Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra

A thoroughly researched indictment of successive Australian governments and the senior bureaucrats and intelligence elit...

Author: Desmond Ball | Hamish McDonald

101 downloads 608 Views 11MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

A thoroughly researched indictment of successive Australian governments and the senior bureaucrats and intelligence elite of Australia, for connivance in· the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and for a quarter century of cover up. -THE HON. JUSTICE JOHN DOWD AO, President, Australian Section, International Commission of Jurists

This is an account oj how the Australian secret intelligence community and pliant politicians conspired to suppress the truth about the murder of five TV journalists in Timor in 1975. Long overdue, convincing, restrained and truly, shocking, it is a (must read' for anyone concerned about the future of open government. -PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY, author of The First Casualty, a history of·war correspondents

DESMOND BALL is Australia's leading intelligence expert. A special professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, AND, Canberra, he is author of many books including A Suitable Piece of Real Estate: American Installations in Australia, Pine Gap and the highly acclaimed Breaking the Codes: Australia's KGB Network, written with David Horner. HAMISH McDoNALD, one of the leading Australian foreign correspondents of his generation, has been following the Balibo incident since 1975. He has worked in many parts of Asia for the Sydney Morning Herald, the National Times, the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Washington Post. As foreign editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, he led that paper's Walkely Award-winning coverage of the East Timor vote for independence and its aftermath. He is also author of Suharto's Indonesia and The Polyester Prince.

This page intentionally left blank

DESMOND BALL +HAMISHMcDONALD

ALLEN & UNWIN

First published in 2000 Copyright © Desmond Ball and· Hamish McDonald 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 9 Atchison Street St Leonards NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.allen~unwin.com.au National Library .of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Ball, Desmond, 1947- . Death in Balibo lies in Canberra. Includes index. ISBN 1 86508 369 O. 1. ]ournalists-Indonesia-Balibo-Death. 2. Journalists-Australia-Death. 3. Balibo (Indonesia). 4. Timor Timur (Indonesia)-Annexation to Indonesia. 5. Australia-Foreign relations-Indonesia. I. McDonald, Hamish, 1948- . II. Title.

959.86037 Set in 12/14 pt Bembo by DOCUPRO, Sydney Printed by Australian Print Group,Maryborbugh

10987654321

CONTEN:TS

LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

VIII IX

1 THE NEWSMEN 31 OPERATION FLAMBOYANT 50 COMPROMISED DIPLOMACY 65 LISTENERS IN THE SOUTH 79 DEATH IN BALIBO 100 THE BALIBO INTERCEPTS 114 COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 122 COVER-UP IN DEFENCE 146

A PUSH INTO WAR

ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN

APPENDIX (

COMPLICITY, BLAME AND SECRECY

157

SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE AFTER BALIBO

166

NOTES ON SOURCES GLOSSARY INDEX

185 191 193

LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

MAPS

The Indonesian Archipelago The East Timor border

XIII XV

DIAGRAMS

Indonesia's covert Timor campaign, October 1974-November 1975 DSD organisation concerning Indonesia, 1975 Organisation of the JIO, 1975 Joint Intelligence Organisation, Office of Current Intelligence Fatal attack on Balibo

viii

51 81 89 91 104

PREFAC,E AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

O

N 16 OCTOBER 1975, during a covert invasion of . . Portuguese Timor by Indonesia, five Australianbased journalists were killed at Balibo.This book tells how and why they died, what the Australian government knew about their deaths, and why it has covered up this knowledge for,Gl quarter of a century since. Well over 100 000 East· Tirp.oresealso,die~ dllring ,tpe Indonesian invasion an.d. o.c,cupation of their country. More recently, in 1999, the territory was devastated with perhaps 2000 more of its people killed and 250 00.0 others deported during Indonesia's exit. It may ·seem disproportionate, even racist, to devote a whole bO,ok to five Western newsmen who went to Timor of their own volition and placed themselves at risk for the sake of a story. But questions about the deaths of these journalists won't go away. The bereaved relatives still want to know what happened. The image of one of the newsmen, Gary ix

Shackleton, standing with a microphone in front of a crude drawing of the Australian flag in· Balibo still persists in the consciousness of, the Australian public. There is a nagging sense that the Australian government did not d.o all that was possible to save the newsmen, and that it has never told the whole truth about the matter. To be sure, this concern about the Balibo .incident was deliberately stirred by supporters of East Timor's independence during the long years of Indonesian occupation, as a way of penetrating the wall of secrecy thrown up by Canberra's close cultivation of the Suharto government in Jakarta. Nevertheless, this concern remains even after .East Timor has gained its freedom, and even after two government-commissioned inquiries (by Tom S,herman,former chairman of the National Crime Authority, in 1995-96 and 1998-99) claimed to have seen all government records and taken investigations as far as possible in the absence of full accounts by the Indonesian participants in the Balibo attack. One of the authors, Hamish McDonald, who was based in Jakarta in 1975, made extensive in.vestigations soon after the deaths, resulting in a lengthy article in The National Times newspaper in July 1979 and sections of the book Suharto Js Indonesia in 1980. After many years reporting from other countries, he returned to a position with ,The Sydney Morning Herald in 1997 to find that the Balibo incident was still a live issue. A further investigative report in the Herald in August 1998 outlined the cover-up in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade about Balibo since 1975. This report drew a wide response from readers, including some who had been with Australian intelligence services in 1975 and who provided new information about the official handling of the incident. The other author, Desmond Ball, has had a longstanding interest in Australian intelligence activities and had been compiling a collection of max

DEATH IN BALIBO, LIES IN CANBERRA

terials o·n Balibo based on discussions with members of the Australian intelligencecommunity,who .indicated that there was' much about'· the· Australian government's knowledge of the~deaths that remained' to be told. In early 1999, the two authors decided to collaborate in telling this story. The authors were intrigued by the evidence of official lies and cover-ups. This is a rare case where officials decided, in peacetime, to sacrifice some of their fellow citizens to protect security and intelligence interests, and where ministers and .officials knowingly conspired to mislead the public and parliament afterwards. With signs of official records being hidden in 'special repositories or being remov.ed from archives and destroyed, the authors felt it was essential to talk with as many of the participants in the 1975 events as were willing to speak. Already many have died and, in other cases, memories have become cloudy. The authors believe there is no excuse for further deferral of the full truth about Balibo and the "'official cover-ups. The' authors wish to ·thank the numerous people who assisted either .by providing their direct knowledge or suggesting contacts and sources. Many of these do not want to be identified. We are grateful to Paul McGeough, the editor of The Sydney Morning' Herald, for allowing us to draw on the newspaper's files and illustrations; to Paul Johnstonand Michelle Verghis, Herald graphic artists, for ·their preparation of maps and diagrams; and to Marian Wilkinson for some crucial information.

Desmond Ball and Hamish McDonald March 2000

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Xl


CO

o0') c.

CD a-

:E () ct C CO

c::

CD

";

CD

o "C ..5 J:

I-


The East Timor Border


ONE

A PUSH INTO WAR

E

a colonial curiosity, virtually devoid of political interest even in Southeast Asia, until middle-ranking officers of the Portuguese army overthrew the doddery fascist regime in Lisbon on 25 April 1974. The efforts of the dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and his successor (from 1968) Marcelo Caetano to hold onto Portugal's African colonies had beggared Portugal and bled its conscript army, whose members had no prospect in sight but endless wars· against liberation movements supported by the communist powers. The new Armed Forces Movement (MFA) set out to dismantle the 400-year-old empire. Its first leader, the conservative Gen. Antonio de Spinola, hoped to set up a Lusitanian federation or commonwealth. In September 1974 he .was replaced by younger, more radical officers supporting a complete and rapid withdrawal from Portugal's colonies. AST TIMOR WAS

Timor was the oddity of this empire. Goa and the other Indian territories had been lost when the Indian army invaded without significant armed resistence in 1961. In Macau, Chinese gunboats had cruised the inner harbours in the late 1960s, reminding the Portuguese they were tenants, not owners, under a treaty that was to expire at the end of 1999. Marxist liberation movements waged guerrilla campaigns in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. But before April 1974 in Portuguese Timor, modern nationalism was barely emerging in the coffee-table discussions of the few educated young people and receiving only oblique references in the few and highly conservative local publications run by . the administration and .the Roman Catholic church. The most remote from Lisbon of the colonies, Timor's population had been quelled only in the early years of the 20th century; when Portuguese· warships bombarded rebellious regions along the south coast, and its border had been finally fixed in a 1913 treaty with the Netherlands. Some 250 years of rivalry with the Dutch led to the colony's quirky frontier. The Portuguese had arrived first, in about 1514, to take the island's famous sandalwood and set up Christian missions on nearby islands. Portuguese governors planted their flag at Lifau, on the north-western coast in 1701, and further east at Dili in 1769. The Dutch built a trading fort at the fine natural habour at Kupang, on the far western tip of the island. Using the warriors of the 62 Timorese kingdoms as mercenaries and proxies, the two European powers, one Roman Catholic and one Protestant, warred for dominance-their interest diminishing with the exhaustion of Timor's chief· exportable resource, sandalwood. The 1913 border roughly divided the island in half, with the historic enclave of Oecussi-Ambeno containing 2


the original Portuguese settlement of Lifau included in the Portuguese territory. For the Timorese population, a racial mixture of Malay and Melanesian types, it was always a ·porous border, with people crossing weekly or daily to local markets. By 1974, the'>Isl£nd's western halt~"had nearly'one million people and was the biggest component of the Indonesian province of East Nusatenggara, which was run by a Jakarta-appointed governor (then a'local man, Col. EI Tari) and a provincial assembly in Kupang. The eastern side was an 'overseas province' of Portugal, controlled by a 'Portuguese governor, invariably an army colonel. Senior officials, army officers and the magistrate-administrators 'who ran, the ·13 districts were mostly Portuguese, but the bureaucracy,medicalservice and judiciary included som-e ;Africans·· and Goan Indians at senior levels. The Portuguese garrison was small, having run down from a high poinf'·,of 'some 2500 European soldiers in the early 1960s to only 200 in 1974-75, alongside 3000 locally raised infantry and some 7000 partially trained auxiliaries. Some 12 000 Chinese and part-Chinese ran the import and export trades, warehouses and shops. Most Chinese had passports issued by Taiwan, which had a consulate in Dili. The total population, put at about 650 000 by the last Portuguese count in 1974, was rural, with just 30 000 people living in the tranquil capital Dili. In the early 1900s,political· debate was stirring among recent students ·of the Jesuit seminary near Dili and among the Timorese lieutenants and sergeants ·of the Portuguese Army, some of whom had seen service in Africa., But compared to the dangerous insurgencies Portuguese administrators an..d soldiers faced in the African colonies, Timor was a soft assignment and well-connected parents of conscripts often used influence to have their sons assigned' there. A·PUSH INTO'WAR

3

Despite the relative lack of clamour for attention, Timor was included in· the . immediate.decolonisation plans of the Armed Fotces Movement. By July 1974, an MFA delegate, Maj. Arnao Metelo, was installed in Timor to supervise disbandment ,of the fascist corporate state party, the secret police and the censorship commission.Lisbon talked of village elections in 1975 and some time later~ a plebiscite on the territory's future. Three main political parties emerged within a month of the Lisbon coup, reflecting the choices open to the territory. T'he small Portuguese~speaking middle class which numbered· perhaps 25 000, and whose members possess,ed some education and ran the construction and coffee-planting sectors, gravitated to the TimoreseDemocraticUnion (UDT) , which initially favoured continuing links with Lisbon but later shifted towards a policy of independence following several years of preparation. A small group of civil servants, high-school and seminary graduates, and junior army officers formed the Association of Timorese Social Democrats, which later in '·1974 took a more radical stance and named itself the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin). Its leaders, such as the journalist Jose RamosHortaand'Lt Roque Rodrigues, who had spent some time in Mozambique, adopted the socialist liberation ideology" then in vogue throughout the Third· World and sought early indepen'dence, but after eight to ten years preparation. ,Many of the leaders of both UDT and Fretilin were mestico-'' -ofmixed Portuguese and Timorese descent. In several cases they were children of Portuguese deportados, those sent into exile from Portugal because of their opposition to Salazar, and Timorese women..The father of the three·" Carrascalaobrothers active in the UDT (Manuel, Joao and Mario) had been a bomb-throwing 4


commu'nist exiled in 1935; ,the father of Fretilin's· Jose Ramos-Horta was a naval officer involved in -.afailed coup against Salazar in 1939. Others, such as: Fretilin's president Xavier do Amaral, were children of traditional chiefs, theliurai. Those whose parents could not afford to· send· them to--'Lisbon for college ,had. mostly been educated in the same school, the Jesuit seminary at Dare in the ,'.' hills outside Dili. Many worked alongside each other in '. theb-ureaucracy-.UDT's .presidentFrancisco Xavier Lopes da Cruz ,;andhis Fretilin counterpart' do Amaral in the customs shed at Dili Harbour. The leader of UDT and Fretilinwere connected.bymarriage too--Joao·.:Carrascalaowas married to a·. sister of-RamosHorta--which made the later conflict even more tragic. Rated as weakest ,In both popular and elite support was the Association for the Integration of Timor with Indonesia, which quickly changed its unpopular name to the Timorese Democratic People?s Association -(Apodeti)., Its leaders too had marriage ties with leaders "of the other parties~ However it ,always' had adi-stinctly native character,while' the mestico, character of many leaders. of the two larger-·parties was used to deride their ambitions. Ap_odeti'spillars were a -number.of th-e liuraiorraja in traditional' fiefdoms alo'ng the western border:, a valuable base close to support, from the Indonesian' town6f Atambua. Until 1974, Indonesian interest in Portuguese Timor had been' desultory. In 1945, Indonesia's founding constitutional committee had sympathised with .argu,ments put by the nationalist Mohammad Yamin, which included Portuguese Timor (and West New Guinea, North Borneo and; Malaya) as part of a Pan-Indonesian nation, based on ethnic grounds and on claims of an. earlier unity under the'.Majapahitdynasty.. Sukarno endorsed 'Yamin's idea and it was' adopted, over the objections of moderate nationalists including Mohammed Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir, A PUSH INTO , WAR

