expression of our national interest. But following September 11, there is a renewed closeness between the US and Australia, and surprisingly also with the Indonesian security forces.
Again, we are faced with the balance between human rights and siding with a tainted security force, the old struggle to determine the national interest.
And there may yet be other costs for Australia. Former ASIS officer, Warren Reed, thinks the pro-Jakarta Lobby is alive and flourishing, though not always seen. He claims that Indonesia has recruited some Australians as spies.
Warren Reed: You have people who have been the subject of Indonesian penetration of our system, and are either, to put the mildest spin on it, agents of influence, or simply old-fashioned traitors. So the Indonesian Lobby in its various forms, I think incorporates what you could say is the good and the bad.
Peter Cronau: As former Head of the Indonesia Desk at the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Warren Reed saw much that concerned him.
Warren Reed: The Indonesians I noticed then were very, very good at exploiting interests, particularly personal interests, of some senior ASIS people. And they were doing this very effectively. I think some of the penetration has occurred directly through the Intelligence system itself.
Peter Cronau: The present debate has been sparked by the apparent Intelligence failures and has been pushed along by the Lance Collins case. It has been about the need to reform our Intelligence agencies and to isolate them from the political demands and pressures placed upon them.
There is also perhaps a need to look a bit deeper, to examine the nature of our community values, and how they are developed in our national policies, and expressed in our national interest. Des Ball says the Intelligence system needs radical overhaul.
Des Ball: We don't have a National Security Council in Australia, we don't have any high level co-ordinating machinery to ensure that other national interests which we have, and indeed hold dearly, principles of democracy of individual freedom, of human rights, that they are correctly composed with the power elements of our national interests.
Peter Cronau: And former Intelligence officer Warren Reed says a return to basic principles is required.
Warren Reed: Truth and accountability in the whole Intelligence process, and a detachment from political influence is absolutely crucial. You lose truth and accountability in Intelligence and you can't have a national interest.
There will often be a point in policy making, decision making with Indonesia for example, where to serve the national interest we may have to weigh up principle and politics. But at the end of the day, to serve a national interest properly we have to know what we stand for as a culture and a civilisation, and what we're willing to live with.
Peter Cronau: Background Briefing's Co-ordinating Producer is Linda McGinness; Technical Operator, Angus Kingston; Research and website, Paul Bolger; Executive Producer, Kirsten Garrett. I'm Peter Cronau. You're listening to ABC Radio National.