DSD Knew East Timor Massacres Planned – And Did Nothing

DSD. Defence Signals Directorate, Australia’s (bigger) equivalent of NZ’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). Along with the GCSB, it is a member of the top secret UKUSA Agreement (the others being the relevant Intelligence agencies of the US, UK and Canada). Operates a network of Waihopai-like satellite interception spybases around Australia.

In May 2002 East Timor finally joined the international community of independent nations, emerging from the narcoleptic torpor of several hundred years as a Portuguese backwater and the absolute nightmare of a quarter of a century of Indonesian genocide. Support for East Timorese independence is now, of course, the status quo for all decent Western nations and all their leaders were there for the big day. But that is a very recent state of affairs – for the 24 years of Indonesian occupation the West regarded it as a necessary (if regrettably brutal) means of ensuring stability in the region and, harking back to the Western obsessions of the mid 1970s - when the invasion occurred - of stopping East Timor from “going Communist”. So the US and Britain armed and trained the Indonesian military; Australia regarded Suharto’s dictatorship as its most important South East Asian ally and took advantage of the occupation to profit mightily from the offshore oil in the Timor Gap; New Zealand did its bit by toeing the party line and supporting Indonesia.

To his credit, Matt Robson, the then Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs, told the truth when he went to the East Timor independence ceremony, in Dili: “A number of countries need to be a little more modest about their contribution to Timor. A large number of Western countries had a strong relationship with Indonesia, and benefited enormously from the sale of arms” (Press, 21/5/02; “Robson slams East Timor help”). He slammed previous New Zealand governments, both Labour and National, for supporting the Indonesian occupation. “The failure in New Zealand’s foreign policy over Timor needed to be examined. We need to draw lessons in relation to East Timor because (our attitude) was completely opposite to all the UN conventions that we signed up to and then turned a blind eye” (ibid). He also said: “It’s a dreadful and shameful period of history. It was really the United States and Britain, the big two, saying to Indonesia, ‘We will give you the green light’…New Zealand went out of its way in the 1980s and 1990s to keep East Timor off the international agenda. They wanted a better relationship with Indonesia, so they just turned a blind eye to it” (New Zealand Herald, 18-19/5/02; “A President and his ‘Ruby Blade’”, by Audrey Young).

It was only in September 1999, as the Indonesian military and its murderous militias ran amok in East Timor, in spiteful reaction to the vote for independence, that the West decided that Indonesia had overreached itself and was now a liability. It suddenly switched to supporting East Timorese independence. As President Clinton boarded Air Force One to fly to Auckland for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, he signalled that Indonesia should leave and that the West would assume military responsibility for East Timor. By the time his plane touched down his loyal satellites, Australia and New Zealand, were falling over themselves to commit peacekeeping forces and to hope the world would not notice their 180 degree foreign policy switch. The rest, as they say, is history (rather like what happened in regard to South Africa as black majority rule became inevitable).

Up until that point (and quite possibly beyond it) the now leaders of East Timor were regarded as subversives and terrorists, people to be spied on and denied visas (both of which happened to Jose Ramos Horta, who is now East Timor’s Foreign Minister. New Zealand, under the 1975-84 Muldoon government, denied him entry; Australia spied on him (once getting an Australian Secret Intelligence Service agent to be his lover). Indonesia was the West’s ally; Fretilin, the political organisation heading the armed struggle for East Timorese independence, was not.

These uncomfortable ghosts from the past came back to haunt Australia (and the West), in March 2002, when raw intelligence data, collected by Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), was leaked to the media. The leaks revealed that Australian Intelligence knew in advance that the Indonesian military was planning to use the militias to massacre and terrorise the East Timorese in the event of a pro-independence vote in 1999. The DSD knew for at least six months that Indonesia planned to do exactly what it ended up doing. But nothing was made public or anything done about it so as not to prejudice DSD spying on Indonesia, and the importance Australia attached to Intelligence ties with Indonesia. Not to mention the political embarrassment that would follow the admission that Australia was spying on a major ally. Spying on Indonesia has always been one of the DSD’s top priorities.

