ANDREW WILKIE: ONA and Australia’s Progressive Intelligence Officer

In March 2003 Andrew Wilkie, an intelligence ‘analyst’ resigned  from Australia’s national intelligence assessment agency, the Office of National Assessments (ONA) and caused a media and political furor in a dramatic carefully-crafted three-day media blitz on ABC Radio, television, newspapers and The Bulletin, the weekly Australian national news magazine. 

Wilkie subsequently travelled to the UK and US and was interviewed on CNN in Washington where he promoted his claims that the invasion of Iraq was a function of US strategic and domestic interests and intelligence assessments underlying the invasion were ‘sexed up’.

Wilkie’s case?  

1. Australia lacks an independent foreign policy and is subservient to the US.

2. The US and Australian governments misused and ‘exaggerated’ intelligence concerning Iraq to justify the US invasion of Iraq. 

3. Iraq is not a security threat to any country or state and the invasion of Iraq was a function of US domestic politics and US strategic objectives in the Middle East.

There is nothing new in Wilkie's claims. They are conventional wisdom in wide sections of the media and universities, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and most of the management of Australian’s intelligence organizations and progressive elites in Australia.

But Wilkie was different in one respect. He was a trained military man. The former 20 year veteran of the Australian Army who reached the dizzy heights of Lieutenant-Colonel, employed by ONA as a ‘military’ analyst would have known that Australia’s specialist SAS forces were behind the lines in Iraq risking their lives during his media campaign. He would have known that Australian troops had been on standby in Kuwait three months before the war began. 

But Wilkie is a type; a symptom of a broader pathogenesis; the deep and pervasive elite anti-Americanism in Australia.  As Dr Wright-Neville, a former ONA analyst who left the organization in 2002 stated in the media on 13 March 2003:

'A fair number of people in intelligence, foreign affairs and the Prime Ministers Department would express the same point as Mr. Wilkie’.

Now that is a reliable assessment.

The government has been described as the government that launched a thousand investigations. Launched. Few completed, less resolved.  

The policy of ‘malign neglect’ of successive Australian governments ensures that individuals who leak classified information are rarely even identified much less punished.

Australian government laxity contrasts vividly with US and Western European governments, who prosecute and jail those individuals who can be proved to have aided and abetted the enemy by releasing classified information.  

Wilkie is not an Iraq expert, a regional specialist, WMD specialist or a global terrorism expert. Neither has he written or published on these topics. He worked in the Transnational Issues Branch at ONA. He has no Middle East expertise and no specialized foreign language skills.

Conspiratorial timing-'all warfare begins with deception'

Did  Wilkie, and perhaps unidentified potentially significant others, craft the timing of his resignation to contaminate media reporting and create anti-US and anti-war sentiment ?

17 December 2002: Wilkie writes his last and only Iraq-related ONA assessment: 'Iraq: Humanitarian Dimension’.

12-27 February 2003:  Wilkie returns from 2 weeks overseas travel researching immigration and transnational issues and is rostered to join the analysts team in ONA’s watch office on Iraq.

Friday 7 March 2003: Wilkie goes straight to the top. He contacts Australia’s leading political journalist Laurie Oakes.

‘I contacted Laurie [Oakes] on the Friday before I resigned. I wanted to be in touch with an appropriate journo without anyone else knowing'.

So I slipped a note into his letterbox in Canberra. It was only my business card stapled to a slip of paper, asking him to ring me on my mobile after work hours.'  How did he know to tell Oakes to only use the mobile number  'after hours'?

Wilkie recalled later: ’I felt like I was in a spy movie’.

Wilkie has expressed his concern that Oakes was under surveillance. He was not.  Wilkie was using tradecraft to avoid detection.

Friday 7 March 2100 hrs: Laurie Oakes phones Wilkie: ’I didn’t say anything to Oakes then. I said I wanted to speak to him on the weekend.’  Wilkie was entertaining ‘half a dozen’ ONA people for dinner. They were obviously dining on a need-to-know basis:  

‘I didn’t say anytime to [Oakes] then; I said I wanted to speak to him on the weekend. He offered anywhere, anytime’.

Wilkie tells ABC television on the day of his resignation: ’it’s been accumulating over many, many weeks, if not months’.

Replying to a question during the Inquiry into Intelligence on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Australia Parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO, ASIS and DSD Friday 22 August, 36 Wilkie stated:

Q: When did you speak to the media?

A: WILKIE: ‘Fair question. Um, I approached Laurie Oakes on 7 March which was contrary to my code of conduct. I acknowledge that.’

