The Hunt for MH370

by Ean Higgins

  ‘The last satellite communication with the aircraft showed it was most likely in a high rate of descent in the area of what is known as the 7th arc,’ the bulletin said.

  ‘This is indeed the consensus of the Search Strategy Working Group.’

  The ‘consensus’ line was reported internationally, including by China’s Xinhua news agency, and Malaysia’s Bernama news service. Then, without announcement or explanation, the following day, 28 July, the JACC bulletin was amended to remove the ‘consensus’ line. The sentence, ‘This is indeed the consensus of the Search Strategy Working Group,’ just disappeared into the ether, with no word as to why.

  Richard Godfrey, who is a member of the Independent Group of scientists, engineers and other experts following the MH370 saga, first picked up the change in the bulletin, and told me about it. Godfrey, a British aerospace engineer, said the most likely explanation for the ‘consensus’ line removal was that one of the experts on the strategy group panel said they did not support such a conclusion. It might be the case, Godfrey suggested, ‘that it was assumed there was a consensus, but then some party complained and the published report had to be changed.’

  While the bulletin was issued in the name of the JACC, it was prepared by the ATSB. When I asked for an explanation of why the ‘consensus’ on their rapid descent theory had disappeared, a bizarre thing happened. All of a sudden, people who had previously been very helpful went totally quiet when asked to explain why the best and the brightest were all in agreement on the death dive one day, but not the next.

  A JACC official who had previously been helpful would not return calls, texts or emails. Nor would ATSB spokesman O’Malley. When I finally got him on the telephone line, O’Malley said in his polite American voice, ‘I’m going to have to ring you back’. He then hung up. He never did ring back.

  It was problematic to report the loss of consensus without the JACC or the ATSB explaining it, but given the absolute wall of silence, eventually it had to be done in the public interest. On 12 August 2016, The Weekend Australian published the story.

  ‘An Australian government agency has secretly retracted its claim that international scientists and air crash investigators had reached consensus that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went down quickly in a “death dive” rather than being flown to the end by a “rogue pilot”,’ the newspaper reported.

  ‘The backdown indicates that the Australian Transport Safety Bureau no longer commands unanimous support among its global advisory group for a public relations narrative it is running in conjunction with the Malaysian government and Malaysian Airline System Berhad.’

  The ATSB, extraordinarily, denied the story, even though the evidence was there in black and white. The same day the story came out, the bureau put a post on its website under ‘Correcting the Record’.

  ‘An article published . . . by Mr Ean Higgins on 12 August 2016 falsely accuses the ATSB of “secretly retracting” information from a Joint Agency Coordination Centre operations update on 27 July,’ it read.

  The ATSB reiterated its claim that its analysis of the final two satellite communications from the aircraft to the ground earth station showed the aircraft was in a high, and increasing, rate of descent.

  ‘All the members of the Search Strategy Working Group have reviewed DST Group’s analysis and no objections to the analysis have been provided,’ it said.

  In denying it had secretly retracted information the ATSB was, of course, telling a falsehood. It did retract the ‘consensus’ line, it did so without any public announcement, and its media officers would not talk about why it was done or even acknowledge the fact it had been done. The Australian set about to expose the truth.

  In the armory of journalists, one of the better weapons is the federal Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation. It doesn’t always work; if a government department or agency really doesn’t want you to get your hands on the truth, they have a variety of ways of claiming they don’t have to provide it. But when it does work, it can be hugely effective.

  There’s a bit of an art to the FOI request. One trick is to always make it in formal terms, starting out by saying you want to make ‘a Freedom of Information request under the relevant statutes’, thus reminding those who receive it that you know your rights under FOI law. Another is to be as precise as possible about what you seek, keep it to one thing at a time, and keep the request tight but at the same time inclusive of all possible material.

  In this case, the identical requests to the ATSB and the JACC were:

  ‘In this FOI request, I seek material, including, but not necessarily restricted to, emails, notes, letters, minutes of meetings or telephone conversations, instructions, or other documents, which go to the reason the “Consensus” line cited above was deleted, including why, by whom, in what circumstances, on whose instructions, and if it was at the request of a member of the Search Strategy Working Group, a foreign government, or any other party be it an individual, agency or other entity.’

  On the JACC side, the FOI request was handled by chief coordinator Judith Zielke. She agreed to release the material, though excluding names of officers citing privacy provisions. The released material proved the ATSB had told a falsehood in saying the ‘consensus’ line had not been secretly deleted. The documents show that just a few minutes after the 27 July bulletin was issued, an ATSB senior investigator warned colleagues by email this was an ‘error’ and that the sentence should be taken down.

  ‘It is certainly not yet the consensus position of the SSWG . . . 2 parties are yet to make a formal response on the subject,’ the investigator said.