“The main source of intelligence was DSD, for which interception and decryption of Indonesian signals had been the highest priority since the 1980s. During 1999 about 150 people worked at DSD's largest intercept station at Shoal Bay, near Darwin, ‘listening with earphones to Indonesian radio traffic, recording encrypted signals, and monitoring satellite telephone conversations’. Small teams of Navy signals intelligence personnel from Shoal Bay served on Royal Australian Navy frigates and patrol boats operating close to East Timor to intercept radio communications. Two Royal Australian Air Force P-3C Orion aircraft modified for signals intelligence gathering were also used” (“Deliverance: The Inside Story of East Timor's Fight for Freedom”, by Don Greenlees and Robert Garran, Allen & Unwin, 2002. Extracts published in the Melbourne Age, 22/5/02).

The leaked transcripts are believed to have come from disgusted senior Australian military sources reflecting deep disquiet at Australia’s reaction to the 1999 massacres, with Canberra at first blaming it on “rogue elements” within the Indonesian military. On the contrary, the transcripts very clearly reveal a chain of command from the highest levels of the Indonesian military and government down to the field commanders. A token few of those generals (but not the top ones really responsible for the atrocities) recently stood trial, in Indonesia, for multiple war crimes in East Timor in 1999. But Australia has never offered this damning Intelligence evidence to assist any war crimes trials.

This is the first time that raw DSD data relating to a contemporary event has been leaked and it provides a fascinating insight into the murky world of Australia’s spies. Two kinds of intercepts were leaked: “Secret Spoke” (ordinary phone calls) and “Top Secret Umbra” (scrambled or encrypted calls). They show that two units of Indonesian special forces went into East Timor, early in 1999, for undercover operations; they establish a clear link between the militia commanders and the highest ranks of the Indonesian military (and that the military was ready to murder the key militia leader if he changed sides); that, when a covert campaign to intimidate East Timorese to vote against independence failed (to the enormous surprise of Indonesia), the military and Government organised the massacres, destruction of all infrastructure and the forced deportation of one third of East Timor’s population across the border into Indonesian West Timor (where huge numbers remain to this day). One intercept shows that even after the international peacekeeping forces (primarily Australian and New Zealand troops) had arrived, the Indonesian military had sent in special forces to murder East Timorese leaders and Indonesian deserters.

Don’t expect too much to change anytime soon. The retired general who helped to set up the West Timor camps into which the East Timorese were forcibly driven, was recently made head of Indonesia’s National Intelligence Body. When Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, visited Indonesia in 2002, he accepted an Indonesian proposal to step up exchanges with this agency. Throughout Indonesia the same methods are being used as in East Timor – militias set up by the military to terrorise restive populations from Aceh to West Papua and brutal military suppression of various autonomy movements. As for Australia, it sees Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, as a vital ally in the “war on terror” to which Australia has committed itself so wholeheartedly. And most importantly, in light of Australia’s current obsession with boat people, Indonesia is seen as being key to stopping that flow. Australian Intelligence will doubtless continue to put its relationship with the Indonesian military and Intelligence as its top priority, overriding any obligation to make public (let alone do something about) the human rights abuses and war crimes that continue to be committed the length and breadth of that country. That’s what they call Realpolitik.

Nor can New Zealand feel smug. No doubt the GCSB was privy to exactly the same information gathered by DSD and also knew what was going to happen in East Timor. Indeed, Phil Goff, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, was personally told by one of those who was in an ideal position to know. As an Opposition MP, Goff (along with other MPs, including then Alliance MP, Matt Robson) went to East Timor as a United Nations observer for the August 1999 independence referendum. “We talked (before the vote) to one of the Indonesians heading up an unlikely group called the reconciliation and friendship groups, and I remember his words. He said: ‘If these ungrateful people decide to vote for independence, we will take everything we can carry, and what we cannot carry we will destroy’. We thought ‘what an arsehole’. But he was probably the only Indonesian who told us the truth because that’s precisely what happened” (New Zealand Herald, 18-19/5/02; “A President and his ‘Ruby Blade’”, by Audrey Young).

