Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

by Matthew Benns

  ‘Unfortunately, I have been too naive in not checking the origins of these recipes and in thinking that the work would be completed in an honest and professional manner,’ she said. ‘This was never my intention and it really sucks that these things can happen.’

  Then the Dieticians Association of Australia named her diet as one of the three worst diets in the country, along with the Lemon Detox Diet and SkinnyMe Tea. The fad diets were based on restrictive eating patterns that could not be sustained long term and undermined people’s health. Bines and her team were baffled as to why they had been picked out — arguing that it did not demonise any particular foods and was full of sensible advice such as swapping chicken breast for rice — and carried on regardless. In 2017, it was still going strong.

  * * *

  Anyway, you can forget fad diets. Experts these days say that drinking plenty of water is one of the best things you can do for your health. Especially if it is the miracle water patented as Unique Water, produced and bottled exclusively in Australia by Bert’s Soft Drinks in the southern Sydney suburb of Taren Point.

  Unique Water really took off after Sydney Morning Herald journalist Paul Sheehan wrote a 4000-word article in the Good Weekend magazine extolling its virtues. Sheehan said he had been sick with chronic pain and reproduced the letter his doctor had written to the newspaper’s editor in chief in 2001: ‘Mr Sheehan has developed a constellation of auto-immune diseases over the last three years … He has seen a number of specialists, had numerous medical investigations, and has required ongoing therapies to enable him to remain at work. His illness is incurable.’

  Sheehan said he had tried everything: 52 sessions with doctors and therapists and 54 with acupuncturists, new diet and exercise regimes, anti-inflammatory drugs and different combinations of all those things. The only thing that seemed to make a difference was what he and others were calling the ‘magic water’. Wow, what an endorsement.

  He said he had been introduced to it by veteran Canberra correspondent Peter Bowers. Bowers’s wife, Yvonne, was also sucking back litres of the stuff to combat her chronic arthritis.

  Sheehan also told his readers about the director general of AusAID, Trevor Kanaley, whose career had been cut short at 48 by a crippling auto-immune disease. He too had started drinking the water and, while sceptical in the beginning, was impressed by the results. ‘What I find fascinating about the water is that it has a good effect on congestion [in the lungs] and inflammation, which are the characteristics of this disease. And when your lungs have been permanently damaged, that’s a pretty big plus. It also gives you more energy,’ he said. Kanaley’s daughter said the water had transformed her father from a man confined to bed to one who could walk outside and play catch. ‘It’s either the world’s greatest placebo or it works remarkably well,’ said Kanaley. He, Sheehan and an unnamed member of one of Australia’s ‘wealthiest and most conspicuous’ families were among the 100 people guzzling litres of the magic water every day.

  The water, Sheehan revealed, had been discovered by ‘an intense biochemical pathologist’ named Dr Russell Beckett. The former practising vet had been working for years on a theory that delivering water with a heavy concentration of magnesium bicarbonate would prolong life. He had been conducting trials on sheep to prove his prognosis for seventeen years, when a friend told him that nature had already done the test for him. There were already sheep and cattle in the Monaro region near the Snowy Mountains that had such long lives, the CSIRO had been studying them since 1955. Beckett investigated and found it to be true — most of the sheep and cattle in the area were living at least 30 per cent longer, but some were even living twice as long as normal. They were also breeding for much longer. A geological survey revealed a rare combination of minerals in the earth, which meant that the spring that the animals drank from was delivering magnesium bicarbonate–laden water. Beckett conducted some more tests, and then decided he was ready to go into production (though he conceded later to Sheehan that the effect of the magnesium bicarbonate was still only a hypothesis at that stage). He went to Bert’s Soft Drinks to propose a partnership, and initially received a doubtful response from co-owner Arthur Shelley. ‘When Russell first came along with this, I thought, “I don’t think so.”’ Then he uttered the immortal line: ‘It sounded too good to be true.’ Nonetheless, Bert’s Soft Drinks eventually agreed to produce and bottle Beckett’s water.