5

by 39 votes out of 66. But,. the greater Indonesia notion disappeared from sight during the independence struggle, and Portuguese Timor received only passing attention thereafter. During the 1961-63 West New Guinea crisis, Jak'arta based its claims solely on the former boundaries of the Dutch East Indies. For their part, the Portuguese themselves regarded Indonesia with disdain and suspicion, discouraging contact until the late 1960s. A small group of refugees from the North Sulawesi rebellion of 1958 gained 'asylum' in Portuguese Timor, but a year later mounted an antiPortuguese uprising at the south-eastern district of Viqueque. The Portuguese put down the agitation, killing over 150 local people and sending almost 60 Timorese into exile in Africa. The border itself was no barrier to informal contacts, and it intersected the island's largest language pool, Tetum, and the domains of several traditional rulers. Raiding cattle or going to market, Timorese ignored the border. The Indonesian response to Portugal's 'carnation revolution' ""as prompt, and involved President 'Suharto's closest intelligence advisers from the start. A vicechairman of parliament, John Naro, who was close to deputy chi~f of the State Intelligence Co-ordinating Body (Bakin), Lt-Gen. Ali Murtopo, expressed the hope to Jakarta newspapers that 'the Indonesian Government takes preliminary steps and finds a special policy on Portuguese Timor so that finally, that area will once again return to Indonesian control'. Murtopowas looking for just such an assignment. A Central Javanese, like President Suharto, he had become part of the president's inner circle as intelligenc~ officer in Suharto's military commands, first during the 1961-62 raids against the Dutch in West New Guinea and then in the military-political 'Confron6


tation' of British Commonwealth forces defending the newly', created federation of Malaysia ,in 1963-65. In the latter ,campaign, Murtopo'developed a second channel, of secret diplomacy that completely undercut the official policies set by the ageing and' erratic Sukarno. He opened contacts with the British command in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore" conveying Suharto'sunwillingness to undertake any more than token implementation of Sukarno's edict to 'crush Malaysia'. His intelligence group, called Qpsus ((rom the Indonesian for 'special operations'), turned increasingly to domestic political manoeuvres as well. It drew together operatives from the army and anti-communist elements of Indonesia's Roman Catholic community. Disinformation" provocation, dummy organisations, stacking of meetings, bribery and propaganda were stock in trade atOpsus.' ', These techniques came in~o play, on 30 September~ 1 October 1965 when a group of dissident officers under Lt-Col. Untung led Sukarno's palace guard and other units in a coup' again~t a pro-Western 'council of generals', which was allegedly about to depose the president. The then Maj.-Gen. Suharto, commanding the army's Strategic Reserve (Kostrad), was not included in UnttIng's hitlist of generals, and successfully put down th~ coup. Suharto then launched an all-out drive against the Indone'sian Communist Party (PKI) , which had been marshalling sympathisers' at Jakarta's air force base and had tentatively endorsed Untung's niove. Between 500000 and 1 million actual or suspected PKI' members were slaughtered by the army and Muslim militants in the following months. In Jakarta, student 'protests kept up constant pressure against Sukarno as he tried to preserve a Leftist political' ,force 'to' counterbalance the army and the Muslim parties. Murtopo was centralto the political planning behind Suharto's battle for ascendency. A PUSH INTOWAR

7

After coercing Sukarno into delegating executive powers in March 1966, Suharto formally took over ,the presidency in 1968. Murtopo'sOpsus group ·then shifted to consolidating Suharto's 'New Order' regime. An early step was securing Indonesian sovereignty over West New. Guinea, where the Dutch had been pressured into handing over to interim Indonesian administration by Washington. in 1963. The wishes of the population were to be ascertained in a United Nations-supervised ~ct of Free Choice' in 1969. Opsus was given charge of the Indonesian···campaignfor a decision that was to be· taken by some 1000 'popular representatives' rather than by plebiscite. In effect, Opsus took over the selection of those representatives, using bribery and threats to achieve a sweeping vote for joining Indonesia. Later, Murtopo and Opsus masterminded the creation ·of Golkar· as a corporatist political party for the Suharto regime, ·and the suborning ·of other parties into two tame conglomerates. By early 1974, however, the power plays and intrigue instigated by Murtopo and his other 'special presidential assistants' had rebounded on Suharto. In January 1974, they and their manipulations figured prominently among the grievances of rioters whose protests shook the regime. Suharto sacked waverers from senior military and government ranks, jailed many critics, and closed down some newspapers. Murtopo remained ·a deputy chief of Bakin and a serving general in the army. He ran two important and useful political (dapur) ('kitchens') in Opsus and in the recently founded Centre for Strategic and International ··Studies, which employed a number of like-minded intellectuals and activists, many of them ChineseIndonesians and Roman Catholics, and rapidly became a second channel in the government's foreign relations. But Murtopo himself was under a political cloud, and Suharto abolished the posts of special assistant. 8


A muscular figure with thick spectacles and. a gaptoothed smile under a balding pate, Murtopo concealed a sharp, laterally searching and ruthless mind behind a garrulous stream of words that listeners found hard to decipher. His energy fastened onto the new Timor issue, and within two rhonths of the Lisbon c'oup he had .sent Opsus agents into Dili to survey the scene, By that time, June 1974, Indonesia's intentions had become a major preoccupation for Timor's political parties and neighbouring countries. Australia's departments of foreign affairs and defence had begun briefing journalists that Indonesia had considerable strategic anxieties about Portuguese Timor. Fretilin's foreign spokesman, Jose Ramos-Horta, paid early attention to Indonesia by visiting Jakarta, where he obtained a letter from the foreign minister, Adam Malik, stating that independence was the right of every country 'with no exception for the people of Timor'. Indonesia had no ambitions in East Timor, Malik said, and sought good relations with 'whoever will govern in Timor in the future after independence'. Never unaware of what was happening on the ground, but always willing to push a bogus propaganda line if necessary, Malik continued to· put up similar diplomatic rhetoric throughout the Timor conflict and at that point in June 1974, before attitudes had set, may actually have believed what he was saying. Slightly built and mercurial, Malik was known sometimes as the kandt, after the mouse-deer that is .the hero of. many Indonesian folktales for outsmarting much fiercer animals. Malik was a political chameleon who had started in the tiny radical party Murba, won Sukarno's confidence and become ambassador to Moscow in the early 1960s, and then jumped across to the Right in 1965. His office supplied a hitlist of names of Indonesian communists and their sympathisers to. the US embassy, A PUSH INTO WAR

9

which passed· them to Suharto. Malik happily became the Suharto government's international voice. In Apodeti, Indonesia saw strengths that were largely missed by other observers. The party's leader was a self-willed, uncommunicative schoolteacher, Arnaldo dos Reis Araujo, then 61, who by his own account had spent the post-war years under restricted liberty for his assistance -to the Japanese, a record that bore fewer nationalist credentials in Timor than in Indonesia. Apodeti's ,following in the towns was soon revealed as considerably weaker than that of the other parties. But its support by certain liurai, notably Guilherme Maria Goncalves -of Atsabe, gave it an important foothold in the border region. Some priests, who had links to Roman Catholic communities in nearby Indonesian islands such as Flores and Alor, were also receptive to the idea of integration. In September 1974, Suharto gained a new advantage when the Australian prime minister, Gough Whitlam, met him for informal talks at Wonosobo, Central Java. According to the official Australian record, Whitlam said two things were basic to his own thinking on Portuguese Timor: First, he believed that Portuguese Timor should become part of Indonesia. Second, that this should happen in accordance with the properly expressed wishes of the people of Portuguese Timor. The Prime Minister emphasised that this was not -yet government policy but that it was likely to become that. The Prime Minister said that he felt very strongly that Australia should not seek, or appear to seek, any special interests in Portuguese Timor. They were people with a very -different ethnic background, language and culture. It would be unrealistic and improper if we were to seek some special relationship. 10


At the same time he believed that Portuguese Timor was too small to be independent. It was economically unviable. Independence would be unwel Would have been pbssible to send a message to the Indonesians. The RAAF intelligence officer,Sqd. Ldr Harding, was in Dili at the tim·e and was in a position to supply authorities in Australia with a list of Australians in Portuguese Timor together with their known whereabouts. Harding seems to have been well aware of intensifying military action: he notified the medical team on 16 October that RAAF flights had been stopped and that all further. air support for them would be carried out by the charter company SAARTAS. If they had been supplied with a list of Australians in Portuguese Timor, the embassy in Jakarta could then have been ordered to spare no efforts in warning. the Indonesians concerned that, however irked they might be by the Australian media, the. death or disappearance of Australians would rebound horribly against their campaign. W oolcott and his senior staff such as Dan and Taylor had almost instant access to Murtopo, Murdani and others directing operations Komodo and Flamboyant. It was even a matter worth taking to Suharto himself, if necessary. Did no one in official circles in Canberra or Melbourne make the necessary mental connections between all available pieces of information to head off a tragedy that rebounded on Australian diplomacy? If so, it was a glaring failure of 'staff work', particularly by the department of Foreign Affairs. However, it was not such a simple case of inefficiency or negligence. Key officials decided to leave their political leaders in ignorance until it was too late to act. COMPROMISED DIPLOMACY

77

So, on Thursday, 16 October, Canberra went about its business, focused on the game of bluff between Whitlam and opposition leader Fraser, as the newsmen met their deaths in far-off Balibo and their bodies were burnt. Some key ministers and officials received preliminary reports about the killing of the journalists in Balibo that night. They went off, holding this terrible secret, to a cocktail party at the Lakeside Hotel followed by a dinner at Government House for .Malaysia's Tun Razak.

78


FIVE

LISTENERS IN THE SOUTH

A

in Albert Park, a Victorian-era inner suburb of Melbourne, the occupants of a sprawling army barracks thrown up as temporary offices in World War II were monitoring what was happening in Timor very closely. This was the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), Australia's largest, most important and most secret intel~igence organisation. The DSD had grown out of Australia's wartime collaboration with the British and the Americans to intercept foreign radio transmissions and break codes and ciphers. Australia had three signals intelligence (or sigint) agencies during World War II: a naval sigint unit; the army's D Special Section, which broke Japanese diplomatic cables; and Central Bureau in Brisbane, working on Japanese army and air force ciphers and providing sigint directly for the Allied supreme command under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Their successes in CONTINENT AWAY,

79

helping MacArthur outwit the Japanese are considered to have shortened the war by as much as two years. This wartime co-operation was institutionalised in the highly secret UKUSA Agreement signed in 1947-48 by the directors of the sigint organisations of Britain, the United States, Australia and Canada-with the Australians signing for New Zealand. The existence of this agreement was known only to the prime minister and two other ministers. It governed co-operation in the interception of signals around the globe, as well as the exchange of sigint products. As the Cold War intensified, this activity gave a window into the efforts of the Soviet KGB's espionage operations around the world. Of critical importance in domestic politics, this information, code-named Venona, was carefully guarded from politicians by self-appointed custodians of the sigint community anxious to hide their arcane skills from their intelligence targets. By the time of the Timor crisis, three decades after the Pacific war, the Australian sigint establishment was still dominated by a small group of individuals who had been instrumental in building up the UKUSA relationship. Under a British sigint officer, the Australian sigint operations were merged into a new Defence Signals Branch in 1947 (later renamed the Defence Signals Directorate). Ralph Thompson, who became the first Australian director in April 1950, was still the DSD's director in 1975. Thompson was an army sigint officer who had served in the Middle East in 1941-42, and then returned to set up two of the largest Allied sigint intercept stations in Australia (at Mornington, near Melbourne, and at Darwin). He was supported by a special assistant, who was also the senior British officer, and a special US liaison officer. By 1975, Thompson was close to retirement and leaving much of the running of DSD to his two most 80


(SIGINT Operations & Production) M.A. Wiliams

eN Branch (South & Southeast Asia)

J.G. Murdoch

CN1Sectlon Indonesia - services

DHI Section Indonesia

CN2Sectlon Indonesia - Diplomatic and Non-service

DSDorganisation concerning Indonesia, 1975

senior officers. Mostyn ('Mos') Williams, as the assistant director heading C Group, was in charge of sigint operations and production. A gifted analyst of signals intelligence, he had worked in the Central Bureau during W orId War II and moved to Melbourne in late 1945 to help establish the postwar sigint organisation. He soon took charge of its intercept stations and became the organisation's senior communications traffic analyst. Ralph Thompson described him as 'the most outstanding member of DSD' during his tenure, in terms of both devotion and brilliance. Thompson believed that Williams should have succeeded him as DSD director when he retired in 1977. The other senior official was R.D. (Bob) Botterill, who was the head of D Group, which included the cryptanalysis or code-breaking section. (This group was said to have more mathematicians with first-class honours degrees than the mathematics departments in all the Australian universities combined.) Botterill was another army officer from Central Bureau who had ended the war in MacArthur's sigint staff ill LISTENERS IN THE SOUTH

81

the Philippines. During the 1950s, Botterill had broken the top Indonesian military and diplomatic cip.hers, produced by.Hegelin machines .·acquired. from Switzerland. The Hegelins, which were very' similar to the Enigma electro-mechanical cipher machines used by Germany in World War II and famously broken by the British code-breakers at Bletchley Park, were used by the Indonesians until the early 1990s. As it turned out, Batterill was Thompson's successor, serving as DSD director from 1977 to 1982, but in 1975 Williams was generally regarded as heir apparent. By the mid-1970s, the interception 'and decryption of Indonesian signals had become one of the two highest priority activities in terms of staff and .budgetary resources for DSD. (DSD's other principal commitment concerned Chinese signals, the primary interception site for which was the joint DSD-British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) station at Little Sai Wan in Hong Kong, where there were some 150 Australian sigint personnel stationed.) DSD's activities against Indonesia had grown rapidly in the early 1960s, as the Sukarno regime built up diplomatic and military links with the Soviet Union and communist China-, took over West New Guinea from th'e Dutch and pursued its Confrontation against the newly formed Malaysia, when Australian and Indonesian forces were engaged in a secret war in Borneo. They continued to expand through the next 15 years following Suharto's takeover of effective power from Sukarno in 1966. Despite the enormous relief in the Australian government at the crushing of Indonesia's communist party, Australian policy-makers remained anxious about Indonesia's internal political stability and its attitudes to Papua New Guinea. As new technical capabilities became available-DSD's computers were always a generation ahead of those available com82


mercially-·-DSDwas able to intercept a much wider range of signals and· decrypt them· more rapidly. In fact, DSD was able to monitor essentially all Indonesian radio communications reckoned to be of political, diplomaticormilitary significance, including Jakarta's diplomatic traffica·nd messages between its higher military commands, which used the Hegelin encryption machines. Until February 1974, DSD's largest site for interception of Indonesian signals was··in Singapore, where some 160 Australian sigintpersonnel were stationed in 1973, although the station intercepted signals from several other countries in Southeast Asia in addition to Indonesian traffic. It had been the main source of intelligence to the British and Australian governments about Indonesia's conduct of the Confrontation of Malaysia' in 1963-65. Small field detachments were placed in the north Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak to follow.the radio signals of Indonesiall raiding parties and to direct British and Australian Special Forces to attack them. In one celebrated instance, DSD intercepts enabled the Australian army's Special Air Service (SAS) to ambush an Indonesian infiltration group that included the young .Benny Murdani. Some two decades later, when Gen. Murdani visited the . SAS barracks in. Perth, his .hosts showed him records of the clash, which he had been very lucky to survive. During the Indonesian army's seizure of power in 1965.,..-66, the Singapore station also provided Canberra with vital intelligence. At the same time, a DSDstation. at Coonawarra, on the southern outskirts of Darwin, which . had been established by the navy in 1939 and was one of the most -importantsigint stations in Australia during World War II, monitored signals in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago. By 1975, Australia's largest and most important sigint LISTENERS IN THE SOUTH

