EAST TIMOR -
The Ties That Bind
45'22''
February 2000
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Reporter: Andrew Fowler
Producer: Michael Doyle
Research: Peter Cronau
ANDREW FOWLER: It was a relationship built on Realpolitik. But Realpolitik ended with the carnage in East Timor. And Australia's 30-year foreign policy investment with Indonesia was in tatters.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: They fooled themselves.
ANDREW FOWLER: There's also the, until now, unexplored death of an Australian spy in Washington amidst murky evidence of secret Timor intelligence.
On Four Corners tonight, what was really known about the explosive situation in East Timor while Australia's foreign policy makers became captive to the ties that bind.
Towns devastated. 400,000 people -- half the population -- forced to flee in terror. Thousands more either dead or missing.
The East Timorese had paid a high price for their decision to vote for independence.
There were other casualties too -- Australia's relationship with Indonesia and the reputations of those who nurtured it.
SCOTT BURCHILL, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, DEAKIN UNIVERSITY: The analogy is equivalent to a surgeon, if you like, who sews up his patient on the operating table with all the instruments still left inside.
I mean, the surgeon would simply be banned and, you know, would be found guilty of professional misconduct, and would never get within 10 kilometres of a surgery again.
Well, that's the equivalent in the mistake that the policy of advice was made to Government on East Timor and Indonesia.
ANDREW FOWLER: Just what went wrong with the way Australia handled its biggest foreign policy crisis since the Vietnam War?
BOB LOWRY, AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE STUDIES CENTRE: What we hear from the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, of course, is that they would've done the same over again.
Um -- but, uh -- I would be surprised if the bureaucracy would take that attitude, because the outcome has shown that the policy didn't succeed, and they should be really looking to see why.
ANDREW FOWLER: Australia's special relationship with Indonesia -- a developing nation of more than 200 million people -- has been largely driven by fear -- originally, the fear of Cold War communism spreading down through Asia in the 1960s.
Later, the concern was about stability in the region.
PROFESSOR DES BALL, STRATEGIC STUDIES, ANU: It's really been a quite critical relationship.
Any security threat to Australia has, in practice, got to either come from Indonesia or through Indonesia.
So -- so long as Indonesia remained stable and we had good relations with it then our security was almost guaranteed.
ANDREW FOWLER: The Foreign Affairs Department's Christmas party last year was host to some of the key men and women responsible for Australia's national security.
Circulating among the diplomats and ambassadors, the elite of the Australian Government's Foreign Affairs bureaucracy -- the best and the brightest.
One who used to be among them -- Scott Burchell.
SCOTT BURCHILL: Well, when you're recruited to Foreign Affairs, you are told immediately that you're the elite of the elite.
So you were told if you actually made it through into the department in a recruitment year that you were the cream of the cream, and that you, in fact, were there to, you know, to reach the very lofty heights of bureaucratic and, ultimately, diplomatic practice.
ANDREW FOWLER: In the Foreign Affairs establishment, there's a group of officials devoted to Australia's most sensitive relationship.
They're members of what's known, unofficially, as the Jakarta Lobby.
Leading members are the Head of Foreign Affairs, Ashton Calvert, and former Ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott.
RICHARD WOOLCOTT, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO INDONESIA: There is a group of people who spent a lot of time working on South-East Asia and Indonesia who believe that the relationship is fundamentally important.
Now, I don't think it's fair to say that the Jakarta Lobby, so-called, are apologists for Indonesia.
That is not the case at all.
SCOTT BURCHILL: The Jakarta Lobby has kept a very tight reign on foreign policy towards Jakarta and, therefore, by definition, on East Timor.
And these are people who believe that Indonesia was a special case -- had to be handled very carefully by 'experts', in inverted commas, with the right views, and that the relationship should be preserved and run by this group, rather than by popular input.
ANDREW FOWLER: This is the only known picture of Dili burning during the Indonesian invasion in 1975.
Accepting the East Timor invasion was part of the price Australia paid for its special relationship with Indonesia.
A policy was developed to train Indonesian military here in an attempt to professionalise them and instill more democratic values.
A deal was signed to get access to oil from the Timor Gap.
And a security pact negotiated that would take the pressure off defence spending.
It was the art of Realpolitik being played out.
ALI ALATAS, INDONESIAN FOREIGN MINISTER 1988-99: We determined that we would do something drastic about that relationship -- namely, to build more substance, more diversity, to that relations.
In the words of Gareth Evans, to put more 'ballast' on the overall relationship, so that East Timor, on which we differ from time to time, would not loom so disproportionately large in that relationship anymore.
GARETH EVANS, FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER 1988-96: You can shut your minds and turn away from any kind of direct relationship with people who you are troubled about, who have a bad track record, or you can try and engage them, embrace them, and move them towards a better regime of behaviour.
That's what the Australian military guys tried to do.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: I think that there's a, um -- an atmosphere within Foreign Affairs and within the Department of Defence that they had things under control.
ANDREW FOWLER: That sense of control began to break down in 1998.
The fall of President Suharto gave new hope for democracy in Indonesia.
But it also created uncertainties for the Canberra analysts.
Would they read the changes right?
One of Australia's most experienced diplomats was Ambassador in Jakarta.
JOHN McCARTHY, AMBASSADOR TO INDONESIA: Nobody would suggest that dealing with Indonesia last year was anything but complicated, and so you have to try and figure out where decisions are being made, how high up the line, to what degree the civilians are influencing decisions and so on.
ANDREW FOWLER: The information the embassy was unscrambling had to be gathered from a host of sources.
Foreign policy makers in Canberra were hoping the special relationship would survive.
What would unsettle them was any evidence of the military further destabilising East Timor.
But evidence of military misbehaviour there was already coming from an aid contractor who'd been recruited as an embassy informant.
LANCE TAUDEVIN, FORMER EAST TIMOR AID CONTRACTOR: When I first arrived there, I was a protagonist for our line and a protagonist for the Indonesian Government.
ANDREW FOWLER: For three years, Lance Taudevin's job of bringing clean water to remote villages provided him and the embassy in Jakarta with an extraordinary information network.
JOHN McCARTHY: It's perfectly natural when you have employees in the field and you visit them, you ask them what is happening around them.
I think you need to know that, partly, in order to make sure that the work that they are doing is being conducted properly and in the sort of environment that you want it to be conducted in.
ANDREW FOWLER: He was conducting -- he was sending back reports -- daily reports at times -- with very detailed information about military movements.
JOHN McCARTHY: I'm, uh -- not aware of that, but I'm sure that's something that he's said to you.
You know, I'm glad to hear that.
Thank you.
LANCE TAUDEVIN: What he's saying -- there are three of four villages around here which were totally destroyed -- including the people.
REPORTER: By the Indonesians?
LANCE TAUDEVIN: Yes.
ANDREW FOWLER: Taudevin says his earlier reports on the security situation in East Timor were welcomed by the embassy.
But as the violence increased, his dispatches on the connections between the militias and the military met resistance.
LANCE TAUDEVIN: I said that there is a link between the militia -- the whole program is being orchestrated.
ABRI is recruiting, it is training, it is supporting, it is providing logistical support to the operations of the militia.
