Silent witness: Australian intelligence and East Timor

The events in East Timor leading up to and immediately following the vote for independence from Indonesia in September 1999, and the attendant breach in Australian-Indonesian relations, posed the greatest challenge to the Australian intelligence agencies and the national security policymaking organization in more than a quarter of a century. On the whole, the intelligence agencies performed very well, producing timely, accurate and informative reports, with the important exception being the under-estimation of the scale of the killings and forced deportations in the fortnight after 4 September, 1999. However, there were serious deficiencies in the national security policy-making organization, and elements of the intelligence community succumbed to political pressures when the Government found some of the intelligence about Indonesian involvement in planning and directing the violence to be unpalatable.     

“I believe that it will be an amazing experience”: pre-departure impressions of students on an Erasmus exchange programme

This article discusses responses to interviews forming the first part of a longitudinal study in which we seek to evaluate the short- and long-term impacts of the Erasmus experience on law students from a British university of the effects of a year spent abroad at a partner institution. Law is a particularly fruitful subject area for such a study, as students will be studying in a country with a different legal culture to that with which students are familiar. It is clear though that the experience is not limited to legal study but extends to working within a different educational culture, as well as living in another country over an extended period of time. The object of this paper is to explore and analyse actual expectations and experiences of students more fully so as to understand the impact of the Erasmus programme on their lives and careers. Whilst the data collected to date, mainly through in-depth semi-structured interviews, covers a limited population, the study identifies a wide-ranging set of motivational factors, though the mixture of, and weight given to, academic and personal motivations that vary from student to student.     

Some Lessons from Using PFI for School Building Projects

This article describes some lessons gained from observing the developments of PFI projects for provision of school buildings. The research, which was primarily based on participant observation methodology, aims to identify key issues relevant to the effective management of such projects. It also attempts to investigate ways in which the PFI process may be changing in this area. Issues covered in the research include motivation, staffing, ownership of the asset, innovation, local democracy and various financial matters. It is observed that some changes in practice in employing the PFI in this area have tended to move it back in the direction of conventional procurement.     

Project Abstract: an Anglo-American intelligence operation in 1947 to recover guided weapon technical documentation buried in Germany

In early 1947, American intelligence organisations learned that there were hidden collections of technical documentation that pertained to World War II German guided weapon development that were not recovered by Allied investigators in 1945. A joint Anglo-American intelligence operation was initiated in February of that year, dubbed ‘Project Abstract’ by the Americans, to recover the caches. Project Abstract was a concerted effort by British and American scientific and technical intelligence experts to round up the last material remains of the World War II guided weapon programmes at the renowned experimental and testing establishments at Peenemünde in northern Germany.     

CONFLICT AND CO‐PARENTING: THE CONSTRUCTS OF NONRESIDENT FATHERS*

Scots law constructs a co‐parental role for nonresident fathers without clarifying how this should operate in practice. Personal Construct Theory (PCT) offers a useful approach to understanding such fathers’ distinct and changing conceptions of their role. Findings are presented from a study of 17 nonresident Scottish fathers maintaining contact with nonresident children. Idiographic analysis of data from repertory grid interviews administered three times over the course of a year shows that participants perceive family situations in terms of paternal involvement, impact, emotion, or antagonism. Changes in construing following family events support the PCT understanding of hostility; implications for family services are discussed.