DSD Spied On “Tampa” Messages

Governments have always claimed that their electronic spy agencies (the GCSB, in New Zealand’s case) intercept only foreign communications, never domestic ones. So although the DSD’s actions in sitting on the intercepts it had from the Indonesian military (planning massacres in East Timor) were morally abhorrent, it was only doing what it is tasked to do – spying on foreigners, even supposed allies. For years the Anti-Bases Campaign has asserted that, by definition, these spy agencies must be spying on their own people, particularly when one party in the international communication being intercepted is a local. The spy agency bosses, their political so-called masters and the likes of New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, have all fudged this question or refused to give a straight answer. Proof of spying on their own citizens is very, very difficult to obtain. The activities of covert agencies are kept very secret and only very occasionally stumble into the daylight.

Well, now there is some proof. And it concerns one of the most disgraceful episodes in recent Australian history (there’s no shortage of candidates). In August 2001 the Norwegian container ship “Tampa”, captained by the redoubtable Arne Rinnan, rescued a boatload of mainly Afghan and Iraqi illegal refugees, from the usual death trap boat favoured by the repulsive people smugglers. He had been asked to rescue them by Australia, because they were in the part of the Indian Ocean for which Australia is responsible for search and rescue. However, when he tried to deliver them to the nearest part of Australia (Christmas Island), the “Tampa” was refused entry and then commandeered by the Special Air Service. September 11 happened while the “Tampa” saga was in full swing and the Prime Minister, John Howard, facing defeat in the imminent Federal election, fused the emotionally loaded issues of “Australia is being overrun by boat people” and “the war on terror” and snatched electoral victory from the jaws of certain defeat. Howard’s equation was “refugees= terrorists” (despite the obvious fact that these people were fleeing the very regimes that are the West’s enemies, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq).

Howard shamelessly used the “Tampa” boat people and an outright lie (that, in a separate incident, boat people threw their kids into the sea to force Australia to rescue them and take them in) to whip up the racist hysteria and xenophobia that is never far beneath the surface of our “multi-cultural” neighbour. The redneck vote that had previously gone to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party swung back behind the Liberal Party and Howard had the racists’ mandate. The “Tampa”, which had been seized by State-sanctioned pirates, was forced to unload its wretched human cargo at the Pacific dumping grounds (such as Nauru) which are being bribed by Australia to take the people it doesn’t want. How ironic that Australia, founded as a human rubbish dump for the underclass of England, such as my own paternal ancestor, (Aborigines will tell you that the first unwelcome foreign boat people arrived in 1788) is now using the same policy on its tiny Pacific neighbours. There is a whole other story about the way Australia treats the illegal refugees that do make it to the mainland – locking them up for years in brutal detention camps in the middle of the Outback – but that’s not our issue.

Only two players emerged with any credit from the “Tampa” scandal – one was the captain, Arne Rinnan, who stubbornly stuck to his guns and did what all seafarers are obliged to do – rescue those in peril on the sea. The other was New Zealand, which offered to take in 130+ of the “Tampa” boat people, who are now settled in this country. When the “Tampa” sailed into Auckland, in 2002, on Captain Rinnan’s final voyage, he got a hero’s welcome from some of them.

In February 2002 senior Howard government sources told the media that the DSD had passed onto to Peter Reith, the then Defence Minister, intercepted radio and electronic communications to and from the “Tampa”. These included conversations between Captain Rinnan and the Maritime Union of Australia (the MUA is an old enemy of the Howard government and one which had spectacularly defeated that government when an all-out attempt had been made, in the 1990s, to physically drive that union out of Australia’s ports. It was the biggest industrial battle in recent Australasian history). These intercepts were both improper and illegal, as they involved spying on Australians in Australia, and they were used to help shape public opinion in the build up to the November 2001 Federal election (which Howard won). So they were doubly illegal, as they were used for the benefit of a political party. In its submission to the 2001 Intelligence Services Act, the DSD “confirmed that clear limits would be placed on its operations, including a legal obligation to respect the rights of Australians to privacy and an absolute prohibition on eavesdropping on Australians within Australia” (New Zealand Herald, 13/2/02; “Howard hit by spy agency scandal”, Greg Ansley).