That the attacks are being done in the presence of or supported by or by the militia -- that kind of thing.
They said, "You cannot be sure of that."
And it was almost as if the directions were that I cannot report that that was happening.
ANDREW FOWLER: Taudevin says the embassy told him to change his reports.
LANCE TAUDEVIN: I would say, "No, if what I'm saying is -- is wrong, "what should I be doing?"
And they were saying, "Just tone it down, "and you've got to remember "that what you report has to fit into the big picture."
And I remember that particular conversation very clearly because I responded, "What big picture?"
ANDREW FOWLER: Lance Taudevin says that as long ago as November 1998, when his reports started revealing the links between the military and the militias he was called alarmist and told to keep his eye on the big picture -- by the embassy.
What's your response to that?
JOHN McCARTHY: Well, I don't recall that having taken place.
ANDREW FOWLER: He says he got a call, at one stage, saying that the Ambassador -- and that's you -- was very unhappy with what he'd said and what he was doing, and that he was getting too close to the Timorese people.
JOHN MCCARTHY: I don't recall having any exchange about his getting too close to the Timorese people.
I would very much doubt that I had any objection to any aid expert getting too close to the people.
That's what they're supposed to do.
ANDREW FOWLER: An early indication of whether the military was changing in line with Indonesia's emerging democracy came with a very public withdrawal of troops from Dili.
It was aimed at showing the world that the military was easing its grip on East Timor.
But Intelligence said otherwise.
LANCE TAUDEVIN: "20th August 1998 -- report to Jakarta.
"The military build-up of late here is horrific.
"The public posturing of ABRI is just that -- posturing.
"Troop withdrawal? No way.
"Just over 600 left as part of a normal rotation."
JOHN McCARTHY: There was evidence that some were being withdrawn and others were being put back.
The evidence was conflicting at the time.
ANDREW FOWLER: But eyewitnesses didn't provide the only reason for scepticism.
Within hours of the troop withdrawal, Australia's Defence Signals Directorate intercepted crucial radio messages.
A senior intelligence and policy official in Canberra told us, "On the day of the supposed withdrawal, "a number of radio transmissions were picked up "from the Indonesian naval craft.
"They were chatting to each other "about how the landing craft had just gone around the island "and dropped the troops off again."
Even though the radio intercepts revealed Indonesia's subterfuge, the Australian Government welcomed the troop withdrawal.
Information about the intercept came from a series of intelligence briefings and documents given to Four Corners.
They provide an insight into how Canberra's long-held views on the special relationship with Indonesia coloured its response to hard intelligence on a growing crisis.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: I believe that we're now witness to the greatest failures in Australian defence policy since the 1960s.
ANDREW FOWLER: Professor Des Ball is a specialist in military intelligence.
He believes the Government was uncomfortable with what some of its own intelligence was revealing.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: Raw intelligence reports which suggested growing violence, which suggested that there were preparations and planning going on between the Indonesian military and the militia groups and which suggested in fact that the Indonesian Army at the highest levels were behind some of this violence was inconsistent with the political position, the policy position, which the Howard Government was maintaining.
And from their point of view, that intelligence was unwelcome.
ANDREW FOWLER: In the months after Suharto fell, Australia continued to confront an unpredictable situation in Jakarta.
The uncertainties were magnified after Prime Minister John Howard wrote to the new president, BJ Habibie, suggesting the East Timorese eventually get a vote on their future.
Habibie circulated the letter to his cabinet colleagues.
DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: President Habibie had scribbled on the cover letter that was sent by Howard this following question.
Isn't it democratic, isn't it just, isn't it right that if East Timorese after 20 or whatever years, you know, 25 years of being part of Indonesia and being treated as being a full part of Indonesia, still feel that they cannot be fully integrated in Indonesia, isn't it fair, isn't it just, etc, that we should separate in peace?
ALI ALATAS: It was rather drastic and quite radical and it shocked many people.
ANDREW FOWLER: Did it shock you?
ALI ALATAS: Well, I was surprised when it came, of course, because, don't forget, we were the ones, the foreign ministry and I personally were the ones who proposed this solution of wide-ranging autonomy and a special status for East Timor as an end solution though, as a compromise solution between those who wanted independence and those who accepted integration as it is now with all its faults and we thought we had a better proposal.
ANDREW FOWLER: In cabinet, Habibie persuaded a reluctant Alatas to agree.
DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR: And then everybody clapped and then the President knocked on the table, so it was all done very proper.
And then he turned around at the back and because, as you know, cabinet meetings are always recorded, and he said, "Make sure that it is all recorded and later transcribed "because this is a very historic decision."
ANDREW FOWLER: Habibie's timetable was far faster than Howard had expected.
It set off a flurry of meetings around the world.
A key figure in the Jakarta Lobby, Australia's Foreign Affairs head, Ashton Calvert, flew to Washington to meet Stanley Roth, who ran US Foreign policy in South-East Asia.
Roth was pessimistic.
"A full-scale peacekeeping operation would be an unavoidable aspect to the transition to independence", he said.
"Without it, East Timor is likely to collapse."
Ashton Calvert replied that: "Canberra would be prepared, if necessary, to send military personnel, but not into a bloodbath.
"Australia's preferred approach was designed to avoid a military option by the use of adept diplomacy."
ALEXANDER DOWNER, FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER: I very much hope that through appropriate diplomacy, through also the use of democratic processes, it'll be possible to get through to the end of the transition without, you know, full scale violence as you put it.
ANDREW FOWLER: But while the Federal Government staked all on diplomacy, Roth called "Australia's position of keeping peacekeeping at arms length essentially defeatist".
PROFESSOR DES BALL: The Government through the course of February through to the middle of the year was arguing with the United States to the affect that a peacekeeping force at that time was unnecessary and that the Indonesian Army WERE on top of things and that through our relationship with Indonesia, we could keep things to the point where any external intervention was unnecessary.
ANDREW FOWLER: Despite some US misgivings, the United Nations, with Australia's backing, accepted Indonesia's assurances that it would keep the peace in East Timor in the lead-up to the vote.
But by now, media reports were emerging suggesting the military were in fact behind the militias.
Four Corners filmed this incident in which an independence supporter was shot dead outside a Dili police barracks.
Australian intelligence was also making the connection.
Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation, the DIO, had already reported "the military decision to arm local militias "has drawn its first blood.
"As long as the military continues to contract out some of its security responsibilities, more clashes are likely."
More importantly, a few weeks later, another defence intelligence report named the armed forces chief, General Wiranto.
It said Wiranto's views on the military's involvement with militias were not known, but "he is at least turning a blind eye."
But the Australian Foreign Minister, on a course that was difficult to reverse, defended Wiranto three days later.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: If it is happening at all, it certainly isn't official Indonesian Government policy, it certainly isn't something that's being condoned by General Wiranto, the head of the armed forces, but there may be some rogue elements within the armed forces who are providing arms of one kind or another to pro-integrationists who have been fighting the cause for Indonesia.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: Beyond March, there was further detailed intelligence which came in through the course of April and May coming from both our external intelligence service, ASIS, and the Defence Signals Directorate responsible for monitoring communications, which provided very detailed evidence firstly of particular working relationships between units of the Indonesian Army and particular militia elements and militia leaders, but also provided even more direct and explicit evidence of Wiranto's direct involvement in the arming and supporting of the militia.
