Balibo burdens. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: I am intrigued by the letters (July-August 2001) from George Brownbill and Ian Cunliffe regarding Balibo. Allow me to explain why.

Last year in Quadrant ("Balibo: Murdani and the Memory Hole", November 2000) I took some pains to try to establish whether DSD intercepted a conversation, on the night of 15th October 1975, in which Major General Murdani instructed Colonel Dading to ensure that there would be "no witnesses" to the impending covert Indonesian invasion of Portuguese Timor. For shorthand purposes, I called this alleged intercept "M-15", for Murdani, 15 (October).

Among the people I spoke to on the subject were George Brownbill and Ian Cunliffe. I interviewed Brownbill over the phone for some fifteen minutes. I spoke to Cunliffe by phone, then met him at the Universita Restaurant, Lygon Street, Carlton, for an evening meal and a frank discussion about my reasonings.

After my essay was published, I supplied copies of it to both Brownbill and Cunliffe, soliciting comment. Neither wrote to me. Some nine months later, Brownbill states that his evidence does not support the presumption "that I had seen `M-15' or that I had in some way confirmed its existence". Truly? Why, then, did he not simply tell me, at the time of the interview, that M-15 was not what he had seen? Or write to me subsequently to set the record straight? And if it was not M-15, what precisely bas been the "burden" which, he confirms, he has carried on his mind for the past ...