Committee member: 'So for four days you were in the planning processes of the Iraqi task force, having spoken to the media about your opposition to the war…’

A: WILKIE: ‘I do not know when I first started to get restless; I suspect it was subconscious initially. One of the first times I can now recall that I was made quite restless by the subject was probably during that report in December.'

The chronology becomes more confusing in Wilkie’s interview-story published in The Bulletin 12 March 2003:

‘…When Wilkie first spoke to The Bulletin, he said: “I’m assuming I’ll be dismissed immediately for going to the media”. But later in the same day, he decided the honorable course would be to submit his resignation to the Director-General of ONA, Kim Jones, before the article appeared.’

But according to published accounts Wilkie first spoke to The Bulletin, i.e. Laurie Oakes on Saturday 8 March.  Wilkie could not have resigned on that day.

Sunday 9 March 2003: Oakes visits Wilkie at his apartment for an hour. Wilkie tells him he intends to resign from ONA and publicly denounce Howard’s justification for war in Iraq. According to Wilkie’s later account:

'Over the weekend Oakes had interviewed him for a news item to lead the Nine Network evening National 9 News. Wilkie told Oakes he was going to resign from ONA… ‘About five o’clock [Monday] and he said he’d bring a crew around in case they got a shot of me literally being escorted out’.

Wilkie poses for the Bulletin photograph. 

According to a report in The Australian 21 August 2003. ’The Bulletin even influenced the timing of Wilkie’s resignation’. The Bulletin’s editors spent Monday March 10 in a huddle with lawyers. According to Wilkie, the magazine’s editors: ‘Asked me to resign as late as possible on Tuesday to minimize the possibility of the government stopping publication’.

Who was setting the pace? The Bulletin editors would have been aware from their legal advisors that the government would not interfere with publication. The government was not aware that the Bulletin and Wilkie had met at Wilkie’s residence for interviews and story purposes. No Australia government would even attempt to prevent publication of a controversial security story due to concern with adverse political and media reaction.

The Bulletin editors made, from their point of view, a sound and valid commercial judgment concerning the publication of the Wilkie article.

But…Did Wilkie ask himself or others if the Bulletin’s claim to be concerned with the alleged threat of government intervention was literally a cover story?

Tuesday 11 March 2003: Wilkie attends ONA planning meeting on IRAQ. Interviewed on 12 March 2003 ABC PM 1830 he said:

Version 1:

’Um, I have worked on Iraq, and in fact I was rostered on team number two to work in the National Intelligence Watch Office once the war was started….In fact as late as 4.30 yesterday, I attended an assessment co-ordination meeting on Iraq attended by the Head of ONA himself’.

Version 2:

According to The Sydney Morning Herald 15 March 2003, Wilkie:

‘Walked into his boss Kim Jones’ office and resigned. He informed Jones his reasons would be laid out in detail in the next day’s Bulletin magazine, and that news of it would break that night. Just 48 hours later, Wilkie stood outside Parliament House addressing a peace rally while inside John Howard laid out his case for war.'

Version 3:

The Age [Melbourne] 12 March 2003:

‘Wilkie said he was involved in a high-level ONA planning meeting about Iraq as late as 4.30pm yesterday-just before his snap resignation’.

Wilkie left the ONA office at about 5 pm and surprise, Laurie Oakes and the Channel 9 news crew were waiting to interview him! Just in time for the National 9 News!

On Wednesday 14 2003 March, Australian Prime Minister, John Howard gave a keynote speech to the National Press Club in the Great Hall, Parliament House to justify the government’s policy on Iraq and support for the US.

On 13 March 2003, the Age reported that the Labor Party Opposition leader stated: ’Mr. Howard must use his National Press Club address today to prove the intelligence analyst wrong’. Indeed. Many of the questions to the PM appeared to have been framed or reflected Wilkie’s media interviews.  

Were Wilkie's media offensives an attempt to de-authorize or contaminate the Prime Ministers speech and Iraq policy?

Wilkie's Anti-Americanism 

In his television Interview ABC TV 7.30 Report, 11 March: 2003,

Q: Interviewer: Kerry O’Brien asked Wilkie:   ‘Very quickly, one-word answer, is there any political motivation behind your actions?’   

A: Wilkie: ‘No’.

Yet Wilkie’s anti-Americanism is quoted in the Bulletin on 12 March 2003:  

‘There has to be some way for the international community to act collectively. And it’s even more important as the US continues its ascendancy. The US is not more important than the UN, nor are its values superior to the values of other nations’.

