Seary asks what he should do ‘if it comes to the point of me to actually knock someone off what’s my position then to knock a Margii off or stop someone else getting hurt?’ Seary is told to ‘ring them to alert them before it happens’. Later, Seary adds, ‘I had to take a vow of secrecy last night to death’ and, ‘The other groups in the Margiis treat the VSS like a joke. They actually don’t like them, they think they are too heavy …’10
It’s not clear from the transcript whether Kapil is actually providing this dark thumbnail sketch of the VSS or whether Seary is regurgitating material he has gleaned from other sources like newspapers or even, I suppose, from Special Branch. All Kapil is quoted as saying directly is that he’d like Seary to meet some people — that ‘there are a lot of things in the pipeline at the moment going on and these people would like to talk to you and see you’.11 Kapil at no point suggests he endorses such radicals or their violent courses of action. Given that Seary’s initiation into the sect is to occur a few weeks hence, it’s just as possible Kapil is attempting to determine whether he is a police informant.
In years to come crusaders for Anderson, Alister and Dunn such as Tom Molomby, the author of Spies, Bombs and the Path of Bliss, will scoff at the idea that such material would be revealed to someone this new to the organisation.12 Nevertheless, like it or not, Seary does have bona fides that make him credible to the Margiis in a way another agent may not. He was a Hare, he’d been in jail at various times, and the (albeit) isolated acts of violence that he retails to Kapil did occur, which well may have made him seem even more authentic.13 The Hilton task force also knows that Kapil Arn is a senior member of the sect and close to the leadership, particularly Abhiik Kumar, so if anyone did have contacts to an inner radical cell, it would be him.
The fact is that these allegations about the sect are extremely common. The papers frequently publish stories about them and they accord perfectly with what police around the world, including Australia’s police, believe to be true. At the very least they are the claims UPRF have been making very publicly for over nine months. I can also think of a few reasons why Kapil may tell a new member rumours about what happens to those who defect from the sect — it’s a good way to measure someone’s allegiance. I assume you’d learn a great deal from how they reacted to such gruesome material. Maybe it’s a test.
It’s clear too that Seary is revelling in his role — he tells Krawczyk he’d like to say that he had a pistol licence to give his role as a hothead more weight, and also requests a listening device.14 Finally he asks what his position is if he is ‘asked to drop a parcel off at such and such a point and the parcel contains bom-bombs [sic] you know’.15 Which in all honesty seems a fair enough question under the circumstances. The first two requests are denied — the listening device rather tragically, as it might have avoided the fracas that is to come. In regard to the latter, the advice is to call his handler.
Seary’s initiation is to take place at the Ananda Marga headquarters in Newtown the following Sunday. That night, presumably to seal the deal, Seary heads off with Kapil Arn and another Margii called Ainjile Morrison to undertake a spray-painting and postering campaign in Ultimo. The three of them happily spray up ‘Fight for Justice, Meditate for Peace, Join Ananda Marga now’ and the Prout slogan, ‘Prout, the only way out’. Mid-slogan Kapil is arrested for defacing property, spray can in hand, by the local police. Seary has the good fortune to further ingratiate himself as a keen foot soldier by bailing the older man out of jail.16
Although a contact briefing is held between Special Branch and Seary on 2 May,17 the next tape recording does not occur until the 7th. Matters appear to have progressed rapidly between Seary and the Margiis. Seary reports he has attended many meetings, been initiated into the sect the day before and been invited to a retreat. Ainjile has told Seary that there is to be a ‘complete full new campaign against the Commonwealth Police — starting with posters and then other things’. Even more exciting are the conversations with Kapil who, subsequent to his arrest, starts to tell Seary ‘about his other exploits with the spray can’ and then about the ‘coming revolution’. Kapil tells him that part of the training was ‘self-defence and firearm practice and things like that’. But of all the things Seary reports, most notable is his reference to the Acharya, the Ananda Marga leader Abhiik Kumar, wanting to put Seary into the Volunteer Social Service and directing him to see Paul Alister, the leader of VSS, about joining up.18 Reading these transcripts carefully, they don’t seem implausible (a later accusation against them). Once again Kapil Arn hasn’t uttered a single word that characterises him as a violent activist, nor one who condones such behaviour. All he actually talks about are his ‘exploits with a spray can’. As for the talk of the coming revolution, there is much corroborating evidence for this — most emanating from the Ananda Marga itself.
