The spy chief left out in the cold

Five years ago a brilliant man hanged himself. Five weeks ago a distinguished army officer put his career on the line in an extraordinary letter to the Prime Minister. Both men were driven by remarkably similar circumstances. Each felt betrayed by the closed, insiders' culture of Australia's intelligence community. One succumbed and took his life. The other refused to bend. He wants a royal commission. So did the wife and the mother of the dead man. The Government is keeping its mouth shut, hoping the daily ebb and flow of political life will, inevitably, simply sweep the matter away. John Howard has not yet replied to Lieutenant-Colonel Lance Collins. How long does it take to write a letter?

I mean, it was the Prime Minister who said 11 days ago: "I have received a letter from him and I've sought some advice on that letter. And I'll give him the detailed and considered reply that the person in his position deserves." It sounded civilised but it was as cold and impersonal as Howard was dismissive. The Prime Minister had had the letter, dated March 18, for three weeks. It had come through military channels, all the way to his office. And then it sat there. And, no doubt, it would have gone on sitting there had it not got into the hands of The Bulletin's John Lyons. Howard's first response was, ominously, on April 13.

The next day The Bulletin published its blockbuster exclusive of Collins's pleading letter to Howard. Even more sensational was the 32-page internal report it published with the letter. Disclosure of the report represents one of the most embarrassing and more serious breaches Australia's military, domestic and analytical intelligence agencies have been forced to endure. Collins is - or was - part of that system. So was Mervyn Jenkins, a former Australian Army intelligence officer posted to Washington in 1996 as liaison officer between Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO) and the American CIA.

Jenkins's sin was to pass, or attempt to pass, Australian military intelligence concerning the collapse into murder and chaos of East Timor and the Indonesian military's clandestine role in organising and directing the militia units responsible. When a DIO colleague discovered in 1998 what Jenkins was doing - a later inquiry reported the colleague "accidentally opened an envelope" addressed to Jenkins "and found it contained classified 'AUSTEO' [Australian Eyes Only] material - Jenkins's mail continued to be intercepted, without his knowledge. Jenkins, however, was doing no more, he thought, than what he was authorised to do: using his own judgement, as the senior DIO liaison officer, in passing to the Americans Australian-collected intelligence concerning East Timor and the Indonesian military.

Under the pressure of an internal investigation conducted by security officers sent from Australia to interview him, and his sense of failure at having somehow let his family down, Jenkins hanged himself on the morning of June 13, 1999 - his 48th birthday - at his rented Washington home. His wife found his body. A later one-man inquiry by Tony Blunn, a former head of the Australian Attorney-General's Department, was critical of the way Jenkins had been investigated and of DIO management processes. It found, unequivocally, his actions had "involved no suggestion of espionage".

It was a full 15 months after Jenkins died that Blunn's confidential inquiry concluded with a report to the then defence minister, John Moore. Three months later, and only a week or so before Moore's surprise resignation from politics, Moore released Blunn's report to Parliament. Blunn had not been required to investigate Jenkins's death - regarded merely as a "terrible tragedy" - only the circumstances surrounding his supposed "mishandling of classified material", which, in the end, was put down as little more than a bureaucratic and administrative cock-up.

The real point is that an intelligence analyst regarded as one of the best at what he did, died in circumstances Australians know little about, other than from a sanitised, 65-page report released after a closed inquiry in Washington and Canberra in which the names of all those involved have been deemed a matter of national security and expunged from the report.

In Britain last year, when a defence scientist committed suicide under similar internal pressures, only this time concerning the Iraq invasion, the British Government held an immediate open inquiry at which senior ministers and others were publicly called to account. Jenkins's wife and mother both sought a similar royal commission in this country, but their appeals never had an earthly of being heard by a Government hugely influenced by the opposition of the very same security agency now at the centre of the Collins affair: the Defence Intelligence Organisation.

The Bulletin disclosures, after just 10 days, already are being pushed into the background of the public consciousness for the very reason the Government has shut up about it and there is precious little other fuel to keep it alight. You'd think just general alarm, if not outrage, at the revelations in the published 32-page security report, which was wholly supportive of Collins and his concerns about our intelligence agencies, would be enough. Not so.

Not when such sexy trivia as Howard's and Latham's plagiarism is competing for the attention of the media pack. Oh, good heavens no! The Government, of course, is doing all it can to ensure the attention stays there. With Latham, anyhow. Anywhere, in fact, but the Government's massive if disguised alarm at the disclosure of Collins's letter and publication of the damning report on his grievances with DIO and its director-general, Frank Lewincamp. That is the business of politics.

The disgrace of what has happened to Collins is no more manifest than in the fact that the report that found so massively in his favour was completed last September - a full seven months ago - yet, until The Bulletin published its contents 11 days ago, Collins had never been given a copy, let alone told the detail of what it contained. The officer who once headed General Peter Cosgrove's military intelligence unit in East Timor - personally chosen by Cosgrove - has fought for four years to have his concerns properly investigated. When they are and the subsequent report vindicates him absolutely, he is shut out by the defence security establishment, and the military generally, from seeing the report.