  That the water was ‘too good to be true’ was certainly the view held by investigative journalist Ben Hills, who comprehensively debunked Sheehan’s article and Beckett in another Sydney Morning Herald article a few years later in 2005. It took him time to battle the story into the paper; there was a lot of resistance to an article that would discredit one of the paper’s own journalists. It was time Sheehan used to get in a story first — he attempted to downplay his role in promoting the miracle water, and resurrected unproven allegations about how Beckett’s first wife had died.

  There is no doubt Sheehan’s original article was the best plug any product could ever have. For a while, the queues outside Bert’s looked like a pilgrimage to Lourdes, with people in wheelchairs and leaning on walking sticks waiting for their three-case allocation of the magic water. People drove from Melbourne to buy the water at $30 a carton — the company once claimed 10,000 cases had been sold in a single day, netting $300,000.

  But Hills did not take the article or Beckett at face value. Beckett had told Sheehan he had a doctorate in biochemical pathology from the University of Sydney. Hill dug out Beckett’s academic record and found that the university does not even offer such a doctorate, and that in fact Beckett had a PhD in veterinary science. His lifetime of study into how life could be prolonged was not reflected in his thesis, which Hills retrieved from the university’s Fisher Library. Instead, it showed the young vet had spent his time poisoning animals and then dissecting them to see the results. The research he had told Sheehan he was working on with the University of Canberra was never done, according to a university spokesperson. And the CSIRO said its study of sheep in the Monaro region was on identifying the number of lambs a sheep could produce, not on how long they lived.

  Sheehan also made much of the patents Beckett had been granted for the miracle water in the US and Australia. The patent granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in 1997 said the water was: ‘A method of preventing or treating inflammatory diseases or degenerative diseases in a mammal … wherein said mammal is human … A method of preventing or treating viral diseases in a mammal … wherein said mammal is human.’ Beckett proudly told the reporter, ‘This is the first patent ever granted in the world, that I am aware of, for slowing the ageing process and increasing our length of life.’ Reading Sheehan’s article, you would think that getting a patent is a tricky and rigorous process that involves scientifically checking and verifying the claim. But Malcolm Royal, president of the Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia, told Hills that ‘patents are generally granted without any examination of whether or not the invention works — the only exception I am aware of is perpetual motion machines’. There were patents granted for all sorts of madcap ideas in both the US and Australia, including cheese that could never go off and a rocking chair–powered vacuum cleaner. ‘Particularly with pharmaceutical drugs there is frequently charlatan-type behaviour in patenting products that don’t work as a selling point,’ he said.

  Even Sheehan admitted some of Beckett’s theories were a bit ‘crackpot’. Beckett told a seminar at the Australian National University that death was an unnatural exaggeration caused by a mismanagement of our health. ‘This seminar is based on the hypothesis that there is no necessity or necessary reason for living organisms, including humans, to age physically, to suffer from degenerative diseases or to die,’ he said. No wonder all those people were drinking Unique Water; they wanted to live forever with none of the aches or pains that would be associated with being 300 years old. Of course, if you are going to live forever, then so
meone has got to pay for it, and adding a few cents’ worth of magnesium bicarbonate — exactly what you can get over the pharmacy counter for reflux — can triple the value of a bottle of mineral water. A nice little earner that can see you comfortably into your second or third century.

  The advocate of the magic water, Sheehan, himself had a track record of dodgy stories and not checking his facts. This is the reporter who was sent to Punta Del Este in Uruguay in 1986 to report on the 92-nation trade talks. Other hacks were asked why they were not getting the brilliant colour that Sheehan was filing with his stories. That would be because they were reporting what was there as opposed to Sheehan, who was allegedly elsewhere having a secret assignation with a woman who would go on to become his wife. He now denies that version of events.