83

station was located at Shoal Bay, about 20 kilometres north-east of Darwin. Constructed in 1973, it was principally concerned with the interception of Indonesian radio communications (although it also intercepted signals from other countries in Southeast Asia) ~ It was built to replace both the DSD station at Coonawarra, which by the mid-1960s was suffering from electrical interference caused by the growth of Darwin, and the DSD station in Singapore,which, it had been recognised in 1966-67, might not be available after the early seventies and was in fact closed in February 1974. The Shoal Bay station was staffed by about 200 personnel, of whom more than 150 were engaged in sigint activities--about 70 from the navy, about 70 from the army (detached from 7 Signals Regiment at Cabarlah, near Toowoomba, where DSD -ha'd another listening post), and about a dozen from the air force (detached from No. 3 Telecommunications Unit at a DSD station at Pearce, Western Australia). The principal sigint system at Shoal Bay comprised two concentric rings of steel poles linked by cables. Called a Circularly-disposed Antenna Array by communications specialists, it was produced by Plessey Radio Systems in Britain and code-named Pusher. The system was highly sensitive to the whole spectrum of high-frequency (HF) radio signals, which included most medium- to long-range transmissions. It was also able to determine the direction of intercepted signals by measuring the minute time differences between reception of the radio waves at each pole. Shoal Bay was also equipped with a very large 'spiderweb' antenna-strung from a single lattice-steel mast over 100 metres high--which monitored HF and very high-frequency signals, such as those produced by low-powered walkie-talkie and field radio sets. The interception range of this 'system depended very much 84


on the power of the transmIttIng radio. Sometimes it could .pick up VHF signals from hundreds of kilometres away. To extend DSD's reach in the VHF spectrum, specialist personnel. 'of the navy's Electronic Systems Unit were put aboard destroyers and Oberon-class submarines, which were deployed close to the target area. They reported back to Melbourne, independently of the host vessel's own commander. Shoal Bay had achieved an 'initial operational capability' in February 1974. The station was severely damaged by Cyclone Tracy on 25 December that yearits staff had to scour the surrounding bushland for days to recover working papers containing evidence of interception and decryption of Indonesian signals--but the station'wasquicklyreconstructed. Though not as well placed as the Singapore station had been for the interception .of some transmissions in Sumatra or Borneo, Shoal Bay provided better coverage of the eastern part of Indonesia, and of signals in Timor. In October 1975, the Shoal Bay station intercepted radio communications between Col. Dading's headquarters at Batugade and his operational units elsewhere in Timor, the radio communications between Batugade and Jakarta via Radio Loro Sae in Kupang, and the radio communications between Dading and the U dayana Regional Military Command in Bali. The 150 sigint staff at Shoal Bay performed three main tasks. The radio intercept operators maintained the receiving equipment. Most receivers were tuned to the .frequencies known to be used regularly by Indonesian commands and field units. Some other receivers were operated by 'search' teams who scanned the radio spectrum. to detect new transmissions. The second group consisted of 'traffic analysts' whose job was to study the pattern of transmissions, especially the call-signs, and work out· the communications heirarchy and the LISTENERS IN THE SOUTH

85

command, relationships: in other words, who directs whom, .what levels of encryption are used, who is not included and the tempo of. activity. Defined as the 'analysis of externals', traffic analysis is like looking through someone's letterbox -and noting the origins of letters, handwriting of senders, dates and frequency of mail-without opening the envelopes and reading the letters themselves. The third group consisted of linguists, most of whom sat with earphones listening to and transcribing voice communications, coping with accents and frequent static. Others translated morse teletype, which had.beeh encrypted in ciphers routinely broken by DSD--doing .what was called 'first echelon analysis'-'-' before sending the intercepts down to Melbourne~ TheDSD staff at Shoal Bay included a high proportion.of women, and overall they were very y·oung, with high-school educations, picked out from junior recruit intakes for their natural. linguistic abilities and se.nt to the RAAF Language School at Point Cook, near Melbourne,for intensive training. With their sensitive ears for language .and sound, these young -. specialists would often develop an instant recognition of particular circuits and voices-and of any changes. The Shoal Bay station was assisted in monitoring Indonesian signals by two other DSD intercept stations. TheDSD station at HMAS Harman, on the southeastern outskirts of Canberra, devoted special attention to the interception of diplomatic radio traffic to and from foreign embassies in Canberra (with the Indonesian.embassy traffic ,orie of the highest priorities). It cooperated, closely with the Darwin station, often being able to intercept transmissions from Southeast'· Asia that 'skip Qver' northern Australia. The station at Cabarlah, operated by the army's 7 Signals Regiment, was also equipped with a 'Pusher' Circular Antenna Array. The primary mission of this 86


station was to monitor radio transmISSIons through Papua New Guinea and the southwest 'Pacific. But it frequently monitored Indonesian signals as welL This mostly involved radio traffic in Irian Jaya (western New Guinea)-, b'ut in 1974-75 it also included traffic in Timor. The intercepted material was' sent down to DSD headquarters in Melbourne by encrypted teletype. The material still requiring 'deciphering was sent to . . the Indonesian section of the cryptanalysis branch within Botterill's D Group. The clear-Ianguage'or easily broken material went immediately to the South and Southeast Asia Branch headed by J.G. Murdoch in Mos"Williams' C Group. This branch included a section working on the signals .of the Indonesian armed .forces and a section responsible for diplomatic and other civilian signals. This group would also analyse the products cracked by D Group's cryptanalysts. The linguists and analysts·in C group .often' differed with the translations and interpretations made in the first-echelon analysis at the forward intercept stations~ It was the C Group's renditions that were forwarded to the 'customers' of DSD in the government and foreign allied intelligence agencies. The distribution point for these customers· was '. the DSD Liaison Office in Canberra, located on the western end of the 3rd floor of Building L, which housed the Joint Intelligence Organisation 010) in' the defence department complex at, Russell Hill. In 1975 the liaison office had 14 staff, who worked in three shifts, and it was headed through the 1970s by J .A. Oock) MacDonald. One of the key DSD officers responsible for distributing Southeast Asian material to· other analysts throughout the organisation was Peter Trewartha. JIO had been established in 1969 to provide the Department of Defence and the service chiefs with LISTENERS IN THE SOUTH

87

intelligence assessments prepared by analysts drawn from all three uniformed services and civilians of bureaucratic, academic andotheibackgrounds. Its first t~o directors were from the Department of Foreign Affairs, beginning with Robert Furlqnger who left ~obeco'me ambassador to Jakarta in 1972. His successor was Gordon Jockel, the previous ambassador in Indonesia. As JIO director, Jockel was also chairman of the National Intelligence Committee, formed in 1973 to improve·· the co~oTdination of the Australian •. intelligence agencies by setting ·priorities for intelligence gath'ering and assigning tasks among the agencies. He found his second responsibility hard going. In November 1974 he reported that only the JIO came under the committee's 'direct jurisdiction' .by virtue of his own two hats. The two foreign intelligence collection agencies, DSD and the Australian Secret ·Intelligence Service, reported to the heads of Defence and Foreign Affairs respectively. In addition, Jockel's, appointment to JIG was opposed by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) ~.. the internal security service, because of his marriage to an Indonesian·· during his Jakarta· posting. The then ASIO director-general,Peter Barbour, went to the prime minister, William McMahon, to object, but the defence department head, Sir Arthur·· Tange, who had known Jockel throughout his career in foreign affairs, insisted on the appointment. Thereafter ASIO's suspicions continued to grow, fostered by Jockel's outside contacts, such as his friendship with the journalist Peter Hastings, the recruitment of independently minded academic specialists toJIO, and the epidemic of leaks that infected the organisation in the mid-1970s. Jockel was supported by one civilian deputy director, Arthur McMichael, and one military deputy, CdreKen Gray. The organisation had four directorates, of which the Directorate of Joint Service Intelligence (DJSI) was 88


Office of Current Intelligence

R.F. Osborn

Organisation of the JIO, 1975

responsible for the analysis of military developments in the region. JIO's principal analytical arm was the National Assessments Staff (NAS) , which also worked directly to the National Intelligence Committee and produced longer term assessments. JIO also included the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI), which was located on the 3rd floor of Building L with the DSD Liaison Office. It was a fairly small office, with a head and some two dozen staff including both analysts and support personnel. Its function was described officially as a 'watch office' designed 'to bring rapidly to the attention of senior policy advisers and relevent agencies, external events of probable interest to them'. Its clientele included the prime minister, the foreign minister, the minister for defence and their respective departmental secretaries. OCI was headed by Rowan Osborn, a career Foreign Affairs officer with a South Australian establishment background and upper-class English mannerisms of speech. Osborn had a forceful deputy, formally called the OCI co-ordinator, in John Bennetts, who had had 30 years experience as a journalist with leading Melbourne newsLISTENERS IN THE SOUTH

89

papers and a brief stint as a lecturer in political science at the Australian National University before joining JIO in 1971. But he had been exposed to the world of intelligence much earlier, as a young soldier in World War II when' he was attached to the Allied Intelligence Bureau and served in Borneo. In 1976 he went on from OCI to become the JIO's liaison officer in Washington. He returned to Canberra in 1978 to be the head of current intelligence in the new Office of National Assessments (ONA) , at which time JIO's Office of Current, Intelligence was disbanded. The office had a staff of 12 analysts in four geographic sections. The largest of these was the Southeast Asian section with four analysts, including Alistair Morrison, son of George 'Chinese' Morrison, who had spent much of his life involved in 'political affairs in Asia and who by 1975 was a legendary 'father figure' in JIO. Another was a brilliant Indonesian scholar, Jenny Herridge, who covered .Indonesian events. At the desk level, the OCI's analysts worked' closely with other specialists within the building, especially their counterpart desk officers in the National Assessments Staff on the 2nd floor and in the Directorate of Joint Service Intelligence on the 5th and 6th floors. The DJSl was the largest directorate in JIO, staffed with 62 service and 24 civilian analysts. It was responsible for providing assessments of military issues to the service chiefs, as well as providing military inputs to the OCI and NAS reports. At higher' levels, there was considerable tension between some of the military officers and civilian officials. In particular, according to a former analyst in DJSI, there was a 'turf war' between Col. Alf Garland, the head of Foreign Forces Intelligence in DJSI, and Rowan Osborn, in OCI. Garland believed that most of the issues dealt with in JIO were military matters that could be appreciated only byprofes'sional 90


Directorate of Scientific and Technical·lntelligence (DSTI) (21) L- 3 - 12 to [- 3 - 24 South Asia

OCI

Support Office

and the

[ .. 3-10

Rest of the World (4) L-3-26

PNG and the

--------------

South Pacific

East Asia

(2)

(2)

L-3-08

[-3-26

Editorial Vault

--------------

I---

Weekly Report Office

Southeast

L-3-07

Asia (4) [-3-27

Coordinator L-3-06 Secretary

Conference

L-3-05

Room

Head OCI Teleprinter

[-"3-04

[-3-02 DSD Liaison Office (14) [-3-03 West (Lake Burley Griffin)

Joint Intelligence Organisation, Office of Current Intelligence (3rd floor, Building L, Russell Hill, Canberra)

military officers. Garland and Osborn had constant argumentsover. the wording of assessments, but the real dispute between them was 'control of information. As the former. DJSI analyst noted: 'In an intelligence organisation, information is power.' According to an ocr analyst from that period, it all resulted in an unpleasant working environment. 'It was a horror show', he said. In the case of Indonesian or Timorese developments, theOCI's Southeast Asia section worked closely with Lt-Col.Geoff Cameron, co-ordinator of DJSI's Southeast Asian section, and his desk officers Capt. Alan Dupont and Capt. Peter Gibson. Installation of a secure telephone link in 1974 with the IntelligenceCoordination Branch of the Department of Foreign Affairs, allowed OCI speedier access to secret diplomatic and ASIS. ,'material. OCI produced a range of current intelligence reports, principally the Daily Bulletin and the ,Weekly Report. The OCI's working day began with the production by the early morning duty officer of an information s,heet"called the. Highlights. This was a digest of important intelligence 'received during the previous night, based mainly on DSD 'flimsies', as copies of the teletype material from DSD headquarters to the liaison office were called. Normally arriving for work at 6 am each day, the duty officer·would walk down the corridor to the DSD office and" collect the, flimsies waiting in a tray. It needs to be emphasised that these were selected for distributionbyDSD's C Group as appropriate fot GCI's purposes. The: officer would then draft the Highlights, usually only a page and on some days only a paragraph or two, and hand it to the Support Office by 8.00 am for typing and copying for distribution by 8.30 am. The recipients, numbering, no more than a dozen 92


and located only within the JIO building, included the office ofJIO director Jockel,. theOClhead Osborn, the OCI co~ordinator Bennetts, the fourOCI section heads, and the li.aison officers from Britain's MI6 (Brian Easey) ·and the AJEericanCIA (Dunning Idle IV). The Highlights;·s~t·theagenda for a meeting at 9.00 am each morning on what should go into the OCI's Daily Bulletin, intended as an authoritative and current briefing fOf the government on political and military developments overseas. Production of the Bulletin was the responsibilityof John Bennetts. A meeting was held to review the draft in Bennetts' office at .·2.00 pm. At 3.00 pm it went by courier from the OCI support office to the prime minister, the foreign minister, the defence minister, their departmental heads, the intelligence representatives in the British, US and New Zealand' missions in Canberra, and to the directors of the other Australian intelligence agencIes. The OCI's Weekly Report was 'the vehicle for publishing items·on developments that warranted more detailed reporting', the JIOsaid in its 1974 annual report. In addition, OCI staff· also produced' 'situation reports' that were photocopied 'in .the interests of speed' and were 'accordingly of somewhat lower physical quality'. At the beginning of 1974, DSD began to extend and speedup its collection and breaking of Indonesian signals. In January, the directorate had provided the intelligence community and selected government officials in Canberra with' especially useful' intelligence about directives by Hankam (the Indonesian defence ministry) and Kopkamtib (the military's internal security command), related to the 'internal-security disturbances in Jakarta' that month, according to JIO's top secret annual report for that year. Following these 'disturbances', Jockel as chairman of LISTENERS IN THE SOUTH

