The Central Intelligence Agency issued an intelligence report listing
Bali among possible targets of a pending terrorist attack just two weeks
before the weekend's devastating Kuta bomb blast, the Washington
Post is reporting.
The warning was based on intercepted communications picked up in late
September, which signalled a strike against "a Western tourist site".
"Bali was mentioned in the US intelligence report," the paper says.
All information gathered by United States and Australian intelligence
agencies is shared between the countries. But the Prime Minister, John
Howard, said yesterday he had no knowledge of the US report.
The US embassy in Jakarta issued two travel notices, on September 26
and October 10, warning Americans and other Westerners to "avoid large
gatherings and locations known to cater primarily to a Western clientele,
such as certain bars, restaurants and tourist areas".
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs' most recent travel advice
before the attacks was on September 20. It urged Australians to maintain
high levels of personal security amid a risk of bomb explosions, including
in tourist areas, but said tourist services were "operating normally" in
Bali.
Mr Howard said the US report "hasn't been brought to my attention, no.
We had no warning of the specific attack that occurred. There have been
general warnings about the deteriorating security position, the
deteriorating terrorist position in Indonesia."
The official Australian death toll rose to 30 last night. A further 180
people remain missing and 113 Australians have been injured.
The Federal Government had airlifted 86 injured people from Bali by
last night. Only seven patients remained in Darwin Hospital, with the rest
sent on to other capital city hospitals.
Ten patients, two of them in a critical condition, were in Sydney
hospitals. Fifteen critically injured people have been flown from Darwin
to other major centres, two of whom had since died.
In Bali, police said yesterday they were "intensively questioning" two
Indonesian men tracked down after one of their identity cards was found
near the site of the bomb blasts.
The Washington Post report did not specify whether the
communications were intercepted in Indonesia, where the Australian Defence
Signals Directorate has primary responsibility for eavesdropping, or as
part of the CIA's intelligence sweep across Asia and the Middle East.
Australian intelligence experts said the existence of the advice would
suggest a huge breakdown in the international intelligence community
before the Bali attack.
"It would be an unthinkable and unforgiveable failure of the
intelligence network," said Warren Reed, a former head of the Indonesian
desk of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
"If the Americans had this information, they would have passed it
directly to us and others in the intelligence club."
The US ambassador to Australia, Tom Schieffer, said yesterday he was
not familiar with the reported US intelligence.
But a US embassy spokesman in Canberra said there was no closer
intelligence-sharing arrangement in the world than that between the US and
Australia. "It's a hand-in-glove arrangement ... I don't think there's
anything that hasn't been sent," he said.
Mr Howard defended Australia's consular warning to travellers to
Indonesia and Bali as "strong" and "quite strong".
Two days before the attack, the US issued a worldwide warning notice
again urging tourists to avoid "clubs, bars and restaurants" where
Westerners congregate. The Australian Government did not issue a similar
warning.
The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, rejected any suggestion the
Government could have done more to alert Australians to the threat of a
bombing.
However, questions over the adequacy of the intelligence system before
the bombing may be investigated by the Senate.
Greens Senator Bob Brown said he would support an inquiry if there was
sufficient evidence of intelligence failings.
He said the best time to think about constituting an inquiry was in
mid-November, when Parliament next sits. The Australian Democrats and
Labor said it was too early to consider an inquiry but did not rule out
their support.