  His columns, often filled with racial vilification, are heavily vetted at the Herald. Many still get through. In 2003, he wrote a piece about the wonders of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It was packed with mouth-watering details and a full range of prices. Later it emerged that not only was Sheehan best friends with a Krispy Kreme executive, he was a shareholder in the company. Then, in 2016, he wrote a virtually pornographic piece on a racially motivated gang rape of a nurse years before that had been ignored by police. Sheehan had not even carried out the most basic of checks and had to write an apology, in which he managed not to actually apologise. He had made no checks and the story was cobblers. Editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir said he had found ‘unacceptable breaches of fundamental journalistic practice’ and then gave Sheehan … a suspension. Then, much to the relief of his editors he was finally made redundant. Others have been sacked for far less. Perhaps it is something in the water?

  Sheehan’s source in the water story, Russell Beckett, also failed to stand up to scrutiny. After all the media hoo-ha, Beckett vanished, taking with him the daughter of Arthur Shelley, the co-owner of Bert’s Soft Drinks, before eventually turning up again in Canada. By this time, Bert’s Soft Drinks was no longer selling Unique Water. In Canada, the miracle water was being marketed under the name Aqua Gilgamesh. Its mythological name drew analogies with the Babylonian god-king Uruk, slayer of Humbaba the Terrible and the Bull of Heaven in ancient mythology. The spiel about miracle cures was exactly the same, with testimonies from people on the website claiming drinking the magical elixir had helped them with everything from eczema to arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

  That website has since been taken down, but Beckett, who had moved on to Sacramento, California, resurfaced in 2012 with news of a short-term study conducted at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney between August 2005 and November 2006. Lyn Tozer, from clinical research company Datapharm Australia, supervised the study and said it did show that people who drank magnesium-rich water had stable levels of parathyroid hormone, which helps with joint disorders. ‘The short-term study did leave a lot of unanswered questions, which means we need to conduct more studies,’ she said, before adding that there was no proof that drinking the water could promote healthy bone metabolism.

  The professor who conducted the trial for some reason did not want to be drawn into the issue, but, when contacted for this book, would only say, ‘the water delivered magnesium to the individual who drank it.’ Assumedly in the same way that water delivers lemon squash to the individual when the water is used to dilute the squash?

  This was a long way short of the miracles Beckett had said his customers were attributing to the water. ‘Customers have claimed that drinking Unique Water has cured their arthritis, osteoporosis and migraines,’ he said. ‘The most amazing story from a customer was that a man with 21 cancerous polyps in his stomach was down to one after drinking the water every day for a few consecutive months.’ At last, the cure for cancer we had all been looking for. Or was it?

  In his original article, Sheehan did not offer any scientific backup for his story because, he said, he could not find a scientist who was prepared to be quoted. Hills responded to that by finding plenty who were happy to give their verdict on Unique Water. The Australian Skeptics shortlisted the water for its Bent Spoon Award, which is named after Israeli illusionist Uri Geller. Medical spokesman Dr Richard Gordon said: ‘There is a well-known saying: the plural of anecdote is not evidence. All journalists should be required to read two books: How We Know What Isn’t So by Thomas Gilovich and Why People Believe Weird Things — Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer. If they did there would not be so many funny articles.’

  Arthritis expert Dr Daniel Lewis, from the Lewis Institute for Health and Wellbeing in Melbourne, had been promised $200,000 by Beckett to conduct trials on the efficacy of the water for treating arthritis. The money never materialised. Furious that patients were blowing their budget for effective treatments on the magic water, he said, ‘I believe it is garbage, but we need clinical trials to show that it is garbage — that is a fabulous and important health message that needs to get out.’

  Monash University nutritionist Dr Mark Wahlquist was interviewed on ABC TV’s Catalyst program together with Beckett. ‘My first instinct on reading about the work of Russell Beckett was it’s another silly story. [But now] I think that it’s worth pursuing further,’ he said. On the same program, Beckett said: ‘Because I didn’t go through conventional gateways, therefore I could be put into the category of being a snake oil salesman.’

