Who bombed the Hilton?

by Rachel Landers

  What about the bright young boys and girls over at ASIO? What about the two informants they have had inside the sect since late the year before? Where is their intelligence? Apart from tiny tidbits, they seem to be completely incapable of producing solid leads. I suppose it might occur to Special Branch during that early evening in late March, as Richard Seary faces them across the desk, that Norm and his handsomely resourced Hilton task force don’t seem to be faring much better than the cloak and dagger ASIO contingent either. Why wait for them to fuck up? Why not strike out on your own?

  Presumably the members of Special Branch believed they could change the course of the investigation and perhaps become the heroes of the day.

  It’s easy to imagine either Krawczyk, Helson or Watson being intensely frustrated by the lack of traction within the investigation. If I shared their suspicions about the sect I might feel as if I were being mocked. ‘Looky, another bomb. First the Hilton, now Canberra. What are you going to do?’ It’s fascinating to note how intimate these detectives are with the fresh terror of this newly discovered bomb, with its potential to rip through walls and flesh, and how mouthwateringly tempting the circumstantial evidence surrounding it is. It is Krawczyk’s name on both the original reports relaying details about the components of the High Commission bomb, and on the report:

  … concerning a description of a male and female suspects [sic] relative to the bomb incident at the Indian High Commission … located on the 25th, March, 1978. Also is [sic] a photo-fit picture of the possible male suspect.1

  He must have felt tantalisingly close. Yes, the description is general, yet the gender mix, the age, the brazenness of the actions — casually throwing a bag full of explosives over the back wall of an official compound — do bear a startling similarity to those Margii couples caught in other countries over the last few months.

  If it were me, I can imagine feeling that things could be done better — that I could do things better. Remember, the Margiis say they have been infiltrated by ASIO, so it’s possible that those operatives are horribly compromised and will never get anywhere. (In almost 20 years’ time ASIO will commission and publish a declassified report to address some of these questions. In it they will admit that ‘ASIO ran agents within the Ananda Marga. Most agents apparently provided only limited coverage of the sect.’2)

  Why not recruit your own agent? It’s a good time to start afresh. Why not Seary? He looks like a hippie, smells like a hippie, but behaves like a nark. He was happy enough to point the finger at the Hare Krishnas, who obviously accept him. Why not get him to take his suspicious mind into the Margiis? The more you think about it, it’s the randomness and speed of Special Branch’s choice that makes Seary kind of perfect. Anyone asking about him knows he’s been loosely allied with the Hare Krishnas for years, drifted around, done this or that, done time, had and got over a drug problem, had a tricky childhood. He’s bright, the right age — just the sort of person the Margiis might like. What’s more, he’s clearly up for it. Whether motivated by adventure, a bit of cash or just because going undercover for the police to help solve a big crime sounds like huge amounts of fun — he jumps on board.

  And why would you tell too many people about it if you were Special Branch? Why tell ASIO if they never give you any information and treat you like second-rate coppers? Why tell Sheather and his team? They’re only likely to be annoyed. Let’s face it, on 28 March 1978 who knows what Seary will or will not discover? Why upset the applecart at this stage? Easy does it, wait and see what happens. Why not ‘let him have a run and see how he goes’?3 How bad can the consequences be?

  Krawczyk, Watson and Helson are not completely secretive about Seary’s recruitment. They inform their boss, Deputy Commissioner Perrin, the officer in charge of Special Branch at the time of the Hilton inquiry, and he has no particular objection.4 The detectives then make a basic perusal of Seary’s fingerprint record and get an oral clearance from ASIO ‘that it had no adverse information in relation to him’, but do not inform them that Seary is being run as an agent.5

  That’s about it. He is immediately sent into the field. His mission: to infiltrate the Ananda Marga in order to determine whether they were involved in the Hilton bombing.