And what does the Prime Minister say?

"Well, it's a letter [from Collins]. I'm not going to comment one way or another on the contents. I don't think people should start jumping to conclusions. He's expressed views; he's entitled to express them. I'll give him a detailed and courteous reply." Having said that, Howard, by inference, then went on to dump all over the substance of Collins's views and the findings of the Toohey report into those views.

Howard said: "I continue to have full confidence in our intelligence agencies. They do a very good job for Australia. He's entitled as an army officer to write to me. I respect his right to do that. But I'll give him a detailed and courteous reply." But not for the time being, it seems.

And what about Collins's appeal by letter to Howard for "a full, open and wide-ranging royal commission into" Australia's intelligence agencies "and the putrefaction underneath"?

Howard told reporters: "I don't think that is necessary. But as I say, I'll give the colonel a detailed and courteous and comprehensive reply. And he's served his country well and I respect that. And I'll treat the letter with the respect it deserves, given who wrote to me."

How bloody unctuous, if you'll excuse me.

Neither the Prime Minister nor the Government nor the intelligence community will openly attack Collins. His record of service and his standing among very many senior people in the military will not allow that to happen. Collins has his enemies, no question, but he has some powerful friends, too. Which is why, when Howard answers questions, we get all this slippery, slimy observance of "respect" and "courtesy" and various other platitudes about a man who has been trying for four years to be heard and waiting five weeks for a letter. You can only wonder at why the Prime Minister even bothers.

Because he's a politician, that's why.

A letter arrived this week from Bill Morrison, a former Whitlam government minister and ambassador to Jakarta in the late 1980s. It said: "Dear Alan, re Colonel Collins's criticism that longstanding intelligence dating back to mid-1998 of Indonesian military atrocities in East Timor was overlooked due to a pro-Jakarta lobby in Defence and Foreign Affairs. A couple of years ago I sent you a report I had written whilst ambassador in Jakarta. In that report I was highly critical of the role of the Indonesian Army. I told the Indonesian foreign minister, Ali Alatas, bluntly of my concerns ...

"Defence have always thought they had a special 'in' with the Indonesian military and didn't want to rock the boat. The end result was I got absolutely no response from Canberra. The pro-Indonesian lobby had prevailed. The rest is history."

We shall see.

A tale of two thieves, in their own words

Two days ago, in Adelaide, Mark Latham faced down a media scrum demanding to know if he was a cheat. The Labor leader had just visited a child-care centre. Outside, the first 18 questions from jostling reporters cited the Government's accusations of plagiarism in Latham's Tuesday speech on national identity. Five of the other seven questions were about Labor's local candidate. Nobody asked about child care.

The first question made clear the only issue reporters were interested in."Mr Latham, had you or your speechwriter read Bill Clinton's [1997] State of the Union address before you made your speech [this week]?"

Latham: "I didn't refer to that speech in any shape or form in the preparation of my speech. I've been declaring these [education] targets and using this rhetoric for many years ...When you say you want every child to be able to read by the age of five, how can you say it other than in ordinary plain English?" But he was never going to get off that easy.

Was it just coincidence? Had he read Clinton's speech? Had he written his own speech? Was he a Clinton fan? Had Latham ever seen John Howard do something "he's accusing you of"? Did he owe Australians an explanation? Had there been any staff input? Could he rule out the possibility his staff had read the Clinton speech? Was he embarrassed?

Latham did not back away. He replied, in part: "I write my own speeches and I'm proud of the speech we produced. And I'm proud of the way I've been supporting those education targets" - the only similarity with the Clinton speech - "for many years ... It's the standard work of a politician who believes in the importance of the education system ... I stand by the speech and its ambitious education program ... I'm never embarrassed about backing education ..."

As for John Howard, Latham said: "I don't think people in glass houses should be throwing stones." No, indeed.

Thirteen months ago, in a National Press Club speech defending his Government's decision to commit Australia to Iraq's invasion, Howard said: "We're talking about a regime that will gouge out the eyes of a child to force a confession from the child's parents. This is a regime that will burn a person's limbs, that in 2000 decreed the crime of criticising it would be punished by the amputation of tongues."

The following week, in this space, I quoted the paragraphs and wrote: "The ABC Media Watch's David Marr four nights later revealed Howard had plagiarised the passage from the book, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, by Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East analyst who'd worked for the CIA. When I asked Howard's office to explain, it rationalised: 'The address was based on a variety of sources, including drawing on intelligence material, and it's not the practice to footnote everything in a speech. All facts were checked against other sources.' "

It was humbug, of course. If David Marr hadn't pinged Howard, nobody would have been the wiser. Latham at least took responsibility. He didn't invent an excuse. Now the Government and its acolytes ridicule Latham. Except that a year ago, when it was Howard who was caught out, the only newspaper (or any other media outlet) in the country which reported Marr's disclosure of his plagiarism was this Saturday space. March 22, 2003. Not a word from anyone else anywhere.

As for Latham, someone on his staff owes him more than an apology. He or she owes him a resignation. Latham shouldn't have to ask for it, either. There can be no place in a political leader's office for such dumb, damaging behaviour.