Who bombed the Hilton? (13 page)
Read Who bombed the Hilton? Online
Authors: Rachel Landers
While Norm is briefed on the course of all three, it is the latter that he steers most directly.
For those who have long believed that the Ananda Marga were singularly targeted, hounded, persecuted and stitched up, it may be surprising how thoroughly the police pursued other lines of inquiry. While there is a potent and compelling sense in the media that the Hilton bombing is a defining historical moment in which Australia is thrust into the horrors of international terrorism, it is also true that there was a fairly long-ish and diverse list of individuals and groups who could have been responsible. A wonderfully subtitled article âCowardly killer that knows no innocents: Australia in Bomb Club', published the weekend after the bombing, states brightly, âSecurity police say there are several hundred people in Sydney alone who could have conceivably been involved in bombing incidents.'
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This includes âCertain members of our fledgling and crackpot National Socialist (Nazi) movements' or âthe anarchro-syndacalists [sic] and others on the far Left'. There were also the Yugoslav and Croat communities in Australia who âbrought their native animosities here' and have been attempting to blow each other up for years. A number of these community members were interrogated and checked for alibis. Slavko Fuskic is investigated because of his vocal attacks on Fraser and the Liberal government, and because he is an electrical fitter by trade.
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Another course of inquiry followed with vigour is a theory that the Malaysian Liberation Front operating in Australia was targeting Singapore's prime minister at CHOGRM. In response to an inquiry about a Singaporean student who arrived in Australia on 30 January 1978, the Singaporean intelligence service sent back an urgent telex warning that Ng Hiok Ngee was a member of a Marxist group plotting with Euro-communists to exert pressure on the Singaporean government âto release hardcore communist detainees to rebuild the Communist United Front in Singapore'.
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He is also accused of sending money to the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) âwho are Communist Terrorists operating in the Malaysian jungle, engaged in insurgency to overthrow the elected governments of Malaysia and Singapore'. The tone of the telex from Singapore strongly suggests that Ngee is good for the Hilton bombing and should be locked up, although the most he is accused of is being a member of an illegal political party. Two days later he is hauled in and interrogated by the task force. His defence, that he is in Australia purely to visit his sister, is backed up by strong corroboration from the sister and her husband.
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Lebanese-born Baha Bayeh presents as a strong suspect in so far as he has convictions for assault and related offences and, exactly one year and one month before the Hilton bombing, âwas arrested at Waverley
on the 13.1.77 by Detective Sergeant Hetherington for the offence of maliciously plac[ing a] bombing device to destroy a building'.
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After investigation, he too is eliminated from the list.
What the Hilton task force is looking for is those who would have the most to gain from an act of terrorism. As Mr William Clifford of the Australian Institute of Criminology points out, âThe sad thing about terrorism is that it works ⦠Bombings are usually not at all personal. They are used to attract attention to particular causes or to destabilise the political climate.'
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The
Herald
, quoting Clifford, expands on this, arguing that the âcallousness of bomb attacks by movements which seek mass support is difficult to explain, except on the theory that governments are finally blamed for the failure to create safe, stable societies'.
Clifford's take on where the blame lies differs from every other publicly reported opinion:
This week ⦠there was room for improvement in the national coordination between Australia's police and security forces ⦠But the real need, the Criminology Institute Director believes, is not for more police and more Special Branch surveillance â a topic quickly taken up by conservatives in the wake of the bomb attack. âWhat is really needed in Australia,' Mr Clifford is reported as saying, âis greater cooperation between
the public and the police. People should be much more security-conscious and aware of the dangers in their cities ⦠Disregarding the police performance, a number of aspects of the Hilton bombing indicated that people generally were just not alert to the risk.'
If Clifford is correct, the âpeople' are certainly attempting to make up for their failings in the days following the bombing. The task force is besieged by information from the public and it is the responsibility of a section of detectives to pursue this information, whatever it may be. In the files is a long and detailed statement about a man behaving suspiciously around the Atomic Energy Commission,
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another relates the sighting of an old noisy car crossing the Harbour Bridge with three male occupants and Western Australian licence plates.
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It's all too easy in hindsight to regard these as petty and inconsequential, but big crimes are often solved with exactly these kinds of random sources of information. The Yorkshire Ripper was caught through a vehicle registration check. The Hilton task force has to receive information with open arms. They set up a desk inside the Hilton lobby manned by Special Branch officers for the sole purpose of providing an easy portal for the public to pour forth their tips, sightings and theories.
So when Richard Seary walks through the smashed exterior of the Hilton Hotel on the afternoon
of Thursday 16 February and comes up to the desk with a story to tell, Special Branch Detective Sergeant Ireland listens and transcribes it.
Did the Hare Krishnas do it?
What Seary discloses to Detective Sergeant Ireland has enough merit to start moving him up the chain of command. He is asked to repeat his allegations on 22 February 1978 â this time to two other Special Branch officers, Detective Senior Constables Inkster and Hardy.
Richard Seary will become one of the most notorious witnesses in Australian criminal history thanks to his involvement in various court cases and inquiries surrounding the Hilton bombing, including the official inquest in 1982. Because of this, it is fascinating to observe his entrance onto the stage; to see not how he was viewed in retrospect, once the spotlight glared down on him, but how he sat among all the other hubbub going on at the time.
