BALI AND AUSTRALIAN INTELLIGENCE FAILURE: 
ASIO / ONA / DFAT / DIO Directors should be dismissed

No person with even a cursory or fractional knowledge of the culture of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) would place the lives of Australian citizens - and US citizens - in the lily white and trembling hands of diplomats whose idea of risk is sharing a cracked champagne glass with a colleague.

The majority of DFAT officers regard the Bush administration as illegitimate, unsophisticated, vulgar, lamentable, dreary and a 'simplistic approach to a complex social problem', namely Western and US, in particular, exploitation of the Third World. Less than10 per cent of DFAT management would believe in, much less be committed to, the War on Terrorism, much less the war on Iraq.  Others would point to a lower level of support, in that DFAT staff would generally find such a commitment to a defence of values simply incomprehensible. DFAT management believes it knows better than the elected government and equates DFAT interests with the national interest.

DFAT professional dilettantes

DFAT recently assessed that the recent US government warnings of an impending terrorist attack in Bali could not be substantiated and  failed to provide warning to the Australian government. Typically DFAT did not want to ‘upset the Indonesians’ by issuing adequate warning. DFAT have been the representatives of the Indonesian government in Australia via the so called 'Indonesian lobby' for decades.

Indonesian 'experts', such as former DG ONA Furlonger, acted as agents of influence for Indonesia. Whether they were witting or unwitting is an interesting epistemological question but the consequences were clear: Indonesia should not be criticised as Australia (read DFAT) had ‘a special relationship’ with Indonesia, or more accurately, with the clique of DFAT officers who formulated Australian policy towards Indonesia.

A legacy of the influential DFAT Indonesian lobby which dominated the Australian intelligence communities for decades are the Australians who are dead, injured or unidentifiable in Bali.

DFAT anodyne assessments reflect their anti-US languor and their pathogenic hatred of free societies. DFAT is hostile to serious intelligence work although they promote the self serving hoax that they are gifted analysts. Many are floridly treacherous to Western and US interests in particular, evidenced in the leaking of classified information to media/mates.

DFAT leaks typically have an anti-US slant and are designed to weaken the Australian–US alliance at critical times. If the US invades Iraq, a tidal wave of leaks of classified information will hit the Australian media. No person will be charged despite, or because of, official inquiries. No DFAT officer has ever been successfully prosecuted in Australia for leaking classified information and they certainly have a proven record of competence in that area.

The mosaic view of DFAT

DFAT is an artefact of the competing lobbies within DFAT and the department is a mosaic of competing fiefdoms. One of the few internal critics and senior managers in DFAT claimed some years ago that he had to manage the pro-Indonesian lobby, the pro-Chinese Lobby and the Pro-Soviet lobby amongst others in DFAT. Asked who was working for Australia, he reportedly replied: 'I wish I knew’. He added that the loneliest officer in the department was the deluded soul who supported the United States.

Anti–US attitudes

Australia Intelligence organisations are incompetent, mismanaged and insecure at best and penetrated at worst. They are soft targets for opposition intelligence services who recruit by playing the anti–American card. There are anti-US cells inside Australian intelligence organisations not yet uncovered. If the US government uncritically trust the management of any Australian intelligence organisation with hard won and sensitive product, they will pay a heavy price for such a delusion based policy.

Prior to the Gulf War, the US prudently refused to tell Foreign Minister Gareth Evans of the invasion time, despite his shrieking and posturing demands. Australia was told four hours in advance. DFAT and Evans staff did not have the opportunity to inform their media mates and their many foreign intelligence contacts. Good news for US servicemen and women serving in the field.   

Anti US/CIA cell in ASIO

In the early 1990s, a self appointed anti-US group within ASIO leaked details to the media of a highly sensitive operation against the Chinese Embassy in Canberra. No doubt the group are still conducting their anti –US activities under the pretence of serving Australian interests and not ‘slavishly following the US’; a favourite Canberra phrase.

From a counter–intelligence perspective, Australian intelligence organisations are the fabric of nightmares. Sexual intrigue has been rife in ASIO and DSD. DFAT has been a haven and rest home for heat struck and world weary paedophiles for decades.

In the mid-1990s paedophilia was regarded by sections of DFAT management as a legitimate sexual preference which was ‘perfectly understandable’ in its cultural context. The Secretary and DFAT management believed that sexual offences against children which would entail imprisonment in Australia were ‘tolerated’in Asian countries - a sophisticated form of inverted racism - and DFAT should not abandon its culture of tolerance towards paedophiles and other forms of paraphilia.

The Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) scandal

The Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) collects monitors and disseminates signals intelligence (SIGINT). As SIGINT is ‘real time' intelligence, often as ‘it is spoken’, it is invaluable in the war against terrorism. The US greatest success against Bin Laden has been based on SIGINT and interceptions of his communications.

A group of dedicated DSD officers recently accused senior management of running a secret and in-house version of the TV show 'Sex in the City'. The Defence Minister accused the DSD critics of promoting ‘gossip’, which is the typical response of Australian politicians faced with intelligence chronic and serious mismanagement problems.

DSD staff provided a file to News Limited papers which claimed:

1. Sexual misconduct had undermined DSD to the extent that it was a national security risk

2. High ranking DSD officers formed a clique which approved and engaged in sexual misconduct and nepotism

3. A male DSD officer who occupied a highly sensitive overseas liaison role had conducted sexual affairs which placed DSD at risk of compromise by a foreign government or intelligence service

4. The high ranking clique are bonded by shared social activities

5. DSD staff have left in unprecedented numbers due to the activities of the senior clique in DSD.

 DSD staff has called for an independent inquiry into DSD. A DSD source reportedly stated:

‘We are afraid that if a September 11 incident was planned in the region, DSD is not well placed to find out what it is’.

Government subsidised comedy: The Inspector General of security and intelligence

The Office of the Inspector General of Intelligence is inquiring into the allegations concerning DSD. Such inquiries are comic and provide government with a convenient smokescreen by sustaining the illusion that a real inquiry is being undertaken. As with most Australian intelligence inquires, it is designed to cover rather than uncover.

Official Australian inquiries into intelligence scandals are only worth the paper they are written on. Internal inquires in DFAT into leaks are also comic. A DFAT officer appointed by a former ambassador to Indonesia to investigate the leaking of sensitive Indonesian cables was responsible for leaking the cables. He was investigating himself! DFAT pioneered post modern investigation.  

Former DG ASIO drunkard and DDG suspected soviet agent

At least the present DG ASIO is sober. The present DDG is not under suspicion of being a Soviet agent as was his predecessor and these facts may constitute progress.

The former DG ASIO (1992 -1996) David Sadleir (left -sober) was one time Australian ambassador to China. Some bemused Australian television viewers still remember him fondly as standing precariously on the edge of a swimming pool obviously under the influence of warm weather in Peking.

Sadleir was also in charge of Political Strategic section of ONA in 1979 when an ONA China desk officer (a former DFAT officer) sold NSA /DSD SIGINT to a Canberra based-mate/consultant . The ONA officer is now a wealthy China consultant in Canberra.

China has a curious political and commercial fascination to DFAT officers.

In the Australian intelligence community, nothing succeeds like failure. After his retirement, Sadleir was promptly employed by one of Australia’s leading corporations, AMP, as a China consultant and one of his tasks was to gain an insurance licence from AMP in China. Curiously, the former ASIO DDG, Gerard Walsh was also employed by AMP.

Has the former DG ASIO or AMP profited from his former unrestricted access deriving from his senior position in ONA and ASIO to provide political and commercial advantage to the Chinese government? Of course not.  Did Walsh, the former DDG, provide similar services to a foreign government? Of course not. Both are men of proven integrity.

ASIO DG Richardson - an ‘idiot’

On 8 May 2002 ASIO Director General Dennis Richardson (right), a so-called Indonesian expert and former DFAT officer, told an international conference on terrorism in Hobart Tasmania that he had no knowledge of ‘any credible threat in Australia at the moment against any specific target’. 

On 2 November 2001, the flushed and hapless Attorney General Williams issued a press statement entitled "Australia Well Prepared' which contained  the  single line statement: 'At the moment there is no specific threat of terrorism to Australia'.

The pseudo assessment reveals how  DFAT, ASIO, ONA and the Attorney General departments merge into a seamless web of passivity and mediocrity.

Richardson also claimed that the refugee stream into Australia did not contain any terrorists. This proposition is wilfully ignorant of the facts. From Atta’s Hamburg cell to the cells in the USA, the refugee stream has provided Islamic terrorists with natural cover and uncheckable backgrounds.

Some conference observers claimed that Richardson’s complacency reflected his politically correct views of his previous positions  in the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) and DFAT, and that he would not issue any terrorist  threat assessments that would weaken his primordial attachments to DIMA and DFAT, much less his professional narcissism and career interests.

A participant at the Hobart conference claimed Richardson was the wrong guy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Another ASIO officer claimed that 'Richardson is sitting in ASIO Central Office but his heart is in Foreign Affairs (DFAT). He is never wrong and regards comment as criticism.' 

