“Mumbai maimed, nation shamed.” That was the lead headline in India’s Mail Today on November 28, which went on to highlight how the country’s intelligence agencies hadn’t a clue of the impending attack, despite spending huge amounts of money on anti-terrorist measures.
Could something similar happen in Australia?
We hope not. But if it does, it will be for reasons that the police can tell you about now. You don’t need to wait for carnage in the streets of Sydney or Melbourne. How so? One experienced Australian officer noted over the weekend how Mumbai’s anti-terror chief, Hermant Karkare, had died in a hail of bullets leading his men against gunmen holed up in the historic Taj Hotel.
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“Don’t expect that sort of bravery here,” he quipped. “Our agency chiefs couldn’t survive boot camp, let alone set an example like that.” Therein lies one of our major problems: Australia’s intelligence agencies, unbelievably, are run by bureaucrats with no hands-on experience in intelligence. And for that reason they lack the respect that is crucial to the fight against terror.
Make no mistake, the front line in that battle is the State Police. They’re the ones with their ears closest to the ground. Federal agencies are supposed to supplement that local knowledge and expertise with additional skills and information. Yet State Police deride the men who run those agencies. In private, they mock their quaint 18th century ways. That’s because the chiefs involved customarily have a Foreign Affairs background. Imagine putting Rolf Harris in uniform to lead our 5,000-strong force into East Timor in 1999.
The police know - as do the many decent men and women employed by those agencies - that intelligence work is all about the allocation of limited resources. You rarely if ever have enough qualified people to handle the specialist tasks that arise when least expected. And yet bureaucrats, who wouldn’t know one end of a gun from the other and who have never been subject to the rigid systems of discipline that mark the professions of arms, police and intelligence, end up making the fine judgments required on such occasions.
Bear in mind, not one of them has been dragooned into the job. They have either actively sought the position for reasons of career advancement, or been offered it by political masters who should have known better. How can Australia possibly benefit from such a ridiculous situation?
It can’t. It puts us back behind the starting line, and our allies haven’t failed to notice. The few runs we have on the board in the fight against terror have come from solid co-operative work between officers who trust each other, regardless of which agency they belong to. Overwhelmingly, this has been despite management, rather than because of it.
We should be asking ourselves whether bureaucrats are placed in these jobs because others with relevant experience simply don’t exist? The answer is no. If that were the case it would mean that our intelligence agencies had failed over decades to produce anyone of experience and talent. That would be a national scandal of enormous proportions.
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So, who gains from the current arrangement? Obviously the bureaucrats and their political masters do, which suggests that successive governments want the agencies to be politically compliant. You can’t come to any other conclusion. But the last thing Australia needs at the top of an intelligence agency is a political crony. The inherent danger is that the act of protecting national security can quickly become a charade rather than a reality.
How does this affect Australia’s preparedness for terrorist attack?
First, there is enough inter-agency rivalry at the best of times without exacerbating the problem with managerialism at the top. That just makes it easier for people further down in the structure to play one boss off against another.
The ill will sometimes displayed by the Australian Federal Police towards ASIO, often with justification; or by the State Police towards the AFP, has to be seen to be believed. Turf battles, which diffuse and waste energy, can be damaging. Political eagerness to score points in the fight against terror can lead to pre-emptive action that lessens or destroys a likely operational outcome. Police have a healthy propensity to patiently monitor target groups until they can “cut all the cancer out”. Politicians like quick results, often regardless of cost.
The Clarke Report on the Dr Mohamed Haneef case, a public version of which is due for release later in December (with any luck, not on Christmas Day) should tell us whether political interests were at work in that Gold Coast investigation.
If agency chiefs can’t win respect and trust in the engine rooms of the intelligence community how can their organisations possibly maintain the trust of Australians as a whole? That trust is vital to the fight against terror. Rather than clever intercept work and skilful sleuthing, it’s usually tip-offs from informants that provide the most valuable insights into what’s brewing.
Potential informants have been put off by unnecessarily draconian anti-terror legislation; they simply won’t take the risk of getting involved. Most people though, are deterred by a perception that the agencies - as well as the government of the day - are largely unaccountable.
The Haneef case has certainly been harmful in this sense. Why, many ask, has the truth (if indeed that is what we are going to get) had to be rung out of the agencies involved, particularly out of the AFP, by a costly inquiry? Shouldn’t the quest for the truth and a wish to learn from mistakes and hence cleanse the system, be a standard requirement within the system?
As a backdrop to this public perception is the widespread disdain that many Australians have for the 2007 Cole Royal Commission into the Iraqi food-for-oil scandal. The Iraqi money that the Australian Wheat Board purloined through bribery - nearly $300 million worth, which made Australia the biggest international offender - was held in trust by the United Nations. It was the Australian Government that had pledged to the UN that it would scrutinise the activities of all Australian exporters involved. It was the government that let us down, not just the AWB. Yet the Cole Royal Commission was never given, nor sought, powers to investigate the abysmal failure of government to acquit itself. One of the bureaucrats involved in conveying vital AWB information to the government, who was never called to give evidence on oath and should have been, is now running an intelligence agency.
Likewise, few Australians have forgotten the ABC-TV Chaser team antics during last year’s APEC meeting in Sydney. It has never been explained to the public how such a major breach of security could have occurred, despite more than $100 million being spent on measures to protect the 21 world leaders in the city for that event. They managed to bring three sizeable vehicles to within metres of President Bush’s hotel. Shouldn’t we want to know what went wrong?
Most Australians recall the speed with which ASIO recently informed the Clarke Inquiry that it had informed the government, as well as the AFP and anyone else that needed to know in July last year, that it saw no reason to charge Dr Haneef. And yet, we still don’t know why Scott Parkin, an American protestor visiting Melbourne for a G20 meeting in 2005, was extradited from Australia as a threat to national security. A court ordered this year that Parkin be provided with the assessment but ASIO is still resisting. These sorts of contradictions only diminish public trust and faith in accountability.
Unsurprisingly, the perception is that national security plays second fiddle to regime survival and that bureaucrats are put in charge of agencies to ensure that that priority is rigidly maintained.
Though Australia’s circumstances are very different to those of India, the danger of a terrorist attack here is still real. Put simply, there is a better chance of avoiding one by having experienced men and women in charge of our agencies than people with no track record at all. Not to put an end to this long-running political indulgence is nothing short of a national crime.
The highly qualified operatives who work silently and assiduously on our behalf in the intelligence system ask nothing more than for Australians to bother to take an interest in having those responsible for this Alice-in-Wonderland situation called to account.
Think of that when you see someone from Canberra on TV lamenting the loss of life in Mumbai.