Initially the Government did what all governments do in such circumstances – invoked national security as a reason to neither confirm nor deny. But this scandal was too much for even the supine Labor Party (still in shock from losing an election it had had in the bag, so it had rallied behind the Government on the “war on terror” and “lock up the boat people” policies). Simon Crean, the Leader of the Opposition, said it was outrageous and un-Australian. “This isn’t a genuine defence matter. This is about spying on Australian citizens to assist with putting together a political strategy around the ‘Tampa’” (Press, 13/2/02; “Probe into Aust Govt spy charge”).

So the Government was forced to do something extremely unusual – depart from the traditional “no comment” and admit that the intercepts happened but deny that any wrongdoing had happened. Specifically, it denied targeting communications to and from the MUA or the International Transportation Federation. Howard told Parliament: “The national interest of Australia required that the Government take the action it did, and the operation of the Intelligence services were, on my advice, wholly consonant with the law, save and except for the inadvertent breach” (Press, 14/2/02; “Spying claims dog Aust Govt”). Howard refused to give any details of the one “inadvertent” breach that he admitted to, saying that they were common in the DSD, because of the huge number of intercepts. Captain Rinnan said that he suspected that the “Tampa’s” satellite phone was being tapped: “We can hear some clicking on the line and I was also complaining about that to the soldiers who boarded the ship, only suspecting it (was tapped), we could not prove it” (ibid).

Our sister organisation, the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition, stated the obvious when pointing out that the DSD is an integral part of the UKUSA Agreement partners’ Echelon spy system. AABCC’s spokesman, Denis Doherty, said: “The ‘Tampa’ incident is just the tip of the iceberg. Government claims that this was a small and one-off infringement of the rule forbidding monitoring of Australian citizens’ communications are deliberate disinformation…Yakima near Seattle covers the Pacific, Sugar Grove, near Washington, monitors trans-Atlantic communications, Morwenstow in Cornwall (UK) covers the Atlantic to the west and Europe and Asia to the east and Waihopai in New Zealand is responsible for the South Pacific. The spy base at Geraldton, near Perth, monitors satellite communications in the Indian Ocean. This inevitably includes communications to and from Australia. The bases at Shoal Bay (near Darwin) and Pine Gap (near Alice Springs) are also involved in this lawless activity. Phone calls to and from Australia to Europe go via the Indian Ocean satellite. For example, if my wife phones her brother in London, that conversation is monitored from Geraldton... The AABCC welcomes this exposure of the lawless activities of DSD and supports calls for an inquiry into its unbridled power to violate the privacy of the Australian people” (AABCC press release, 13/2/02; “Government Lying On DSD Spying”).

Draconian New Powers For ASIO

ASIO. Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, equivalent to the NZ Security Intelligence Service (SIS).

In the wake of the September 11 2001 atrocities and subsequent “war on terror”, governments all around the world have scrambled to beef up airport security (in April 2002 I flew, for the first time in a year, and entertained hundreds of rush hour travellers at Wellington Airport by being searched several times until the man with the metal detector worked out that what was setting it off were the metal domes on my denim jacket. MH.). Plus, they rushed through ill-considered and draconian “anti-terrorist” laws. New Zealand was no exception and our critical analysis of the Terrorism Suppression Bill can be found on our Website www.converge.org.nz/abc at both the Peace Researcher and Submissions pages.

Australia however, as is its wont, has taken “anti-terrorism” a whole lot further. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Bill 2002 – part of a package of six anti-terrorism bills which were due to go before Parliament later in 2002 - passed the lower House in May 2002 but had to be pulled from the Senate agenda at the last minute because of a revolt by Government backbenchers. It is extremely uncommon for Tory MPs to not back their own party on something as fundamental to reactionaries as “fighting terrorism”, so it must be a pretty nasty piece of legislation. It is.

