Justifying the Egregious: John Howard and Spying on East Timor

Bugging, in the context of intelligence, is natural for the buggee. Those who approve it and engage in such a practice, however, get riled when the favour is returned in all its rich naturalness. In the murky stock exchange of espionage, deception and surveillance, agencies are expected to lie and spy for their country. The ultimate responsibility for their services, like any employee in service, lies with those who employ them.

It is, however, not beyond comment to note that these are matters of degree. National security threats warrant surveillance and judicious monitoring, the obvious candidates being terrorism, vast criminal enterprises, and the threatening military capabilities of one’s opponent. Thieving economic secrets also features, though some states claim to do it less than others. The matter gets a bit less noble, and more debatable, when it comes to breaching the protocols of confidentiality between diplomatic services of supposedly friendly states. Is it appropriate for one party to pry into the affairs of another when negotiating an important deal on sharing natural resources, for instance? Do you spy on vulnerable friends to steal an advantage at the negotiating table? The answer, very often, would seem to be yes.

This issue presented itself in 2004 when a spying operation conducted by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) led to the bugging of cabinet offices occupied by officials of the Timor-Leste (East Timor) government. The office was being used by officials charged with negotiating the terms of access to the rich oil and gas reserves with Australia that would be indispensable to a fledgling, impoverished state. The Australians, despite offering sweet words of encouragement to a land ravaged by Indonesian occupation, sensed a chance to stalk some prey.  

Showing itself to be a mere servitor to the corporate interests of the mining and resource sector, the Howard government deployed its intelligence services to monitor what East Timor’s negotiators might give away. Doing so would place the Australians at a distinct advantage on what Timor-Leste’s negotiating team would do, be it their tactical sense or their expectations.  

The subsequent treaty proved criminally lucrative to Australia and disconcertingly uneven to Timor-Leste. The spoils of the Greater Sunrise fields were shared evenly, delighting the hungry multinationals led by Woodside. The illegal incident would have remained buried but for the actions of a former operative of ASIS, Witness K, and his defence lawyer and impeccably principled advocate, Bernard Collaery. When light of the bugging took place, it suitably enraged Timor-Leste’s hired chief negotiator and US diplomat Peter Galbraith. “It was outrageous,” he told Guardian Australia in 2019. “I’d taken protective measures against Australian espionage, which I thought would be based on cell phones and internet, but I thought it was pretty crude to be bugging the prime minister’s offices.”

Both men subsequently offered their invaluable insight on the operation to East Timor’s petitioning efforts in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. The intervention proved crucial in pushing Australia towards mediation on the disproportionately large share of access to the oil and gas fields it had effectively afforded itself in the original negotiations. In the process, Canberra came across as bullying and uncharitable, its manipulation nothing less than, in the view of East Timor’s former Prime Minister Rui Maria de Araújo, a moral crime.

For his deeds in revealing this disgraceful operation, Witness K was charged and convicted, effectively condemned to principled anonymity. Collaery faced five charges alleging that he communicated information to journalists from the ABC prepared by or on behalf of ASIS and allegedly conspired with Witness K to communicate that same information to the Government of Timor-Leste.  

This scandalous prosecution, which was also threatened to be held in secret, was considered too richly oppressive even by the standards of the current Labor government. In 2022, the Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, did something he has refused to do with other disclosers of illegalities and misdemeanours: drop the case. The decision to do so was, according to Dreyfus, “informed by the government’s commitment to protecting Australia’s national interest, including our national security and Australia’s relationships with our close neighbours.”

With the thick stain of poor repute smeared over Australian diplomatic and espionage efforts, former Prime Minister John Howard had a chance to reflect on the matter ahead of the January 1 release of the 2004 cabinet documents. In an interview with SBS, he expressed “such confidence in our intelligence agencies […] they would always act in a manner that promoted Australia’s national interest.” When asked whether the bugging incident fell within that measure of promotion, Howard preferred to be enigmatic. “Well, I said, what I said, I always thought they adhere to the national interest.” Conveniently, the issue of direct responsibility was thereby eschewed.  

While thousands of pages of documents were released, there was one omission: a cabinet submission about the East Timor maritime boundary. When asked whether his ministers discussed the intelligence operation against Timor-Leste, John Howard used the selective memory defence. “I’ve got a good memory, but not that good.”  

The best assessment offered of this sordid episode in Australian history comes from Galbraith: both Howard andhis foreign minister, Alexander Downer, had shown themselves to be mere “shills for the corporations”. This amoral, piratical approach towards a supposedly friendly country in dire need undercut the nonsense about rules-based orders in international relations. The bugging breached several laws – Australian and local. It also produced a response most venal by targeting those responsible for revealing its existence. In East Timor, they are lionised; in Australia, they were institutionally demonised. The notion of the “fair go” remains, at the end of the day, just a notion.

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