The Margiis’ May 1978 newsletter (published by the public relations department of Ananda Marga, Pracaraka Samgha) confirms Kapil’s claim to Seary that there is ‘much in the pipeline’. The newsletter opens with a detailed overview of Baba’s court case in Patna and how well it appears to be going:
On 16 April [Baba] said, ‘This year will be a very good year for all of us. You know when I was arrested Ananda Marga work was only in five countries. When I came in jail it spread in more than 87 countries. Had I been outside it won’t have been in so many countries. But my physical presence is also necessary — so it is very near. The enemies tried their level best to suppress the fact by implicating in false cases, harassing, torturing etc., but they could not do anything. AM will remain forever.’19
Other coming actions outlined in the newsletter include the start of the ‘FREE THE BANGKOK 3’ campaign. A detailed catalogue of the deficiencies of the case is laid out for members. Much is made of attempts by the Australian Commonwealth Police to squeeze information from the three about the Hilton bombing as well (‘the most serious case of harassment by the Australian Commonwealth Police’).20 There is a lengthy piece from Timothy Jones himself. His eloquent dissection of his visit from members of Sheather’s task force demonstrates the sect’s perception of the Australian police at the time:
It certainly seems probable that the Aust. Police are pressurizing the Thai prosecution into building the case into an anti=Australian [sic] government move. This would serve their purpose nicely, since in a police state such as this, conviction is likely. All three of us have been asked by Thai/Aust. investigators/F.B.I about the Hilton incident — they were evidently trying to make connections.21
In the same vein, the May newsletter also contains a lengthy discourse about Pranava’s case, which is thoroughly critiqued as an act of pure police fabrication and harassment. Non-Margiis know Pranava as John William Duff, currently on trial in Canberra for the kidnap and assault of Colonel Singh and his wife. The newsletter is full of instructions on what actions members can take to voice their concerns about the various cases. If Baba is freed (as it is fervently hoped in mid-May), Margiis are encouraged to participate in a range of celebratory activities that publicise the joyous news. With regard to the Duff case, they should lobby local members of parliament, organise poster campaigns, participate in demonstrations and so on. To convey the tone and spirit of these instructions, the front page of the newsletter ends with the headline ‘Live Fight and Die for your Ideology’.22 So yes, Seary quoting Kapil saying there is much in the ‘pipeline’ in Ananda Marga-land in early May is perfectly accurate.
*
In the second week of May Sheather receives bomb diagrams found in the possession of a Margii in London, as well as news of an improvised explosive device (IED) planted in an Air India office in Kuala Lumpur that went off without casualties in November 1977.23
These incidents cannot be obviously connected to each other, nor to those at the Hilton, the High Commission in Canberra or the latest bomb in Brisbane. The London diagrams, allegedly found by the London Metropolitan Police in the possession of Ananda Marga mem
ber Catalina Rivera Cabanatan, are fascinating. Done in a style reminiscent of a classic children’s book, there are illustrations showing how to make a door handle bomb, a homemade hand grenade, a ‘walk trap’ (wire, safety pin, heavy firing pin, detonator and TNT) and a ‘nipple time bomb’.24
I suppose niggling at the back of everyone’s mind, from the detectives at Special Branch to Sheather and his team, ASIO, the Australian Government — and no doubt the leadership of the Ananda Marga — is the question: what if Sarkar is unsuccessful in this appeal? Legally there aren’t too many other options. What will happen then?
