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Did foreign spies tap Rosmah's phone? Posted: 14 Dec 2013 06:10 PM PST Australian intelligence agencies actually targeted the mobile phone of Indonesia's first lady in 2009 because she had become the single most influential adviser to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and was thought to be hatching a presidential succession plan for her eldest son. The decision to target Kristiani Herawati's phone was not done on a whim but was part of a deliberate and calculated strategy to learn more about the shifting balance of power inside Jakarta's ruling elite. Today The Weekend Australian publishes an important story concerning the intercepts of the telephones of Indonesian leaders by Australia's intelligence agencies in 2009. In particular it explains why the then-Defence Signals Directorate intercepted the mobile phone calls of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's wife, Kristiani Herawati. (I wonder if Australian and Singapore spies had also intercepted Rosmah Mansor's mobile phone. Compared to Kristiani, she is 'much closer' to the Cabinet. Although Singapore denied it, the Republic's close partnership with the US, Australia and Israel brings about endless doubt.) Drawing on his own extensive sources, as well as material already in the public domain via the diplomatic cables disclosed through WikiLeaks, Associate Editor Cameron Stewart builds up a convincing picture of why the intelligence agencies had an interest in the President's wife. Once the threshold decision to intercept the phones of senior Indonesians was made, Kristiani Herawati's phone was relevant for several reasons. The chief of those was that she was a significant, autonomous political player in her own right. As the cables reveal, she was regarded as her husband's most important adviser, a potential president in her own right, a senior figure and office holder in the Democrat Party and a mover and shaker in politics. The intelligence agencies were interested in the formation of strategic political views within the Indonesian administration, as well as the complex links to organised Islamic political groups. Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan reports these phone intercept decisions were approved by the relevant cabinet ministers and Kevin Rudd at the time. The Weekend Australian believes Stewart's story demonstrates that both the federal government, and the intelligence agencies, were acting reasonably and responsibly when they made these decisions in 2009. There is a clear public interest in Australians knowing that these decisions were taken for weighty reasons, emerging not least out of the fact that extremists based in Indonesia had taken nearly a hundred Australian lives in acts of terror in the decade from 2002. No government has been a more doughty foe of terrorists than that led by President Yudhoyono. Tony Abbott is right to describe the Indonesian leader as a great president of his country and a great friend of Australia. At the same time, there are forces in Indonesia that are deeply hostile to Australians, and indeed which have also conducted a great deal of violence directed at Indonesians themselves. No one would ever accuse SBY or his senior ministers of conniving in any such activity, but this is an essential element of the context in which the Rudd government authorised these operations in 2009. Since The Guardian Australia website and the ABC broke the initial story, in the most irresponsible way imaginable, with the publication of unredacted, raw Australian intelligence documents, there has been a concerted effort, especially among many commentators at the ABC and in the Fairfax press, to blame the Abbott government for the fallout from Rudd government's decisions, and to blacken the reputation of Australia's intelligence agencies. These campaigns are completely unjustified. The agencies operate wholly within the law, under the guidance of the Australian government of the day. The Prime Minister has shown commendable restraint in not going down the obvious road of blaming his Labor predecessors for the decisions later revealed in the documents. Australians can have faith in the prudence and integrity of their security agencies and government. Bambang, in protest over the espionage, had limited relations with Australia. Although PM Tony Abbott said it was 'not done during his premiership', diplomats had been mounting pressure on him to apologise for the Australians. And recently, Bambang issued a warning about the possibility of 'a violent Christmas' in Indonesia as intelligent experts found evidence of terrorist groups' plan to 'teach the foreigners', especially Australians. A police officer has suggested that Christians take only bibles and not bags to Christmas services as a precaution against possible terrorist attacks. Church-goers were also advised to stay alert and report anything suspicious to the nearest police station. "Not carrying bags into church would enable us to monitor the whole situation," Semarang Police chief Sr. Comr. Djihartono said on Saturday. Djihartono said his office had previously requested that every church in the city install CCTVs and ensure that the cameras worked during Christmas services. The Semarang Police will deploy 782 personnel to safeguard Christmas, backed up by the military and mass organizations. Recently, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned of the possibility of a Christmas terrorist attack during this year's festive season.

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