ANDREW FOWLER: In April, four months before the poll, the militias killed again.
In the town of Liquica, more than 50 people were slaughtered at a church.
An intelligence brief circulated at senior levels in the Australian Government again implicated the Indonesian forces.
The military had fired tear gas into the church and apparently did not intervene when pro-independence activists were attacked.
Downer was again in a difficult position.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: They clearly didn't themselves kill people but there is an argument about whether they did try to stop the fighting or they didn't do enough to try to stop the fighting and the trouble is it's very hard given we ourselves had no eyewitnesses there to be able to prove the case either way.
The military give one story, others give another story, still others give a different story again.
ANDREW FOWLER: Four days after Downer's interview, the militias attacked this house in Dili.
The people here were refugees fleeing militia violence in outlying villages.
Thirty men, women and children were killed here and elsewhere in Dili that day.
Three days after that, the Australian Government shifted ground slightly, publicly expressing impatience with the military.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Anybody can see that the Liquica incident and there have been other incidents as well, simply demonstrate that the Indonesian security forces don't have the situation sufficiently under control.
ANDREW FOWLER: On April 20, Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation stepped up its criticism of General Wiranto.
This document, never made public before, reported "Indonesian military officers are actively supporting pro-Indonesian militants in East Timor.
Wiranto has failed to restrain these officers."
Less than a week later in late April, John Howard and senior ministers arrived in Bali for a hastily convened summit on East Timor.
Australian intelligence reports have made dealing with the Indonesians that much more difficult.
Still, the Prime Minister refrained from publicly criticising Wiranto.
JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: The President and I discussed the events in Timor over the past few weeks.
I underlined to him the importance of the steps that had been taken by General Wiranto which I very strongly support -- the commitment made to winding down violence, the commitment made to greater peace and greater stability within the province of Timor.
ANDREW FOWLER: Behind closed doors, the Australian Government was getting jumpy.
In a one-on-one meeting with President Habibie, John Howard proposed a peacekeeping force, something his government had warned the Americans against just two months earlier.
DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR: John Howard pressed a number of times, and during the Bali meeting, in fact, asked explicitly, "Can I ask you, President, will you accept police -- uh -- international keeping force?"
And President said, "You can ask, but the answer is no."
And Howard asked again.
"You can still ask, but the answer is still no."
ALI ALATAS: And that was raised actually in a personal meeting before the plenary meeting.
ANDREW FOWLER: How strong was the demand from the Australian Prime Minister?
ALI ALATAS: Not very strong.
I didn't have the impression that it was.
He raised it because probably he needed to raise it.
He felt that he needed to raise the question.
ANDREW FOWLER: With that rebuff, the Australian Government was locked into Indonesia maintaining security.
Australia was hoping for the best.
But within days in Macau, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, one of East Timor's most senior militia leaders revealed a military plot to wipe out the independence movement.
Four Corners can reveal that he passed his detailed knowledge to one of Australia's senior intelligence agents.
Tomas Goncalves told the chief of the Hong Kong office of ASIS, Australia's Secret Intelligence Service, the names of senior Indonesia military behind the plan.
TOMAS GONCALVES, FORMER MILITIA LEADER: The order came from the regional commander, Adam Damiri, to the East Timor commander and the special force commander, Yayat Sudrajat -- liquidate all the CNRT, all the pro-independence people, parents, sons, daughters and grandchildren.
Commander Sudrajat promised a payment of 200,000 rupiah to anyone wanting to serve in the militia.
ANDREW FOWLER: Over a series of meetings, Goncalves poured out what he knew about the plans to destroy the independence movement.
TOMAS GONCALVES: On March 26, I went to a meeting run by the East Timor governor.
He said to kill the priests and nuns because it was they who were defending the people of East Timor.
ANDREW FOWLER: Goncalves drew the line at killing priests and nuns and fled the country.
But there was reason to believe his evidence.
JOSE RAMOS-HORTA, INDEPENDENCE CAMPAIGNER: If you know the background of Tomas Goncalves, then you'd have to believe him, because you cannot find someone closer to the Indonesian military for almost 20 years or more than Tomas Concalves.
So he knows the whole situation from the very beginning.
ANDREW FOWLER: So, the quality of his intelligence that he passed on would've been what -- first-grade?
JOSE RAMOS-HORTA: Yes, I would say first-grade.
ANDREW FOWLER: As ASIS reported on the Concalves disclosures, a defence intelligence organisation document obtained by Four Corners and written three months before the independence ballot sounded a grim warning.
"Should the autonomy proposal be rejected convincingly, violence by those supporting integration is likely as soon as the ballot outcome is known.
Indonesia will seek a quick departure to rid itself of the financial and political burden.
Any deployment of forces is unlikely to be prompt enough to prevent conflict."
This was exactly the kind of warning that Stanley Roth had given the Australians three months before.
The Americans remained worried about East Timor in the lead-up to the vote.
As the tragedy unfolded in East Timor, a personal and secret tragedy unfolded in Washington as the US suspected Australia was withholding crucial intelligence.
The man caught in the middle was Australia's Senior Defence Intelligence Liaison Officer in Washington.
His name -- Merv Jenkins.
Australia gives the US intelligence, but gets far more back in return.
MERV JENKINS, FOUR CORNERS, MAY 1970: Honour, loyalty, integrity --
ANDREW FOWLER: From his days at Duntroon, Jenkins was described as a brilliant and dedicated officer, a man contemporaries called a 'patriot'.
FOUR CORNERS JOUNALIST, 1970: What does honour, for instance, mean for you?
MERV JENKINS, 1970: Um -- pride within myself, for what I'm doing.
ANDREW FOWLER: But questions of honour aren't always simple.
It's rare that there's a large gap between Australia and the US on Asia policy.
But one had opened up over East Timor.
As Liaison Officer, it was Jenkins's job to keep his American counterparts informed without compromising his primary loyalty to Australia.
During 1998, Jenkins believed he had the authority to pass 'Australian Eyes Only' or 'AUSTEO' material to the Americans, with discretion.
A colleague he'd fallen out with intercepted this material, including three Department of Foreign Affairs cables, and informed defence bosses back in Canberra.
In May last year, in the midst of the Timor intelligence confusion, Jenkins received an email from the Defence Intelligence Security Office warning him about passing intelligence.
But it was hardly a severe reprimand.
It said that "issues are becoming extremely sensitive as there are foreign policy implications".
It didn't tell him to stop giving information to the Americans, but pointed out, "it is imperative that extra care is taken with the passing of material to the US and Canada".
PROFESSOR DES BALL: That would've placed him in a very, very uncomfortable position.
On the one hand, uh -- the Americans would've detected immediately that there had been cuts in the flow.
Yet they were continuing to pass to him really valuable high-level and expensive intelligence.
In return, he must've thought that he couldn't do anything but, at least unofficially, let them see material that he had whether it was classified AUSTEO or not, because in the case of the intelligence liaison arrangements with the Americans, it's common practice to give them intelligence which is AUSTEO.
