On the evening of November 28, the day the Australian, Canadian and European Union embassies shut down, Blas Ople, foreign affairs secretary, met with the ambassadors of the three embassies, top officials from the Department of National Defense, the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), and the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Not one among the biggies in the intelligence community that night had a clue as to what information triggered the closure of the embassies.
Embarrassed by this latest black eye, the Philippine officials wanted to know the basis of the "credible and time specific" threat. To their surprise and consternation, the diplomats were not willing to reveal the information. The meeting was polite despite the frazzled nerves-and the top Philippine defense and intelligence honchos left with unanswered questions.
Only weeks later did they learn-after a joint investigation by the Philippine National Police and the NICA-that the source of the information that had caused such a furor was an obscure middle-level Philippine police intelligence officer who got the sensitive information on planned attacks on the Australian and Canadian embassies from a Muslim who claims to be a former member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and who is also known to peddle information. He wrote a report based on raw information and, apparently, an unsigned copy reached the US embassy. This was passed on to the Australians and Canadians.
The US embassy said they were not the source of the information and a diplomat privy to the information said it was "corroborated and not fragmentary."
The embassies continued their operations but in undisclosed places. They plan to reopen in new locations in 2003.
This whole incident sharpens the difficulties in the war against terror and shows the dilemmas countries face in fighting a global menace. It also raises questions about the treatment and ownership of information, and intelligence sharing among countries, post 9/11. When do they share sensitive information with one another or disseminate it to as wide a public as possible and when do they not? When is the process of corroboration sacrificed and when is it not? When do they act on information and when do they not?
After 9/11, the US, Australia, and other countries called for cooperation in counter-terrorism, especially in sharing information. This means breaking down turfs and going against a well-entrenched culture. Yet the Australians and Canadians decided to keep the information to themselves.
In an interview a week before the closure of their embassy in Manila, when Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer was asked about his country's response to information on potential terrorist attacks, he said: "When we get the information, we assess the reliability and credibility of the information. We consult with other countries that have an interest in these issues and on the basis of that we make the decisions..."
In Manila, this process wasn't entirely followed.
After the Bali bombings in October, a newspaper reported that the Australian government had received information about the attacks but kept them confidential. The government was criticized. Downer denied this, saying that their intelligence information mentioned possible threats to several provinces in Indonesia and Bali was only one of them. Shouldn't they have warned their nationals about it?
"The reason we don't talk about the intelligence in any more detail is that this comes from very sensitive sources...obviously we would lose our sources," Downer said in an interview, referring to the Manila threats. A diplomat based here says the information wasn't Australia's to share, in the first place. Sharing it could also "compromise efforts" to stop whatever action had been planned against these embassies.
The subtext is: it's hard to trust officials here where information is easily leaked to the press. Moreover, asks a security consultant whose clients include some embassies, "What's our track record in completing an investigation? There's little to show for it."
For Australia, though, it wasn't just a single piece of intelligence information that made Canberra decide to shut down the embassy here. Bali has made Australians highly vulnerable and jittery. It was their 9/11, a turning point in their lives.
There was a build-up of events as well. In November, in a taped interview allegedly with Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda head said that Australia was one of their targets. Soon after, Australia received information about possible terrorist acts in their country although no specific places were mentioned.
Amid this nervousness, two separate incidents spooked the Australian embassy here. First, a number of "Arab-looking" men on skateboards were hanging out near the building in which they were located. When approached by security guards, they fled by car. Second, an "Arab-looking" male was seen taking photos of the Tower. He was questioned by the police and was released.
While these incidents did not yield anything conclusive, they exposed the vulnerability of the building, flanked by three streets, making it an easy target.
Australia has waged a high-profile campaign against terror, making it America's surrogate in the Asia-Pacific region: it sent its soldiers to Afghanistan, led the move in the United Nations to declare Jemaah Islamiyah a terrorist organization, signed counter-terrorism agreements with Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and is now negotiating one with the Philippines. These agreements include enhancing of capabilities in law enforcement, intelligence gathering, anti-money laundering, and border control.
But, as the shutdown of the embassies here shows, cooperation between countries needs to be tightened. Certainly, there are lessons to be learned from this incident.
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Lessons from Manila