Axis of Deceit: The Extraordinary Story of an Australian Whistleblower

By Andrew Wilkie

In the 2010 federal election, independent candidate Andrew Wilkie grabbed headlines after winning the seat of Denison, and with it a key role in deciding who would form the next government of Australia. Before he was a politician, however, Wilkie was Australia’s most talked-about whistleblower.

In March 2003, Wilkie resigned from Australia’s peak intelligence agency in protest over the looming war in Iraq. He was the only serving intelligence officer from the ‘coalition of the willing’ – the US, the UK and Australia – to do so, and his dramatic move was reported throughout the world.

Wilkie’s act of conscience put him on a collision course with the Australian government. Why was he willing to risk his career and reputation to tell the truth? What happened when he decided to take a stand? In Axis of Deceit, Wilkie tells his story. He exposes how governments skewed, spun and fabricated intelligence advice. And he offers a rare glimpse into the world of international intelligence and life as a spook. With a brand-new preface, this is the fascinating inside story of a man now set to play a pivotal role in our public life.

‘A clear-eyed treatise on how the coalition of the willing conned the public about its motives for war’ —The Sydney Morning Herald

‘A glimpse into the world of a modern spy’ —The Age

‘Impressive’ —Canberra Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Inc. Books
• Release date: Aug 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9781921825699

Andrew Wilkie

Andrew Wilkie is the author of Axis of Deceit. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Australian Defence Force before he joined the Office of National Assessments as a senior strategic analyst. After leaving ONA, he gave evidence at the official British and Australian inquiries into the case for the Iraq war. He contested John Howard’s seat of Bennelong for the Greens in the 2004 federal election. In 2010 he stood successfully as an independent for the federal seat of Denison in Tasmania.

Book preview

AXIS OF DECEIT

Published by Black Inc. Agenda

Series Editor: Robert Manne

Other books in the Black Inc. Agenda series:

Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History ed. Robert Manne

The Howard Years ed. Robert Manne

Axis of Deceit Andrew Wilkie

Following Them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum Seekers David Corlett

Civil Passions: Selected Writings Martin Krygier

Do Not Disturb: Is the Media Failing Australia? ed. Robert Manne

Sense & Nonsense in Australian History John Hirst

The Weapons Detective Rod Barton

Scorcher Clive Hamilton

Dear Mr Rudd ed. Robert Manne

The Dreaming & Other Essays W.E.H. Stanner

Goodbye To All That? On the Failure of Neo-Liberalism and the Urgency of Change eds. Robert Manne and David McKnight.

AXIS OF DECEIT

ANDREW WILKIE

Published by Black Inc. Agenda

an imprint of Schwartz Media Pty Ltd

37–39 Langridge Street

Collingwood Vic 3066 Australia

email: [e-mail]

http://www.blackincbooks.com

First published in 2004.

Second edition © Andrew Wilkie 2010

Appendix © Morry Schwartz 2010

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the

prior consent of the publishers.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Wilkie, Andrew.

Axis of deceit : the extraordinary story of an Australian

whistleblower / Andrew Wilkie.

2nd ed.

ISBN: 9780977594962 (pbk.)

Wilkie, Andrew--Contributions in intellegence service--Australia.

Australia. Office of National Assessments. Iraq War, 2003---Personal

narratives, Australian. Iraq War, 2003---Causes. Whistle blowing-Australia.

Intelligence Officers--Australia--Biography. Intelligence

service--Australia. Weapons of mass destruction--Iraq. Australia-Politics

and government--21st century.

956.70443

Printed by Griffin Press

Dedicated to the victims of the Iraq war.

May you rest in peace.

And may those whose lies killed you

be one day brought to justice.

CONTENTS

Preface

INTRODUCTION

TAKING A STAND

LIFE ON THE INSIDE

THE WORLD OF INTELLIGENCE

AN UNNECESSARY WAR

THE BIG LIE

BLAME GAME

PUBLIC DISSERVICE

INTELLIGENCE FAILURES

SILENCING DISSENT

EPILOGUE

Appendix: Publishing Axis of Deceit

Glossary

Notes

Preface

On 8 September 2010, the Australian Electoral Commission declared that I had won the federal seat of Denison, in Tasmania’s south, with a swing of over 16 per cent. I’m now one of a handful of independents in the Australian Parliament and one of just four members holding the balance of power in the House of Representatives.

The declaration of this result came about a week after the official end of US combat operations in Iraq. Almost exactly the same amount of time before the war started, on 11 March 2003, I had resigned from the Office of National Assessments (ONA) in protest at the Howard government’s deceitful justification for joining in the invasion.

Desperately needing my political support, the Liberal Party’s leader, Tony Abbott, rang me shortly after the 21 August 2010 poll and apologised for the way the Howard government had vilified me over my criticism of their Iraq policy. Liberal Senator David Johnston, a man who had called me everything from ‘reprehensible’ to ‘outrageous’ in one particularly memorable Senate outburst in 2003, also tried to get in touch to apologise, once it became clear the Liberal Party needed my support.