The ASIO Bill introduces powers to ban “terrorist-linked” organisations, but has such an incredibly wide definition of such groups that it could apply to virtually every sort of Australian-based international or domestic campaigning group. And humanitarian aid organisations. It was the latter realisation that provoked the backbench revolt. The Government rushed around trying to find a compromise to satisfy its own Liberal Party. Previously there was no defence of honest or reasonable mistake – the Government introduced an element of intent. The Bill made all terrorist offences (as defined in the Bill) subject to a reverse onus of proof i.e. the accused would have to prove his or her innocence, rather than the State having to prove guilt. The Government backed away from this in relation to preparatory offences, such as being found in possession of an “item” connected with a terrorist (in itself, a breathtakingly wide net) but the reverse onus would still apply to terrorist training offences. The real sticking point was the proscription powers, similar to the 1950s laws which were introduced to ban the then Communist Party of Australia (laws which were chucked out by the High Court). The Government argued that any “terrorist-linked” organisation could only be banned with the agreement of four Ministers, but the backbenchers were opposed to such banning powers in principle.

The rest of the Bill (accepted by Government backbenchers) is horrifying. For the first time, it gives ASIO the power to detain people (“terrorist suspects”). It’s worth remembering that throughout the Western world, Intelligence agencies have not had this power – not the CIA, MI5, not even the good old NZSIS (in 1974, when the late Bill Sutch was arrested and charged with Official Secrets Acts offences arising from his contacts with Soviet diplomats – the only such case in New Zealand history – it was the Police who did the actual arresting, etc, on behalf of the SIS. Sutch was acquitted, and died, in 1975). Nor are there any plans to give the SIS powers of arrest and detention, despite abominations such as the Terrorism Suppression Bill.

But the Australian Bill proposed to give ASIO the power to indefinitely detain suspects (for up to 48 hours at a time, with the right of renewed detention for a further 48 hours and so on) without charging them and with no right to silence. In fact, refusing to answer questions carries a five year prison sentence. Such “terrorist suspects” can be indefinitely detained on the basis of information inadmissible as evidence in a trial and on a significantly lower standard of proof. The Bill would allow suspects as young as ten to be detained and strip searched. Journalists, doctors and priests could be jailed for refusing to divulge information about a terrorist suspect. Suspects could have access to a lawyer after 48 hours in custody but an ASIO officer would be present during all discussions. The lawyers would be vetted by ASIO beforehand and would face up to two year’s jail if they revealed details of cases to an unauthorised person. People could be jailed for life for possessing a “thing” connected to terrorism, even if they had no idea that the thing would be used for the purposes of terrorism. The definition of a terrorist threat is extremely broad.

Michael Rozenes, the former Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, said that the Bill was not aimed at finding evidence against the actual terrorist suspect, but rather at people with information about them. He described the legislation as: “a gross departure from every standard that currently governs the way in which we legislate for criminal and other conduct. So this is a novel proposition that you can take a person when he or she is not the subject of charge or suspicion, have their liberty removed from them, put them into indefinite custody and not have them have the ability of being advised by lawyers of whether they should speak or not. There ought to be judicial supervision of the process which we do not have, there ought to be legal advice available to the detainee which we do not have, and there ought to be a privilege against self-incrimination” (Sydney Morning Herald, 1/5/02; “ASIO admits children face strip search”).

Not surprisingly, lawyers, civil libertarians, unions, aid agencies, religious groups, academics and journalists have attacked the proposed law and its companions as anti-democratic, putting Australia on a par with Malaysia’s notorious Internal Security Act or the former Soviet Union. It looks very much like the Howard government wants to convert ASIO from an Intelligence agency to a fully fledged secret police force. Despite the fact that the Attorney-General can not identify one single terrorist threat to Australia, the Government is strongly defending its proposed new powers. John Howard told a Melbourne radio interviewer: “We are a close ally of the United States, properly so, we have taken a strong stand properly against terrorism. The idea that it can’t happen in Australia is wrong and misguided – it can. We have to be vigilant, but the vigilance of course can’t and won’t stop us going about our daily lives…I want to arm us with what is needed, consistent with our traditions as a liberal democracy, what is needed in order to fight terrorism. We think this legislation which goes a little further than in the past, particularly in relation to the 48 hour period, we think that is justified in relation to the sort of threat that we now face. You have this eternal dilemma. People say what’s the Government doing about the new terror threat. When we do something about it we are then accused of going too far” (Press, 4/5/02; “Anti-terror proposals defended”).