ANDREW FOWLER: Jenkins would later tell his superiors that: "The pressure on me to pass on information has been intense and is building."
In late May, Jenkins attempted to pass further information to American contacts.
We can't be sure of the exact content of any of the documents Jenkins handed over, but the warning email he got from Defence Intelligence was headlined 'Timor Issues'.
Australia's former defence secretary confirms the subject was Timor.
PAUL BARRATT, FORMER DEFENCE SECRETARY: As Secretary of the Department of Defence, I was responsible for the integrity and security of the system, and I did not give permission for any Australian Eyes Only documents to be passed to anybody at any stage.
ANDREW FOWLER: Did these documents relate, at least in part, to East Timor?
PAUL BARRATT: Uh, I believe so.
ANDREW FOWLER: The Defence Intelligence Organisation had warned Merv Jenkins to take care.
But the Foreign Affairs Department had apparently been kept in the dark about the allegations of unauthorised disclosure of intelligence.
When it found out, for Merv Jenkins, events suddenly took a turn for the worse.
Foreign Affairs immediately sought a 'please explain' from Defence. An investigation was launched and Jenkins was hauled in for questioning.
He was asked specifically about the East Timor correspondence.
After the questioning, Jenkins emailed his superior in Canberra.
He said he was "experiencing a range of emotions from frustration to anger to remorse".
He said he'd been "as discreet as possible".
Jenkins ended his email with an apology for the trouble caused and a request to talk in "August '99, if you are free."
But Merv Jenkins would never make the appointment.
Two days later, the man to whom honour meant so much was found hanged in the garage of his Arlington, Virginia, home.
He'd left a suicide note.
It was his 48th birthday.
The Australian Government was at great pains to emphasise the personal tragedy and avoid speculation about any political ramifications.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: You know, the central point here -- the central point here is this is a terrible human tragedy.
The central point here is that there is a widow and there are three sons.
ANDREW FOWLER: After his death, those who had been investigating Jenkins reported that he'd broken the rules but he'd not intended to harm Australia's national interests.
We may never know exactly why Merv Jenkins took his own life, but it appears that the Department of Foreign Affairs was edgy about the flow of intelligence possibly compromising its position on East Timor.
There will be an inquiry into the Merv Jenkins tragedy.
The Australian Government wants it to be secret. The Jenkins family want it to be public.
ENID JENKINS, MOTHER OF MERV JENKINS: I want to be told what happened.
What happened to change him from happily talking to me about coming home in two or three weeks, taking his family round Canada and coming home, back to his son in Canberra, back to his dog.
I want to know what happened to make him decide that he had no other course but to take his own life.
ANDREW FOWLER: Whatever Merv Jenkins was or was not telling the United States, by now the flow of information out of East Timor left no room for doubt about what was happening there.
With the independence referendum two months away, the United Nations monitors had arrived, including unarmed Australian Federal Police.
They began putting together a virtual library of evidence establishing the conspiracy between the military and the militias.
One Indonesian military document revealed a covert plan.
WAYNE SIEVERS, FEDERAL POLICE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: A decision was taken where the Denrin and the Colpola, that is, the head of the Indonesian military and the head of the Indonesian police in East Timor would each supply five intelligence officers to work for the Aitarak.
The Aitarak -- it means 'thorn' -- were the local militia in the Dili region.
And those five intelligence officers would monitor, initiate and monitor, on a date to be determined, terrorist attacks on pro-independence supporters in the Dili region.
ANDREW FOWLER: Sievers says he volunteered this evidence to the Australian Consulate in Dili.
WAYNE SIEVERS: I offered it to the appropriate people and they had a look at one document and agreed it was probably genuine and then weren't interested in collecting the rest of the documents because they said to me, "Yes, we know all about these kinds of documents."
It seemed to be one more headache for them.
ANDREW FOWLER: Three days after the East Timorese voted four to one for independence, the long-feared carnage started.
Prime Minister John Howard moved quickly to stitch together an international force for East Timor.
JOHN HOWARD: What we've seen over the last few weeks, and particularly over the last week or two, is a significant change in the direction of Australian foreign policy and the abandonment of a generation of what I might call, loosely, 'acquiescence'.
ANDREW FOWLER: In an extraordinary about-face, the Australian Government now found itself closer to Timor liberationists than to Jakarta.
JOSE RAMOS-HORTA: We will remember John Howard as the man who brought in the multinational force.
And as far as Paul Keating and the others, no resentment, you know.
We harbour no resentment, no anger, no hatred towards anyone.
But they will be remembered only as the ones who betrayed us all these years.
And still we don't hate them, we don't resent them.
They will be part of history, they will be pushed into the dustbin of history, and John Howard will be the one who will be remembered.
ANDREW FOWLER: But the Foreign Affairs establishment still has much to explain.
Australia's long-term policy objectives have failed.
Indonesia's soldiers may look the part, but there's little evidence from their behaviour in East Timor that they've benefited from Australia's assistance to become a more professional army.
The celebrated Timor Gap oil deal was frozen by a newly independent East Timor.
And the collapse of a security pact with Indonesia means a complete rethink of defence spending.
Even those who'd invested careers in the special relationship are left a little rueful.
GARETH EVANS: I, for one, am prepared to acknowledge that I was overconfident about the Indonesian military's capacity for redemption for a number of previous years.
They've behaved badly over a long period and they behaved abominably in the present environment.
ALI ALATAS: I was -- as someone who has worked so hard on putting Indonesian-Australian relations on a strong basis of friendship -- I was very sad.
I was very sad that at the end of my tenure, we were back to square one and that we were again at loggerheads precisely because of East Timor.
And that again there was this atmosphere of mutual suspicion.
ANDREW FOWLER: Australia's special relationship with Indonesia clearly hasn't paid off.
The long-term failures were compounded in the months before the Timor poll when Australia was blinded to information it was getting through its extensive intelligence network.
JUWONO SUDARSONO, INDONESIAN DEFENCE MINISTER: I think it's good technologically.
I don't know whether good in interpreting the data on the ground.
BOB LOWRY: I think one of the major problems was that defence was not brought in to the diplomatic process earlier in terms of bringing pressure to bear on the Indonesian military.
And then having discovered that that wasn't sufficient, mobilising external support principally from the Americans to help with that process.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: I think it comes from the arrogance which pervades a lot of the senior decision-making circles and national security affairs in Canberra.
I think those who held those views fooled themselves.
ANDREW FOWLER: Australia Day at the Ambassador's residence in Jakarta.
The job of building a new relationship with Indonesia is under way. But there's still great sensitivity.
The Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Defence Minister and the Head of Foreign Affairs all declined to be interviewed for this program.
While they've argued that there were conflicting intelligence signals throughout the Timor crisis, one message came through clearly -- the Indonesian military couldn't be trusted.
The Australian Government needs to examine what went wrong if the same mistakes aren't to be made again.
There were, after all, no winners.
Not in Canberra, where the Government relied heavily on its flawed special relationship with Indonesia.
Nor, more importantly, in East Timor where the people might have their freedom but little else.
