AUSTRALIAN intelligence agencies targeted the mobile phone of Indonesia‘s first lady in 2009 because she had become the single most influential adviser to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and was thought to be hatching a presidential succession plan for her eldest son.

The decision to target Kristiani Herawati‘s phone was not done on a whim but was part of a deliberate and calculated strategy to learn more about the shifting balance of power inside Jakarta‘s ruling elite.