FBI failed to alert Australia on terrorism

FBI failed to alert Australia on terrorism

The Australian government admitted on Tuesday the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had failed to pass on information about a terrorist threat in Indonesia before the Bali bombings, but said the information would have made no difference to the outcome.

ABC television reported that the FBI said it had been told by an al-Qaeda suspect about imminent attacks on Westerners in the region a month before the Bali bombings claimed 202 lives in October 2002.

ABC said that in a written statement to its Lateline program, the FBI said the information was given only to countries deemed to be at risk of attack and that there was no indication of a specific threat to Australia.

In an FBI interrogation in August 2002, al-Qaeda suspect Mohamed Mansour Jabarah said he had met Hambali, the terrorist leader subsequently named as the mastermind of the Bali attacks.

Hambali told Jabarah he wanted to attack Westerners in soft targets such as bars and nightclubs in several Southeast Asian countries.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the FBI's failure to pass on information about terrorist threats was an oversight.

"I don't know why the FBI did not hand it over. They are normally very reliable, as the CIA is, at handing over relevant material to us.

"But as I say, it may have been an oversight -- and I am sure it was nothing more than an oversight -- but it wouldn't have added to the sum total of the knowledge we had because we did know there was a possible threat to those sorts of targets."

Australian National University academic and terrorism expert Clive Williams said the information could have been useful. "It would have perhaps changed our travel advisories," he said. -- AFP