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Lessons From East Timor: what value Australia’s intelligence apparatus? : Comments
By Warren Reed, published 23/7/2008How can Alexander Downer’s pride in his accomplishments be reconciled with what actually happened in East Timor in 1999?
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This is an excellent commentary on the process and principles of intelligence, East Timor and failures in Australian ministerial leadership.
To give Downer his due, he was the man who quipped that he only read DFAT cables while dozing in a [VIP] plane seat. Treatment of the job as a consolation prize for being edged out of the Liberal Party leadership was transparent - parallels with Hayden obvious.
Hopefully Australia won't intervene so late again through a failure of imagination, leadership and guts.
The treatment of Merv Jenkins underlines a cruel truth that those in the intelligence profession who question issues on principle are rarely supported. They are often hounded, shunned and are then alone.
Anyone contemplating a career choice of joining part of the bureaucracy that has a clamping security culture may want to think again. This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Secret_Intelligence_Service is interesting.
Those last bastions of silence, DSD and ASIS, may be happy places, treating their employees well, maybe not, no-one knows, no-one talks, oblivion.
Again a timely article.
Regards
Peter Coates
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/