The Ties That Bind
45'22''
February 2000
---------
Reporter: Andrew Fowler
Producer: Michael Doyle
Research: Peter Cronau
ANDREW FOWLER: It was a relationship built on Realpolitik. But Realpolitik ended with the carnage in East Timor. And Australia's 30-year foreign policy investment with Indonesia was in tatters.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: They fooled themselves.
ANDREW FOWLER: There's also the, until now, unexplored death of an Australian spy in Washington amidst murky evidence of secret Timor intelligence.
On Four Corners tonight, what was really known about the explosive situation in East Timor while Australia's foreign policy makers became captive to the ties that bind.
Towns devastated. 400,000 people -- half the population -- forced to flee in terror. Thousands more either dead or missing.
The East Timorese had paid a high price for their decision to vote for independence.
There were other casualties too -- Australia's relationship with Indonesia and the reputations of those who nurtured it.
SCOTT BURCHILL, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, DEAKIN UNIVERSITY: The analogy is equivalent to a surgeon, if you like, who sews up his patient on the operating table with all the instruments still left inside.
I mean, the surgeon would simply be banned and, you know, would be found guilty of professional misconduct, and would never get within 10 kilometres of a surgery again.
Well, that's the equivalent in the mistake that the policy of advice was made to Government on East Timor and Indonesia.
ANDREW FOWLER: Just what went wrong with the way Australia handled its biggest foreign policy crisis since the Vietnam War?
BOB LOWRY, AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE STUDIES CENTRE: What we hear from the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, of course, is that they would've done the same over again.
Um -- but, uh -- I would be surprised if the bureaucracy would take that attitude, because the outcome has shown that the policy didn't succeed, and they should be really looking to see why.
ANDREW FOWLER: Australia's special relationship with Indonesia -- a developing nation of more than 200 million people -- has been largely driven by fear -- originally, the fear of Cold War communism spreading down through Asia in the 1960s.
Later, the concern was about stability in the region.
PROFESSOR DES BALL, STRATEGIC STUDIES, ANU: It's really been a quite critical relationship.
Any security threat to Australia has, in practice, got to either come from Indonesia or through Indonesia.
So -- so long as Indonesia remained stable and we had good relations with it then our security was almost guaranteed.
ANDREW FOWLER: The Foreign Affairs Department's Christmas party last year was host to some of the key men and women responsible for Australia's national security.
Circulating among the diplomats and ambassadors, the elite of the Australian Government's Foreign Affairs bureaucracy -- the best and the brightest.
One who used to be among them -- Scott Burchell.
SCOTT BURCHILL: Well, when you're recruited to Foreign Affairs, you are told immediately that you're the elite of the elite.
So you were told if you actually made it through into the department in a recruitment year that you were the cream of the cream, and that you, in fact, were there to, you know, to reach the very lofty heights of bureaucratic and, ultimately, diplomatic practice.
ANDREW FOWLER: In the Foreign Affairs establishment, there's a group of officials devoted to Australia's most sensitive relationship.
They're members of what's known, unofficially, as the Jakarta Lobby.
Leading members are the Head of Foreign Affairs, Ashton Calvert, and former Ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott.
RICHARD WOOLCOTT, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO INDONESIA: There is a group of people who spent a lot of time working on South-East Asia and Indonesia who believe that the relationship is fundamentally important.
Now, I don't think it's fair to say that the Jakarta Lobby, so-called, are apologists for Indonesia.
That is not the case at all.
SCOTT BURCHILL: The Jakarta Lobby has kept a very tight reign on foreign policy towards Jakarta and, therefore, by definition, on East Timor.
And these are people who believe that Indonesia was a special case -- had to be handled very carefully by 'experts', in inverted commas, with the right views, and that the relationship should be preserved and run by this group, rather than by popular input.
ANDREW FOWLER: This is the only known picture of Dili burning during the Indonesian invasion in 1975.
Accepting the East Timor invasion was part of the price Australia paid for its special relationship with Indonesia.
A policy was developed to train Indonesian military here in an attempt to professionalise them and instill more democratic values.
A deal was signed to get access to oil from the Timor Gap.
And a security pact negotiated that would take the pressure off defence spending.
It was the art of Realpolitik being played out.
ALI ALATAS, INDONESIAN FOREIGN MINISTER 1988-99: We determined that we would do something drastic about that relationship -- namely, to build more substance, more diversity, to that relations.
In the words of Gareth Evans, to put more 'ballast' on the overall relationship, so that East Timor, on which we differ from time to time, would not loom so disproportionately large in that relationship anymore.
GARETH EVANS, FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER 1988-96: You can shut your minds and turn away from any kind of direct relationship with people who you are troubled about, who have a bad track record, or you can try and engage them, embrace them, and move them towards a better regime of behaviour.
That's what the Australian military guys tried to do.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: I think that there's a, um -- an atmosphere within Foreign Affairs and within the Department of Defence that they had things under control.
ANDREW FOWLER: That sense of control began to break down in 1998.
The fall of President Suharto gave new hope for democracy in Indonesia.
But it also created uncertainties for the Canberra analysts.
Would they read the changes right?
One of Australia's most experienced diplomats was Ambassador in Jakarta.
JOHN McCARTHY, AMBASSADOR TO INDONESIA: Nobody would suggest that dealing with Indonesia last year was anything but complicated, and so you have to try and figure out where decisions are being made, how high up the line, to what degree the civilians are influencing decisions and so on.
ANDREW FOWLER: The information the embassy was unscrambling had to be gathered from a host of sources.
Foreign policy makers in Canberra were hoping the special relationship would survive.
What would unsettle them was any evidence of the military further destabilising East Timor.
But evidence of military misbehaviour there was already coming from an aid contractor who'd been recruited as an embassy informant.
LANCE TAUDEVIN, FORMER EAST TIMOR AID CONTRACTOR: When I first arrived there, I was a protagonist for our line and a protagonist for the Indonesian Government.
ANDREW FOWLER: For three years, Lance Taudevin's job of bringing clean water to remote villages provided him and the embassy in Jakarta with an extraordinary information network.
JOHN McCARTHY: It's perfectly natural when you have employees in the field and you visit them, you ask them what is happening around them.
I think you need to know that, partly, in order to make sure that the work that they are doing is being conducted properly and in the sort of environment that you want it to be conducted in.
ANDREW FOWLER: He was conducting -- he was sending back reports -- daily reports at times -- with very detailed information about military movements.
JOHN McCARTHY: I'm, uh -- not aware of that, but I'm sure that's something that he's said to you.
You know, I'm glad to hear that.
Thank you.
LANCE TAUDEVIN: What he's saying -- there are three of four villages around here which were totally destroyed -- including the people.
REPORTER: By the Indonesians?
LANCE TAUDEVIN: Yes.
ANDREW FOWLER: Taudevin says his earlier reports on the security situation in East Timor were welcomed by the embassy.
But as the violence increased, his dispatches on the connections between the militias and the military met resistance.
LANCE TAUDEVIN: I said that there is a link between the militia -- the whole program is being orchestrated.
ABRI is recruiting, it is training, it is supporting, it is providing logistical support to the operations of the militia.
