By Sean Malloy
SYDNEY — February 13 is the 15th anniversary of the Hilton Hotel bombing. The question of who bombed the Hilton has never been satisfactorily answered.
Terry Griffiths was a police officer at the time and was seriously injured in the blast. He supports the demand for a joint federal-NSW royal commission on what happened outside the Sydney Hilton in 1978.
Griffiths believes the framing of Tim Anderson and the Ananda Marga "was a smokescreen to get away from the truth" — the truth being that police organisations planted the bomb.
"All the evidence that I've ever been given or found myself, or had any access to, has always suggested that the security forces were responsible", Griffiths told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ in an extended interview.
"The only dog squad in Australia at that time was the military sniffer dog squad. They were told to train for two weeks and to train their dogs to find parcel and letter bombs or similar explosive devices. On the Thursday before the actual explosion, orders came through Victoria Barracks to tell [the squad] to stand down, they were not required."
As well, police were prohibited from establishing a normal "secure area" at the entrances to the hotel. A former Commonwealth police inspector, called Ian McDonald", had gone public in December 1991 with the information that the NSW and Commonwealth Police had requested a secure area on the footpath in both Pitt and George Street.
"The police went to the Protective Services Coordination Unit, which was a committee made up of members of ASIO and members of Commonwealth security forces. They were primarily responsible for the planning of the security arrangements.
"The very committee whose job it was to protect us all and plan the security arrangements refused to allow the front entrances to be made secure."
Further evidence comes from council workers on the garbage trucks. "On a number of occasions over that weekend, when the garbagemen drove up the street, and could see that bin was overflowing, when they tried to stop their vehicle and empty it, uniformed police waved them on and refused them permission to
empty a garbage bin.
"The municipal council workers union said that over that whole weekend that was the only bin in the Sydney metropolitan area not emptied."
Griffiths was told of NSW Special Branch involvement in the bombing while he was recovering from the bombing, performing light duties at Blacktown police station in 1979.
"A member of the Special Branch who had come there sees me in a room as he's walking past and comes back and says 'Terry Griffiths, victim of the Hilton bombing'. I said yeah, he said, 'I've got something to tell you', and he told me that the person who made the bomb warning phone call was a member of the Special Branch. He was in a motor vehicle in George Street with other security force members."
When a coronial inquiry was finally held in 1982, Griffiths says, tampering with and misrepresentation of evidence indicated that the police were hiding something.
"In two weeks and four days of court hearing, the queen's council who represented the police victims, who was instructed on behalf of the Police Association of NSW, was not allowed to subpoena one person or one document."
Police produced a document "which was alleged to be the original copy of the police record of the Hilton bombing in the initial stages; it's called the police occurrence pad entry."
When it was shown that this document was not in the different-
coloured inks that would have been normal, it was called a copy. The alleged "original", when produced, was significantly different from the "copy". Later, it became a mere "running sheet". Says Griffiths, "They were just making up documents and filling in the gaps as they went on".
But why would Australian security forces bomb an Australian hotel? Griffith believes that they "were trying to stage the event.
"They were going to sandbag the outside receptacle; they were going to have the robot there and shoot the bullet in and blow it up. The phone call was going to be made, we were going to be notified, then the army called in, the police ballistics called in, the media called in.
"ASIO and other security forces believed that this was the ideal moment to stage what was pretending to be the beginning of terrorist activities in this country."
He points out that, as a result of the explosion, ASIO was given immunity from prosecution for its illegal activities, as well as an expanded staff and budget.
A silent vigil will be held in Sydney at 11 a.m. on February 13 outside the George Street entrance to the Hilton. At 1p.m. there will be a public forum at the Metcalfe Auditorium in the State Library, Macquarie Street.