Who bombed the Hilton?
Read Who bombed the Hilton? Online
Authors: Rachel Landers
R
ACHEL
L
ANDERS
is a filmmaker with a PhD in history.
Rachel Landers'
Who Bombed the Hilton
is a terrifying tale written with sparkling good humour and panache. Landers takes the âtatty, fractured saga' of a horrific terrorist attack in the heart of Sydney, and, backed by remarkable research, she brings it to life. She makes of it a testament to the victims and the investigators, as well as a warning to us in our own age of terror. As we struggle with terrorism, and with the danger of damaging our democracy by our measures to counter it, we do well to remember this story of âthe one who got away'.
â Anna Funder, author of
Stasiland
and
All That I Am
A NewSouth book
Published by
NewSouth Publishing
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052
AUSTRALIA
© Rachel Landers 2016
First published 2016
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the
Copyright Act
, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Landers, Rachel, author.
Title: Who bombed the Hilton? / Rachel Landers.
ISBN: 9781742233512 (paperback)
9781742241470 (ebook)
9781742246413 (ePDF)
Subjects: Ananda Marga (Organisation) â History.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation â History.
Trials (Conspiracy) â New South Wales.
Judicial error â New South Wales.
Terrorism investigation â Australia.
Australia â Politics and government â 1976â1990.
Dewey Number: 345.94407
Cover design
Blue Cork
Cover image
The Sydney Hilton on 13 February 1978.
The Sydney Morning Herald
/Fairfax Syndication.
All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.
Contents
An Australian campaign of terror
âThe blast that shook Australia'
âA full-scale terrorist war'
âHave you ever seen what this stuff can do?'
The immolation of Lynette Phillips
âCampaigns of violence and intimidation'
Epilogue: âMy heart has been broken'
For D and D
I arrived outside the Hilton only about two minutes after the explosion. Already the air was thick with the noise of sirens and cries from the injured and the peculiar, pungent odour of human blood.
About 15 metres from the rear of the mangled garbage truck where the bomb had exploded I saw what appeared to be the torso of a man covered in a few bloody rags.
Another man was getting up from beside a taxi clutching his face, which had been cut by flying glass from one of the many wrecked shop windows. A young girl was lying behind a car sobbing as the first ambulance screamed to a halt.
Some of the younger State policemen appeared dazed by the shattering event. A more senior Commonwealth officer took control and started moving some youths who had rushed to the scene back down George Street towards the Town Hall.
Ambulancemen and police threw black plastic covers over the human debris.
A team of paramedics began working frantically on one of the police officers who had been caught in the blast. It was hard to recognise him as a policeman. The only distinguishing form was the blue âNSW Police' insignia on his shoulder. Ambulancemen worked feverishly patching a wound at his side and setting up a saline drip.
It was now about 15 minutes since the bomb went off. The area was teeming with uniformed and Special Branch officers, firemen and ambulancemen. A crowd of onlookers was growing rapidly about
100 metres away near the Town Hall. Police also began to move away the handful of journalists who had arrived at the scene.
The first ambulances left for the hospital and the search for clues to the blast was underway.
Peter Logue, AAP, âWitness Reminded of Northern Ireland',
Sydney Morning Herald
, 14 February 1978.
The Hilton and me
I'm sitting in the Tea Room in Sydney's Queen Victoria Building across from a man whose name I can't tell you. Let's call him Fred. Fred's a dapper, grey-haired former senior detective in his late sixties who was lionised for his skill in running a series of spectacular covert operations in the 1990s. It has been said that he could wire up an operative and send him into the fray â a drug operation, a dirty cop shop â and they could strip the agent naked if need be and never locate the recording device. Fred is also known for his excessive operational caution. Contact between us was made by a third party and only then were my details forwarded to him. He has asked the waiter to move us to an isolated table and only accepts the third one offered â near an exit, good visibility, away from other diners.
He sits eating his grilled fish with his back to the wall. If I wish to continue contact with him I am to buy him a SIM card and forward it through the third party. While he is, shall we say, assisting me with my inquiries, all this would be a lot more gripping if I was confident he actually had inside information about the bombing of the Hilton Hotel in Sydney at 12.40 am on 13 February 1978 that left three dead and nine wounded. Often described as the first (and, for almost four decades, the only) act of terrorist murder on Australian soil, it is a crime which â despite decades of convoluted trials, inquiries, counter inquiries, commissions, parliamentary declarations and more plot twists than an airport potboiler â remains unsolved.