In the future much will be made of the fact that immediately before he fronts the police desk three days after the blast, Seary had been to see the first
Star Wars
at the Hoyts cinema complex further down George Street. The implication being, I suppose, that he was all hopped up on Goodies and Baddies and living in a complete fantasy world. In reality there can't have been that many people in Sydney who hadn't seen
Star Wars
at this point.
More pertinent is the potential connection between the timing of his statement to the police and the announcement of the astronomical reward that same morning. I would imagine that anyone who believed they had even a snippet of information about the Hilton bombing would have been lured out when this bait was dangled.
Yet another accusation to be made against Seary is that the allegations he makes to the police that day are full of bizarre and colourful oddities. However, reading over it now, Seary's statement comes across as rather boring and long-winded, as if from an overearnest but upstanding member of the public.
He introduces himself thus: âI am a drug counsellor at the Wayside Chapel at Kings Cross and I have been engaged in this work for the past 14 months.'
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He goes on to relate a visit he made to a Hare Krishna gathering at Belmore Park in Sydney on 3 February 1978. The Hare Krishnas are a religious sect popular
among Westerners, founded in 1966 by an Indian swami based in New York City. Seary told the police he had been invited to the gathering of four or five thousand people because he was a former member of the sect, and he was interested in what was going on. There he sees an old friend called David. They chat and then David leaves. After this, a stranger, a Krishna called Bala Deva, approaches him. Deva knows Seary's former sect name, âPandu', and strikes up a conversation. He knows that Seary had been an opal miner at Lightning Ridge and wants to know all the ins and outs of what kinds of explosives he used, how you obtained them, and whether they were safe to handle. Seary reports all this with the monotony of a head prefect dobbing on a wayward student.
He said, âYou're mining, aren't you.' I said, âNot any more. I haven't mined for about a year.' He said, âWhat sort of mining?' I said, âOpal mining.' He said, âDo you use explosives?' I said, âYes.' He said, âWhat sort?' I said, âNitropril or gelignite.' He said, âWhat's nitropril?' I said, âIt's a nitre [sic] glycerine solution suspended in a neutral base which gives it the appearance of small gray pebbles.' He said, âHow does it work?'
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And so on and so on. The Krishna Deva does not say he is intending to buy or use explosives of any kind.
He does not say he is intending to blow anything up â let alone CHOGRM or the Hilton. This is the worst that Seary says of Deva: âI would recognise him again if I saw him. I would say that this person I was talking to was very interested in explosives and mining but he obviously didn't know anything about it.'
What piques the interest of the Special Branch officers is how Seary contextualises this conversation with Deva. He tells the police that when he had been a member of the Hare Krishnas he had âheard talk of a radical member of the sect' advocating a plot to bomb the Homebush Bay meatworks. There was mention of a similar plan in New Zealand in which two members had died while building a bomb to be planted in a meat-packing factory. He says that he had eventually left the sect in Brisbane after becoming disenchanted with the leadership. This leadership tended towards violence, directed at the more peaceful members, particularly on the part of some of the âmore radical' members, mainly the Americans, many of whom were Vietnam veterans â¦
Seary rounds all this off by stating that he believes that some members of the Hare Krishnas were capable of the Hilton bombing. He offers to provide information to Special Branch if they want some insights into the organisation. Furthermore, he claims that some senior members of the sect who had been at Belmore Park had come from overseas and were in Sydney
several days before the Hilton bombing and left two or three days after it ⦠The only possible motive he can provide for Hare Krishna involvement in the bombing is that it would have been directed against the Prime Minister of Singapore, âas a number of sect members had been imprisoned in that country'.
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As vague, if overly detailed, as Seary's statement is in its allegations, it does have enough references to explosives and suggestions that this Deva could be a potential member of the new âBomb Club' to warrant attention.
Seary's assertions are typed up in the running sheets. Next they are considered by long-suffering Hilton task force member Detective Sergeant Bruce Jackson, whose job it is to sift through the mountain of information received and identify âwhich matters ⦠called for further investigation'. Such information could include rants from a certain Mrs A, who thinks her âEuro-Indian neighbours' whom âI do not know [and] do not wish to'
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are putting âshocking' literature in her letterbox, to the delusional confessions of the mentally ill. Jackson selects Seary's statement for review and it is sent to Norm Sheather for consideration.
As will be said in one of the many official inquiries years later, âIt is evident that the members of the Hilton bomb squad were unimpressed with the information.'
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Norm's immediate reaction is to dismiss the tale outright. There has never been a whiff of violence,
alleged or otherwise, associated with the Hare Krishnas in Australia, which for Sheather makes them unlikely suspects.
As an exhaustive inquiry seven years later put it:
Detective Inspector Sheather was satisfied that the description given by Seary of Bala Deva as a man â25 to 26 years old, 170 centimetres tall, slim to medium build, large nose, pimply face, looks slightly Jewish, mousy brown hair which possibly was a wig' was too uncertain, and that there was no suggestion in the police files, or within police experience, of any involvement of the Hare Krishna in terrorist activity. As a consequence the allegations were not pursued.
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And that is that. I imagine Norm simply put Richard Seary from his mind and did not expect he would ever encounter him again. If someone had told Norm that in less than four weeks this man would actually be working for the police force on the Hilton bombing investigation without his knowledge or approval, he may have simply retired early or demanded a transfer â anything to avoid the horrors he will be plunged into once he and his task force go over the falls with Seary.