That the attacks are being done in the presence of or supported by or by the militia -- that kind of thing.
They said, "You cannot be sure of that."
And it was almost as if the directions were that I cannot report that that was happening.
ANDREW FOWLER: Taudevin says the embassy told him to change his reports.
LANCE TAUDEVIN: I would say, "No, if what I'm saying is -- is wrong, "what should I be doing?"
And they were saying, "Just tone it down, "and you've got to remember "that what you report has to fit into the big picture."
And I remember that particular conversation very clearly because I responded, "What big picture?"
ANDREW FOWLER: Lance Taudevin says that as long ago as November 1998, when his reports started revealing the links between the military and the militias he was called alarmist and told to keep his eye on the big picture -- by the embassy.
What's your response to that?
JOHN McCARTHY: Well, I don't recall that having taken place.
ANDREW FOWLER: He says he got a call, at one stage, saying that the Ambassador -- and that's you -- was very unhappy with what he'd said and what he was doing, and that he was getting too close to the Timorese people.
JOHN MCCARTHY: I don't recall having any exchange about his getting too close to the Timorese people.
I would very much doubt that I had any objection to any aid expert getting too close to the people.
That's what they're supposed to do.
ANDREW FOWLER: An early indication of whether the military was changing in line with Indonesia's emerging democracy came with a very public withdrawal of troops from Dili.
It was aimed at showing the world that the military was easing its grip on East Timor.
But Intelligence said otherwise.
LANCE TAUDEVIN: "20th August 1998 -- report to Jakarta.
"The military build-up of late here is horrific.
"The public posturing of ABRI is just that -- posturing.
"Troop withdrawal? No way.
"Just over 600 left as part of a normal rotation."
JOHN McCARTHY: There was evidence that some were being withdrawn and others were being put back.
The evidence was conflicting at the time.
ANDREW FOWLER: But eyewitnesses didn't provide the only reason for scepticism.
Within hours of the troop withdrawal, Australia's Defence Signals Directorate intercepted crucial radio messages.
A senior intelligence and policy official in Canberra told us, "On the day of the supposed withdrawal, "a number of radio transmissions were picked up "from the Indonesian naval craft.
"They were chatting to each other "about how the landing craft had just gone around the island "and dropped the troops off again."
Even though the radio intercepts revealed Indonesia's subterfuge, the Australian Government welcomed the troop withdrawal.
Information about the intercept came from a series of intelligence briefings and documents given to Four Corners.
They provide an insight into how Canberra's long-held views on the special relationship with Indonesia coloured its response to hard intelligence on a growing crisis.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: I believe that we're now witness to the greatest failures in Australian defence policy since the 1960s.
ANDREW FOWLER: Professor Des Ball is a specialist in military intelligence.
He believes the Government was uncomfortable with what some of its own intelligence was revealing.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: Raw intelligence reports which suggested growing violence, which suggested that there were preparations and planning going on between the Indonesian military and the militia groups and which suggested in fact that the Indonesian Army at the highest levels were behind some of this violence was inconsistent with the political position, the policy position, which the Howard Government was maintaining.
And from their point of view, that intelligence was unwelcome.
ANDREW FOWLER: In the months after Suharto fell, Australia continued to confront an unpredictable situation in Jakarta.
The uncertainties were magnified after Prime Minister John Howard wrote to the new president, BJ Habibie, suggesting the East Timorese eventually get a vote on their future.
Habibie circulated the letter to his cabinet colleagues.
DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: President Habibie had scribbled on the cover letter that was sent by Howard this following question.
Isn't it democratic, isn't it just, isn't it right that if East Timorese after 20 or whatever years, you know, 25 years of being part of Indonesia and being treated as being a full part of Indonesia, still feel that they cannot be fully integrated in Indonesia, isn't it fair, isn't it just, etc, that we should separate in peace?
ALI ALATAS: It was rather drastic and quite radical and it shocked many people.
ANDREW FOWLER: Did it shock you?
ALI ALATAS: Well, I was surprised when it came, of course, because, don't forget, we were the ones, the foreign ministry and I personally were the ones who proposed this solution of wide-ranging autonomy and a special status for East Timor as an end solution though, as a compromise solution between those who wanted independence and those who accepted integration as it is now with all its faults and we thought we had a better proposal.
ANDREW FOWLER: In cabinet, Habibie persuaded a reluctant Alatas to agree.
DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR: And then everybody clapped and then the President knocked on the table, so it was all done very proper.
And then he turned around at the back and because, as you know, cabinet meetings are always recorded, and he said, "Make sure that it is all recorded and later transcribed "because this is a very historic decision."
ANDREW FOWLER: Habibie's timetable was far faster than Howard had expected.
It set off a flurry of meetings around the world.
A key figure in the Jakarta Lobby, Australia's Foreign Affairs head, Ashton Calvert, flew to Washington to meet Stanley Roth, who ran US Foreign policy in South-East Asia.
Roth was pessimistic.
"A full-scale peacekeeping operation would be an unavoidable aspect to the transition to independence", he said.
"Without it, East Timor is likely to collapse."
Ashton Calvert replied that: "Canberra would be prepared, if necessary, to send military personnel, but not into a bloodbath.
"Australia's preferred approach was designed to avoid a military option by the use of adept diplomacy."
ALEXANDER DOWNER, FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER: I very much hope that through appropriate diplomacy, through also the use of democratic processes, it'll be possible to get through to the end of the transition without, you know, full scale violence as you put it.
ANDREW FOWLER: But while the Federal Government staked all on diplomacy, Roth called "Australia's position of keeping peacekeeping at arms length essentially defeatist".
PROFESSOR DES BALL: The Government through the course of February through to the middle of the year was arguing with the United States to the affect that a peacekeeping force at that time was unnecessary and that the Indonesian Army WERE on top of things and that through our relationship with Indonesia, we could keep things to the point where any external intervention was unnecessary.
ANDREW FOWLER: Despite some US misgivings, the United Nations, with Australia's backing, accepted Indonesia's assurances that it would keep the peace in East Timor in the lead-up to the vote.
But by now, media reports were emerging suggesting the military were in fact behind the militias.
Four Corners filmed this incident in which an independence supporter was shot dead outside a Dili police barracks.
Australian intelligence was also making the connection.
Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation, the DIO, had already reported "the military decision to arm local militias "has drawn its first blood.
"As long as the military continues to contract out some of its security responsibilities, more clashes are likely."
More importantly, a few weeks later, another defence intelligence report named the armed forces chief, General Wiranto.
It said Wiranto's views on the military's involvement with militias were not known, but "he is at least turning a blind eye."
But the Australian Foreign Minister, on a course that was difficult to reverse, defended Wiranto three days later.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: If it is happening at all, it certainly isn't official Indonesian Government policy, it certainly isn't something that's being condoned by General Wiranto, the head of the armed forces, but there may be some rogue elements within the armed forces who are providing arms of one kind or another to pro-integrationists who have been fighting the cause for Indonesia.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: Beyond March, there was further detailed intelligence which came in through the course of April and May coming from both our external intelligence service, ASIS, and the Defence Signals Directorate responsible for monitoring communications, which provided very detailed evidence firstly of particular working relationships between units of the Indonesian Army and particular militia elements and militia leaders, but also provided even more direct and explicit evidence of Wiranto's direct involvement in the arming and supporting of the militia.
