Who bombed the Hilton? (20 page)

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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:

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:

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 …'
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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.
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Although a contact briefing is held between
Special Branch and Seary on 2 May,
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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.
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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:

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').
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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:

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'.
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So yes, Seary quoting Kapil saying there is much in the ‘pipeline' in Ananda Marga-land in early May is perfectly accurate.

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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.
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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 member 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'.
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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?

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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.
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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.'
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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:

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'.
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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.
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