  The email chain shows another ATSB senior investigator agreed and gave instructions for the sentence with the ‘consensus’ line to be removed from the ATSB’s and the JACC’s websites. But the ATSB did not retract the sentence until the next day, by which time it had been reported internationally, including in Malaysian and Chinese publications. When The Australian exposed the ATSB’s falsehood, the JACC finally issued a public admission:

  ‘The information was retracted when it was learned not all working group members had, at that stage, provided formal responses. Subsequently a consensus view was reached.’

  The ATSB and the JACC – represented by decent young individuals like O’Malley – could have just said so first up when The Australian first queried why the ‘consensus’ line had been removed.

  But it turned out O’Malley and the others had been instructed by their superiors not to divulge any more information to me.

  The Australian’s fight for the truth about whether the international experts did really agree with the ATSB’s ‘death dive’ interpretation had led to the first attempt by the bureau and the JACC to restrict the newspaper’s enquiries. In a letter to the editor-in-chief of The Australian, Paul Whittaker and cc’ed to me, dated 12 August 2016, Zielke wrote that the government agencies had imposed an information ban.

  ‘If Mr Higgins attempts to make contact, he will not receive any assistance from either the Department or the ATSB,’ Zielke wrote. ‘The Department and the ATSB will continue to respond to media inquiries from other journalists [at The Australian].’

  The idea that a government agency would dictate which reporters would be allowed to ask questions goes against all the principles of press freedom and independence, and was roundly rejected by the editors of The Australian. In the letter to Whittaker, Zielke tried to justify banning me on the basis that I had engaged in ‘harassment’ of staff. This, she claimed, included ‘sustained and persistent questioning on issues to which answers have been provided’ and ‘threatening to name staff if they do not acquiesce to requests’.

  The editors wrote to Zielke stating that while my pursuit of the MH370 story had been determined, apart from one communication whose timing and tone could have been more considerate, my reporting was in keeping with the principles of good, robust journalism. Af
ter a few days of negotiation, Zielke lifted the ban.

  The exercise shows how even senior public servants can fail to grasp the practical fundamentals of journalism in a democracy. ‘Sustained and persistent questioning’ is exactly what journalists should engage in when government agencies respond with non-answers to questions in the public interest. And while government media officers hate being named when they don’t provide real answers to legitimate questions, it is good practice to name them when it looks like the agency, department or minister’s office is withholding the truth.

  In a career spanning nearly four decades, I have observed a marked decline in government transparency, engagement and willingness to provide information. In the 1980s when I first entered journalism, federal government ministers, departments and agencies felt a duty to answer legitimate questions, and more often than not did so. That is the way it should be, but since then that sense of duty has steadily evaporated, and media officers often seem to think that a bland response made of bureaucratic blancmange, which does not answer the question but makes nice irrelevant statements, is good enough. It’s not good enough, and it should be called out, naming both the ministers and senior public servants who whip up the blancmange and the media officers who dish it out.

  The Search Strategy Working Group ‘consensus’ story is a good example. When as outlined, in July the ATSB and JACC media flacks mysteriously went silent, I went to the office of the then transport minister, Darren Chester. It was a compendium of questions which over the weeks the ATSB and the JACC had refused to answer. The questions emailed to Chester’s office on 30 July 2016, included:

  1/ Why was the line ‘this is indeed the consensus of the Search Strategy Working Group’ removed?

  2/ Was it because a member of the SSWG saw the bulletin, and asked that that line be removed because he or she does not share that consensus view?

  3/ If so, who objected?

  4/ Is it the case that there is no longer a consensus among the SSWG on this question?

  Question series B:

  1/ Is it correct that the ATSB, and/or the DSTG, has received a request from members of the IG group (another prominent member is Duncan Steel), and this information has not been provided to those seeking it?

  2/ If so, why?

  Question series C:

  1/ As a journalist himself, is Mr Chester concerned that a government agency under his portfolio, the ATSB, is consistently failing to answer questions from the media about MH370?

  2/ What action will the Minister take to ensure the ATSB, a taxpayer funded body with a media unit whose officers have their salaries paid for by the taxpayer and whose role is presumably to inform the public via the media, answers questions from the media about MH370?

  Chester’s media officer, Brie Colley, responded with the following email on 1 August:

  Please find below:

  Quotes attributable to Darren Chester, Minister for Infrastructure and Transport.

  ‘There is an enormous amount of data which has been collected in the search for MH370 and the Australian government has already given an undertaking that it will be provided as open source information when possible.

  ‘I am confident in the ATSB’s expert analysis and remain hopeful the aircraft will be located in the 120,000 km sq highest priority search area.’

  As exemplified here, ministers are increasingly hiding from issues by having their media officers come up with meaningless motherhood statements rather than answers.

  The practice of warning media officers they will be named if they don’t answer questions might sound aggressive, but it goes to the principle of making them, and in turn their bosses, take responsibility for their responses or non-responses. It can also be very effective in getting answers – once trained with the Pavlov effect of being named, media officers become far more attentive.

  On one occasion, in June 2017, O’Malley did not respond to a question on when exactly the ATSB would be releasing its final report on its failed search for MH370, prompting outrage from Danica Weeks. The Australian quoted Danica as saying, ‘If the ATSB had crossed their “t’s” and dotted their “i’s” on the search, why would it take nine months to produce a report? It’s inconceivable.’