93

theNIC. and JIO director requested that DSD improve its collection efforts on the 'respective power-bases of Indonesian generals', the 'organisation and operations of Indonesian intelligence services' and 'Indonesian attitudes and activities in respect of Portuguese Timor'. As Portuguese rule in Timor collapsed in the aftermath of the overthrow of the fascist regime in Lisbon ··in April 1974, DSD was very attentive. It also monitored the governmental and military signals, traffic between Dili and Lisbon. During the course of 1974, according to the director of ,the JIO, 'sigintmade a substantial contribution to our total information' on such matters as 'Indonesian order of battle ·in Irian Jaya and Timor' , 'Indonesian Hankam/Kopkamtib directives', 'Indonesian views on the activities against dissident groups on the Papua New' Guinea/Irian Jaya border' ,and 'Indonesian attitudes to the future status of Portuguese Timor'. As Operation Komodo, the Opsus political campaign to bring about the annexation of East Timor, unfolded in 1975, it was monitored closely by the Australian intelligence community. On 20 February, Jockel sent ASIS and .DSDa list,of 48 questions about East Timor for them to answer. On 16 May, the JIO updated its intelligence requirements, and 36 broad questions were passed to ASIS. Foreign Affairs and DSDwere also given new rep,orting tasks 'in accordance with their functions'. On 14 July 1975, the NI C issued a 'Secret-Australian Eyes Only' catalogue of intelligence requirements of 74 closely typed pages. The list of queries ab,out Timor included the 'capacity of Timorese to organise resistance to a takeover by Indonesia, including strength, weapons and equipment; indications of Indonesian infiltration into and subversion in Portuguese Timor; order of battle of Indonesian forces in Indonesian Timor and Indonesia's capabilities to mount military operations against Portuguese Timor. . ' 94


ASIS had a strong presence in Jakarta, with two officers in the Australian embassy running a wellestablished network of informants. But it had had no station in Dili since 1962. The Darwin office of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation,. responsible for domestic .security, had maintained' a 'cooperative contact' with an Australian hotelier in Dili, Frank Favaro, and in March 19.75 introduced him to ASIS. But Favaro provided material of only marginal value, and was too talkative. After the unsuccessful UDT coup in· Dili in August 1975, the senior military intelligence specialist on Indonesia in Darwin, Sqd-Ldr Stan Harding, began on his own initiative 'assembling int~lligence 'briefs to cover likely exigencies' in East Timor. According to the citation to theMBE he received ·in June 1976, Harding's·· 'efforts were to prove invaluable to military as well as Government agencies during the ensuing events· in Timor'. After August, in addition to all key Indonesian military communications in the East Timor region,'DSD also intercepted most Fretilin and UDT radio traffic. DSD had Tetum-Ianguagespeakers for monitoring the vernacular Timorese communications that were not in Portuguese. But as a backup, DSD· was also able to get the substance of Fretilin communications 'by listening to the Indonesian reports of their intercepts (an exercise known as 'piggy-backing'). DSD was also able to intercept Portuguese communications, including the transmission of intelligence from Dili back to Lisbon. For many years, the Portuguese navy' had run···a .radio station just north of the Diliairport. It provided communications with Portugal via Macau, the nearest Portuguese territory, but its receivers were often used to monitor transmissions in the area, including those of the Indonesian armed forces. The journalist]ill· Jolliffe noted that on about 25 August, when fierce fighting LISTENERS IN THE SOUTH

95

was being waged between UDT and Fretilinforces for control of Dili, the station intercepted an Indonesian radio message 'suggesting that the Indonesian destroyer Mon Icidi [Monginsidi] is on its way to Dili to "rescue" the Portuguese governor and his staff in order to take them to "a safe place'" .On 27 August, the governor, Col. Lemos Pires, pre-empted the Indonesian move and evacuated his administration to the island of Atauro, about 30 kilometres north of Dili. They were joined by two Portuguese corvettes, the Joao Roby and the Alfonso Cerquiera, which anchored ·off the island. Governor Pires and his ento'urage used the radio facilities aboard the Joao Roby to maintain regular radio contact with Lisbon (via Macau) and with the administration in Oecussi, the Portuguese enclave in Indonesian Timor. In addition, the Australian army sent in communications specialists and equipment aboard an air force Caribou transport aircraft to set up a radio post for Governor Pires on the island. This operation, supervised by Sqd. Ldr Harding, took several days. According to JillJolliffe, 'a radio room near the officers' mess' was used for monitoring local radio communications until the Portuguese abandoned Atauro and sailed to Darwin on 8 December. In February 1976, Maj. Peter Young, a former army intelligence officer in Vietnam and JIO analyst, said he knew of 'sigint evidence pointing to at least a brigadelevel force in operation in East Timor in support of the UDT well before the announced "invasion" '--a clear reference to the 3200-strong force in Dading'sOperation Flamboyant. However, the most authoritative account 'of the monitoring of Indonesian communications by Australian and US sigint authorities during the period from August 1975 to February 1976 was published in The National Times in May-June 1982, in the form of extracts from 96


a wide range of classified US documents, including the Central Intelligence Agency's National Intelligence Daily and other CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) intelligence reports dated between August 1975 and February 1976. These documents were based primarily on slglnt collected at the Shoal Bay station and passed to the special US liaison officer with DSD in Melbourne. In return, copies of the· CIA and D IA reports were made available to JIG in Canberra by the accredited CIA and DIA 'liaison officers. Possibly, these reports also included American-origin sigint, which may not have been shared in its entirety with Australian intelligence agencies. In 1975-76 the CIA controlled two Rhyolite geostationary sigint satellites from a ground station at Pine Gap, in central Australia. One was used to intercept radio communications in ·East Timor and it is highly likely that its intercepts included signals concerning the deaths of the journalists at Balibo. The Rhyolite satellites were developed in the late 1960s to collect a wide range of foreig11 signals, including the telemetry associated with Soviet strategic missile tests, radar emissions, and VHF a11d microwave communications. The first Rhyolite satellite (designated 1970-46A) was launched on 19 June 1970, and placed in geostationary orbit above the equator over the Indian Ocean, where it was primarily used to monitor the telemetry and other signals associated with Soviet strategic systems developments. When the second Rhyolite (1973-13A) was launched on 6 March 1973, it took over the primary (Soviet) duty, and Bird 1 (as 1970-46A was known colloquially by Pine Gap personnel) was redirected towards· China and Vietnam, but also other crisis areas in the region according to scheduling priorities. From August 1975 to February 1976, Bird 1 was often used to intercept Indonesian radio communications LISTENERS IN ·THE SOUTH

97

in Timor.. It is not known whether the Rhyolite satellite intercepted any signals concerning the' killing of the journalists, though it is very likely that it did. However, Australian access to sigint collected at Pine Gap was very restricted in the 1970s, and this was especially the case in the Signals Analysis Section at Pine Gap'where the voice ,intercepts were analysed. Instead, intelligence of interest to Australia was passed to the JIO liaison officer' at the CIA headquarters· in Langley, Virginia, but this was typically a day or so after the event. The American intelligence briefs published in 1982 showed that the Australian and US authorities had been aware .of the Indonesian invasion plans for many months, and were cognisant of the full dimensions of the Indonesian determination to take over East Timor and its subsequent efforts to cover up the behaviour of its occupation forces. Among the reports in the US briefs were the following: 20 ·August: 'Indonesian military contingency preparfltions are continuing, as are clandestine operations into Portuguese Timor. According to an intercepted message, a local Timorese leader is ready to ,call publ~cly for integration with Indonesia.' , 4, September: 'Communications intelligence indicates that two Indonesian special forces groups, consisting of about 100 men each, may have entered Portuguese Timor",on the evening of September 3-4.' 18 September: 'Indonesian special forces units operating covertly in Portuguese Timor are meeting unexpected resistance in several areas, according to intercepted communications.' 22 September: Referred, to 'a September 22 intercepted message [to Jakarta from] the Indonesian 98


Ambassador in Canberra' concerning . conciliatory messages from the Fretilin leadership. 8 October: 'Previous communications intelligence indicated that Jakarta was .preparing to "confront" Portuguese Tim.or on the 7th or 8th.' 11 October: A CIA brief said the Indonesian president had .approved 'a plan of action that will increase military pressure on Fretilin forces operating near the border' by setting up e.nclaves,. 'The first of these enclaves is to be established on October 14· when Indonesian' units are to attack the town of Maliana. The troops participating in the, operation will wear uniforms without insignia and are to carry' 'older, Soviet-made weapons so as not. to be identified as' Indonesian regulars.' 17 October: 'An intercepted Indonesian message said that a seventh town was captured . . . along the Portuguese Timor border. yesterday.'

These intelligence briefs gave Washington's policymakers a close view of events in Timor b·utPresident Gerald Ford was not, informed by the CIA or ·the DIA about what happened to any journalists at Balibo on 16 October 1975. In Australia, however, their fate 'was the most sensitive aspect of the Indonesian interventio'n in Portuguese Timor. DSD's remarkable demonstration of expertise presented an enormous politically charged conundrum for the Australian listeners in the south. It threatened to blow apart the Whitlam: government's policy towards Indonesia, and' even to incapacitate AU$tralia's most valuable..foreign intelligence asset.

LISTENERS IN THE SOUTH

99

SIX

DEATH IN BALIBO

T.

of East Timor began towards midnight on Wednesday, 15 October. In Maliana, the Portuguese television journalist Adelino Gomes was startled by the noise of mortar bombs .falling on the town at 11 pm. From the Catholic mission on high ground about 1.5 kilometres outside the town, he and his three crew members watched the attack. As it developed, ,the priest at the mission, Father Bruno, became worried and told his guests: 'I think it's better you go.' The Portuguese journalists left in their vehicle, beginning a journey to Dili that was to take 40 hours. Some 20 kilometres away in Balibo, the five newsmen and the 40 or so Falintil soldiers and ·auxiliaries commanded by AntonioPina heard the distant explosions, and went out to scan the countryside from. high points. At 3.00 am, in darkness, the watchers in Balibo saw flashes from the Indonesian ships off the coast to the north and from the shore· itself at Batugade, followed HE COVERT INVASION

100

by the shriek of artillery rounds over Balibo, exploding in the bush behind. Some fell short, starting fires in the scrub down the hill. Accurate mortar fire also began falling on the village from the direction of the Indonesian borde~, to the west. Three Falintil soldiers-Lucas Jeronimo, Rosito Ximenes and Manuel Silva-had been nervously patrolling the deserted village through the night. ·They were terrified by the artillery fire, a new experience. They fled to the old Portuguese fort. The Australians were already there, trying to film. From the front parapet of the fort, the Falintil soldiers saw headlights moving around the Indonesian stronghold of Batugade 8 kilometres away on the coast and heard the heavy diesel engines of Marine Corps tanks heading towards them on the road. First light began to creep over the mountainous landscape from about 4.45 am, preceding the sunrise at 5.17 am local time. Towards 5.00 am·thebombardment from the coast suddenly halted. From the south~western side ·of the village, across hillside slopes studded with sparse trees, came rifle and automatic fire, and rocketpropelled grenades. Dozens of armed attackers came into view. The Falintil troops opened up with their G3 rifles from the height of the fort, and>a Falintil machine-gunner fired bursts from the battlement over the fort's gateway back, into the village. The gunfire and tank manoeuvres from the north coast had been a ruse planned by Col. Dading. The previous evening, several groups of Indonesian army Special Forces and Timorese auxiliaries had moved across the border far inland, frama forward base-camp in the tiny village of Haekesak in the salient of Indonesian territory that bulged the east Timor border in the central hills. Some of the groups were codenamed with popular Indonesian female names,such as Tuty, DEATH IN BALIBO

101

Umi and Susie One group had crossed the border close to Maliana, and taken up positions for the early attack planned to tie up the town's defenders. A .group codenamed TeamUmi and commanded by Maj. SofyanEffendi (who used the personal codename Agus) , moved down to the road junction at Nunura, blocking motorised reinforcement to or retreat lines from Balibo. Another group, named Team Susi, was commanded by Special Forces captain Mohammed Yunus Yosfiah (codenamed Maj. Andreas). Other officers with him were Maj. Tony Sumardjo (codenamed Anton Papilayan), Capt. Sutiyoso (codenamed Manix), and Lts Marpaung and Slamat Kirbiantoro, each in charge of a Special Forces company. Also with the attack group was a party of the Apodeti partisans who had been trained·atAtambuaunder Tomas Goncalves. All of them carried rifles, but were forbidden to shoot without specific orders. After reaching a village called Leohitu at about 10 pm, Team Susi had rested, and then had moved across to a position put by different accounts at 1.5 kilometres to 500 metres west of Balibo before the attack, carrying 80 millimetre mortars captured at Batugade from Fretilin as well as the Yugoslavian-made rocket-propelled grenade launchers used by the Indonesian army. Just as they were moving to attack, Team Susi radioed to Batugade for the bombardment to cease. As the Indonesian force approached the village, Fretilin soldiers say they saw the Australians run down from the fort towards the house on which they had painted the sign ~ustralia'. Fretilin medical orderly Guido dos Santos, who said he escaped from Balibo during the attack and was interviewed by journalists in Dili on 27 October, caught a glimpse of the five newsmen. When the attack began, the Australians had gone out into the open in the village and begun filming. The last time Guido dos Santos saw 102


them, they were standing in front of the ~ustralia' sign gesturing towards it. 'They [the attacking soldiers] fired on the building where the Australians were and I saw one fall. The others pointed their hands at the sign on the wall and were shouting ''Australians! Australians!'" As Santos ran away he heard the Australians calling out as shooting continued. The voices then stopped. While he was still close to Balibo, he saw a helicopter landing in the village. Some other Fretilin soldiers also gave their accounts in Dili in ·later weeks. ·Lucas Jeronimo·· said: The Australians ran towards their house about 200 metres away. One kept stopping, looking back and pointing his camera. He was a big man but I didn't know his name. [This description fits Cunningham.] We ran into the vegetation and called out 'Come on, come on' but they di9n't listen. The Indonesians kept firing. The man with the bald head [Peters] was still filming, then he cried out and fell down. The other Austraiialls were screaming 'Australians, Australians' with their hands up. The soldiers circled them and made them turn their backs and face the wall of the house. The firing died down and we crawled away through the undergrowth. We heard the Australians screaming and then there was a burst of automatic fire.

Another witness who said he was among the Fretilin defenders came forward to a British journalist, Richard Lloyd Parry of The Independent, in Dili in 1998. Named as 'Terrado' he said he was 16 at the time, and was with a·· small group at the Balibo fort as the Indonesians attacked. The two cameramen ·had come up to the fort to film when the attack started, then moved down to the village where he saw them setting up camera gear at one point, then lost sight of them. When the Indonesians, who included troops in camouflage DEATH IN BALIBO

103

Fatal attack on Salibo

uniforms, entered the village, he saw them drag three of the newsmen out of a house. Two of the newsmen were holding hands. When they were outside .. we heard them yelling 'Australia, AustJ;'~ha.No Fretilin, No Fretilin' . . . They weren't resisting when they were dragged out. They had completely surrendered to the soldiers.