ANDREW FOWLER: In April, four months before the poll, the militias killed again.
In the town of Liquica, more than 50 people were slaughtered at a church.
An intelligence brief circulated at senior levels in the Australian Government again implicated the Indonesian forces.
The military had fired tear gas into the church and apparently did not intervene when pro-independence activists were attacked.
Downer was again in a difficult position.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: They clearly didn't themselves kill people but there is an argument about whether they did try to stop the fighting or they didn't do enough to try to stop the fighting and the trouble is it's very hard given we ourselves had no eyewitnesses there to be able to prove the case either way.
The military give one story, others give another story, still others give a different story again.
ANDREW FOWLER: Four days after Downer's interview, the militias attacked this house in Dili.
The people here were refugees fleeing militia violence in outlying villages.
Thirty men, women and children were killed here and elsewhere in Dili that day.
Three days after that, the Australian Government shifted ground slightly, publicly expressing impatience with the military.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Anybody can see that the Liquica incident and there have been other incidents as well, simply demonstrate that the Indonesian security forces don't have the situation sufficiently under control.
ANDREW FOWLER: On April 20, Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation stepped up its criticism of General Wiranto.
This document, never made public before, reported "Indonesian military officers are actively supporting pro-Indonesian militants in East Timor.
Wiranto has failed to restrain these officers."
Less than a week later in late April, John Howard and senior ministers arrived in Bali for a hastily convened summit on East Timor.
Australian intelligence reports have made dealing with the Indonesians that much more difficult.
Still, the Prime Minister refrained from publicly criticising Wiranto.
JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: The President and I discussed the events in Timor over the past few weeks.
I underlined to him the importance of the steps that had been taken by General Wiranto which I very strongly support -- the commitment made to winding down violence, the commitment made to greater peace and greater stability within the province of Timor.
ANDREW FOWLER: Behind closed doors, the Australian Government was getting jumpy.
In a one-on-one meeting with President Habibie, John Howard proposed a peacekeeping force, something his government had warned the Americans against just two months earlier.
DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR: John Howard pressed a number of times, and during the Bali meeting, in fact, asked explicitly, "Can I ask you, President, will you accept police -- uh -- international keeping force?"
And President said, "You can ask, but the answer is no."
And Howard asked again.
"You can still ask, but the answer is still no."
ALI ALATAS: And that was raised actually in a personal meeting before the plenary meeting.
ANDREW FOWLER: How strong was the demand from the Australian Prime Minister?
ALI ALATAS: Not very strong.
I didn't have the impression that it was.
He raised it because probably he needed to raise it.
He felt that he needed to raise the question.
ANDREW FOWLER: With that rebuff, the Australian Government was locked into Indonesia maintaining security.
Australia was hoping for the best.
But within days in Macau, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, one of East Timor's most senior militia leaders revealed a military plot to wipe out the independence movement.
Four Corners can reveal that he passed his detailed knowledge to one of Australia's senior intelligence agents.
Tomas Goncalves told the chief of the Hong Kong office of ASIS, Australia's Secret Intelligence Service, the names of senior Indonesia military behind the plan.
TOMAS GONCALVES, FORMER MILITIA LEADER: The order came from the regional commander, Adam Damiri, to the East Timor commander and the special force commander, Yayat Sudrajat -- liquidate all the CNRT, all the pro-independence people, parents, sons, daughters and grandchildren.
Commander Sudrajat promised a payment of 200,000 rupiah to anyone wanting to serve in the militia.
ANDREW FOWLER: Over a series of meetings, Goncalves poured out what he knew about the plans to destroy the independence movement.
TOMAS GONCALVES: On March 26, I went to a meeting run by the East Timor governor.
He said to kill the priests and nuns because it was they who were defending the people of East Timor.
ANDREW FOWLER: Goncalves drew the line at killing priests and nuns and fled the country.
But there was reason to believe his evidence.
JOSE RAMOS-HORTA, INDEPENDENCE CAMPAIGNER: If you know the background of Tomas Goncalves, then you'd have to believe him, because you cannot find someone closer to the Indonesian military for almost 20 years or more than Tomas Concalves.
So he knows the whole situation from the very beginning.
ANDREW FOWLER: So, the quality of his intelligence that he passed on would've been what -- first-grade?
JOSE RAMOS-HORTA: Yes, I would say first-grade.
ANDREW FOWLER: As ASIS reported on the Concalves disclosures, a defence intelligence organisation document obtained by Four Corners and written three months before the independence ballot sounded a grim warning.
"Should the autonomy proposal be rejected convincingly, violence by those supporting integration is likely as soon as the ballot outcome is known.
Indonesia will seek a quick departure to rid itself of the financial and political burden.
Any deployment of forces is unlikely to be prompt enough to prevent conflict."
This was exactly the kind of warning that Stanley Roth had given the Australians three months before.
The Americans remained worried about East Timor in the lead-up to the vote.
As the tragedy unfolded in East Timor, a personal and secret tragedy unfolded in Washington as the US suspected Australia was withholding crucial intelligence.
The man caught in the middle was Australia's Senior Defence Intelligence Liaison Officer in Washington.
His name -- Merv Jenkins.
Australia gives the US intelligence, but gets far more back in return.
MERV JENKINS, FOUR CORNERS, MAY 1970: Honour, loyalty, integrity --
ANDREW FOWLER: From his days at Duntroon, Jenkins was described as a brilliant and dedicated officer, a man contemporaries called a 'patriot'.
FOUR CORNERS JOUNALIST, 1970: What does honour, for instance, mean for you?
MERV JENKINS, 1970: Um -- pride within myself, for what I'm doing.
ANDREW FOWLER: But questions of honour aren't always simple.
It's rare that there's a large gap between Australia and the US on Asia policy.
But one had opened up over East Timor.
As Liaison Officer, it was Jenkins's job to keep his American counterparts informed without compromising his primary loyalty to Australia.
During 1998, Jenkins believed he had the authority to pass 'Australian Eyes Only' or 'AUSTEO' material to the Americans, with discretion.
A colleague he'd fallen out with intercepted this material, including three Department of Foreign Affairs cables, and informed defence bosses back in Canberra.
In May last year, in the midst of the Timor intelligence confusion, Jenkins received an email from the Defence Intelligence Security Office warning him about passing intelligence.
But it was hardly a severe reprimand.
It said that "issues are becoming extremely sensitive as there are foreign policy implications".
It didn't tell him to stop giving information to the Americans, but pointed out, "it is imperative that extra care is taken with the passing of material to the US and Canada".
PROFESSOR DES BALL: That would've placed him in a very, very uncomfortable position.
On the one hand, uh -- the Americans would've detected immediately that there had been cuts in the flow.
Yet they were continuing to pass to him really valuable high-level and expensive intelligence.
In return, he must've thought that he couldn't do anything but, at least unofficially, let them see material that he had whether it was classified AUSTEO or not, because in the case of the intelligence liaison arrangements with the Americans, it's common practice to give them intelligence which is AUSTEO.
