Australian Police Raid Office Of the Nation's Secret Service
The following article from the New York Times describes the bizarre situation surrounding the Australian police raid on the nation's intelligence service, the Security Intelligence Organization, or SIO. The reason: "the police were seeking files on Croatian liberation movements operating in Australia," which the SIO refused to hand over. At the time, the Croatian Statehood Party of Nikola Stedul - an offshoot of Odpor - had acheived almost unprecedented respectibility in Australia, at least for an organization implicated in dozens of terrorist bombings is concerned. According to the last half of the article, two bombs were found immediately thereafter, one on the route of the motorcade carrying England's Prince Philip on an official visit, ostensibly intended to kill him.

 

AUSTRALIAN POLICE RAID OFFICE OF
THE NATION'S SECRET SERVICE

 

SYDNEY, Australia, March 16 [1973] (AP) - Commonwealth policemen raided the headquarters of the nation's secret service, the Security Intelligence Organization, in Melbourne today.

Government soruces [sic] in the Federal capital, Canberra, said the police were seeking files on Croatian liberation movements operating in Australia.

The informants said that agency, which is under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's control, had refused to hand over the files and that police acted on the orders of the Attorney General, Lionel Murphy.

A Government official in Canberra declared: "It's like the army attacking the navy."

In the United States, the equivalent would be a raid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Central Intelligence Agency headquarters.

 

Statement Was Expected

Mr. Murphy, who refused to comment, had been expected to make a statement in Parliament this week about the Croatian groups, which have been blamed for bomb attacks on Yugoslav buildings and supporters in Australia. The statement was scheduled to precede the visit to Canberra next week of Yugoslavia's Premier, Djemal Bijedic.

The Yugoslav Government has charged that Australia is being used as a training ground for Croatian secessionists, who return to Yugoslavia for terrorism against President Tito's Government. Government sources in Canberra said this was confirmed to Mr. Murphy by the F.B.I. when the Attorney General visited Washington earlier this year.

The groups operated under the banner of the Ustashi, the wartime brown shirt organization of the Nazi puppet dictator, Ante Pavelic.

 

2 Bombs Are Defused

Meanwhile, two bombs were found here today, one of them along the route Prince Philip later took into the city from the airport on his arrival here for a visit. Experts defused the bombs, and the police guarded his route.

The second bomb was found in a locker in the central railway station. A report of another bomb in a government office building opposite a club Prince Philip was opening tonight proved to be false.

So did a fourth suspicious object found in a garbage bin near the busy Taylor Square intersection, where the Prince's limousine was to pass.

Extra policemen were rushed to the airport to meet the Prince, touring the country as president of the Australian Conservation Foundation. Welcoming ceremonies were cut back to less than a minute.

The bombs were found following an anonymous call to the office of the state Premier.

 

:: filing information ::
Title: Australian Police Raid Office Of the Nation's Secret Service
Source: New York Times. Transcribed by Erica Case.
Date: March 16, 1973 (published March 17, 1973) Added: October 15, 2003