When the three were out in the street, Terrado said he saw the Indonesians stabbing at the newsmen, though he was too far away to see the knives, and the three fell down. Terrado and his companions were shocked, realising that if independent journalists were being killed, they themseves would have no chance if captured. Abandoning their personal gear stored in the Portuguese bungalow within the fort, they scrambled down the 2 metre high external wall on the northeastern side, away from the village, and ran towards distant Atabae. By the account of several participants among. the Timorese on the Indonesian side, as well as the Indonesian war correspondent Hendro Subroto who covered Operation Flamboyant, the attack was virtually over 45 minutes after it started, though sporadic firing on the outskirts of the village continued for some time. Tomas Goncalves, the leader of the Timorese auxiliaries who deserted the Indonesian cause in April 1999, has recently said that when the Indonesians advanced into the town square, four of the Australian journalists came out into the open with their hands up 'seeking protection'. An Indonesian soldier had been shot in the wrist about five minutes earlier from the direction of the fort--one of only two casualties that day on the Indonesian side, tfle other being a Timorese who was wounded-but resistance was virtually over and no firing had come from the house in which the journalists had been. DEATH IN BALIBO

105

Goncalves ,said that 'without 'hesitation' Yun,us and others"jncludingLt Kirbiantoro, a Capt. Ali Mussa and Special Forces soldiers named as Kris, Marcos and Yusuf had opened fire on the jo'urnalists frama range of about 10 metres with AK-47 automatic rifles. Olandino Maia Guterres, then aged only 16, was another Titp.orese among the 300 or so attackers in Team Susiunder Capt. Yunus. In the half-light before dawn, Guterres advanced into Balibo. From less than 20 metres he saw, four' or five Indonesian soldiers--among' them he named 'Marcos', 'Kris' and 'Simon'- firing'through the windows of a Chinese house on the corner where the Maliana road enters 'Balibo's square. Guter~es 'says he heard'the voice of Yunus: (Tembak saja! Tembak saja!J Uust shoot! Just shoot!] Guterres was ordered round the" side of the house to watch the back. The soldier Kris, described a~ a native of Flores in East t;Jusatenggar3;, shouted at the closed door of the bathroom" threatening to throw'in a grenade. One of the journalists came out, the soldier Kris motioned him to walk, back into .the house, then killed him with a,single thrust of a commando knife, in the back. Other Timorese fighters dragged the body inside., Guterres later looked, inside the front, room of the house. He saw the bodies o~three other Europeans ,slurp.ped in chairs where they had been sitting, round a table with cups of coffee and peanuts on it. The body of a fourth Westerner lay against a wall. A third Timorese eyewitness among the attackers, who spoke to. The National Times in 1979 but still refuses to be identified:, said the only real resistance encountered by the Indonesians came fro;m a Fretilin outpost. After this was silenced, they entered Balibo from the south. The witness said he had an unobstructed view from about 50 metres away of the house the neWSlnen were in. This was not the house with the flag and ~ustralia' i

106


painted on it, but the other Chinese house across the dirt square of the village on the corner of the Maliana road. 'I saw one Australian come out of the door with his hands up saying something like ''Australian! Journalist!",' this witness said. He was struck down instantly by a knife blow from an Indonesian soldier. I then saw Indonesian soldiers fire through the window of the house on others inside, as well as the one who had fallen from the knife blow. I then saw a wounded man run out the back of the house trailing blood, up the hill to a house, formerly a Portuguese security post, behind the other. I saw him try frantically to open the door but couldn't, turn, run a short distance, then drop dead. This witness said he did not enter the house. But some Timorese troops who went in with the Indonesians later told him one of the journalists was still alive. He was killed with a knife by an Indonesian. Another source told the The National Times that he was told by one of the Timorese who went in that the wounded Australian was propped against a wall with two bodies beside him. He had earphones on and was talking into a 'radio' , presumably a tape-recorder. The Indonesians talked to the man, then ordered the Timorese to leave. The Timorese later saw the man dead. The eyewitness later moved behind the house. The body on the hill had been taken back into the house, he said. Hearsay evidence from another Timorese, who was working with the Indonesians at Batugade, suggests a sequence that might bridge the differences in these accounts. Fernando Mariz said: They come outside and put their hands up, 'Weare Australian journalists, we don't have guns', all this stuff, they said, the captain said, 'No, go inside'. DEATH IN BALIBG

107

When they [were] inside the captain shoot, shoot all of them.

Other hearsay accounts. give partial backing to some of the claimed eyewitness accounts described here. Jose Martins, the KOTA leader, said that when he was in Balibo after the attack, at about 10 am on 16 October, the Apodeti commander Tomas Goncalves told him two of the newsmen had been shot in the Maliana road corner house along with some Fretilin personnel, two had been gunned down in the open as they emerged trying to surrender and the fifth was shot trying to run out the back of the house. A Timorese who spoke t.o Goncalves in 1980 in Dili claims Goncalves boasted of having knifed two of the newsmen himself. As well as discrepancies in the details of the killings--though James Dunn has pointed out a broad convergence that two or three were killed in the open, two or three in a house, and one seeking to escape,there are obvious differences in the various accounts about the time the attack started and ended. Many talk of it beginning at 3.00 am with the artillery barrage, and of the infantry assault starting just before dawn, that is, from about 4.45 when the first dim light would have appeared. Some of the retreating Fretilin soldiers say they were within earshot of Balibo towards 7.00 am, while Terrado puts this ,as late as 9.00 am. The Indonesian journalist Hendro Subroto, who was waiting with Col. Dading at Batugade, states the attack began at 6.00 and was over by 6.45 am. It is possible that the participants felt the time pass more quickly than it did. Few would have been wearing watches (photographs taken that morning show neither Tomas Goncalves nor Jose Martins wearing a watch). There may be conflicting definitions about when the attack as such started-·-with the naval barrage or with 108


the first mortar shells fired at Balibo, when the footsoldiers started moving from their halting point up to 1.5 kilometres away,or when they actually entered Balibo. In April 1976, Tomas Goncalves gave Australian officials two different times. In both cases he said the attack started at 5.00 am but on one occasion he said it lasted about two hours and another exactly '57 minutes. Dading himself said in 1995 that he had begun the ruse oftevving up the tanks at·Batugade at 3.00 am and that the attack on Balibo took place at 6.00 am. This seems to refer to the point at which the attackers were on the fringes of the village, engaging the defenders with rifle fire. KOTA's Jose Martins, who was in Batugade, recalled a message being received by Col. Dading at 6.45 am-·presumably a radio-voice message-stating that 'some Australians were at Balibo'. The UDT leader Joao Carrascalao, who was also at Batugade, said he was talking to Col. Dading at about 7.00 am. 'He told me they had recaptured Balib·owith· no problems, without much fighting, but they have some problem there that he had to solve, to go there and solve and he left soon after.' Dading had then left by helicopter. Dading himself says he went to Balibo at about 6.30 am. Several other accounts affirm that Dading, accompanied by the Bakin agent Louis Taolin, flew into Balibo when the fighting was barely over. The fleeing Fretilin orderly Guido dos Santos also recalled seeing a helicopter land at about 7.00 am. Most of the eyewitness accounts outlined here indicate that all the five newsmen were dead by that time, four either shot down in the open or by shots fired through the windows into the house and the fifth while running out the back. However, it is possible that perhaps three of the newsmen were captured and held in the corner house while the troops sought orders DEATH IN BALIBO

109

about what to do with them. Olandino Guterres' account has the odd detail that three of the newsmen were sitting around a table when they were shot. It is inconceivable that they would not have' been trying to look ,out at· the action or· desperately sheltering in corners of the room at, that moment-unless they ·had been ordered to sit quietly and wait. Other hearsay evidence is that some of, the newsmen were brought into;ahouse .alive and later killed. The wording of the 6.45 am radio signal from Capt. ¥unus. to Col.· Dading and . his reply, . as we shall see" was cryptic. By the time Dading and Taolinleft Balibo and flew back to Batugade after a quick. inspection,all five were certainly dead. Most probably on the :recommendation of Bakin agent Taolin-the postgraduate in propaganda-Dading gave orders for the newsmen's bodies to ·be dressed in. Portuguese uniforms and posed behind a· captured machine gun and other. weap.ons for photographs.' JoaoCarrascalao recalled Dading bringing back with him in the helicopter some cameras and other equipment. Dading told him 'they kill[ed] some Australianpeople who [were] fighting with Fretilin'.Only later didCarrascalao find out the dead. were j0urnalists. Later· that morning, at about 11.00 am, Carrascalao· saw the UDT president Lopes da Cruz also return by helicopter from Balibo, bringing with him larger, movie-type cameras. From about 8.00 .am reinforcements and support personnel were· moving up by road from Batugade to Balibo. A former UDTfighter now living in Perth says he accompanied Col. Dadingin a four-wheel-drive vehicle back to Balibo at about 9.00 am. When he arrived he saw three bodies of Europeans, dressed in Portuguese military uniforms, slumped over three machine guns. The uniforms were intact. Some 50 Indonesian soldiers.stood 110


around watching as the bodies were turned over for Dading to see. Another UDT fighter, now living in Lisbon, claims to have travelled up to Balibo by truck at some time around 9.00 or 9~}O am and to have seen four or five bodies of Europeans lying in the house with the 'Aus-tralia' sign on it. The bodies of Timorese with weapons nearby were in another part of the house. Unlike other witnesses, this witness said that shooting was still going on around the village at that time, and he himself had been hit by a piece of grenade shrapnel, though the witness later qualified this observation, saying that firing was only sporadic. Other Timorese auxiliaries who went to Balibo that day say they saw the bodies around the middle of the day. At some time in the afternoon, if not before, all the bodies-or at least four, possibly excluding that of the man shot trying to runaway-·-were placed in the Chinese corner house, covered with mattresses soaked in petrol and set ablaze. The fire was relit several times over the next two days. UDT's Joao Carrascalao says he was shown the photographs of the newsmen's bodies posed with the weapons two or three days later by the Indonesian photographer Djumaryo, of the Opsus-run newspaper Berita Yudha. Another UDT leader, Domingos Oliveira, says he was shown the pictures two or three weeks later by Djumaryo. Djumaryo was certainly in Balibo soon after the village was seized, as his own photographs and a snapshot of him posing with Team Susi leader Capt. Yunus attest. Djumaryo took a series of photographs designed to portray the Balibo victory according to Indonesia's propaganda line, including line-ups of the Timorese leaders alleged to have .led the attack (Tomas Goncalves, Joao Tavares and Francisco Lopes da Cruz) and the armed Timorese partisans who took part. DEATH IN BALIBO

111

If there were to be 'propaganda pictures taken of communists' Djumaryowould have'been assigned to take them. Timorese interviewed •., by The National Times in 1979 variously recalled a 'large' or 'fat' Indonesian, taking pictures, of the bodies, a description· that fitted the chubby Djumaryo. (However, "the alleged eyewitness' OlandinoGuterres says Yunus himself took the photographs.) Djumaryohimself denied having ta~en such pictures. In 1999 his widow insisted such. photographs were not part of the photographic archive he left and·.that to her knowledge they never existed. Eventually, use of the faked images was overruled or decided against by Dading, once it became obvious that the notion of the newsmen taking up arms was hot at all credible ·and that pictures of the intact bodies would immediately raise questions about why they had been burnt and not kept for identification. With the burning of the bodies, Dading's forces applied a strict cover-up. Various pieces of the camera equipment and personal effects of the newsmen had been looted, and these were now recalled and held centrally, though the UDT leader Joao Tavares was said to have 'kept a still camera taken from the bodies. Capt. Yunus spoke to members of his Team Susi on the night of 16 October, telling them the reason for the killing of the newsm~n was to maintain the security of the covert operation, and that the incident was not to be talked about. Apodeti's Tomas Goncalves and UDT's Lopes da Cruz were told they were to take responsibility for the attack if any questions were asked. Some of the pro-Indonesian partisan leaders took a more· bizarre step to lay the ghosts of Balibo to. rest. Jose Martins said in May 1976 that he returned to the village about three days after the attack and picked up three fragments of bone from the ashes and the rubble In the Chinese trader's house where the bodies of the ~ustralian

112


newsmen had been burnt. Goncalves and other Timorese also took splinters of bone, Martins said, taking care that the Indonesians did not see them picking them up. Martins concealed his fragments in his boot. Martins said Timorese such as himself, though belonging to the Catholic church, 'still retained some ancient animistic beliefs. He and his colleagues had gathered the bits of bone because of the Timorese custom of collecting such relics to put in their uma lulik (sacred houses) in order to placate the spirits of the dead.

DEATH IN BALIBO

113

SEVEN

THE BALIB 0

U·

INTERCEPTS

collected by the DSD monitors at Shoal Bay and Cabarlah and by the DSD detachment aboard the navy destroyer cruising close to the island of Timor, the Australian intelligence community had closely followed Col. Dading's preparations for the attack on Balibo. The signals DSD detected included commnications by encrypted teletype and scrambled voice-radio between Dading's advance headquarters- at Batugade and Gen. Benny Murdani at Hankam(the defence ministry) in Jakarta, relayed by the radio station in Kupang. They included details of troop arrivals and other reinforcements at the Batugade fort, and details of the. planned attack along the border. Finally, on Wednesday, 15 October, the Indonesian colonel was told on the radio that his 'monkeys' were assembled at Haekesak, the little village high in the salient of hills behind Balibo. On the3rd floor of the JIO building in Canberra, the Indonesian moves were notified to the Southeast SING THE INTERCEPTS

114

Asia analysts in the Office of Current Intelligence by Peter Trewartha, who walked down the corridor from the DSD Liaison Office and dropped flimsies of the latest intercepts on their desks. The OCI analysts would almost certainly have seen already the same intelligence material that had resulted in the CIA brief the previous Saturday, 11 October, noting President Suharto's approval of the plan to set up pro-Indonesian enclaves around Maliana. They had seen Ambassador Woolcott's cable of Monday, 13 October to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra, reporting the detailed briefing about the forthcoming attack given to his diplomats Malcolm Dan and Allan Taylor by Harry Tjan Silalahi at CSIS. Together with their uniformed colleagues upstairs in the Directorate of Joint Service Intelligence and downstairs in the National Assessments Staff, they had been constantly updating their picture of the Indonesian forces in the border area, and the strength of the Fretilin resistance. But there was one vital intercept that was withheld from OCl's analysts by DSD in Melbourne. Some hours before the attack on Balibo, the Shoal Bay and Cabarlah DSD stations intercepted signals being exchanged between Batugade and Jakarta about the final preparations. Col. Dading reminded Gen. Murdani of the presence of foreign journalists in the Maliana-Balibo area. There was some discussion of what should be done about them, given the covert nature of the Indonesian involvement. According to a former Australian intelligence analyst, who saw the intercept some years later, Murdani said: 'We can't have any witnesses.' Dading replied in words to the effect of: 'Don't worry, we already have them under control.' The existence of this intercept has been confirmed by several members of the intelligence community. It appears to have been alluded to by an intelligence THE BALIBO INTERCEPTS