  It’s hard to say whether this complete lack of guidance and training is a hindrance or a virtue. Does it make him a good or bad spy? More or less credible as a witness? If the detectives from Special Branch genuinely believe that the violent inner circle of the Margiis both here and abroad are responsible not just for the Hilton but the wave of violent acts claimed in the name of UPRF, they are sending a man without the slightest notion of spycraft into what is effectively a terrorist organisation. Alternatively, perhaps, they believe that sending in someone with fresh eyes will reveal the Margiis are innocent.

  It’s tricky to clarify from the material available in the archive. Things get murky from this point. Seary’s narrative, his every footfall and utterance become so caught up with the Anderson, Alister and Dunn story, with blowing up white supremacists, false arrests, verbals, and on and on which will consume the entire investigation, it’s hard to pick one’s way backwards through the dark thicket of patchy and ambiguous information. Once Seary enters the Hilton story, everything he says and does becomes the focus of multiple secondary sources that will proliferate like fungi. These start emerging from 1979 onwards and divide into three arenas:

  A. Analysis — in the form of books, films, articles — that unwaveringly supports Alister, Anderson and Dunn in their miscarriage of justice case and regards Seary as a liar and/or a police agent provocateur.

  B. Reportage that takes Seary and the police at their word and believes the trio of Margiis are guilty as charged, ignoring all the oddities of the case.

  C. All those trials and inquiries dedicated to determining whether A or B or something in between is the truth.

  Each of these explores in depth the events surrounding the arrest of the three young men on 15 and 16 June 1978. Other details that bob up that are not relevant to the issues surrounding Anderson, Alister and Dunn are simply discarded. Yet within this detritus are many revelations.

  As far as Anderson, Alister and Dunn and their supporters are concerned, everything that issues from the mouth of Richard Seary from 16 February onwards is a fantasy — fuelled by either Special Branch’s incompetence or, more malevolently, by specific design.

  Making events even harder to navigate during this period is that certain agencies have, to use a euphemism, ceased to communicate effectively with each other. For a month or so both the Hilton task force and ASIO are kept away from the clandestine meetings between Seary and his Special Branch handlers. The two principal reasons Krawczyk, Watson and Helson later give for this are strangely contradictory. First, they say they didn’t want to pass on information emanating from Seary too early because, if they could not absolutely substantiate it, they would be made to look foolish.6 Second, because they were afraid that their rivals in ASIO would steal Seary once they figured out how valuable he was.7 It may seem childish but it’s also very human. At the time I think these Special Branch detectives were at their wits’ end.

  It is also possible they are compelled to take this sort of risk because, once again, Sarkar’s case is coming up for review — this time by the Patna High Court. All the police must be conscious of how things played out the last two times Sarkar’s appeals failed. Perhaps Special Branch just want to try something different, to have one last audacious fling at the case, to attempt to claw back some authority. Who knows, had things gone differently, maybe they could have solved the case and been hailed for thinking outside the box. Of course this is not to be and this ‘concern … that if Seary [is] identified or intelligence linked to him, he might be lost to Special Branch’ will have cataclysmic consequences for all involved. In a massive understatement in the findings of the Section 475 inquiry, Justice James Wood will note that while ‘this attitude [is] understandable, [it is] not conducive to the mo
st effective operation of police/intelligence investigations in this country’. 8

  The one advantage of the siege mentalities of ASIO, the Hilton task force and Special Branch (although ASIO and the task force do continue to share some information) during the initial running of Seary in April and May is that they can hardly be accused of colluding. Indeed, one of the few ways to penetrate the fog surrounding what might have occurred is to try and identify points of concurrence in the information gathered during this period from independent sources, many of them outside the Hilton archive in New South Wales State Records.

  For me the most startling point is this: the information Seary provides to Special Branch, in the form of tape-recorded debriefings with detectives (principally Krawczyk) before 30 May 1978, and the information he gives after 30 May, seems to emerge from two parallel and distinct universes. Before 30 May, Seary’s information is all about Kapil Arn and our friend Abhiik Kumar. After 30 May it’s all Anderson, Alister and Dunn. Given that he will ‘shop’ these three on 15 June, he has a two-week window to make their acquaintance. In regard to Anderson and Dunn, Seary only meets them properly between 11 and 13 June. In the Section 475 inquiry, Seary will say of Anderson, ‘I hardly knew [him] at all.’9

  Another critical point is that until 30 May certain elements of Seary’s intelligence about the Ananda Marga can be corroborated by information gathered independently by the other investigative agencies. After 30 May, almost none can.

