Before I Sleep (13 page)

The bill had one interesting innovation for a
Police Act.
It empowered me to recruit at any level. Traditionally state police could only offer recruits appointments at constable level. I needed desperately to bolster my head office staff with officers who had sufficient intelligence to handle some of the new challenges which would face the force.

It was because of this new provision that I was able to recruit Kerry Milte at superintendent level. Professor Stanley Johnson, then head of Melbourne University's Criminology Unit, recommended Milte who had topped his examinations for a law degree and had then impressed Johnson with the outcome of his postgraduate year in criminology. Milte was tall and well-built and, at the time, aged only about 23 years. He had been raised in the disciplined environment of a Melbourne Fire Brigade station.

Recruiting someone so young at superintendent level raised eyebrows and some opposition, which I overcame. It was only by offering Milte a superintendent's salary that I could match the money he was being offered by several big law firms. I did not explain to all and sundry that I wanted someone to create a central crime intelligence unit since there wasn't one nationally or in the states. There was an obvious need for one and Canberra was well-placed to provide a home for it. There was no model for us to use, so I initially set Milte to working on an elementary intelligence section for our own use. Milte proved to be a good choice, although he and my deputy, Jack Davis, a former New South Wales Fraud Squad member with an Honours degree in law, did not hit it off. I think this was purely a clash of personalities, combined maybe with a little jealousy. After I resigned to go elsewhere, Milte also left and went into private practice. Then I heard he had become associated with Senator Lionel Murphy who became federal attorney-general in the Whitlam government. I have little doubt that Milte was the architect of Murphy's notorious raid on ASIO headquarters in Melbourne in search of concealed files about terrorists.

In 1962, with approval from the Commissioners' Conference, we were able to introduce a Commissioned Officers' Course at Manly to which, each year, all states except Victoria would send about two students. I was very careful in selecting staff for the course. The course went well and, as far as I know, continues on in some form today. At the 1966 Commissioners' Conference, approval was obtained for a sub-committee to be established to investigate the setting up of a National Police Planning and Research Unit, but we made slow progress for a few years until, in 1969,1 was appointed chairman of a committee of representatives from the Commonwealth, Victorian, Queensland and New South Wales forces. We met on a number of occasions in Canberra, and this time Inspector Barlow of the Queensland force gave me considerable support for the concept. The sub-committee agreed that the research unit's main objectives should be to examine present police practices and procedures in order to provide recommendations on how to increase efficiency and plan for development. We decided that the basic costs should be shared by the Commonwealth and the states, and that each force should provide a liaison officer to cooperate with the unit. We felt it was important not to duplicate or conflict with the National Institute of Criminology. These arrangements were subsequently implemented.

One of the people remaining in my memory from those early Canberra days is the governor general, Sir William Slim. I met him quite a few times and I was most impressed with the man. Slim dealt personally with letters from ordinary Australians that had been written to him as representative of the Queen. Apparently this is an old English custom: when all legal avenues have been exhausted, a citizen may appeal directly to the monarch. In Australia, this means the governor general. Slim read every letter that was sent to him, although his secretary, Murray Tyrrell, would already have dealt with most of them. Many of these appeals to the governor general were made by people who were mentally deranged, and it was often obvious that there would be no point investigating their claims. However, Slim was adamant that before a letter was consigned to file, it was necessary to be convinced that there was no merit in the appeal. So the governor general arranged for any appeals which looked as if they had substance to be sent to me as director of the Commonwealth Investigation Service. As a result of our field inquiries, it became evident that there were some people in the Australian community who would be possible threats to the safety of the Queen when she was in Australia or to the governor general himself. On one occasion, our officers on the gate at Government House intercepted a man who had driven up from Sydney to demand an audience with the governor general. When the guard commander asked the man what time his appointment was, the man indicated that he didn't need to make an appointment: he was in Canberra to bring the governor general to account. The guards talked to the man quietly and asked him into their office to sit down while they made the necessary arrangements. While they had the man preoccupied, a guard made a surreptitious examination of his car and discovered a loaded rifle and spare rounds of ammunition. The man was taken to see two Commonwealth doctors who certified him as temporarily insane and committed him to Kenmore psychiatric hospital in Sydney. There he soon recovered and was released.

A year later the man again arrived at the Government House gate. Luckily the same guard commander was on duty at the time and he immediately identified the man. Again the man was found to be carrying a rifle and ammunition. He was recommitted to Kenmore where he soon made a full recovery and was released. Our inquiries revealed that the man was a marine engineer whose vessel docked once a year in Sydney. Here the man hired a car, bought a rifle and set off to Canberra because he was convinced that the governor general was not doing a proper job.

It was the existence of people such as the marine engineer who gave us the idea of producing a small loose-leafed photo album carrying pictures and details of people who posed a threat to prominent Australians or visiting overseas VIPs. This
Black Book,
as it became known, was invaluable during royal visits and during such high-security exercises as the visit of the American president, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was the first American president to visit Australia and I remember driving with him in a car with an open roof from the centre of Canberra to Government House. We arrived at a large intersection where a crowd of people were waiting. So thick was the crowd that the car slowed and Johnson, who was a consummate politician, ordered the driver to stop. He stood up and spoke to the people. I noticed a face in the crowd that belonged to one of people depicted in the
Black Book.
He was the author of a number of very threatening letters which detailed what he would do to visiting VIPs. The man was moving towards Johnson. I tried to get out of the car, but the crowd was so thick that the front door was jammed shut. I tried to get Johnson to sit down, but he wasn't paying any attention to me — he was enjoying the adulation of the crowd. I saw the man from the
Black Book
reach up to Johnson, shake him by the hand and say, “Welcome to Australia, Mr President.”