ABC Lateline 13 March 2003 described: ’Andrew Wilkie’s the new hero of the peace movement. Protestors set up outside parliament queued at the entrance yelled in the foyer. Some even made it to the lunch disguised as guests.’ As Wilkie addressed peace protestors outside Parliament House in Canberra; Prime Minister Howard was addressing Parliament on the case for the invasion of Iraq.

Wilkie told the ‘peace rally’:   ‘I am absolutely convinced that Iraq does not pose a threat to any country or state. The rhetoric against Iraq is unrelated to the war on terror….More likely is the proposition that the government was deliberately intent on using WMD and terrorism to exaggerate the Iraq threat so as to say in step with its US buddies’.  

Wilkie warmed to his theme. Addressing the Palm Sunday ‘Peace’ Rally Sydney 13 March 2003, he intoned on the threat of “US imperialism’:  

‘…Hatred of the West in the Middle East has been stirred up even further by US Imperialism.  Australian foreign policy is hostage to US foreign policies and will remain this way as long as this Australian government is committed to support the US at any cost’.

Australia must have an independent foreign policy. But let our decision be based on Australian national interest, not the US [sic]. [The US] is not more important than any other country. And its values are not superior to the values of other peoples’.

Wilkie has a contract to write a book ‘about the issue’ with a Melbourne publishing house. Writing in August 2003 he modestly referred to himself in the third person;

…’hang on a minute, Australian intelligence officers are not supposed to act this way. They’re model citizens vetted by the most comprehensive and intrusive security clearance processes possible. Their codes of conduct make it clear they’re not allowed to speak to the media.

The Crimes Act promises them two years in jail for disclosing sensitive information to anyone not entitled to receive it. Nonconformity is simply unthinkable.

But in this climate of untruths, there should have been little surprise that at least one spook felt compelled to go out into the cold over Iraq.

…’A big problem for the Government now is the fact that the Office of National Assessments made very clear before the war that the US was intent on invading Iraq for many strategic and domestic reasons, not just because of WMD and terrorism’.

More likely is the proposition that the Government was deliberately intent on using WMD and terrorism to exaggerate the Iraq threat so as to stay in step with its US buddies.’

But the government hasn’t yet tried to explain unfairly its policy failure as an intelligence failure. When it does at least some spooks will be tempted to lash out’.

Wilkie is listed as a panel member at a Conference: 'Challenging the American Empire’ at workshop One entitled: ‘Unilateralism and sycophancy: Australian support for US global strategy’.

Who better qualified than Wilkie to speak on this topic?  Consider his anti-American effusion published17 June 2003 in The Sydney Morning Herald:

‘America’s adversaries are being encouraged to acquire WMDs to deter US aggression. Mutual Assured Destruction kept the United States and the Soviet Union from each others throats for decades. And for now, Iran’s and North Korea’s arsenals seem to be influencing the US to back off.

[Emphasis added].

The Wilkie Case -Key  Questions :

Is there a shadowy group called 'progressive intelligence officers' involved in the Wilkie case ?

What classified papers did Wilkie access on the Iraq crisis and with whom did he discuss his work outside the Australian intelligence community?

Both PM Howard and Foreign Minister Downer, claim that he did not have access to the most sensitive Iraq information. However, both PM and FM Downer are reliant on ONA's advice as to Wilkie's access. Have they been told the truth by ONA? 

Australia's leading political journalist journalist Laurie Oakes [The Bulletin 12 March 2003] wrote; 'because of Wilkie’s work on         transnational issues, he was able to pull down intelligence on any countries of concern’. Oakes account is based on his interviews with Wilkie. If Wilkie was 'able to pull down information of any countries of concern' it indicates that ONA security is notoriously lax. 

• Has Wilkie intentionally or otherwise disclosed classified information to The Bulletin or in his many media and public statements?
   

• Wilkie has publicly stated in reference to Iraq; 'intelligence services did not pick up on telltale emissions and other signs that would point to a large-scale nuclear program’. Such information may indicate Western intelligence capabilities or vulnerabilities and may assist a potential adversary to devise countermeasures. Is Wilkie aiding and abetting actual or potential enemies? According to Wilkie, ‘ONA was central in the lead-up to the war. It understood months before war commenced that war was inevitable and Australia would be involved’. So did Wilkie. Did he plan his media campaign accordingly?
   

• Why wasn’t ASIO or the AFP immediately alerted to investigate his activities, contacts and the content of his conversations with unauthorized persons?
   

• Has Wilkie has been subject to an official interview by ASIO or the AFP? Is that not standard procedure?
   