Before breaking for the winter, the Senate did pass the Bill allowing organisations to be banned as “terrorist threats” and have their assets seized. The Bill giving ASIO detention powers was defeated, at least for the time being. But it remained in Parliament and was reintroduced in August 2002. Earlier in the year the Parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) and the DSD had examined the proposed legislation and recommended that significant changes should be made, such as denying ASIO the power to detain people under 18. The Government was having none of that and countered with a proposal to give ASIO power to detain children as young as 14. It also rejected the Committee’s recommendation for a sunset clause that would have rendered the legislation invalid after three years. It is believed that the Government has offered to limit ASIO’s proposed powers of detention without charge to seven days (compared to the eight hours that the Police are allowed to hold someone without charge). Once again, this Bill faced a battle in the Senate.

The same applies to an amendment to the Telecommunications Interception Legislation Amendment Bill 2002, which would have given the spy agencies powers to intercept domestic electronic communications without a warrant. The Government temporarily gave up the fight on that one, to the extent that its own backbenchers voted against it. But it also was due to be reintroduced. There is total hypocrisy in this redefinition of “terrorists” – Australia became a haven of Nazi and Axis war criminals after WW2 and they were undisturbed; Croat terrorists, namely the fascist Ustashi, conducted a campaign of bombings and terrorism within Australia and against (the former) Yugoslavia, from Australia, for decades. Not only were they not prosecuted, evidence emerged of their close links with the Australian military and the ruling Liberal Party (which is in power today). This same Government, which denies refuge to Afghans and Iraqis, has taken in 250 members of the South Lebanese Army, Israel’s former puppet army throughout the nearly 20 years of its occupation of southern Lebanon (before it was driven out by Hezbollah). This bunch of torturers and murderers includes a fair crop of war criminals. But none of these people are terrorists, not as far as the Government is concerned.

And the Howard government has no doubt about who is going to pay for this national security State – the sick and disabled. The 2002/03 Federal Budget, released in May 2002, commits more than $A2.8 billion extra to Australia’s defence and security forces to “combat terrorism”. The Treasurer, Peter Costello, said: “The Government’s first responsibility is to defend our citizens and our national security assets” (Press, 16/5/02; “Budget uses sick to aid security”). The Government wishes to avoid further embarrassments such as the “Tampa” affair and the Easter 2002 protest at the Woomera detention camp (in the Dead Heart of the Outback) which succeeded in freeing a number of the boat people detained there. The Budget commits $A219 million to build a new detention camp on Christmas Island and $A455 million over four years to process asylum seekers at Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands (Australian territories but as far away from the mainland as possible). To pay for this, among other measures, prescription charges were increased to $A28 per script and qualifying for disability pensions has been made tougher.

So those are the priorities of our biggest and most important neighbour – more powers and money for the military and spies; continual bashing of the hapless boat people (an electoral Godsend); and make the most vulnerable sectors of society shoulder the burden of paying for it all. It makes me very pleased that my Australian grandfather had the good sense to get out of there a century ago and never go back. He was an Australian boat person who came here for a better life – funnily enough, New Zealand didn’t treat him like a criminal. It is that thread of common humanity and common decency that is so conspicuously lacking from Australia’s public life at present. So, next time the bright boys on this side of the Tasman suggest that the answer to all our problems is to become a state of Australia (changing our name to New Tasmania perhaps), remember that this is the shonky bunch we’d get as a government. No thanks. “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, no, no,no”.

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