Dan Box – Whitlam era foreign minister Don Willesee believed the Balibo Five were "murdered" by Indonesian soldiers and in his dying days told his daughter the Australian government had conspired to keep news of the deaths from the victims' families.

His account, that ministers "were supposed to keep a lid on (the deaths) until the next week", is supported by his former chief of staff Geoff Briot and Gerald Stone, a former news director for the Nine Network, which employed two of the five journalists killed.

This version of events is in contrast to evidence given on oath by Gough Whitlam at a coronial inquest, due to report next week, during which the former prime minister said he was not told about the deaths until five days after they happened.

Writing in The Australian today, Geraldine Willesee describes how her father "in his dying days... talked again, bitterly and unforgivingly about Australia's role in the Indonesian invasion of East Timor", in 1975.

Ms Willesee says the recent inquest jogged her memory of how her father, who died in September 2003, said the five – Brian Peters, Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Tony Stewart and Malcolm Rennie – were "murdered" by Indonesian soldiers, contradicting official reports at the time that they were caught in crossfire.

The inquest by the NSW Coroner into the death of Peters has heard from witnesses in the East Timorese village of Balibo who said the men were deliberately killed by Indonesian soldiers, including the former Indonesian information minister and special forces officer Yunus Yosfiah.

Evidence before the inquest also suggests the Australian government knew the men were dead on the day of the invasion, October 16, but this was not publicly confirmed for 10 days, leaving the men's families to suffer in the interim.

"(I) couldn't stand the thought of those poor families going through the whole weekend not knowing. So I quietly made sure that they'd be told," Willesee told his daughter.

Mr Stone yesterday confirmed that an unidentified man, whom he believed to be from the military, had approached Nine Network news director John Foel two days after the attack and told him the journalists had been killed.

"He had been approached by somebody who asked him to have a drink... and who told him, 'There is no reason to look for your boys, they are dead'," Mr Stone said.

As this account was unverified and the man had not given his identity, Mr Stone said, he had chosen not to pass it on to the journalists' families.

The inquest has also heard that a navy linguist, Robin Dix, translated an intercepted Indonesian military radio communication on the day of the invasion that was subsequently sent to the office of the then prime minister, Mr Whitlam, as well as other senior government officials.

"Five Australian journalists have been killed and all their corpses have been incinerated or burnt to a crisp," the message read, Mr Dix told the inquest. "I will never forget it. I remember it word for word."

Mr Briot yesterday referred The Australian to his own, largely unreported, testimony at the inquest, where he said the then senator Willesee came under pressure to withhold the news for fear of revealing that Indonesian military signals were being routinely intercepted.

"He was annoyed that he had been pretty heavily leant on not to say anything that might give away the secret information that he had," Mr Briot told the inquest.

"His reaction was that he wanted to inform the families of those who had been killed and he was effectively talked out of doing that on the grounds it may effect national security."

When asked who had put this pressure on the minister, Mr Briot identified the then head of the Joint Intelligence Organisation, Gordon Jockel, and his counterpart at the Defence Department, the late Arthur Tange. Mr Jockel could not be contacted yesterday.

Despite the suggestion that a number of senior government officials, including the then foreign minister, knew of the deaths the day they happened, Mr Whitlam has maintained he was not told until October 21, as he had been travelling around the country and could not be reached on a secure line. Mr Whitlam's diary from the time shows he left Canberra for Sydney on the afternoon of October 17 and attended the Gymea Lily Festival a day later, before returning to Canberra on October 20.

In his testimony to the inquest, Mr Whitlam said he had warned Shackleton not to go to East Timor as the government would be unable to guarantee their safety, and that the reporter was "culpable" in the deaths of his colleagues as a result.

There was no response from Mr Whitlam to a request yesterday for comment.