• Why hasn’t Daryl Williams, the Commonwealth Attorney-General, made a single public statement on Wilkie's activities and prima facie breaches of the Commonwealth Crimes Act?  Wilkie told the English House of Common Committee: ’I had access to virtually the entire Iraq data base'. Wilkie also claimed to the ABC World Today 12 March 2003 to have access to the highest level of intelligence information.
   

• Has Wilkie been approached - and has he recognized or reported - any approaches from hostile intelligence services?
   

• Was ONA management negligent? Were they aware at any stage of his intentions and real anti-US beliefs? How did he manage to deceive the Director-General of ONA and attend a meeting with him at 4.30 pm, resign and proceed to attend an interview on ABC television only three hours later on the same day?
   

• Will the Government intervene to ensure that Wilkie’s forthcoming ‘book‘ does not contain or refer to classified information  derived from his access to the ONA and presumably US/UK  Iraq data base?  Will the Australian government protect the hard won product of UK and US intelligence services?
   

• Will his proposed ‘book’ include critical reference to US intelligence documents he has accessed which he described as ‘rubbish’?  

 ‘….But to analysts at the Office of National Assessments in Canberra…a decent chunk of the growing piles of intelligence ‘ooked like rubbish. In their offices at the top floor of the drab ASIO building, ONA experts found  much of the US material worthy only of the delete button or the classified waste chute to the truck- size shredder in the basement.’   

• Did Wilkie draw on classified materials in a newspaper interview [The Age 13 May 2003] in which he was quoted as a former ONA analyst in which he described Australian vulnerabilities, terrorist threat scenarios and US terrorist attack scenarios involving CBW and anthrax attacks?   

A comparative content analysis of Wilkie's' views' as told to The Bulletin 11 March 2003 and the publicly released details of Wilkie's ONA assessment of 17 December 2002 reveal that Wilkie was quoting from or referring to to his  classified ONA  assessment of 17 December 2003.

In the Bulletin article, Wilkie outlined three ‘options’ for Saddam Hussein  including use of water as a weapon, creating a humanitarian disaster to overwhelm US troops and following a scorched earth policy and sabotage. This information from Wilkie , a former ONA analyst with Top Secret and above clearances  – prior to the invasion of Iraq - could only help one country: Iraq and one leader: Saddam Hussein.

Wilkie was making public statements to the media at the same time as  Australian forces were in combat or in the combat zone. 

How many covert anti-American analysts are sitting in the offices of Australian intelligence organizations, like Wilkie, with access, to Gamma and Echo material, brooding, storing, memorizing, planning, plotting, crafting… meeting?

Key References

Official papers: United Kingdom. Oral Evidence Taken Before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday 19 June 2003.  Witness. Andrew Wilkie.  Question: Q: 570 -658   

Commonwealth of Australia Senate Parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO, ASIS and DSD. References: Intelligence on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Friday 22 August 2003 Canberra.

The United Kingdom Parliament, Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. Memorandum from the Acting Director General and Deputy Director-General Office of National Assessments, Government of Australia. Letter to the Chairman of the Committee Office of National Assessments Australia 20 June 2003.

Prime Minister of Australia John Howard. News Room Media release. Andrew Wilkie. 25 August 2003.

Feature Article: The Insider’. The Bulletin 12 March 2003.

Profile: ‘Out on a limb’ Jane Cadzow. Good Weekend. 16 August. 2003. 18-21.

Articles written by Wilkie: ‘A Lack of intelligence’ Sydney Morning Herald 31 May 2003.  ‘With so much cock and bull over Iraq, spooks are bound to speak up’ Sydney Morning Herald. 17 June 2003.

Interviews: Lateline ABC TV 11 March 2003 ABC AM RADIO12 March 0815. ABC PM 18 June 2003, ABC PM Radio 22 August 2003.1814.ABC 7.30 report.  14 March 2003. ABC The World Today 22 August ABC.PM. 22 August 22 2003.

Articles: The Age 12 March 2003, Sydney Morning Herald 12 March 2003, The Canberra Times 14 March 2003, Sydney Morning Herald 12 July 2003,  Iraq Nuke evidence was thin. AAP. 19 July 2003. The Age 7 June 2003, The Age13 July and 22 July 2003, the Australian 21 August 2003, Sydney Morning Herald 9  July 2003, The Australian 21 August 2003. The Age 27 August 2003.

Critical: The Australian 26 August 2003, The Age 13 July 2003. The Sun 23 June 2003.

See Wilkies contribution to ‘Plan to thwart terror: creating a storm in any port The Age 13 May 2003. In which he outlines WMD-CBW Aust/US vulnerabilities and threat scenarios....’ Iraq Nuke Evidence was Thin, Experts Say’ .AAP. 18 -19 July 2003.   

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