Negotiations can be pressed to the limit. In the case of East Timor, Australian intelligence may have been quite positive that Jakarta would never have accepted a peacekeeping force before the referendum. We do not know exactly how much violence defence intelligence predicted after the ballot in East Timor. Perhaps the prediction was for far more violence than actually occurred. Nor do we know what other government agencies, such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Office of National Assessment, were predicting.
Assessments are often changeable, contradictory and incomplete.
Finally, openness about intelligence can close off options. It would surely not have convinced Indonesia to accept a peacekeeping force. Moreover, pressure would have arisen in Australia and the UN to postpone the ballot, perhaps indefinitely. The lesson for TNI would have been that threats of violence help to retain East Timor. For all these reasons governments cannot provide a running commentary on the sort of intelligence they are receiving.