Sydney Hilton Bombing Conspiracy

On 13 February 1978 about 1am a bomb exploded in a rubbish bin outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia killing two garbagemen and a policeman, and injuring several others.

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was taking place in the hotel and a number of foreign leaders were staying there but none were injured. Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser immediately called out the army to guard the remainder of the CHOGM meeting.

No one claimed responsibility for the blast, and there is considerable disagreement as to who may have perpetrated it. A Royal Commission, headed by Justice Hope the Royal Commissioner, was established.

(This is based on the Wikipedia article before it was censored.)

Evidence of official misconduct (ASIO)

There is considerable circumstantial evidence to suggest that Australian Security forces and in particular Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) were responsible for the Hilton bombing. This includes:

Much of this was uncovered by Terry Griffiths who was a policeman injured during the blast. There are many sources for these alegations, one of the best is the ABC documentary "Conspiracy" 1995.

Ananda Marga

The Indian prime minister, Morarji Desai claimed that Ananda Marga had attempted to kill him due to the imprisonment of the organisation's spriritual leader, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti.

Tim Anderson, Ross Dunn and Paul Alister, known as the Ananda Marga Three and members of the Ananda Marga sect. They were convicted and jailed on charges that were not directly related to the bombing. However many (including a member of the jury) thought that they were related.

They were then pardoned on 15 May 1986 and given compensation after several inquiries. Then Tim Anderson was prosecuted again, this time for the bombing itself. However, the case against him was not successful, and there were considerable problems with the evidence against him.

Related events

In 1977 a judicial inquiry was made into the South Australian Special Branch under Justice White. It was very critical and the police commisdioner Harold Salisbury was sacked. The Special Branch's special relationship with ASIO was also discontinued.

Largely as a result Neville Wran(Premier of NSW) announced that a similar judicial inquiry would commence in NSW. This was just a few days before the Hilton Bombing. These events put considerable pressure on the Australian security forces.

Shortly after the bombing Wran decided to abandon his enquiry. The intelligence services and ASIO received a substantial increase in funding. ASIO was also given immunity from prosecution for illegal activities.

Sources and extracts

Since this event is now rather old, many sources are not easily available online. Below are extracts of some relevant articles. (Note that full articles can be purchased from the Sydney Morning Herald for $2.20 each, min charge $22.) These extracts are reproduced under copyright Fair use provisions.

SMH: The Hilton bombing; Jane Freeman, 6 Feb 1995:

" (...) [The ABC documentary] Conspiracy tells the story of Terry Griffiths, one of the policemen brutally injured by the explosion. Griffiths believes the bomb was planted by security forces in an attempt to secure more funds, prestige and power (the ASIO Act, following the bombing, gave them all three).
According to Griffiths's theory, the bomb was never intended to go off but, due to a fumble at CIB in passing on the bomb warning and the fact that the garbage truck was running early and had not been banned from emptying the bin, it exploded.
(...)
The documentary looks at the mysteries which surround the bombing: Why was the bin never checked? Could the sophisticated bomb have been made in a Commonwealth laboratory, as one scientist claimed? Were there army sniffer dogs trained for the CHOGRM security operation but never used? When did the warning phone call come through and were the police records of the call tampered with? Who decided that all the rubbish in the garbage truck, including bomb fragments, should be thrown away in the local tip?
(...)
The film suggests a number of possible scenarios. Griffiths says it was the spooks, with help from the military and Special Branch. Researcher Jenny Hocking thinks it may have been a bungled training exercise along the lines of the ASIS raid on the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne. Ian McDonald, an inspector in the Australian Federal Police who saw the bomb flash against his Hilton hotel window, is sure no secret service would use a live bomb for training or political purposes (he says it would have been easy to make an inert bomb that looked as if it was intended to go off).
(...)
In 1991 the whole NSW Parliament called for an inquiry and the Federal Government refused. That's a situation without precedence.

SMH: The path of bliss...; Ben Hills, 25 Oct 1990:

"In 1985, after unsuccessful appeals to the Supreme and High Courts, a government inquiry recommended that the three be pardoned - largely because of the tainted testimony of the key Crown witness, a Special Branch infiltrator into the Ananda Marga - and Anderson, Alister and Dunn walked free after more than six years behind bars. They later received $100,000 each to help with their rehabilitation.
(...)
Ostensibly, the charges that were eventually laid in June of 1978 had nothing to do with the Hilton bombing...
Ostensibly. In fact, as one of the jurors was later to relate, the jury was influenced by the fact that they believed the three were really guilty of the Hilton bombing - but police could only get evidence against them for the so-called Yagoona conspiracy.
(...)
The day after Anderson's arrest [the second time, after the pardon] was announced, a man no-one had heard of before - a former member of the Ananda Marga named Evan Pederick - walked into the confessional of a Catholic priest in Brisbane and confessed to having planted the bomb, at Anderson's direction.
(...)
Pederick was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the crime, and Mr Tees had the copper-bottomed evidence he needed to get a conviction.

This 1990 article then speculates that Anderson would be found guilty. In fact he was cleared due to the wildly inconsistent evidence against him.

Wikipedia Notes

This article was originally written for Wikipedia, but it was then attacked quite viciously by people that disagreed with the evidence.

It is normally quite fun interacting with others to produce a solid article. But that requires some sensitivity to the views of others. On the other hand, the Wiki Mafia just deleted well researched contributions, with no added contribution of their own, nor any attempt at reconcilliation. Their argument was simple: "our clique is bigger and more established than your clique".

I felt that Wikipedia is not worth the angst, so I have left.

(The long saga of the Wikipedia article can be found on the Wikipedia talk page.)

External links

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