From The Sydney Morning Herald

FBI left Australia in dark on terror
July 13, 2004

A US intelligence agency has admitted it received warning of a possible terrorist threat in Indonesia prior to the Bali bombings, but did not immediately inform Australia.

The FBI told ABC television's Lateline program it had gleaned the information from interrogated al-Qaeda suspect Mohommad Mansour Jabara in the lead-up to the attacks on October 12, 2002.

In January 2002, Jabara met Bali bombings mastermind Hambali, who told him he wanted to attack Westerners in soft targets such as bars and nightclubs in several south-east Asian countries.

In an interrogation with the FBI in August of that year, Jabara told the FBI of Hambali's intentions.

The FBI told Lateline that while it had passed the information on to some countries in the region, it had not informed Australia because there was no specific threat against Australia.

"Information obtained from the questioning of Mr Jabara was forwarded to the US State Department, which then provided the information to various countries believed to be potential targets of terrorist acts in east Asia," the FBI said.

"This information did not indicate specific threats against Australia, but was provided to those countries deemed to be at risk of terrorist attack."

ASIO director-general Dennis Richardson has previously told a Senate estimates committee that Australia was not informed of Jabara's comments until after the bombings.

Mr Richardson also told the committee the information would have made little difference to Australia's response in the lead-up to the bombings.

However, the director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University, Clive Williams, told Lateline the information could have been useful for the Australian Government.

"It would have perhaps changed our travel advisories," he said.

"If you put out travel warnings about Bali and bars and nightclubs, there would still be people that would ignore that and go there, but at least the Government would have done the responsible thing in providing the warnings."

Few Americans have any clue where Indonesia is, or any idea that it might have anything to do with Australia.

One odd thing is that the interrogation was done by FBI. That's a domestic agency. Had this been done by military intelligence there's a chance they might have known something about the region.

ECHELON is the term popularly used for an automated global interception and relay system operated by the intelligence agencies in five nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (it is believed that ECHELON is the code name for the portion of the system that intercepts satellite-based communications). While the United States National Security Agency (NSA) takes the lead, ECHELON works in conjunction with other intelligence agencies, including the Australian Defence Signals Directorate (DSD). It is believed that ECHELON also works with Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the agencies of other allies of the United States, pursuant to various treaties
http://archive.aclu.org/echelonwatch/faq.html

This was interrogation information, not sigint, and the story says FBI, not an intelligence organization (not NSA).

These were probably a bunch of domestic FBI guys who probably figured that an attack in Indonesia meant an attack on Indonesians or other asians, and weren't thinking of something like Acapulco with American tourists.

I was pointing out to our Aussie mate that his country falls under the Echelon umberalla & "possible terrorist threat" is not hard intel.