[Australia]: Message to the United States [SEC=TOP SECRET]

[Owen]

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DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE​

SECURITY CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET (ENCRYPTED)​

10 December 2003

Dear the United States Director of National Intelligence, Let me formally introduce myself, my name is Peter Varghese and I'm the Director-General of the Office of National Intelligence, an agency within the Australian Government's Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The role of the office is to disseminate intelligence from all of our National Intelligence Community agencies and from our allies and other Open Source Intelligence in order to provide the Prime Minister and National Security Committee of Cabinet with all-source intelligence assessments. From what we understand from Open Source Intelligence assessments, Thailand is exerting an immense amount of influence and power in the region and perhaps even globally through various means. As we still regard the United States as our closest ally, an alliance which is unshakeable regardless of which government is in charge in Australia, we are inquiring as to whether we could receive a dossier and all-round assessment on the Republic of Thailand from the perspectives of the United States Government so our government can be better informed to make decisions about foreign policy and defence. Yours sincerely, Peter Varghese.

Robert Marsden Hope Building, CANBERRA, ACT 2600 Telephone: (02) 6277 7700​

Protective Marking:	Business Impact Level:	Compromise of Information Confidentiality:	Required to be Encrypted:
UNOFFICIAL	No Business Impact	No damage. This information does not form part of official duty.
OFFICIAL	Low Business Impact	No or insignificant damage. This is the majority of routine information.
OFFICIAL: Sensitive	Low to Medium Business Impact	Limited damage to an individual, organisation or government generally if compromised.
PROTECTED	High Business Impact	Damage to the national interest, organisations or individuals.
SECRET	Extreme Business Impact	Serious damage to the national interest, organisations or individuals.
TOP SECRET	Catastrophic Business Impact	Exceptionally grave damage to the national interest, organisations or individuals.

Odinson

 

[Owen]

Odinson

 

[Odinson]

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OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE​

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ENCRYPTED MESSAGE​

TO: Peter Varghese, Director-General of the Office of National Intelligence of the Commonwealth of Australia ( Owen )​

FROM: Orlando Waller, Director of National Intelligence of the United States of America

Director-General Varghese,

Thank you for reaching out to my office. I have spoken with the President, the Secretary of State, and the Commander of Naval Intelligence to prepare this message for you. I am sure it goes without saying, but I trust that you will keep the contents of this message between our governments.

The United States and Thailand have had an increasingly troubling relationship since the turn of the century. Most of the strain between the United States and Thailand has been caused by a change in the Thai government's foreign policy, which seems to have begun after Thailand's cooperation with Sweden in South Africa. Thailand has repeatedly, on numerous occasions, attempted armed interventions in Europe and the Pacific. Virtually all of these attempted interventions have been without any request for assistance from the affected governments.

The most recent example of this was in the Mediterranean where Thai ships maintained a holding pattern at the mouth of the Mediterranean while others operated off the coast of Italy during the crisis in the Vatican. At the request of the Italian government, President Gore deployed a carrier battle group and two battleships with the mission of protecting Italy and the Vatican from "outside intervention." At the peak (at least from an American perspective) of this crisis, one of our battleships and a destroyer intercepted a Thai helicopter carrier that was operating in the Adriatic Sea. During this heightened time of tension, and afterwards, multiple European countries privately reached out to the Federal government and expressed deep concerns over Thai operations in and around Europe.

The Thai government also attempted to provoke an armed conflict, presumably to justify and armed invasion, of Burma. This prompted a joint response from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Poland in which several fleets were deployed to the Pacific. A second American fleet was directed to the Bay of Bengal. Thai maritime forces publicly broadcast the whereabouts of the carrier battle group and came close to entering the fleet's security zone, which likely would have led to an armed response and possibly conflict - at one point, the Thai government implied that the American carrier battle group may have been taken over by pirates...

Before this incident, the Thai government failed to protect the American Embassy in Bangkok which led to a bombing of the embassy. To this day, the United States still does not have a diplomatic mission there. Since then, Thailand has repeatedly made political and diplomatic blunders that have decreased the number of diplomatic channels between the United States and Thailand (as well as a number of other Western countries). Some of these blunders were malicious, some may have been due to incompetence, while others may have been simple misunderstandings. Regardless, because of these diplomatic mishaps which have decreased the number of available channels for the Thai and American governments to communicate and resolve issues with each other, the Thai Prime Minister and President Gore had to speak over the telephone to defuse the escalating situation in the Bay of Bengal before it turned into open conflict. This was probably the closest, so far, that our armed forces have come to open conflict.

That brings us to present day. I am sure that you are well-versed in the current war between Canada and France right now, so I do not need to give a full briefing of it. But the Thai government has repeatedly voiced its support for France publicly. While this itself is not necessarily an overtly hostile action, it is another example of Thailand meddling in Western affairs. President Gore has made it clear that the United States will not tolerate any outside interference in the conflict between Canada and France. The American intelligence community, the Pentagon, and the White House are concerned that Thailand will once again attempt some type of intervention, or armed support, of France. If Thailand attempts this, in the Western Hemisphere, it will be crossing a line that will have dire consequences. I can only speculate as to what that scenario would look like, but it would assuredly bring the United States and Thailand onto the brink of war, and it could force the United States to begin an armed intervention in the conflict between Canada and France.

I will give you my own personal assessment of the situation from a Thai perspective... The Thai Republic has built numerous public infrastructure projects and made numerous domestic reforms which have benefited the Thai people. However, instead of focusing more on building Thailand into a regional powerhouse, the Thai government has instead tried to focus on building up its military - specifically its navy - in an attempt to be able to project power around the world. Thailand does not have any overseas territories (outside of a military base in Turkey which is extremely controversial) and has no real justification to be interfering in global or Western affairs. My conclusions are that the Thai government is taking this approach to impress its people domestically. However, this has come at the cost of tarnishing Thailand's diplomatic standing in the world. This is extremely disappointing because the State Department believes that Thailand could be a key regional partner in East Asia - and perhaps even more - if it simply sat back and tried working with other countries diplomatically instead of trying to assert itself forcefully into every Western trouble.

The Office of Naval Intelligence has privately classified the Thai Coast Guard as unprofessional and paranoid and the Thai Navy as a wild card. After speaking with the President, the Secretary of State, and the Commander of ONI, I can confidently say to you that your government should be weary of any Thai military activity in Oceania or the Pacific and that your government should not invite Thai forces into Australia or your sphere of influence.

Finally, while I am not a diplomatic agent of the United States, the President told me point blank that the Federal government would be more than willing to work with Australia's government directly to ensure your country's national security and sovereignty. If that is something that your government would like to peruse, even on a limited scale, then it is something that could be arranged through proper diplomatic channels.

I hope that this message was sufficient. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach back out to me.​

Very respectfully,

Orlando Waller
Director of National Intelligence
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