  So reconstructing the separate investigative strands up until 30 May, what do we know that is beyond dispute?

  A new wave of terror

  Two days after Special Branch recruit Seary, Norm Sheather receives information (most likely from ASIO) that despite an upcoming conference in Katmandu about Sarkar’s imminent appeal, Abhiik Kumar decides to stay in Australia and to send someone else in his stead.1 This is unusual — the globe-trotting Kumar rarely remains in one place for long and it is rarer still for him to delegate another Margii to take his place. Kumar sends Mathew Donald Meighan (probably the same person as David Mathew Meighan), whom we met through the parents of Timothy Jones, who is still languishing in a Bangkok jail. For five years Meighan acted as go-between for Mum, Dad and their estranged Margii son.

  Does this delegation indicate something is afoot in Australia? Sheather and his team stay on their investigative trajectory, keeping the focus on the movements of the Margii leadership, Kumar in particular, and on the most recent bomb found at the Indian High Commission. Sheather contacts his international police colleagues for precise forensic information from the bomb attacks (actual or thwarted) carried out by real or phantom Margiis. Perhaps these bombs share similar construction.

  This latest bomb in Canberra has not only unleashed a burst of possibly misguided action in Special Branch, it has also re-energised Sheather and the Hilton task force with the sense that a new wave of terror against Indian nationals is inevitable. The same report from ‘a confidential source concerning the sect Ananda Marga’ that details Kumar’s decision not to travel to Katmandu for the conference on 30 March states that:

  It is thought by the source that the activities of Ananda Marga have increased prior to SARKAR’s … appeal. At that stage the demonstration on 22 March 1978 and the abortive bomb attack at the Indian high commission, Canberra, on 25 March 1978, were given as examples. In regard of the latter incidents no evidence is available to connect same to the sect Ananda Marga … Information to date indicates that Sarkar’s case comes before the Patna Court on 3rd April 1978.2

  The international meeting of the Ananda Marga leaders in Katmandu is scheduled to conclude the same day — presumably with decisions to be made about what to do if the appeal does not proceed. It’s the first time Abhiik Kumar will not be at an international Ananda Marga leadership meeting in India that coincides with one of Sarkar’s key court dates.

  Perhaps Kumar’s absence gives Sarkar the good luck he needs. On 3 April the Patna High Court grants the supreme leader of the Margiis the right to appeal his conviction of multiple murder.

  One can imagine it’s a great time to join the sect if you’re planning to enter it as a covert operative. The membership, who have fought for Sarkar’s release for seven years, are euphoric. Two days later, on 5 April, Richard Seary travels to the Balmain home of Kapil Arn to begin the first of four introductory sessions into the beliefs and practices of the Ananda Marga, which will take place over a month. In addition to the usual fare about mediation, yoga and Ananda Marga philosophy, there is much excited talk about Sarkar’s appeal.

  A few days later Seary has his first debrief with Krawczyk. This meeting is not recorded but at the same time Seary doesn’t actually have anything much to report. Special Branch in a fit of hilarity assigns Seary the code name M Ghandi [sic] and they start to make meticulous records of the modest financial transactions that pass between agent and handler — $10 received on 13/4/78, $30 on 19/4/78 — ‘receipt signed by Krawczyk and Ghandi’. Ghandi is his Special Branch moniker for financial book keeping; Seary’s Ananda Marga appellation is Virata.3

  Underneath the hope and the excitement that novitiate Seary observes among the membership about Baba’s appeal, Sheather and the task force are picking up grumblings from other sources that troubles lie ahead. In Australia and abroad the Margiis make increasing assertions about the Bangkok Three having been set up by the Thai police. The trial of Margii John William Duff, accused of attempted kidnapping and assault of the military, naval and air advisor to the Indian High Commission Colonel Singh and his wife the year before, is set to commence in Canberra in early May. This case is also regarded by the sect as made up of lies and slander — yet another travesty of justice and another case of persecution without substance.