  The next sentence in the story was: ‘Despite the plea from Ms Weeks, Mr O’Malley would not provide a clearer timeline for the release of the report, or explain why it had been delayed.’

  Three months later, when O’Malley again failed to answer a similar question after three days, I wrote him an email:

  Hi Dan -

  Are you going to answer this question, or do I write:

  ‘ATSB spokesman Daniel O’Malley refused to say whether the bureau would meet its latest deadline in releasing its long-awaited report on its failed search for MH370.’

  Cheers,

  Ean

  That worked a treat: this time, O’Malley came back with an answer the same day, at 4:47pm, 13 minutes before the deadline set by me.

  Dear Mr Higgins,

  Thank you for your email. Owing to the extensive review and consultation process, and the size of the report, we now anticipate that the ATSB’s final MH370 report will be released in the first week of October.

  Regards,

  Dan

  The warning that he would be named if he did not answer the question by deadline had the desired effect: O’Malley no doubt applied pressure on one of the ATSB officers to come up with the goods. Most reporters would describe such practices as holding media officers and their bosses to account in a bid to get answers; some senior public servants regard it as bullying and grounds to ban whole government agencies from answering questions of high public interest.

  I was curious about the inside machinations that led Zielke to send the letter of complaint and banning to Whittaker, and put in an FOI request to the ATSB and the JACC to this effect. The FOI request sought: ‘All material, including but not limited to documents, emails, reports, minutes and transcripts of meetings, relating to communications among JACC staff, ATSB staff, and ministerial staff that went towards the decision to issue that letter from Ms Judith Zielke . . . to The Australian.’

  To their credit, the ATSB and the JACC provided not all, but at least some, of what I applied for. What emerged was very revealing. The material provided showed a flurry of activity among a number of officials, some expressing concern they might be named for not answering questions, and discussing what sort of action could be taken against me in the form of contacting the editors, banning me from information, and even complaining to a federal media industry body.

  It was another example of how the public service often seems to have little grasp of real-world media practice, but does display a keen desire to try to suppress journalists when they are persistent and poke around where bureaucrats prefer they didn’t.

  Theory Four: Terrorist Hijacking Gone Wrong

  The plan of the jihadists was brilliant, or so they thought: take control of a big jetliner, fly it to a Taliban-held airstrip in Afghanistan, and hold the passengers and crew, and the aircraft itself, to ransom. And they knew Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid had just the weakness for a particular temptation to make it work. Zaharie was known to like young attractive women generally; Fariq had been known to flirt with them on invitations to the cockpit. Days after MH370 disappeared, the Australian television program A Current Affair made headlines internationally showing Fariq getting friendly with South African blondes Jonti Roos and Jaan Maree and an unidentified Malaysia Airlines captain.

  So when it came to the MH370 flight on 8 March 2014, about half an hour after take-off, three passengers – two men and a pretty young woman travelling together – asked a male flight attendant if they could visit the flight deck for a brief photo opportunity. The flight attendant asked permission over the intercom to enter the cockpit, was let in, and said, �
�Captain, two gentlemen and a young lady have asked to visit the flight deck’.

  Zaharie inquired, ‘Is she a good sort?’

  ‘Yes, sir, a real good-looker, la!’

  ‘Fine, 10 minutes from now should be perfect, after we pass IGARI.’

  Just after Zaharie signed off with ‘Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero’, the flight attendant brought the trio of passengers to the cockpit door, and they were let in. Seconds later, the two men and the woman pulled out guns they had reassembled on board made out of plastic with 3D printers and which can escape detection by metal detectors.

  ‘No distress call, captain, do exactly as I say, and no-one gets hurt,’ the hijack leader said.

  ‘Turn off the transponder and the ACARS, then turn this aircraft towards Penang.’

  Meanwhile, back in the passenger cabin, a fourth hijacker had similarly pulled out a plastic gun, and seized the mobile phones of all the passengers and cabin crew. The lead hijacker was well briefed in aviation and the plan – he ordered the slow right turn onto Airway N571 after Penang, heading in the general direction of Afghanistan.

  To throw off any military aircraft which might give chase based on primary radar picking up the aircraft and observing it heading north-west on N571, at 2:45am, when they had calculated MH370 would be out of radar range, the terrorists ordered Zaharie to turn sharp left on a heading of 188 degrees, near due south. The intention was to ‘jink’, or throw any pursuers off the trail by unexpectedly changing course over the area not covered by radar for some minutes, then set a new heading with a right turn towards Afghanistan.

  It was all going fine, the hijackers thought. But they had not counted on the pluck and initiative of some of the passengers and crew. One of the passengers, a former army sergeant in an aisle seat, whispered to a well-built individual who knew martial arts on the other side of the aisle. When the hijacker passed by on his patrol up and down the cabin, the sergeant asked the hijacker, ‘Where are you taking us?’