ANDREW FOWLER: Jenkins would later tell his superiors that: "The pressure on me to pass on information has been intense and is building."
In late May, Jenkins attempted to pass further information to American contacts.
We can't be sure of the exact content of any of the documents Jenkins handed over, but the warning email he got from Defence Intelligence was headlined 'Timor Issues'.
Australia's former defence secretary confirms the subject was Timor.
PAUL BARRATT, FORMER DEFENCE SECRETARY: As Secretary of the Department of Defence, I was responsible for the integrity and security of the system, and I did not give permission for any Australian Eyes Only documents to be passed to anybody at any stage.
ANDREW FOWLER: Did these documents relate, at least in part, to East Timor?
PAUL BARRATT: Uh, I believe so.
ANDREW FOWLER: The Defence Intelligence Organisation had warned Merv Jenkins to take care.
But the Foreign Affairs Department had apparently been kept in the dark about the allegations of unauthorised disclosure of intelligence.
When it found out, for Merv Jenkins, events suddenly took a turn for the worse.
Foreign Affairs immediately sought a 'please explain' from Defence. An investigation was launched and Jenkins was hauled in for questioning.
He was asked specifically about the East Timor correspondence.
After the questioning, Jenkins emailed his superior in Canberra.
He said he was "experiencing a range of emotions from frustration to anger to remorse".
He said he'd been "as discreet as possible".
Jenkins ended his email with an apology for the trouble caused and a request to talk in "August '99, if you are free."
But Merv Jenkins would never make the appointment.
Two days later, the man to whom honour meant so much was found hanged in the garage of his Arlington, Virginia, home.
He'd left a suicide note.
It was his 48th birthday.
The Australian Government was at great pains to emphasise the personal tragedy and avoid speculation about any political ramifications.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: You know, the central point here -- the central point here is this is a terrible human tragedy.
The central point here is that there is a widow and there are three sons.
ANDREW FOWLER: After his death, those who had been investigating Jenkins reported that he'd broken the rules but he'd not intended to harm Australia's national interests.
We may never know exactly why Merv Jenkins took his own life, but it appears that the Department of Foreign Affairs was edgy about the flow of intelligence possibly compromising its position on East Timor.
There will be an inquiry into the Merv Jenkins tragedy.
The Australian Government wants it to be secret. The Jenkins family want it to be public.
ENID JENKINS, MOTHER OF MERV JENKINS: I want to be told what happened.
What happened to change him from happily talking to me about coming home in two or three weeks, taking his family round Canada and coming home, back to his son in Canberra, back to his dog.
I want to know what happened to make him decide that he had no other course but to take his own life.
ANDREW FOWLER: Whatever Merv Jenkins was or was not telling the United States, by now the flow of information out of East Timor left no room for doubt about what was happening there.
With the independence referendum two months away, the United Nations monitors had arrived, including unarmed Australian Federal Police.
They began putting together a virtual library of evidence establishing the conspiracy between the military and the militias.
One Indonesian military document revealed a covert plan.
WAYNE SIEVERS, FEDERAL POLICE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: A decision was taken where the Denrin and the Colpola, that is, the head of the Indonesian military and the head of the Indonesian police in East Timor would each supply five intelligence officers to work for the Aitarak.
The Aitarak -- it means 'thorn' -- were the local militia in the Dili region.
And those five intelligence officers would monitor, initiate and monitor, on a date to be determined, terrorist attacks on pro-independence supporters in the Dili region.
ANDREW FOWLER: Sievers says he volunteered this evidence to the Australian Consulate in Dili.
WAYNE SIEVERS: I offered it to the appropriate people and they had a look at one document and agreed it was probably genuine and then weren't interested in collecting the rest of the documents because they said to me, "Yes, we know all about these kinds of documents."
It seemed to be one more headache for them.
ANDREW FOWLER: Three days after the East Timorese voted four to one for independence, the long-feared carnage started.
Prime Minister John Howard moved quickly to stitch together an international force for East Timor.
JOHN HOWARD: What we've seen over the last few weeks, and particularly over the last week or two, is a significant change in the direction of Australian foreign policy and the abandonment of a generation of what I might call, loosely, 'acquiescence'.
ANDREW FOWLER: In an extraordinary about-face, the Australian Government now found itself closer to Timor liberationists than to Jakarta.
JOSE RAMOS-HORTA: We will remember John Howard as the man who brought in the multinational force.
And as far as Paul Keating and the others, no resentment, you know.
We harbour no resentment, no anger, no hatred towards anyone.
But they will be remembered only as the ones who betrayed us all these years.
And still we don't hate them, we don't resent them.
They will be part of history, they will be pushed into the dustbin of history, and John Howard will be the one who will be remembered.
ANDREW FOWLER: But the Foreign Affairs establishment still has much to explain.
Australia's long-term policy objectives have failed.
Indonesia's soldiers may look the part, but there's little evidence from their behaviour in East Timor that they've benefited from Australia's assistance to become a more professional army.
The celebrated Timor Gap oil deal was frozen by a newly independent East Timor.
And the collapse of a security pact with Indonesia means a complete rethink of defence spending.
Even those who'd invested careers in the special relationship are left a little rueful.
GARETH EVANS: I, for one, am prepared to acknowledge that I was overconfident about the Indonesian military's capacity for redemption for a number of previous years.
They've behaved badly over a long period and they behaved abominably in the present environment.
ALI ALATAS: I was -- as someone who has worked so hard on putting Indonesian-Australian relations on a strong basis of friendship -- I was very sad.
I was very sad that at the end of my tenure, we were back to square one and that we were again at loggerheads precisely because of East Timor.
And that again there was this atmosphere of mutual suspicion.
ANDREW FOWLER: Australia's special relationship with Indonesia clearly hasn't paid off.
The long-term failures were compounded in the months before the Timor poll when Australia was blinded to information it was getting through its extensive intelligence network.
JUWONO SUDARSONO, INDONESIAN DEFENCE MINISTER: I think it's good technologically.
I don't know whether good in interpreting the data on the ground.
BOB LOWRY: I think one of the major problems was that defence was not brought in to the diplomatic process earlier in terms of bringing pressure to bear on the Indonesian military.
And then having discovered that that wasn't sufficient, mobilising external support principally from the Americans to help with that process.
PROFESSOR DES BALL: I think it comes from the arrogance which pervades a lot of the senior decision-making circles and national security affairs in Canberra.
I think those who held those views fooled themselves.
ANDREW FOWLER: Australia Day at the Ambassador's residence in Jakarta.
The job of building a new relationship with Indonesia is under way. But there's still great sensitivity.
The Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Defence Minister and the Head of Foreign Affairs all declined to be interviewed for this program.
While they've argued that there were conflicting intelligence signals throughout the Timor crisis, one message came through clearly -- the Indonesian military couldn't be trusted.
The Australian Government needs to examine what went wrong if the same mistakes aren't to be made again.
There were, after all, no winners.
Not in Canberra, where the Government relied heavily on its flawed special relationship with Indonesia.
Nor, more importantly, in East Timor where the people might have their freedom but little else.