115

officer who told ALP Senator Arthur Gietzelt that 'the Indonesian order to shoot the Australian newsmen' was intercepted at Shoal Bay-·as Gietzelt revealed in the Senate on7 April and 3 June 1976. This intercept was also shown by a young DSD officer at Shoal' Bay to visiting staff of Justice Robert Hope's Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security on 4 March 1977. The intercept-·in the form of a working draft translation during 'first echelon processing'--led one of the officials, the Hope Commission's legal officer Ian Cunliffe, to believe that the killings had been premeditated. Cunliffe has not disclosed the contents of the intetcept, but said in .December 1998 that 'my recollection is that the nature of the report made it clear that the circumstances of their deaths was not crossfire in the heat of battle but rather they were taken and executed'. Another member of the Royal Commission staff, George'Brownbill, has a more precise recollection of the interc;ept shown to them in March 1977. According to his account, a 'young person' approached the two visiting officials when they. entered a room at Shoal Bay and showed them a working paper with the original message in Indonesian and the English tran,slation printed in pencil in block capitals. Mo,.s Williams,head of DSD's Group C, accompanied the Royal Commission staff to Shoal Bay. In 1998 he said he had no recollection of this event. But he said that at the time 'there was some tension between processors at the facility and at the Head Office, but in his view the Head Office processors (particularly.translators) were more experienced and competent'. Williams agreed' with the suggestion that the document shown to the commission staff might have been the work of an analyst at Shoal Bay who took a different view of the 116

DEATH IN BALIBG, LIES IN CANBERRA

translation and resented the fact they had been overruled by Head Office in Melbourne. However, recollections also differ about the precise timing of this signal. According to the former analyst who read the intercept, it was processed by DSD in Melbourne five hours before the attack. It is not clear how much time had elapsed between the signal's inter,.. ception at Shoal Bay and completion of processing at Albert Park. Nor is it clear when the attack was judged to have started. If it was the moment when Capt. Yunus and his force entered Balibo, it was about 6.00 am local time-meaning the signals would have been processed by about 1.00 am Timor time, or about 3.00 am in Melbourne. If it was when the naval artillery barrage began, it was at 3.00 am local time-meaning the signals were processed by midnight in Melbourne. If it was when the mortar barrage began against Maliana and Yunus crossed to his attack position at Leohitu, it was around 11.00 pm Wednesday night Timor time, meaning the intercept was processed by 8.00 pm in Melbourne the night before the attack. In the latter case, this would have allowed DSD to notifY Canberra in the middle of the evening, when with parliament still sitting, ministers and senior officials were still easily contactable. And it was about 5.00 pm in Jakarta, allowing sufficient time for the Australian government to have made an effort to save the newsmen. It allowed 12 hours, half a day, before the final Indonesian advance into Balibo during which the news~ men were killed. However, this intercept does not appear to have left DSD headquarters. None of the senior JIO officials or the relevent desk officers in the OCI or DJSI recall anything like it coming through the DSD Liaison Office that night. A decision to withhold it was evidently taken THE BALIBO INTERCEPTS

117

at the', highest levels of DSD" by officials who were not prepared to take the risk that politicians or other government . departments might act on the knowledge in a' way that would expose to the Indonesians . . the extent of Australia's sigint capability. This decision almost certainly involved ,both the DSDdirector, Ralph Thompson, and his most senior operations officer, Mos Williams. The ,.next intercept mentioning the journalists was the field. Tadiocommunication at 6.45 am Timor time from C'apt. Yunus at Balibo to· Col. Dading.at Batugade, which said:~mong the dead are four [sic] white men. What are we going to do with the bodies?' This intercept;· tagged AUM-364 by DSD and given the classification 'Secret Spoke' (indicating it was transmit-· ted in clear language or with a low grade of encryption) , mentioned., neither Australians. nor journalists. However it horrified the analysts at Shoal Bay, .who had assumed that steps would have. been taken, based on the earlier intercept, to protect the journalists. This -intercepted signal was undoubtedly ·the saine one that the 'KOTA leader Jose Martins said he heard mentioned.at Batugade later that morning, and which he subsequently transcribed in Portuguese in a notebook. The two-line entry states: '0645: Balibo esta tornado. Tudo passada arnetralhadora. Veio un radio a falarem de uns Australia-nos qui foram abatidos.' [Balibo is taken. Everything is machine-gunned. A radio message came speaking of some Australians who· were slain.] The actual message had not mentioned Australians, but by' the time Martins heard about or wrote down the 6.45 am message it is evident that . the 'white men' had been identified by the' Indonesians in Batugade as Australians. According to Martins, when Col. Dading heard the casualty repQrtby Yunus, the commander told Yunus to 118


wait until he could get to Balibo before doing. anything further. Joao CarrascaHio's account corroborates this. As we have seen, Dading went by helicopter to Balibo about 15 minutes later. The report by Yunus was translated at Shoal Bay and sent immediately/to Melbourne. Evidently, C Group decided this could be forwarded to Canberra as it was now too late for any compromising action to be taken. The flimsy arrived after that morning's Highlights were prepared by OCI, and it was passed straight to the Indonesian desk officer, Jenny Herridge. It also went immediately to Capt. Peter Gibson in DJSI, who showed it to his direct superiors, Col. Alf Garland and Lt-Col. Geoff Cameron. The director of DJSI, AirCdre D.F. Gilson, was also told. Jockel and his two deputies, Arthur McMichael and Cdre Ken Gray, were informed soon afterwards. Later that morning, Jockel went over to Parliament House on his own to tell the defence minister, Bill Morrison, that it appeared some Australian journalists had been killed during the Indonesian attack they had been expecting. Morrison's reaction was simply to exclaim, 'Oh, shit!' There was no need for J ockel to advise Morrison that this information could not be disclosed until there was an attributable source. Morrison, who had been a career diplomat with postings in Moscow and Kuala Lumpur before entering parliament, has said he was the only Labor minister who had known about DSD before the Whitlam government took office. He was quite aware of the extreme sensitivity of sigint. Throughout the day, the analysts in OCI and DJSI received further sigint from the DSD liaison office about progress of the attacks on Balibo, Maliana and other border towns. This material was discussed with Osborn and Bennetts in OCI, who supervised the preparation of a special intelligence summary about the Indonesian THE BALIBO INTERCEPTS

119

actions and the killing of foreign journalists who almost certainly included Australians. The Defence department head, Sir Arthur Tange, took· the intelligence report over to Morrison at Parliament House early that evening. Tange was accompanied by one or two other officials, one of whom said in the hearing of Morrison's press secretary, Bill Pinwill:'I'm afraid we've lost some of the press chappies.' This was about 10 hours after the killings. Tange took no chances with Morrison's understanding about the sensitivity of DSD material. He emphasised strongly that the government could not yet reveal what had been learned about Balibo, not even to the·n~wsmen's next-of..;"kin.To do so would reveal to the Indonesians what signals could be intercepted· and invite them to take countermeasures, such as using more sophisticated encryption techniques or maintaining radio silence. Morrison agreed that Tange's report should be immediately circulated to the prime minister, Gough Whitlam, and the minister for Foreign Affairs, Don Willesee, with this clear understanding about the need for secrecy. According to the former Whitlam staffer Richard Hall, in an account published in 1978: That night a debate took place at a high political level. The defence establishment was unbending-the secrecy of DSD operations had to be preserved at all costs . . . . The politicians wished to inform the relatives but the defence side claimed that this would destroy the future effectiveness of the listening operation against Indonesia. There is no doubt that Prime Minister Whitlam and his two Ministers [Defence Minister Morrison and Foreign Minister Willesee] were personally very distressed by the affair.

But none of the ALP ministers were in a mood to look closely at the report. That day Opposition leader 120


Malcolm Fraser had announced that, because of the Khemlani loans affair, the Opposition would block supply in the Senate. With the long day drawing to a close, Whitlam and Willesee had to leave almost immediately for the dinner hosted by the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, at Government House for the visiting Malaysian prime minister. According to Geoff Briot, then Willesee's press secretary: 'He [Willesee] really was aggrieved by the fact that we knew through the DSD intercepts that they had been killed.' And Pinwill, Morrison's press secretary, has said that his minister was also sorrowful but that he was obliged to accept the advice of his departmental head where DSD was involved. Morrison has recently reiterated that: 'It was important that these matters [DSD operations] should not be compromised to any extent.' There was another intercept about the newsmen delivered to Canberra later that day. Some time in the afternoon in Timor, Col. Dading had reported to Jakarta that among the dead in Balibo were white men--he put the number at four-and that their bodies had been burnt. Their remains, he said, had 'menjadi abu'-turned into ashes.

THE BALIBO INTERCEPTS

121

EIGHT

COVER-UP IN ·FOREIGN AFFAIRS

O

N THE EVENING of 16 October, an Australian aid . .•mission, which included former consul]ames Dunn, was in Dili. It was requested to go to the Marconi centre, where Fretilin vice-president Nicolau Lobato told them ofa 'massive attack' by Indonesians on a wide front from Lebos to Balibo, which had included naval and artillery fire. Lobato could say nothing about the fate of five Australian-based journalists and four Portuguese newsmen known to be in the. vicinity of Balibo. Dunn went to dinner with the Australian army medical team" where the border attack and· fate of the missing TV ~rews was discussed, along with rumours of impending air and sea attacks on Dili itself. On Friday, 17 October, Australian morning newspapers carried reports to the same effect, quoting Fretilin statements that a big Indonesian attack had been made in the north-coast border area. They also mentioned a 122

report on the previous day in the Jakarta newspaper Berita Yudha, which as we have seen was controlled by Murtopo's Opsus special operations group, that the local pro-Indonesian forces were ready to move against Fretilin. Later that day Fretilin announced· in Dili that the five Australian-based newsmen were missing and were last seen in Balibo as the Indonesians advanced. The four members of the Portuguese TV crew arrived back in Dili after their flight from Maliana, which had been made in part on foot and had taken 40 hours. They reported that they had left the five from Australia in Balibo. According to some accounts at the time, the Portuguese had 'begged' the Australian crews to return with them, though the leader of the group has since insisted they did not. Both of the Australian television networks with crew members involved contacted the foreign affairs department. Nine news director Gerald Stone rang the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Because Ambassador Richard W oolcott was away he spoke to the acting head of the mission, Malcolm Dan, who said to Stone he was unaware that journalists were at the border. Dan made inquiries later that day to the Indonesian foreign ministry and other authorities. In Canberra the department of Foreign Affairs was still not aware of the situation, even at high levels, until later in the day. On that Friday morning, the depart. ment's secretary, Alan Renouf, sent a submission to Foreign Minister Willesee: the department was aware of Australian journalists in Dili 'and some outside Dili', as well as several Australian aid workers in Timor. The department would 'have to consider next week whether evacuation plans need to be implemented'. By that stage, the five journalists had been dead for more than 24 hours. COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

123

It ·was.· not until·late morning or early afternoon that Friday, 17 October, that a report from the. defence department- based. on ·the intercepted Indonesian .signals was ,circulat~d to· senior Foreign ·Affairs officials in Canberra. It was also sent to the Jakarta embassy, reaching the embassy in the evening. W oolcott's 'heart sank'. While the' first reaction in the embassy. was one of dismay, the next reaction was to pass blame. The diplomatic cables exchanged between Jakarta and Canberra were widely copied and· passed around the department; and one official recalls them in some detail. He remembers an 18 October cable in which the Jakarta embassy commented on the' following lines: The news :,o[ the death of the five Australian journalists in Balibo came as. a great shock to us all in the missiqn.. But it has to be said that they took their lives in their own hands in exposing the~selves in the frontline of the attack. It .was foolhardy and, unnecessary, and the blame must rest with them and their employers .. .' The mi~sion has reported over a long period, the plans of Indonesia to take East Timor by force:, and more recently, the specific plans of the invasion. It .must be assumed that Australian nationals were warned by. Canberra presumably of the dange~s of tr~vel in Timor at this time, and in particular that special briefings were given to the management of the media organisations.

Renollf'exploded: 'I wish to know by return telegram who in the mission sent this telegram~' he cabled back. W oolcott is recalled replying: You know that we have all been under considerable pressure, over an extensive period of time. I had to leave for a tour of the Java provinces the day after news of the tragic deaths of the journalists. In my 124

DEATH INBALIBO, LIES IN CANBERRA

absence Malcolm Dan sent the telegram that· was intended only to make the point that reports on the impending· Indonesian attack on· Timor had been known well before the invasion··and that the journalists would clearly have been forewarned of the dangers.

Renouf was already taking steps to check on that aspect, ordering the assistant secretary in charge of the department's executive branch (a secretariat to the department head), Geoffrey Miller, to see what warnings had been given. In a submission to the Foreign Minister on Monday, 20 October, Miller reported that the Department of Civil Aviation issued an instruction that all personnel boarding civilian flights from Darwin to Timor had to be warned of the dangers. It turned out that neither group of journalists had been given the official warning, though each of their pilots had been· cautioned. For two or three days Willesee had been agonising over the knowledge that, barring the remote chance of mistaken identity, the journalists were in all probability dead, while family and colleagues of the five were pressing the government with inquiries and being told that Canberra was still seeking hard information. ~fter all, most of his own kids had gone into journalism', said his former press secretary, Geoff Briot. Defence officials wanted to keep their intelligence methods secret. ~t that time he [Willesee] was under intense pressure from the department not to reveal that knowledge', says another Willesee staffer, Alan Oxley. 'The argument at that time was that if he did, he would have revealed the existence of intelligence gathering. Since then that convention has gone by the board. About three years later Malcolm Fraser broke that convention and we've been much less coy about it.' Despite these security concerns at a high level, the television station managements were discreetly and COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

125

without authorisation notified over the weekend by outraged intelligence personnel that their staff were dead. The managers in. turn notified some familymembers. But they could not be sure that what they were told was true. Keeping secrets is difficult and, in any case, within two or three days about 50 people-'-including ministers, ministerial staff, key Defence and Foreign Affairs department officials and the top Australian embassy people in Jakarta-were told of signals intelligence suggesting that the newsmen were ·dead. ALP backbencher J ohn- Kerin was known as an outspoken opponent of the Whitlam policy. on Timor since he visited Dili with the party's foreign affairs and defence committee in March 1975. As the committee's secretary, he had posited some awkward questions about the Timor policy to the government and to· the Department of Foreign Affairs. Kerin had a running feud with the head' of the Foreign Affairs department's Southeast Asia branch, Graham Feakes, whom' Kerin regarded as a leading member of an 'Indonesia lobby' within the Australian bureaucracy. In Canberra on Friday, 17 October, Kerin received a phone call from a man who did not give a name. By that stage, Kerin says, he was a regular recipient of such anonymous tip-offs. The caller told Kerin details of the Balibo attack, including the name and unit of the Indonesian officer in charge. Kerin says he is now hazy on these details. Shortly afterwards, Kerin says, he met Feakes at a cocktail party, and, referring to Balibo, asked if 'everything was going as expected or according to plan'. A 'heated altercation' then took place. ALP Senator Arthur Gietzelt, who had just returned from a visit to Fretilin-controlled Timor was also an opponent of the Whitlam policy. He received a letter through the mail about DSD intercepts, about which he spoke in the Senate a few months later. 126