Ultimately I decided to back Labor. I did so not because I hold a grudge against the Liberal Party, but because I judged Julia Gillard and Labor to be more likely to deliver the better government over the next three years.

‘From national-security threat to MP’ was how one journalist described it. How did it come to this? It has been a long journey. First, there was the immediate aftermath of my decision to become a whistleblower, much of which is described in Axis of Deceit. Since then, I’ve become active politically, initially joining the Greens and running twice for federal parliament, including against Prime Minister John Howard in his Sydney seat of Bennelong in 2004. Early in 2008 I left the Greens and struck out as an independent, running first for the Tasmanian Parliament, where I missed out by a mere 315 votes, and now fi nally winning a seat in Canberra.

I’ve been so active politically because the Iraq war was for me as much about poor governance as about the unwarranted invasion of a country for fraudulent reasons. And the more you immerse yourself in politics, the more you learn about the opportunities missed in Australia and the countless people not so much falling through the cracks as being shoved through them. Political activism is an enriching experience; almost every day I encounter a new human story, putting a face to what was once a somewhat theoretical concern. I now find myself emotionally involved in important public-policy areas from gambling-law reform to public health.

Along the way my first marriage ended and I’ve linked up with a former ONA colleague, Dr Kate Burton. We moved to Tasmania, married and have two beautiful little girls, Olive and Rose. To pay the bills we’ve run a little Persian rug shop – an endeavour not altogether unrelated to the part of the world that got me into so much trouble in the first place.

Kate is central to my story. Although I acted alone when I resigned from ONA, she shared my concerns and gave me a shoulder to lean on. This was to cost her a good job when in 2004 she was sacked on her first day as secretary of the parliamentary committee on the intelligence services. Some members of that committee, knowing of her connection with me, were concerned that her personal views were inconsistent with the committee’s. There was no room for diversity of opinion, not to mention frank and fearless advice, when it came to national-security planning during the days of the Howard government.

That government’s vendetta against me didn’t stop with Kate’s sacking. As the first edition of Axis of Deceit was about to be printed, the attorney-general’s department advised the publisher that the book couldn’t possibly be published on account of security concerns. Nonsense. There was nothing in the original version that threatened Australia. As a man criticising the government for its misuse of information, I was hardly about to misuse it myself.

In the end I did agree to the book being censored so that at least what was left of it would see the light of day. There was no substance to the Howard government’s concerns; the government wished only to bully me and intimidate my former colleagues as well as the publishing industry. The Howard government left us all in no doubt that it was prepared to do anything in its power to try to silence dissent.

Returning to Canberra after all this was almost inconceivable. As much as I enjoyed living there, the best jobs in the nation’s capital would always be blocked to me. Sometimes just walking the streets of Canberra during my infrequent visits made me feel uncomfortable on account of the memories I harboured and the stares I attracted. But now all that has changed. The one job that could bring me back to Canberra is mine, at least for now, and I’m going back with a sense that somehow I’ve prevailed.

Dampening my mood, however, is the knowledge that my journey started with Iraq more or less intact, and with the US and its allies having a range of options to deal with the odious Saddam Hussein. But George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard decided to race to war with their fanciful arguments about weapons of mass destruction and terrorists. Almost 5,000 US and allied troops are now dead, while the Iraqi death toll has reached somewhere between 100,000 and 1.5 million (estimates vary markedly). Even now, 50,000 US troops remain in the country, the violence continues and Iraqis keep dying. All for a lie.

And all the while the war in Afghanistan goes from bad to worse, needlessly so given the opportunity lost in 2002, when relative calm was replaced by violence as the US and its allies shifted their attention to Iraq.

I hope that in Australia at least, some important lessons have been learned. Next time, perhaps the government will be honest with citizens about the need to resort to lethal force. I am sure the public will be much more critical of what is said.

For my part, I will continue to speak out and challenge authority when it betrays us. Unsurprisingly, some of my first efforts in the parliament will be directed at better protection for whistleblowers and the media that help them to tell their story.

Andrew Wilkie

Hobart, September 2010

INTRODUCTION

There is nothing in man’s plight that his vision, if he cared to cultivate it, could not alleviate. The challenge is to see what could be done, and then to have the heart and the resolution to attempt it.

—George Kennan

Iwas a lieutenant colonel and a senior intelligence officer. My great-uncle was killed at the Mennen Gate in Belgium during World War I – the war they said would end all wars. More of my kin served in the next big one: my father completed 32 missions over German-occupied Europe as a tail-gunner in Lancaster heavy bombers, while my mother served in the Women’s Australian Auxiliary Air Force. My brother fought in South Vietnam. More recently my friends have served all over the world. My wife spent almost a year on operational service in Cambodia.

