Australia to share US secrets


By Greg Sheridan

September 01, 2005

Bush and Howard / AFP
Close ties ... Australia has never before had such access / AFP

US President George W. Bush has issued a decree upgrading Australia to the highest rank of intelligence partner that the US has in the world.
Australia's new status is equalled only by Britain and vastly expands the quantity and quality of US intelligence our agencies receive.

In order to bring this about, Mr Bush has changed US national disclosure policy.

In the 50 years of the US-Australia alliance, Australia has never before enjoyed this level of access to American intelligence. The agreement ranges from tactical and operational military information through to comprehensive national assessments.

Increasingly, Australian agencies will have direct access to US intelligence systems. Australian military personnel in the Middle East, for example, can already directly access US intelligence databases and real-time battle space imagery.

John Howard has discussed the new intelligence arrangements with Mr Bush at several meetings in recent years.

Advertisement:
The Prime Minister raised it again with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at their Washington meeting on July 19.

Defence Minister Robert Hill would not comment on anything related to US presidential decrees or US national disclosure policy, but he confirmed Canberra had a higher intelligence-sharing status with the US than ever before.

"In recent years we have obtained unprecedented access to US intelligence and tactical planning," Senator Hill said.

"That has been of great value to Australia in terms of enhancing our national security. This is access to the greatest repository of information that exists. It's another sign of the close relationship between the US and Australia."

Mr Howard raised US national disclosure policy at his meeting with Mr Rumsfeld because of resistance to Australia's new status within the US bureaucracy.

While Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld and US service chiefs have strongly backed the new arrangements, the natural inertia and caution of the vast US intelligence and military bureaucracies has meant a lot of operational resistance to their implementation.

Put simply, US spooks are not used to sharing the crown jewels. However, repeated instructions from the top have moved the process steadily forward.

Mr Bush's decree is believed to have followed the annual AUSMIN meeting of Australian and US foreign and defence ministers in Washington last year, where they signed the "US-Australian joint statement of principles on Inter-Operability".

Since the turn of the century, there has been a steady deepening of compatibility in equipment and training between US and Australian military forces. All aspects of this "inter-operability" have been canvassed in a secret paper jointly compiled by the US and Australian defence departments.

The AUSMIN statement said Australia and the US had "agreed to enhance inter-operability between our defence forces such as communications, information exchange, operational planning and training".

It has not previously been revealed that these seemingly anodyne words had brought about the most intimate intelligence relationship in Australian history.

The new relationship occurs at many levels.

Canberra now has a permanent senior officer stationed at the US Strategic Command in Nebraska.

US Strategic Command is responsible for integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, space and global strike operations, information operations, integrated missile defence and command and control.

It is the most sensitive intelligence hub in the US military network and to have Australians stationed there at high levels of seniority is a sign of the depth of the intelligence relationship.

Australia gains access at all levels - to US raw intelligence, to US assessments of the intelligence and to real-time operational information and planning.

This has meant Australia further upgrading its own security because the US is extremely sensitive about who shares such information.

Australia's new status is a sign of the growing trust the US has in the Australian military and intelligence community. Co-operation between Canberra and Washington in these fields has grown exponentially as a result of both the war on terror and the joint operations in Iraq.