Later I remarked quite casually to Johnson that I thought the crowds were larger than those on the Queen's previous visit. Johnson said quite sharply: “Son, don't tell me, tell the press.” It wasn't my job to tell the press anything. But if I had done so, I would have told them that the crowds were actually smaller than they had been on the Queen's
first
visit.

During Johnson's visit, I became quite friendly with his own Secret Service team who, I learned, were actually Treasury officials rather than members of the FBI. But their leader told me something I didn't know about the FBI's head, J. Edgar Hoover.

“You're in a good spot to broaden your horizons,” he said to me one day. I asked him what he meant.

“Do what Edgar Hoover does,” the Secret Service leader said, and went on to describe how Hoover kept a large album filled with details of affairs, adulteries, tax evasions and anything else that could be used to blackmail influential Americans. Hoover, the Secret Service leader assured me, always managed to get what he wanted in Washington. His budgets were always approved. “You could do the same thing in Australia — it wouldn't be too difficult.”

I said I was sure the ploy would work perfectly well, but I wasn't really interested in building my own empire in quite this way.

The other American president I came into contact with was John F. Kennedy, whom I met on a visit to the United States. He really impressed me and I found him a very engaging person. What struck me was the very easy camaraderie that existed between JFK and his Secret Service escort team. They shared jokes and generally seemed to be on warm personal terms. The Secret Service team were very keen on their job. They were much more professional in their work than the two Scodand Yard men that I'd known over the years from royal visits. I had been at the White House talking to the escort team about tactics and movements when I was asked to join them on their next run with the president. About an hour later, I joined them in their close escort car for a trip shadowing the president's limousine. On our return to the White House, Kennedy left his car and walked over to me and said: “Welcome, Aussie. I'm glad to have you with us.” We chatted for some time and then the Secret Service team and I followed Kennedy into the White House. While I was having lunch in the Staff Mess, the leader of the escort team told me that the president had invited me to travel on Air Force One whenever I was with the Secret Service. I thought that was a great privilege; many Americans would have given a lot of money to say that they had travelled on Air Force One. Shortly after I returned to Australia, a packet arrived from the White House. It contained a certificate signed by the president which stated that I had been an invited guest on Air Force One and a photograph of the President signed “To Ray from John F. Kennedy”. A couple of years later, I was quite disturbed when I heard that Kennedy had been assassinated. I had been aware, of course, of his father's anti-British sentiments when he was the American Ambassador in London during the war. But John F. Kennedy spoke to me as if Australia and the United States were cousins; I felt welcomed by him and I noted that that sort of conversation would not have occurred if a strange officer had appeared in the royal escort team when the British monarch was in Australia.

When I had been offered the directorship of the CIS, Mavis had sensed how keen I was to take on this responsibility and so, despite our having become settled in Melbourne, she had agreed to another move to another strange city where we, as usual, had no relatives or friends. I went on ahead, but this time — having learned from my two previous mistakes — only took a rented house. With perseverance, Mavis sold our “white elephant” without loss, packed the furniture again and brought the family to Canberra. Once again, she made the routine calls on the headmasters of the local schools and got the children settled in and adjusted to the new school curriculum, before she searching for and buying a home for us. Mavis found a house in the best residential suburb in class-conscious Canberra. She obtained it at a price which so impressed our land agent that he immediately offered her a job on his staff. This invitation she declined, and we settled down to the task of getting our family arrangements back to normal. The local guide company was short of a leader, as was the local scout troop, so we both volunteered, and our children joined our units. Both the guides and the scouts flourished, and did so for the next eleven years. We set new standards in Canberra for guide and scout cooperation. In New South Wales (which for scouting purposes included the ACT), there was a split between these two “kin” organisations and we found this disconcerting. So we arranged joint training for leaders of both organisations, as well as social activities, and when our own scouts and guides held their annual camps we often managed to have combined campfires at night.

We joined the local Baptist church and discovered an intelligent, progressive fellowship. The church had a lively youth group which, amongst other activities, fielded two men's hockey teams, one in senior grade. Andrew and Ian were soon involved, and not long afterwards I was invited to be their goalkeeper. The three Whitrod males turned out each Saturday afternoon, and Mavis and Ruth loyally came as barrackers. After the game the family usually went to a picture show at Manuka, and then had a snack at a nearby cafe. From 1954 to 1964, Mavis gave all her time to being a homemaker. She was always there when the children came home from school. She listened to their accounts of the day's events, tactfully offered wise counsel, ensured we were all properly clothed and fed, offered warm hospitality to the other children of our neighbourhood who were less well cared for, maintained a nice garden in poor soil, and made friends with our neighbours. A former guide, now a professor of Economics in Canada, wrote recently saying that the Whitrods had provided her with a second home while she was growing up in Canberra, and added that she had always been warmly welcomed and her views were listened to with respect — a rare thing for children in those days.