Who bombed the Hilton? (6 page)

1.45 to 2 am. A new bomb scare. An object
wrapped in hessian is located on the fire escape. It's a wrapped brick used to prop open the door.

Superintendent Reginald Douglas briefs the press in the media centre. He accepts responsibility for not telling police to search the rubbish bins.

3 am. The hotel is sealed. No one is allowed to enter. The police bomb squad continues searching for further explosives.

3.30 am. Before Fraser retires for the remainder of the night, he asks for a full written report on the security assessment of the Hilton and the Bowral visit.

Outside, the Scientific Branch detectives and Army experts begin to examine the wreckage. A team of up to 12 Scientific Branch detectives work through the night.
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In a few hours Norm Sheather will read the following eloquent précis of the crime scene compiled by Detective Sergeant RD Millington. This report will take him through that long, warm night and bring him to the moment he forms the Hilton bombing task force.

The day unfolds … The man completing the review of securing CHOGRM after the bombing is Alan Flemming, the 65-year-old head of the Protective
Security Coordination Centre and chairman of the inter-departmental committee advising the government on VIP security. A World War II veteran and intelligence officer, he had been brought out of retirement to head a new unit. Six months earlier his unit of 20 had been given sharply increased powers in preparation for CHOGRM and given the job of counter-terrorist planning. He has clearly failed in that and has until 8 am to come up with a new plan.

Also wearing failure is Superintendent Reg Douglas, who was in charge of all CHOGRM security. He admits to Flemming that he no longer believes that he can guarantee the security of the Sydney–Bowral train line with the 300 police at his disposal.

8 am. Flemming and his team complete the new security report. He flags calling in the Army.

8 am. The President of Bangladesh arrives at the Hilton straight from the airport — God only knows what he thinks.

10 am. CHOGRM starts inside the Hilton. The mood is bleak.

Norm gathers witness statements. He makes no assumptions. He continues to corral the information that pours in throughout the day and begins the hunt. Everyone who was present at the demonstrations the day before will be tracked down and questioned — the feminists, the anarchists, the Ananda Marga. Leads are pursued from eyewitness accounts around
the time of the blast. Three men are seen driving a Mr Whippy van away from the explosion (reported by Trevor James Thomson, Station Assistant). A suspicious ‘Arabic-looking' man is seen hanging around the escalator (reported by Hilton employee Manfred Von Gries). Other leads include someone seeing a Rolls Royce weaving up the street and information about an escapee from a Western Australian prison.

Yet Norm is not content to simply receive information that may or may not be tinged with agendas. Given that he has 12 world leaders in close proximity to that explosion, who can say who the target was? Even the press is speculating:

Thus Norm sends a telex out to the world. Titled ‘Regarding a Fatal Bomb Explosion outside the Hilton Hotel', he sends it first to the respective countries of the visiting Commonwealth heads of state, next to the secretary-general of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) in Paris, and then to every member country of Interpol. He asks simply for a ‘list of persons belonging to international organised gangs and who are known to be responsible for various types of violent crimes (bombings, assassination attempts, hostage taking etc.)'.
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In 1978 the telex is at its pinnacle and it connects the most remote places on the planet to each other. Yet despite the information being conveyed in real time, it cannot be responded to instantly. Without sophisticated computers and email to flit across the globe, hard-copy files need to be searched, experts consulted, responses compiled. It may be a slow form of evidence-gathering (some of the responses will take up to two or three weeks to arrive), but when answers do come, they are considered and disturbing.

By the end of the day Norm Sheather sends Detective Superintendent Jim Black to face the press. He reports the accomplishment of lots of groundwork, the compilation of lots of statements, of messages sent to interstate police and to Interpol, but ‘No positive leads.'
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Tuesday 14 February 1978

Norm Sheather and the rest of Australia awake to the news that the Australian Army has been mobilised to take over the security for CHOGRM. Over 500 armed soldiers line the train route from Sydney for the world leaders' planned jaunt to the country town of Bowral. Not content with this security measure, the train is sent off empty while the leaders are stuffed into Iroquois helicopters and whisked to their destination. The press are incredulous and compare the scene to — Belfast! Beirut!
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— and report breathlessly that it is ‘the most elaborate security operation in Australia's history'. One reporter can't help but add the barb that ‘Operation Ghost Train was carried out with a sophistication that contrasted sharply with the position on
Sunday when a bomber was able to plant an explosive device in a street rubbish bin under the eyes of police guarding the conference venue'.
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The task force begins to focus. Those on it need to swiftly and effectively order the material that is streaming in. Sheather has three principal sources of information to contend with. The first from the public, the second from the task force's own investigations, and the third from ASIO and Special Branch. As the first and second are now in motion, he sets his mind to the third, and prepares for a briefing from ASIO.