  But perhaps the most succinct and eloquent summation came from Dr Hayden Lloyd Davies, who was a former dean of the faculty of veterinary science at Sydney University and knew Beckett when he was there as an undergraduate. ‘It’s pure, unqualified bullshit. The man is genuinely self-deluded,’ he said.

  Codename Iago: John Friedrich

  EVERYONE is the hero of their own story, and this goes double for con artists. To be a great con man, you need to believe in your own lies. But that does not explain it all. It is also about perception, and where you stand to view your exploits. Often it is those who are motivated by altruism, those who believe they are the good guys, who do the most harm of all. As the old saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Perhaps the biggest trick con artists play is the one they do on themselves.

  ‘Listen to me. Listen carefully.

  ‘I will tell you that both my parents were German and came to Australia in 1931.’

  So began John Friedrich’s extraordinary memoir, Codename Iago, released in 1991 and written with the help of young Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan, who would go on to become one of Australia’s finest novelists. Friedrich claimed that his father, a mining engineer who had worked with Aboriginal camel drivers, had died when young Friedrich was nine years old. ‘People ask me what I remember of him. I say, what do you remember from when you were nine?’

  Friedrich revealed in the book that, after completing his engineering degree, he was recruited to work at the CIA as a ‘spook’. He said he trained at the clandestine Camp Pearce in Virginia in 1968 and then went out as an undercover operative in Laos, Vietnam, Egypt, the US, New Zealand and Europe. His codename was ‘Iago’, after Shakespeare’s Machiavellian villain in Othello. Friedrich said the things he saw and the things he did affected him deeply. The death of a friend working undercover with him against far-left extremists in Germany pushed him to breaking point. Mentally broken, he came back to Australia.

  On 20 January 1975, a man who was named Johann Friedrich Hohenberger, according to his Federal Republic of Germany passport, flew from Auckland, New Zealand, to Melbourne, Australia. According to Department of Immigration records, Hohenberger then left Australia and flew to Singapore on 22 January 1975. ‘What remained behind in Melbourne was John Friedrich,’ he wrote. ‘Would I tell you this if it wasn’t true?’

  Like so much of John Friedrich’s remarkable story, it was hard to tell where fact stopped and fiction began. According to an immigration officer working at the time, it would have been easy for a passenger to arrive in Australia and then disappear. ‘The trick was to arrange arrival in Austral
ia on a flight from overseas, but with the passenger’s final destination booked on a forward flight to another country,’ said the officer. Back in those days, the immigration department allowed travellers in transit to leave the airport for up to 72 hours. ‘After the passenger left the airport, the department would lose him.’

  Welcome to Australia, Mr Hohenberger.

  Slipping through that simple loophole was not a troubled Australian returning home to mend his mind after years working for the CIA, but a man who would go on to become one of Australia’s greatest ever con men. A man who built the equivalent of a private army on borrowed money and conned the whole country at the same time. He was so good, even his biographer, Richard Flanagan, did not know where fact ended and fiction began. ‘I can vouch for the veracity of none of it,’ he said of Codename Iago. ‘But then my job was not to check facts but only to echo John’s voice in its many and varied manifestations. This book is neither the full story nor the only story about John Friedrich. Its interest lies in its being his own story told in his own way.’

  John Friedrich was not born to German parents in Australia, as he claimed. He was right in saying that John Friedrich was not his real name. However, he did not change it because of his secret life as a spy for the CIA. John’s real name was Johann Friedrich Hohenberger. Hohenberger grew up in West Germany where, in 1972, he forged an engineering degree to get a job with a major Austrian road-building company. The 24-year-old then set about defrauding the company with a devious road-repair racket. He would send out fake invoices for repairs that had not been done to roads that did not exist. Munich police later said they were amazed at his abilities. Nevertheless, the authorities got wind of his scheme when he hit $200,000 in earnings from the scam.