The most salient comment came from an ASIO officer who spoke candidly after the conference: ’Frankly, Denis is an idiot’.

Richardson’s complacent assessments on terrorist threats were privately dismissed by many attending the conference. A noted visiting overseas expert described them as ‘dangerously complacent’. A participant at the conference from a law enforcement agency produced a list of ethnic communities in Australia who were suspected of harbouring or supporting terrorists and estimated the number of terrorists. An international expert on terrorism and others also named six groups who were a terrorist threat to Australia.

‘The Australian’ Reports

Reviewing the Bali terrorist attacks and the role of Australian intelligence, the national newspaper 'The Australian' 19-20 October 2002, accurately described the weakness in Australia intelligence :

‘Sources say a significant clique of analysts within Australia’s key two intelligence organisations- the Office of National Assessments and the Defence Intelligence Organisation-initially refused to believe that (Jemaah Islamiyah) JI, the favoured suspect for the Bali terrorist attack, was an international terrorist outfit. As a result, ONA and DIO were slower than the CIA in drawing the links between JI and Al Qa'ida.

The Bali scandal provides an opportunity for a Royal Commission into the terrorist attacks and the web of intelligence failures, corruption and incompetence at the senior levels of Australian intelligence for after the Bali terrorist attack, DG ONA, DG ASIO and DFAT in particular have blood on their hands.

Previous editorials
20th June 2004		Lakemba's terrorist connections: The 'axis of evil' in Australia
9th May 2004		Australia’s Mufti Sheikh Hilaly meets Hezbollah in Lebanon
23rd April 2004		Pakistan-born Faheem Khalid Lodhi, aka Abu Hamza, charged
12th April 2004		Lakemba, Australia: A great place for transnational terrorists
15th February 2004		Sydney’s Sheikh Feiz and his students
7th January 2004		The Al Qaeda CI /CE challenge
16th December 2003		ASIO management and Willie Virgil Brigitte’s dark terrorist network in Australia
11th November 2003		Australia’s Islamic fundamentalist Sheikh Mohamed Omran’s Mystery Train
13th October 2003		Al Qaeda and Islamic rules on espionage
22nd September 2003		REVIEW: INSIDE AL QAEDA: How I infiltrated the World’s deadliest terrorist organisation
9th September 2003		ANDREW WILKIE: ONA and Australia’s Progressive Intelligence Officer
16th March 2003		Al-Jazeera –‘Taqiyya Television’- Begins in Australia
4th March 2003		Yosri Fouda of Al Jazeera meets Saddam Hussein and the Director of Iraqi Intelligence: Why? Fouda - A contaminated source
17th March 2003		Yosri Fouda and Al- Jazeera- Journalism as terrorism by other means
2nd December 2002		Taqiyya and kitman: The role of Deception in Islamic terrorism
6th November 2002		A noted Anglican theologian discusses the ‘Terrorist Threat’
31st October 2002		Implications of the Washington ‘sniper case’: A scenario for US-Iraq war-time terrorism
19th October 2002		Bali and Australian Intelligence Failure: ASIO / ONA / DFAT / DIO Directors should be dismissed
6th October 2002		Terrorism with a return address: The nuclear suitcase bombs threat
23rd September 2002		In the name of Allah, the wise and the merciful
19th August 2002		Intelligence  (mis)management :  The Platitude Masters versus intelligence analysts
10th May 2002		Record of conversation between (deleted) Australian Intelligence Officer and USIO
10th March 2002		The Assassination of Daniel Pearl:  Islam hates “The Other”
11th February 2002		Australia's most sophisticated Anti-American Elite Organisation: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)
15th January 2002		The neutralisation of intelligence: The rise of the legal mystique, the decline of intelligence capability and the rise in terrorism
25th November 2001		Interview with Professor I C Comfort, Professor of Multicultural Law and Inter Ethnic Jurisprudence
10th November 2001		Lakemba's Sheik Hilaly:Australia’s anti-semitic multicultural Mufti with many masks
26th October 2001		Muslim fundamentalism: the false comfort of illusions
19th October 2001		One thousand Bin Ladens: Inflammatory Australian Muslim Web Site - pro Bin Laden and pro Taliban
15th October 2001		Psycho-linguistic warfare and Terrorism: the use of ‘BUT’
12th October 2001		The methodology of theories of conspiracy
7th October 2001		The Australian Broadcasting Commission’s  Propaganda:  War by other means
30th September 2001		Bin Laden in Australia
26th September 2001		BIN LADEN'S war against the United States of America and the West
21st September 2001		Australia: elite anti US opinion

 

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