The Nine Network in Sydney was also making inquiries. On Friday 17 October, it sent an executive, John Foell, to Darwin to see what information could be gleaned. Foell booked into the Darwin Travelodge and started asking around. Towards lunchtime the next day, Saturday, 18 October, Foell was paged to the lobby of the Travelodge. The visitor was a stranger who did not give a name but who clearly knew why Foell was there. The stranger suggested a quick beer in the hotel bar. Foell said the conversation lasted about 15 minutes. The stranger told him: 'You can stop trying to find them. It will all become official in 48 hours. They were machine-gunned and their bodies burnt.' The man gulped his beer and left. The Seven Network had its Adelaide-based producer Bernard Keenan in Darwin. He recalls being contacted by a 'Carlton-Brown of the FO' type diplomat who told him the team was dead. By the Monday, 20 October, reports of the deaths came out in the Jakarta press and were passed on by the Australian embassy, which allowed Canberra to cite an open source for what it already knew. By then officials in Canberra and Jakarta had fallen into the pattern of two parallel cover-ups of the Balibo affair. Each of the governments had something to hide. Jakarta wanted to conceal any involvement by its forces in the East Timor fighting. It also wanted to deny any culpability on the part of its Timorese allies who, the Indonesians claimed, carried out the Balibo attack unaided. Canberra was trying to avoid any public acknowledgment that it had been told by the Indonesians what was going on. It also had to conceal from the Indonesians that it could follow what was happening through signals intelligence. At the same time it had to satisfy calls for an inquiry into the fate of the five Australians. COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

127

Political turmoil in Canberra, resulting from the dismissal of the Whitlam government on 11 November 1975 by the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, freed the department 'of Foreign Affairs from close political supervisi0rJ.fora •.•. significant period. This .freedom from scruti~ywas :abetted by the fact that although Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie were British citizens and Gary Cunningham was aNew Zealander, neither the British nor the New Zealand governments became involved in the inquiries in more than token· ways. They had little direct concern with Timor, but had trade and other interests in Indonesia. The five journalists had died ,under the Australian flag daubed on the house at Balibo and were identified as Australians by Indonesians.London and;Wellington were content to leave it this way. At avery early, stage the 'Australian government's inquiries had. a genuine note of doubt. The radio intercepts about" the bodies had only mentioned 'white men' and the number of dead was unclear, four or five. It was just possible that this reference might include members of the Portuguese TV crew in Timor. This possibility vanished when the Portuguese arrived back in Dili late on 17 October. On Friday, 17 October, a Foreign Affairs official, Jphn;Starey, was sent into Dili on a Red Cross flight. Former consul James Dunn, then in Dili with an aid mission, recalled that Starey was anxious that his official status not be known to local people. He spent only a few hours on the ground, establishing that the journalists were indeed missing at Balibo, before flying back to Darwin. He later interviewed the Portuguese TV crew on their way home through Darwin. The Australian government's first formal approach to the Indonesian government was on the morning, of Saturday, 18 October, when the ambassador in Jakarta, 128


RichardWoo1cott, called on the Indonesian foreign minister, Adam Malik, while other embassy officers contacted Indonesian military and intelligence officiak At the official level, Woo1cott met a wall. Neither W oo1cott nor Malik, if he knew as much as W oo1cott, felt able to refer to their background knowledge about Operation Flamboyant. Malik promised help in getting information, through the pro-Indonesian Timorese. He was also querulous with W oo1cott over a wave of anti-Indonesian demonstrations in Canberra. Woo1cott had already been summoned to the foreign ministry a week before to hear a complaint about demonstrators occupying the·· Indonesian embassy in Canberra and daubing slogans on embassy homes. The demonstrations provided· a convenient· red herring for Malik. Malik had promised Woo1cott there would be no reprisals over the Australian demonstrations, but when he emerged from the meeting with W oolcott and faced questions from Indonesian journalists about the missing newsmen he quipped angrily· that he was 'not a grave-digger'. Malik and his department had little involvement with the operation in Timor itself, and off-the-cuff statements like this were not always taken at face value in Jakarta. But this reaction typified the response given to Australian inquiries for some three weeks: defensive, un-cooperative and contemptuous. But equally, the whole series of Australian inquiries at this level were ritualistic. On Monday, 20 October, the Jakarta morning daily Kompas, one of the most respected newspapers in Southeast Asia, published a report of an interview by staff correspondent Valens· Doy in Batugade the previous Friday, 17 October, with UDT leader Lopes da Cruz. Lopes da Cruz was quoted as saying the bodies of four Europeans had been discovered in a house in Balibo. It could not be determined what nationality the dead men COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

129

were, but nearby was a sign, 'Australia' . The UDT leader was later to deny giving this interview, and the Kompas journalist Doy felt so ·threatened by Operation Flamboyant's commanders he returned to his home district in Flores island to hide out for several months. But Day's report was later confirmed by the published Opsus account in 1976. Kompas also quoted Apodeti leader Tomas Goncalves, who, according to the subsequent Indonesian account, led the attack on Balibo, as making an explanatory broadcast over the Opsus-run Radio Ramelau based in Kupang. Goncalves said that in a war anything could be destroyed, deliberately' or not. There was no guarantee of safety. The pro-Indonesian troops did not know of the journalists' presence and could not be held responsible for them. The Apodeti leader said the attack on Balibo had taken Fretilin by surprise from the rear. It had lasted only 45-, minutes. After the attack the badly burnt bodies of white men were discovered in the house, ofa Chinese trader. As we have seen, listeners in. Dili recall broadcasts by· Radio Ramelau in KU'pang over '20-21 October saying that 'Australian' communists' helping Fretilin in combat had been killed at Balibo. The Kompas article deepened fears in Australia when it was reported in morning newspapers on Tuesday, 21 October, five days after the killings. Foreign Minister Don Willesee said in the Senate that 'the Australian government is gravely concerned about the fate of the missing journalists. The Australian embassy in Jakarta has been able to enlist the assistance of the Indonesian authoritiesan'd an officer of the embassy will proceed to the border area shortly, perhaps today, to make on-the-spot. investigation.' This was at least four days after. Willesee knew the newsmen were dead. The best qualified Indonesian linguist in the embassy's political section at that time was its most junior member, 130


Third Secretary Richard Johnson, who had just transferred over from the consular section. He flew to Kupang, Indonesian Timor, the next day, Wednesday, 22 October. During his stay of 19 'days in Kupang, Johnson sought in vain for permission from local authorities to travel to the b~ rder, only:"one 'hour's flight in aircraft available for charter from local missionaries, or one day's journey byroad. Ina roundabout fashion, the 1976 Opsus account, Integrasi, tells why: Even though the Australian Foreign Affairs Department also intervened over Johnson's plans to visit the border area, because anti-Indonesian demonstrations in Australia increased around that time, and because the ~ Australian Government did not display a firm enough approach to them, it turned out that . . . Mr Johnson stayed bottled up in Kupang and could not carry out his journey to Atambua (the main border town) .because there was no transport.

In other words, as a punishment to Australia for not banning demonstrations against Indonesia, the Indonesian authorities presented endless excuses to Johnson to prevent him from .pursuing inquiries. In Jakarta,. Ambassador Richayd W oolcott became increasingly disturbed· at the- lack of co-operation and puzzled that the Indonesians did not supply even the minimum information the embassy needed ·to confirm the deaths if not the circumstances. This would have also taken some, of the heat off the Indonesians themselves. Indonesian officials, principally the head of the foreign ministry's Asia-Pacific directorate, Maj .-Gen. Adenan, and BakinChief Maj .-Gen. YogaSugama, insistedpedantically and disingenuously that Balibo was under Portuguese'jurisdiction, that the border: was 'closed' and that Indonesia had only influence, not control, over COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

131

Apodeti and UDT. In earlier private conversations, Indonesian officials. such asSugama had not bothered with this pretence. On Friday, 24 October, Johnson received in Kupang letters from the pro-Indonesian Timorese parties stating that 'several white men' had been found among the dead at Balibo. The letters suggested that inquiries be pursued with Fretilin, Portuguese and Australian auth~ orities. A second letter, from ··Lopesda .Cruz dated 27 October, pointed out a Fretilin flag as well as the slogan 'Falintil is always with the Manbere people' on the Chinese house in Balibo and said he questioned whether the people in the village were journalists or not. '. . . We are now expecting that the Australian government [will] tak"e the necessary steps to stop Australian citizens to come and fight side by side with Fretilin and fight and press the Timorese people', Lopes da Cruz wrote. On 29 October, The Canberra Times and other newspapers carried a report based on the account by Guido dos Santos, who claimed to have been a Fretilin auxiliary who had fled Balibo as the Indonesians attacked, and said he heard the newsmen attempting. to s-urrender. The Nine Network's news director, Gerald Stone, had given the department of Foreign Affairs the full text of the Guido dosSantos interview, as well as a tape recording of one of the 20~210ctober broadcasts by UDT's Lopes da Cruz over Radio Ramelau in Kupang in which he talked of"~ustralian communists' having been at Balibo. The other broadcast, on 21 October, in which Lopes da Cruz was reported. to have -said the ·-Australian communists had been captured-· and that 'they got· a lesson'was not taped. The tape-recording supplied by Stone has not been included in any list given so far of the department's holdings of material on Balibo. 132


Still, on Thursday, 30 October, a fortnight after the killings, and after a week of what was clearly a runaround, with newspapers editorialising that Australia was being treated in a humiliating fashion, Canberra maintained its studied position of ignorance. After being talked out of expressing direct knowledge of Indonesian involvement by Ambassador Dick W oolcott, in a series of cables later leaked to Canberra Times journalist Bruce Juddery, Foreign Minister Willesee made his controversial Senate statement: The Government has viewed with concern widespread reports that Indonesia is involved in military intervention in Portuguese Timor . . . Were there substance in these reports, the Australian Government would be extremely disappointed and we have so informed the Indonesian authorities. The Australian Government has urged that Indonesia pursue her interests through diplomatic means. We have told the Indonesians that we remain opposed to the use of armed force.

In Canberra, some time before the Whitlam government was dismissed on 11 November, ALP backbencher John Kerin had approached Foreign Minister Willesee about the gulf between what was known and what was disclosed by the Australian government. Willesee replied: 'All right John, if you want to be known as the man who brought down the Labor government . . .' Senator Arthur Gietzelt said in 1979 that he and Labor MP Ken Fry approached Whitlam about the Indonesian involvement. He said Whitlam commented: 'What do you want us to do? Send troops in?' As Gietzelt explained: 'At that time we were so besieged and beleaguered as a government . . .' On about 5 November, the Indonesian foreign minister, Malik, finally told President Suharto that the case COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

133

of the missing journalists was damaging relations with Australia and that something had to be done. On 7 November, Whitlam wrote Suharto a personal note appealing for greater co-operation in confirming the fate of the newsmen: The issues involved are very' difficult ones for us. We have been assuming that the men, or at least four of them, have been killed. But we have so far been unable to obtain positive confirmation of this fact or indeed to establish precisely the circumstances in which the men were killed.We need to do what we can to establish the facts, .to obtain positive identification, and to carry out the wishes of the next-of-kin in regard to the disposal' of the remains and the return of personal effects. In the absence of information about', the fate of the missing men, varIOUS legal problems arise and will continue. I recognise" that Indonesia might not feel well-placed to provide information on an incident which occurred in Portuguese Timor. But Indonesia is the only country in direct touch with UDT, and Apodeti forces and we have, therefore, been enlisting the good offices of your Government in trying to bring this matter toa satisfactory 'conclusion. Our officials have been in touch these last few weeks and I appreciate, the help which Indonesian officials have been able to provide, in particular in arranging for an exchange of letters between the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and the UDT leader, M'f Lopes da Cruz., Weare still lacking, however, final ,and positive confirmation that the bodies located at Balibo are in fact those of the missing newsmen. My concern, Your Excellency, is that the longer the, issue is not settled the greater will be the speculation, in our newspapers and elsewhere about the 134

DEATH INBALIBO, LIES IN CANBERRA

circumstances in which the five died. It is for this reason that I have felt that I should write to you personally to seek your help in overcoming the problem which has arisen for us. May I suggest, too, that it is in the interests of others concerned, including the UDT and Apodeti parties themselves, that the matter be cleared up as quickly as possible . . .