*
By 15 May, the date of the third tape-recorded debrief, Richard Seary’s rapid momentum in securing a place in the sect appears to have continued. He has been given the opportunity to go to two Margii camps the following weekend. One of them is to be a VSS camp to be run by Alister. He’s been told by some unnamed member (who has participated before) that there is to be arms training — he is asked to bring along a machete or a rifle.25
Seary also tells Krawczyk and Helson that the night before he’d been at a sect meeting at which Kapil Arn’s wife was extremely agitated about her husband’s imminent court appearance following his arrest in Ultimo. As Seary tells it, the Acharya (Abhiik Kumar) explained to her, ‘I already told him an alternative thing to do.’ In response Kapil’s upset wife turns to Kumar and says, ‘Did you tell him to blow it up too?’ As befits a religious leader, the Acharya does not rise to the bait and replies evenly, ‘You said that, not me.’26
Krawczyk, long acquainted with suggestive hints that lead nowhere about Margiis and bombs, starts to get more specific in his questions to Seary. What’s happening with the two radicals that Kapil Arn said he was going to introduce him to? Seary whines that he hasn’t had much of a chance to see Kapil on his own. He adds that Kapil is very close to the Acharya Kumar and there is tension between Kumar and Alister — something to do with Alister having failed acharya training.
While none of this amounts to much more than banter, what makes it interesting is that someone else (possibly ASIO or Interpol) is also watching Kumar closely that night. About the same time Detective Krawczyk and Helson are recording Seary, a report (its author’s name redacted) is sent over to Sheather and the task force. Dated 15 May 1978 and titled ‘Information Received From [Redacted] Re. Brandon Alias Hoffman Alias Alexander’, it says:
At 3 pm this date information received from [blacked out] that person using the name of Michael Luke Brandon, using Passport No. P.075549 departed Sydney International Airport on Thai International Airlines Flight no. 982, 11.20am on 15/5/78 for Bangkok via Singapore. Passport endorsed one month holiday. Previous information has been obtained by this enquiry that Jon Hoffman, alias Jason Holman Alexander, changed his name by deed poll to Michael Luke Brandon.27
So Abhiik Kumar has yet another new name and a brand new passport. He has slipped out of the country undetected: ‘enquiries at the Customs Branch at Sydney Airport revealed that there was no currency search of Brandon and he did not receive any extra scrutiny or enquiries when he departed’.28 Crafty bastard!
The following day the trial of Margii John William (Pranava) Duff in Canberra comes to an abrupt halt when the jury is discharged after 12 days, after inadmissible evidence is given. A new trial is ordered to commence with a new jury on 24 July.29
Two days later, on 18 May, Sydney is hit by another bomb blast. At 7.40 pm ‘a bomb blast shattered a plate glass window at the New South Wales Police Headquarters in College St’.30 The bomb, while not large and resulting in no injuries, is alarming — the devices seem to be turning up with disturbing regularity. The police investigators take the debris to be examined and compared to the bomb fragments from the Hilton and the bomb from the Indian High Commission.
What does Norm Sheather make of this devilry? Not much — he’s on leave, as will be nastily reported in the paper in a few days’ time. Not only has he been kept out of the loop by the clandestine actions of his colleagues in Special Branch, he is also being mocked and derided in public.
At the very moment Richard Seary heads off to his first Volunteer Social Services camp (and alleged arms training) in Ashton Park, Mosman (around the back of Taronga Zoo, where the new car park is), Sheather is being hectored like an errant schoolboy. In response to the bombing at police headquarters, the Sun-Herald adopts the tone of an aggrieved headmaster:
Three months later, the Hilton inquiry looks like being a sad, lost cause … There is still little hope of finding the Hilton murderers … Three months after the blast that killed two council workmen and a policeman there is little hope the $100,000 reward will be claimed.