These two organisations, ASIO and New South Wales Special Branch, have been regarded as conjoined twins in the minds of many, but they have different structures, agendas, duties and, importantly, different personnel. While they do occasionally work on the same cases, this does not necessarily mean they work together. Nor do they always share information.

At the time of the bombing, ASIO is headed by Sir Edward Woodward, and the organisation is fresh from the Hope Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security, which reported the year before. The royal commission is the catalyst for ASIO becoming more professional and less politically partisan, with officers who are better educated and better trained. ASIO's mandate is to collect intelligence from multiple sources by clandestine surveillance — technical and human sources (agents they recruit) — for the purpose
of identifying security threats to Australia in the form of politically motivated violence. Its first obligation is to report directly to the federal government, and it is under no obligation to pass on its intelligence to the Commonwealth or state police or to New South Wales Special Branch.
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New South Wales Special Branch, on the other hand, in early 1978 is operating under pretty much the same system it has had since its inception in 1948 — that is, demonstrating ‘little evidence … of formal operating or reporting procedures'.
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The ranks of Special Branch are drawn from the police — officers who had left school early and worked their way up through the system. Officially its purpose is to ‘be aware' of subversive or extremist activity in New South Wales
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and to report this information to the police commissioner. It is charged with gathering information on various factions within ‘ethnic communities',
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both to prevent internecine violence and to give protection to consular representatives. In addition it is to provide security escorts to VIPs, both local and international visitors. If, in the course of any of these functions, information arises that would be of importance from a national point of view, it is to be passed on to ASIO through the commissioner of police.

Unofficially, Special Branch is known to be a place of nepotism, corruption, ineptitude, ‘dirt' files and good times. Apparently most afternoons a bar
opens in the Special Branch office following a long lunch. One senior policeman told me they were very good at mixing martinis. Little wonder they were not in the office at 12.40 am when the phone call warning about the bomb came in.

So ASIO is a national organisation in the throes of professionalising its staff, and Special Branch is a New South Wales–based outfit packed with working-class mates who enjoy a boozy, cruisy, working environment … hardly joined at the hip. Both, however, are deeply shocked by the bombing. Special Branch feel the sting of knowing they were ensconced in the bar at the Hilton when Suzanne Jones was trying to get hold of them to transfer the warning call. ASIO is even more disturbed — they had been assiduously monitoring ‘organisations of interest'
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by multiple means and had reason to feel confident that they would have had some forewarning of an attack of this nature.

Sir Edward instructs ASIO to provide all assistance to Sheather, and on the afternoon of 14 February a senior ASIO officer provides him with a three-hour briefing.

The officer brings Sheather up to date on the list of subversive groups identified as of potential concern to security at CHOGRM. This list had been provided to the Commonwealth and New South Wales police, including Special Branch, in the days leading up to the conference. The officer hints strongly that ASIO has
operatives working undercover within these groups.

The groups identified were:

A. Demonstrators condemning Singapore's detention of political prisoners, targeting President Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Malaysia's Prime Minister Dato' Onn. ‘Organisations which might act, although we have no evidence so far of interest, are the Overseas Student Service of the Australian Union of Students and a small group of anti–Lee Kuan Yew ex-Singaporeans resident in Sydney, which Singapore authorities have described as a branch of the Malayan People's Liberation League (MPLL).'

B. Militant trade union protests against the Fijian Prime Minister instigated by ‘Apisai Vuniyayaw Tora', a militant Fijian trade unionist jailed in that country for illegal industrial activity. That said, ‘So far subversive organisations having influence in trade unions have shown no interest.'

C. A number of members of the New South Wales Ananda Marga have ‘recently discussed the possibility of forming a delegation to speak to the Indian PM Mr Desai during CHOGRM in order that they may present pleas for the release of their spiritual leader PR Sarkar [Baba]'. If refused, ASIO anticipates them holding a demonstration at an as yet undetermined site. ‘We expect that final planning for the demonstration will not proceed until the return to Australia of the AM spiritual director Jason Holman Alexander.'
Alexander is also known by the name Abhiik Kumar.

D. The New South Wales Railway Workers Union is threatening to stop the train carrying the delegates to Bowral. This is to demonstrate the shocking conditions for many workers at ‘a number of stations'. The idea is to stop the train at one of these ‘shocking stations' and presumably shake these leaders to the core about the state of Australian railways.