C.I.A cover up Australia's Shame!!

On September 4, 1975 the CIA reported to President Ford that the Indonesians had secretly invaded East Timor. On September 17 the CIA reported: "Jakarta is now sending guerrilla units into the Portuguese heart of the island in order to engage Fretilin forces and encourage pro-Indonesian elements and provoke incidents that would provide the Indonesians with an excuse to invade." The CIA and other US intelligence agencies had intercepted much of Indonesia's military and intelligence communications traffic at a secret base run by the Australian Defence Signals Directorate at Shoal Bay near Darwin. The information was shared under treaty arrangements with Canberra and summarised in the National Intelligence Daily which the CIA publishes and places on the desk of the president every morning. Reading this, there is no doubt in my mind that the Australian government knew that the Indonesian special forces were planning to land in Balibo in mid-October. There is also no doubt that the Australian government knew that the TV crews -- Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, Malcolm Rennie, Brian Peters and Gary Cunningham -- were in grave danger and that it made no attempt to warn them. To do so would have revealed that it knew about Indonesia's invasion plans, which were being denied in Canberra. So it is reasonable to assume that the lives of the five newsmen were sacrificed to what has almost become a cult in Canberra -- the relationship with Jakarta. The Australian government did not want the Australian public to know the truth. In a cable sent to Canberra in August 1975, the then Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott, argued Indonesia's case for the invasion, and how Australian public opinion might be "assisted", as he put it. "What Indonesia now looks to from Australia", cabled Woolcott, "is understanding of their attitude and action to assist public understanding in Australia rather than action on our part which could contribute to criticism of Indonesia". Translated from the diplomatic-speak, Woolcott was urging his government to lie in order to cover for one of the world's most brutal regimes as it invaded and illegally occupied a territory to which it had not the slightest claim. And that is exactly what happened after the murder of the two TV crews. Of course, the journalists knew the risks they were taking. They expected to be captured. But they also had good reason to believe that the flowering of the so-called "special relationship" between the Australian and Indonesian governments offered them protection. They also made every effort to show that they were not armed -- they dressed in non-military clothing and painted a large Australian sign on the wall of the house they were staying in. I have sometimes found myself in similar situations and have decided not to stay. Staying on in such circumstances demonstrated a commitment on their part which their government, employers and compatriots ought to have been proud of. Everyone who has seen Greg Shackleton's camera piece, recorded the night before he was killed, and which was meant to be broadcast on Channel 7 in Melbourne, must feel that pride. Shackleton said: "Something happened here last night that moved us very deeply. We were brought to this tiny village in East Timor and were the targets of a barrage of questions from men who know they may die tomorrow and cannot understand why the rest of the world doesn't care. Why, they ask, are the Indonesians invading us? Why, they ask, are the Australian's not helping us? I said we could certainly ask that Australia raise this fighting at the United Nations. At that, the second in charge rose to his feet, exclaimed, `Camerado journalist!' and shook my hand and we were applauded because we were Australians. That's all they want -- for the United Nations to care about what's happening here." The next day the journalists were murdered. A retreating Fretilin soldier saw them shot and stabbed. He reported that the Australians had their hands up and were made to face the wall of the house. Brian Peters, the Channel 9 cameraman, was shot with his camera turning on his shoulder. Tony Stewart, the young sound recordist for Channel 7, was shot dead as he tried to speak into his tape recorder although he was terribly wounded. As James Dunn has pointed out, the events on that day have been the subject of extensive research by a number of investigators and the differences in the conclusions are a matter of detail and not substance. The journalists were murdered because they would have exposed Indonesia's conspiracy to invade East Timor, thus revealing the lies of the Jakarta regime -- lies in which the Australian government was complicit. The Australian government made no formal public protest to Jakarta. Six months later, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser agreed that his government would take part in an Indonesian-run inquiry which was stage-managed to the point of farce. Australian officials, led by an embassy counsellor, Allan Taylor, flew to East Timor and interviewed East Timorese who were not East Timorese at all but Indonesian soldiers playing the part. Others were East Timorese collaborators and trusted agents. It beggars belief that the Australian party did not know this. Not surprisingly, the report they submitted to parliament was "inconclusive" as to the cause of the journalists' deaths. This has been the government's line ever since. The man who led that charade of an inquiry, Allan Taylor, was rewarded with the job of Australian Ambassador to Jakarta where he is today, spreading the good word about Indonesia's "economic development" of East Timor. Under Taylor and his predecessors, the Jakarta embassy has become something of a bad joke among honest elements in the Department of Foreign Affairs. It is known as the "good news post" because that is what it pumps out about a regime which Amnesty International and countless other human rights organisations describe as one of the most barbaric of the 20th century. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Australian Parliament has judged that "at least" 200,000 East Timorese have died under Jakarta's illegal occupation. The Australian embassy officials have consistently applied crude pressure to journalists not to publish what they call "bad news" about the regime. This happened following the demonstration during the Pope's visit to East Timor in 1989. And it happened following the Santa Cruz massacre two years later, when at least two Australian witnesses to that massacre were subjected to offensive questioning by Australian embassy officials, trying to find holes in their stories. Again, earlier this year, as Ambassador Taylor and other Australian officials were taken on one of their regular guided tours of East Timor by the regime, an Australian nurse, Simon De Faux, attempted to tell them about the victims of massacre, torture and rape he had personally treated. An embassy official told De Faux that under no circumstances was he to speak to the media.