Whitlam gave the letter to the returning Indonesian ambassador, Maj.-Gen. Her Tasning, whose term had expired, to be taken to Jakarta. On the same day, 7 November, a first secretary from the Australian embassy's political section, Peter Rodgers, flew from Jakarta to Kupang to reinforce Third Secretary Johnson's efforts to break through the obstructiveness. On 12 November, nearly a month after the killings, the Bakin chief Yoga Sugama handed Ambassador W oolcott a box containing charred human bone fragments, some camera gear, notebooks and papers belonging to Shackleton, Rennie, Peters and Stewart. An accompanying letter from an Apodeti leader, Guilherme Goncalves, said four white men had been among 15 people burnt in a house used as a Fretilin strongpoint in Balibo, about 100 metres from the house with 'Amtralia' daubed on it. A later search of the site found 'some documents'. Goncalves said that on 27 October soldiers had found two bodies in the bush outside Balibo, one a European, with a camera and documents beside him. The two bodies had been burnt. No attempt was made to explain the contradiction that the four bodies in the house had been almost completely burnt, yet papers found nearby the bodies inside the house showed only mild water damage. By then the two Fretilin accounts had appeared, one from Guido dos Santos and the other from three soldiers interviewed by the Australian Associated Press COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

135

correspondent' in Dili, Roger East. W oolcott is understood to have raised these accounts with Gen. Yoga S,ugama, who became angry and said words to the effect that he 'had no intention of reacting to every example of Fretilin propaganda'. It was not until 13 November that the letter from Gough Whitlam, who had by then been dismissed by John Kerr, was hand-delivered toSuharto by the returning Indonesian ambassador. No reply was ever received. The d'epartment's handling of the funeral arrangements for the" five journalists showed diplomacy at its shabbiest. In a submission late in November to Andrew Peacock, the foreign minister in the acting· LiberalCountry Party government, Graham Feakes, the department's Southeast Asia branch head, warned of public support for the bones to be returned to Australia for lab,oratory testing.. (The Jakarta embassy's doctor, Henry Will, had ,been able to state only that the remains 'appeared to be human'.) The department 'must notfavour this' because it could lead to an 'anti-Indonesian campaign' and cause 'public outrage', Feakes urged. Feakes attached a draft of a letter for Peacock to send to the next-of-kin, advising them of the deaths and extending the government's condolences. One government official at the ·time recalls Peacock returning the draft, demanding it be rewritten in less bureaucratic language and with more compassion. The letters from the department of Foreign Affairs reached the next-of-kin around 5 December, the day the remains of the journalists were buried in a Jakarta cemetery, in a single coffin, in a ceremony attended by several embassy staff and their spouses, resident Australian journalists and the secretary of the· Indonesian Journalists' Association. Some' of the relatives had agreed with the Jakarta burial. 'When I heard the bodies had been burned I.said 136


I didn't want the remains brought back to Australia, and made that known to Foreign Affairs,' said Gary Cunningham's father, Jim. 'It would have been too harrowing.' But others say they were pressured and misled into agreeing. Greg Shackleton's widow, Shirley, remembered the 'call from the department: 'I was told "If you want to bring the remains back it would cost a lot and you would have to pay." I didn't think they were the remains anyway, and said do what you like.' Brian Peters' sister, Maureen Tolfree, had been in Australia making inquiries and was on her way back to Britain just before the funeral, on a flight that stopped in Jakarta. She made an impromptu decision to get off the plane in Jakarta to see if she could collect her brother's remains to take back to Britain for burial. On her arrival in Jakarta, she was taken to a small office at the airport until a British embassy officer arrived. He advised her to get back on the plane, which she did. A former fiancee of Brian Peters, who has asked not to be named, remembered the person who rang from the department of Foreign Affairs as 'quite cold'. 'Foreign Affairs conned each family by saying the other families did not want the remains brought back', she said. To add to her anger, she learned only in 1994 that two letters written by Peters were in the personal effects handed back by the Indonesians. At the funeral service in Jakarta, the wreath from the Australian embassy carried an epitaph written by one of the bereaved relatives: 'They stayed because they saw the search for truth and the need to report at first hand as a necessary task.' At the funeral Ambassador W oo1cott said: 'These five Australian newsmen were regrettably and tragically killed. No one could have expected it. We do not even now have legal proof or complete evidence of their deaths but all available evidence points to their being COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

137

killed on October 15 or 16. Journalists are like soldiers. They take risks in the pursuit of their profession, in: the pursuit of truth.' Australia's ambassador, it must be recalled, was .·at the very moment he was giving a graveside homily on truth, party to the efforts by the Department of Foreign Affairs .to conceal the truth from the next·· of kin. That same department had effectively endorsed the invasion plans which led directly to these deaths. The Balibo affair rested until early in 1976 when the leader of the KOTA party, Jose, Martins, defected from the· Indonesian cause. In April 1976, Martins gave his inside version of the· Indonesian campaign in Timor in a· .sworn declaration to the department of Foreign Affairs and in accounts to the Australian press. As we have seen, Martins gave a sketchy description of the command centre at Batugade. He identified the commander as a colonel 'Dadin' [meaning Col. Dading Kalbuadi] and the attack leader as a 'Major Andreas' [the cover name of Capt. Yunus Yosfiah]. He said he had been at Balibo at about 10 am on 16 October, and recounted Tomas Goncalves' telling him that two· of the. newsmen had been killed in the Chinese shop-house, two were shot down by Indonesian soldiers as they came into the open and tried to surrender,. and the fifth was shot down as he ran out the back. The first four bodies were stripped of valuables, then burnt. Martins' account brought more calls from the press, the Australian Journalists' Association, jurists and b;lckbench MPs for a proper inquiry-.-just ahead of a visit to Jakarta by the Fraser government's foreign minister, Andrew Peacock. With the agreement of the Indonesians, a three--man team from the Australian embassy in Jakarta, led by the third most senior ·political officer, Counsellor Allan Taylor, went to Timor on 28 April. The other members were the embassy's consul, David 138


Rutter, and Third Secretary Johnson. Basing themselves in Kupang, over 12 days they made two trips of less than a day each time by helicopter into Balibo. The investigation was a model of its kind. The team meticulously inspected. Balibo, studied damage to buildings, looked at fields of vision, took photographs from the air and ground, and quizzed the Timorese alleged to have been present in the attack. They even asked pro-Indonesian Timorese leaders for help locating the Fretilin witnesses interviewed by Australian reporters . the previous November. Tomas Goncalves was hazy about how it was decided that four bodies were among the ashes in the Chinese house, and could not clear up contradictions in his earlier account of where the belongings had been found. While noting certain such unsatisfactory aspects, the embassy team said the account they received from Goncalves and other Timorese had 'a certain plausibility'. Circumstantial evidence suggested that the remains of the five were found in Balibo but beyond that few conclusions could be drawn. By this time, of course, Dili and the region around Balibo had been occupied by the Indonesian army, and the entire territory sealed off from out~ide access. What the team saw had been thoroughly filtered, rehearsed and directed by senior Indonesian military officers who stayed offstage 30 kilometres away in Indonesian Timor, at Atambua. DSD listeners at Shoal Bay heard the military radio traffic as Indonesian military officials sorted out their stories and shuffled military units around the landscape to avoid being seen by the Australians. Not a word of what Taylor himself already knewfrom his detailed briefings by CSIS and other sources in Jakarta during October 1975-was contained in his mission's report, which was notified to parliament on 2 June 1976 in a verbal statement by Foreign Minister COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

139

Peacock and .placed in the Parliamentary Library soon after, rather than tabled in parliament itself. The escape clause for the department of Foreign Affairs was contained in the mission's terms of reference, set· out in the report's preamble, that 'the team based, its findings on. the information obtained during its two visits to 'Balibo', meaning it would be an extremely limited exercise, barring a major mistake by the Indonesians orchestrating the witnesses interviewed by" the Australians. Unsurprisingly, Peacock was only able to tell parliament: 'I regret that it is still not possible to come to firm and' final conclusions as" to the circumstances and manner of the deaths of the newsmen.' The Department of Foreign Affairs 'claimed to The National 'Times in 1979 that it did follow up'statements by Jose Martins that contained the names of Indonesian personnel. The Indonesians had 'stated that they" believed they, had cooperated as fully as possible and could not agree to pursue the matter further'. Another line of inquiry was among Timorese refugees in Portugal, most of whom left Timor from the border area in mid-1976. Some had participated in the, '. campaign against Fretilin late in 1975. From 1976, these refugees had been contacted by John Dowd, then a NSW state Liberal MP (later state Opposition leader and NSW Supreme Court justice) who headed the Australian chapter of the International Commission of Jqrists, a lawyers' hu~an rights organisation. Another to contact them was the former Australian consul in Dill, James Dunn, then a researcher in the federal Parliamentary Library. However no attempt was made to interview refugees by the Australian .government, which at that time ·maintained an embassy in Lisbon. The attitude of Australian . officials was summed "uP in the ,words of one senior Defen·ce department official140


at the time: 'We do not know exactly how they died, and I'm glad we don't know.' It was not until the 20th anniversary of the Balibo killings, in 1995, that sufficient pressure for a new inquiry to be opened came on the then ALP government under Prime Minister Paul Keating. More detail of the Indonesian military operation was available, several Timorese exiles had come forward with pieces of information-and more were said. to be ready to testify to a truly independent inquiry. The pressure came from the Australian media, the bereaved families, interested bodies such as the International Commission of Jurists and some government backbenchers including the Labor MP Chris Haviland. In November 1995, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans commissioned a career federal government lawyer and former chairman of the National Crime ComJ11ission, Tom Sherman, to conduct an inquiry i~to the circumstances of the Balibo deaths, and of the disappearance of Roger East, the AAP journalist who had stayed on in Dili during the 7 December 1975 Indonesian attack and was reported to have been captured and executed the next day. Sherman did not have the powers to compel witnesses to testify or give legal protection to the identity of witnesses, as would a judicial inquiry. Because of his background in the legal bureaucracy, he was seen in some Timorese quarters as too much part of a government that was compromised by its closeness to the Suharto Government in Indonesia. While there was no question of Sherman's integrity and there is no evidence that at any time he was blocked from pursuing any line of inquiry in his first report,his appointment allowed a perception that the inquiry was not completely independent of the government. Sherman's inquiry did not take him into Timor itself, or Indonesia, and he took his terms of reference COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

141

to exclude any scrutiny around the conduct of the Balibo affair by the department of Foreign Affairs itself He was given six months to report. His first report, presented in June 1996 after a change in government and tabled in parliament by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, was ground-breaking in that it declared Indonesian forces to have been involved at Balibo, named Yunus Yosfiah and Dading Kalbuadi as officers in charge, and judged that the bodies had been dressed in uniforms and posed for propaganda photographs, then burnt as part of a cover-up. Sherman's report was criticised for adopting the judgment·· that the five had been killed quickly in the heat of battle, ev'en though some might have been trying to surrender. By that stage, with witnesses testifying about the monitoring ·of Fretilin radio by Dading's forces and the weakness of Fretilin resistance and quickness of the fight at Balibo, and Murdani's admission of prior knowledge of the journalists' ptesence, this seemed to many analysts· unduly· soft on Indonesia's responsibility. The government's handling of Sherman's report was also criticised by many familiar with the Balibo controversy. It showed the inclination to shrink from confronting the Indonesian government remained embedded in the·· Foreign Affairs psyche. Although Sherman said his work was 'preliminary', Foreign Minister Alexander Downer soon after ruled out the value 'of any further inquiry outside· Indonesia, and on a visit ,to Jakarta soon after its release made only a formal effort to persuade his counterpart, Ali Alatas, to follow up the report's findings. Most puzzling of all about Sherman's research was the lack of virtually any attempt to contact the department of Foreign Affairs ·officers who had been working on Timor in 1974-76. Former ambassador W oolcott made a written submission to the inquiry on his own 142


initiative. Former consul David Rutter, who was working in Foreign Minister Downer's Adelaide office, supplied some topographical material about Balibo to Sherman. Some of the other officers were dead (Graham Feakes and Michael Curtin) but the others-including Allan Taylor (appointed to head the Australian Secret Intelligence Service in 1998), Malcolm Dan and Alan Renouf--were accessible. The department of Foreign Affairs denied any instruction to clam up. 'Mr Sherman was free to contact any individual, either in Australia or abroad, whom he considered to have relevant information on the deaths of the journalists', it said in a written reply to questions from The Sydney Morning Herald in 1998. 'The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade did not, at any stage, instruct any individual not to come forward to Mr Sherman. Nor did the department attempt to exert any influence over individuals with whom Mr Sherman initiated contact in order to obtain evidence.' Nor did Sherman appear to have tapped the voluminous cable traffic between the Jakarta embassy and Canberra around the time of the Balibo attack, though the department says he had 'unfettered access' to all its records and files, and routinely requested information from them. Sherman did say that shortly before closing his inquiry, he asked for and was given access to intelligence material relating to Balibo, which he perused in one day. He reported that this information did not contain any material 'of sufficient evidentiary value' to warrant inclusion in the report or cast doubt on any of its conclusions. Clearly he did not see the full body of intelligence material and it seems not the vital DSD intercepts. Canberra's knowledge about Indonesia's Timor campaign in 1975 was not only the result of military intelligence work, but also the tainted fruit of the COVER-UP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

I43

connection built up by - the]akarta' embassy with the Indonesians running that campaign. It was inside knowl~ edge, and the department of Foreign Affairs studiously avoided presenting Sherman with evidence about this aspect. A report in The Sydney Morning Herald in August 1998 cast doubt on whether all the department's Timor records would be revealed at the end of ·2005, when the 1975 files were due to be opened under the 30-year rule. It pointed out that the department had already withheld hundreds of pages of documents relating to Indonesia from records up to 1967, covering the 1965 Jakarta coup attempt, in the files already opened. It also said that Timor records, occupying some 9 metres of shelf space, were not secure and were open to interference. Documents were being lost, and it was not unknown for fabricated notes and advice to be slipped into files .to enhance reputations. In particular, the copy of the record of Whitlam's meeting with Suharto in Se'ptember. 1974 was missing from the archives' for long periods of time. In response to questions from the newspaper, the department said it 'was not aware of the precise location of the docu-ment to which you refer. There are a number of historical documents that are currently being examined by this department with a view to their archiving and long-term storage. The document to which you referred may well be amongst them.' The department of Foreign Affairs was also unable to locate immediately the 13 October cable from Woolcott warning of the imminent attack on the border between West and East Timor, though it had found a reference to this cable in a subsequent cable. Bruce Haigh, who ran the department's Indonesia desk in 1984-86, recalled that two files of key documents on Timor and Indonesia, including photographs of 144

DEATH IN BALIBO, ·LIES· IN

CANBER~A

Balibo, were withheld from the department's registry and kept in a safe in his section. 'I said 1 didn't want to hang onto it any more, that no files should be kept like that', said Haigh. 'It was illegal, 1 thought, to hold files like that. They sh?ll~~

Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra

Where Death Lies

Schooled In Lies

True Lies in Chess

Schooled In Lies

True Lies in Chess

In Death 16 - Purity in Death

In Death 07 - Holiday in Death

In Death 17 - Portrait in Death

In Death 08 - Midnight in Death

In Death 13.5 - Interlude in Death

In Death 13 - Betrayal in Death

In Death 05 - Ceremony in Death

In Death 18 - Imitation in Death

In Death 04 - Rapture in Death

In Death 25 - Memory In Death

In Death 06 - Vengeance in Death

In Death 14 - Seduction in Death

In Death 02 - Glory in Death

In Death 09 - Conspiracy in Death

In Death 20 - Divided in Death

In Death 12 - Judgment in Death

In Death 11 - Witness in Death

In Death 03 - Immortal in Death

In Death 15 - Reunion in Death

Time of Death (Eternity in Death & Ritual in Death)

Time of Death (Eternity in Death & Ritual in Death)

Canberra Travel Guide

In Sickness And In Death

Martin B-57 Canberra

Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra

Where Death Lies

Schooled In Lies

True Lies in Chess

Schooled In Lies

True Lies in Chess

In Death 16 - Purity in Death

In Death 07 - Holiday in Death

In Death 17 - Portrait in Death

In Death 08 - Midnight in Death

In Death 13.5 - Interlude in Death

In Death 13 - Betrayal in Death

In Death 05 - Ceremony in Death

In Death 18 - Imitation in Death

In Death 04 - Rapture in Death

In Death 25 - Memory In Death

In Death 06 - Vengeance in Death

In Death 14 - Seduction in Death

In Death 02 - Glory in Death

In Death 09 - Conspiracy in Death

In Death 20 - Divided in Death

In Death 12 - Judgment in Death

In Death 11 - Witness in Death

In Death 03 - Immortal in Death

In Death 15 - Reunion in Death

Time of Death (Eternity in Death & Ritual in Death)

Time of Death (Eternity in Death & Ritual in Death)

Canberra Travel Guide

In Sickness And In Death

Martin B-57 Canberra

Recommend Documents