It’s Norm who is pushed forward as the author of this sad state of affairs. Not only is he, ‘the officer in charge’, on leave that week, it seems his second in command, Detective Sergeant Bruce Jackson, is also ‘off for four days’. The Sun-Herald spent two days (their italics) making phone calls that fail to discover who is heading the investigation in their absence. What a far cry it is, the Sunday tabloid declaims, from the mighty hundredfold of detectives (actually 58) who began the team. A number that dropped to 70 after a fortnight, then to 37 by mid-March and now only constitutes a mere handful. The article pits the monumental, but in its view pointless, effort of interviewing ‘1500 people ranging from religious groups to political activists and plain cranks … to produce only three strong leads’. The reporter, Roger Franklin, then sets out the tragic narrative arcs of rising and falling action, the hopes of promising leads — like the Mr Whippy ice-cream van, and box-carrying, Piggy Muldoon–hating Penny from New Zealand — which are irrevocably dashed. As is the latest sliver of hope that came in the form of a strip of super-8 film sent anonymously to the police. Unlike Zapruder’s history-defining piece of celluloid, this is simply a dead end. On examination it reveals a man carrying a brown box towards the bin outside the Hilton — a man who turns out to be a local shopkeeper getting rid of some rubbish.31
It’s amazing how little this reporter is able to glean about what is really going on in the investigation, and how closely the reduced task force is holding its cards to its chest. The ‘leads’ the article refers to are so far down the priorities list for Norm and his investigative team they appear laughable. Still, it must grate that things do suddenly appear to be going a wee bit pear-shaped. Having Abhiik Kumar throw on another pantomime mask and slip out of Australia as Michael Brandon must stick in the craw a bit, as must all those bloody bombs. If Norm’s mood is bleak, it is hard to imagine what it’s going to be like when he finds out a few weeks later that Seary has been recruited as an operative to gather information about his case.
‘A full-scale terrorist war’
Seary has his fourth tape-recorded debrief with Krawczyk and Helson on 24 May, immediately after his attendance at the VSS and related Margii camps. It’s a doozy. Given that he’s been immersed with Margiis on camp sites for days on end, it isn’t surprising that he’s chummed up with a few of them and picked up some chatter. In brief, Seary claims he has heard that if Baba is not released during the current appeal process, there will be ‘a full-scale terrorist war coming about the middle of June’. This attack will be coordinated by the head of the Volunteer Social Services, who is coming to Australia from Manila. Seary relates the information that Abhiik has gone to India to await the outcome of the trial and to confer with Baba. He then details the unarmed combat training he received at the VSS camp and the war games he saw; conversations with Margiis about the existence of caches of weapons; the existence of a VSS uniform; and the existence of the Universal Proutist Revolutionary Federation. Heady stuff indeed, to be lambasted in years to come as far-fetched nonsense.1
And yet, and yet … there is corroboration for much of this. Not only is Seary’s account of the postering and of Kapil’s arrest of 30 April supported by independent local area command ‘police observations’,2 we know that the camps were held and that Seary attended them. ASIO was undertaki
ng its own surveillance. We know that Abhiik has indeed left the country. There is independent corroboration of Seary’s acharya in Manila, the head of the VSS, who is allegedly to lead the violent uprising of Margiis should Sarkar not be released.
A telex to the Hilton task force from COMPOL or Interpol with information supplied by Hong Kong’s Special Branch states ‘we can confirm Acharya Japananda is global secretary of volunteers social service, whose headquarters is in Manila’. Like Kumar, he is a man of many names and dangerous (or unlucky) friends:
… a list of AM members supplied by Hong Kong Special Branch has the following entry — Japanand [sic] Avahoot aka Nimay Chandra son of Nand Lai Rai Choudry … We note that a Mani Rai Choudhury … travelled with Timothy Jones from Bangkok to Katmandu in January this year. Choudhury transited Bangkok from Manila, in company of Victoria Mary Shepherd … Transliterations of Indian names are complex and it is probably that Choudhury/Choudry are the same name. Choudhury however is a very common name.3
Like Abhiik Kumar, Acharya or Avadhut Japananda has been travelling in the company of long-term Ananda Marga members immediately prior to their arrests in Bangkok and Manila. It must be concerning to Special Branch and the Hilton task force to imagine such a man entering Australia.
Even with corroboration, it is true that Seary’s list of Margii activities is, as James Wood will come to describe it, ‘startling’.4 However, when one looks at the lengthy transcript itself, these ‘facts’ emerge fairly vaguely and are issued with all manner of qualifications. To be honest it reads to me like someone struggling to fathom the nature of the people around him and unsure of what to make of what he has heard, rather than just spouting allegations in order to stitch them up. On 24 May Seary comes across as particularly circumspect. When asked by Krawczyk (referred to phonetically as C in the transcript) whether he thinks the Margiis are held together by the imprisonment of Baba or by something else, Seary replies:
Who bombed the Hilton? Page 14