Now I’ve written a book condemning the war in Iraq and the governments that made it happen. No-one is more surprised about that than I am. I was brought up in a conservative Catholic family in regional Australia. I enlisted in the Australian Army as soon as I finished high school, trained at the Royal Military College Duntroon and enjoyed a successful military career before being medically discharged with injured knees. My post-Army working life was dominated by the world of intelligence. Even my stint in private enterprise, working for US defence giant Raytheon in management and business development, was pretty straight. What the course of my life shows, I think, is that a time can come unexpectedly in any life when certain things – call them principles or fundamental beliefs – become more important than anything else. What is ultimately most precious is the opportunity to help make the world a better place.

The pages of history are already filled with unnecessary wars and criminals dressed up as patriots. The history of the presentday will be no different, no matter what happens in the future, because the war in Iraq that began in March 2003 was neither justified nor legal. Not justified because Iraq did not pose a serious enough security threat to any other country to warrant a war. Not legal because Iraq’s material breach of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 did not present a legal basis for resort to force.

As the war grinds on into its second year, some are inclined to put all of that behind us – to accept that what was done is done and focus instead on helping the people of Iraq to stabilise and repair their country. It is true that we ought to do whatever we can to repair the terrible mess we’ve made. But it is just as important that we not forget or walk away from the official deception that brought about this war and has been used to justify it ever since. The dishonesty is too serious, the implications too alarming. We were told that there was an urgent need to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein possessed horrific weapons and it was inevitable that he would hand them on to terrorists. That story was always arguable, and is now laughable. What is not laughable is the knowledge that at almost every turn the protagonists of the Iraq misadventure looked us straight in the eye and then lied through their teeth. It is well for them that they are protected by victors’ justice, because in other places and at other times leaders like them have faced judgement for less.

I didn’t find it difficult to reach the conclusions I did before the war began.The raw intelligence on Iraq was sometimes awful and the subsequent assessments were not always much better. Nor did the so-called ‘politicisation’ of the intelligence community help – that combination of direct political interference and implied expectations which skews intelligence officers’ work to suit their political masters. But the reality of the situation in Iraq was always obvious enough to cut through the intelligence clutter in Washington, London and Canberra. Or at least it was to those genuinely interested in knowing the truth.

Even more obvious to me, and to my colleagues, was the significant gap between what we were seeing, and what George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard were saying publicly. This was no small matter. On the one hand was the limited and manageable threat posed by Iraq, while on the other was all that talk about an urgent need to deal with a ruthless dictator before he used his massive arsenal of the world’s most deadly weapons.

The only difficult part for me was working out what to do about the gulf between the reality and the spin. That decision had nothing to do with the world of intelligence, but everything to do with my sense of right and wrong, and my threshold for when well-intentioned half-truths become unacceptable lies.

It was, I suppose, a convergence of everything that had shaped my approach to the world – my home life, schooling, military and intelligence service, my relationships with friends and adversaries, and everything else that has influenced me over the years. This made my concern with the government’s conduct over Iraq an intensely personal matter, one that might have been dealt with quite differently by anyone else if he or she had found themselves in my exact position.

The personal implications of my decision to stand up to the government are yet to become clear. I’ve been vilified. I’m emotionally exhausted. I’ve lost friends. There is no chance of ever returning to a career I cherished. The financial cost is alarming. But even so I have no regrets about what I did, and I would do it all again. Better for me to have done what I could to energise the public debate about the impending conflict than to slip away quietly or to continue with my duties as though nothing were at stake. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself had I failed to act as I did.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me since I took my stand. Your encouragement has kept me going through some difficult times. Mentioning particular people risks offending many more than it heartens, but I want nevertheless to acknowledge all of the members of my family, in particular my wife, Simone, whom I put in an awkward position during 2003 when she was the first woman Commanding Officer of Duntroon.

Invariably relationships suffer terribly from the pressures, buffeting and personal changes that accompany an act of whistle-blowing. Simone and I are no exception, my resignation and its aftermath taking a toll on our marriage. We lived apart during some of this story, at the time apparently for reasons unrelated to my decision to speak out. On reflection, though, I understand that our separation was linked, to some degree, to my great unease concerning the impending war and my inability to do much about it as long as I was living in the CO’s house at Duntroon.

I also wish to recognise those serving and former members of the intelligence and defence communities who share many of my concerns. The unease over the government’s behaviour runs deep. From their numbers my friend and former colleague Dr Kate Burton has been especially influential.

On 25 August 2003 the Prime Minister invited me to back up my accusation that the government had lied about the Iraq war. He said that:

If Mr Wilkie has evidence that the Government misrepresented intelligence he should submit it. It is open to him to do so without breaching his legal obligations not to reveal classified information obtained in the course of his previous employment. To suggest otherwise is absurd.

This was a foolish thing for Howard to say – it should be obvious that I don’t possess copies of the highly sensitive material that illustrates the government deceit which I discuss in this book. It was also irresponsible, because national security material should be protected as far as possible, so as not to compromise intelligence capabilities and sources. If I do inadvertently brush up against such information here, it is done only in the context of the Prime Minister’s invitation to go much further.

Andrew Wilkie, 2004

TAKING A STAND

In this business, whose side do you take?

—A former colleague, before the war

Ican’t recall precisely the origin of my decision to betray my government.