Former Australian spy to plead guilty in East Timor bugging case
- Lawyers for the former agent, known only as ‘Witness K’, told a Canberra court he would plead guilty to blowing the whistle on the spying operation
- Unlike most democracies, Australia has no formal protections for freedom of the press or for whistle-blowers who expose alleged government wrongdoing
Lawyers for the former agent, known only as “Witness K”, told a Canberra court he would plead guilty to blowing the whistle on the spying operation against the newly independent government of East Timor, national broadcaster ABC said.
The man’s former lawyer, Bernard Collaery, who was charged with conspiring to violate the secrecy act with his client, said he would continue to fight the charges.
The case against Witness K and Collaery became public a year ago, when they were charged with breaching the Intelligence Services Act for divulging details of an operation to bug East Timor’s cabinet rooms in 2004 during negotiations over an oil and gas treaty and maritime boundary.
The protracted row over the maritime border – with billions of dollars in offshore gas revenue at stake – was finally resolved in March 2018 and Australia’s parliament ratified the deal just last week.