  On 9 April, in the lead-up to Duff’s trial, a bomb is found outside the Brisbane apartment of a relative of Colonel Singh.4 On 13 April the sect issues a press release:

  … calling on the Federal government to make a full investigation into the recent incidents involving employees, relatives and property of the Indian high commission suggesting that they [are] involved [in] a campaign directed to discrediting the Ananda Marga and to prejudicing the appeal of PR Sarkar.5

  Around the same time Seary joins the sect, Sheather receives further intelligence from the Danish, US and Thai police about Ananda Marga activities, including the identification of a potential new major player in the sect based in the Philippines. But more of that in a moment. What’s important to observe is that Sheather and the task force continue to be open to non–Ananda Marga leads.

  In April the Commonwealth Police send a long-ish report to Norm about a Ms EMD, an allegedly ‘militant politically active communist … capable of involvement in such a bombing incident [like the Hilton]’.6 The information comes from an informant referred to only as C.283. This intelligence is rich with the allure of an international espionage thriller — a Portuguese-born female terrorist trained in ‘bomb construction knowledge’ by an unknown South African while they shared a flat in Bronte, near Bondi Beach. Read closely, it all seems unlikely to amount to much. The informant seems both vague and self-important. He tells Assistant Commissioner JD Davies that, ‘he would ring my number again at 11 am (29 March) to check the result of inquiries. If positive we should “go softly” as he has an “in” with her and may be able to help.’ The informant never calls back.7

  Special Branch also continues to receive other leads. In early April, Special Branch officer Watson writes a report about a Mrs Grace N, who accuses her de facto husband, Anthony (not the former Mr N) of being the bomber. He was attending a six-month ‘explosives course in Melbourne’ at the time and would ring her every night except ‘for a five day lapse about the time of the Hilton bombing, [when] there were no calls’. Furthermore, after the bombing, Anthony would laugh and joke about the people who were killed in the Hilton explosion and warn her to expect a visit from the police. He had a preoccupation with death and regularly sent money to the IRA. Mrs
N, however, emerges as a problematic witness; it seems the reason she makes this statement is because a detective has questioned her about almost burning down her house ‘when she attempted to burn holes in [Anthony’s] clothing so he couldn’t wear it again’. She had also been charged previously with ‘malicious wounding when she attacked [him] as a result of a domestic dispute’.8

  *

  Seary’s second and third forays to the introductory Margii lectures, like the first, result in no information and despite the fact that Seary and Krawczyk meet on 12 and 19 April to debrief after each of the sessions, these meetings are also not recorded.

  In late April Seary starts to get innovative. He skips his fourth introductory meeting and instead goes the following night to meet with Kapil alone. The debrief of this meeting is recorded by detectives Krawczyk and Watson. According to Seary, he’s inveigling his way into Kapil’s heart by:

  … basically making myself out to be a bad piece of work … and saying things we did in the Hares. The time about how the two Hares had killed themselves in New Zealand when the bomb they made exploded … also I told [him] how we had an idea of blowing up the Homebush meatworks … when I told him about being involved with the bombing Homebush Abbs he said I’ll just tell that to some friends of mine who are quite radical and said to be with the VSS. I said — what’s the VSS. He said, oh well in English you can call it the Volunteer Social Services.

  Seary goes on to paint a picture of the VSS as the radical arm of the Margiis, responsible for the murder of the six defecting Margiis in 1971 — the crime for which Sarkar was imprisoned. The VSS believes the Indian CBI is allied to the KGB and that anyone connected to them — Indian government officials, diplomats, and the like — is fair game. These radicals:

  … kill people they regard as rakass or demons and they think they are doing an honourable act by killing them, they also regard policeman [sic] as legitimate targets. At least they do in India and what goes on in India goes here too. And you can see by the way they address or talk about Commonwealth Police … they’d be in bliss if that policeman died in that bombing.9