the game?
pp. 10-11 · Read in the full issue
lago’s the name, but what’s the game?
By Evelyn Hogan
THE use of a former National Safety Council of Australia (NSCA) Bell 212 helicopter in Bougainville is re vealed in Codename logo, the newly released book by the former director of the since collapsed NSCA Victorian Division, John Friedrich. He completed the first draft of this book just before suiciding on his farm in Gippsland, Victoria, on July 26 last year.
Friedrich fled across Australia after a huge scam involving the NSCA Victorian Division with debts of $260 million was exposed. The nationwide
manhunt by police caught the imagin
ation of Australia in 1989.
There were wild speculations about who Friedrich was and who he was working for. There were rumours of gunrunning and CIA involvement, which Friedrich does little to dispel in his book. His case was compared to the Nugan Hand Bank case in which millions of dollars of debts were alleged to have been incurred in a money-laundering operation involving drugs and guns.
Frank Nugan was found shot dead in his car and Michael Hand shot through.
In Codename lago Friedrich states: “There was. . . interest on the part of intelligence organisations in our overseas operations ... The Bell 212 helicopter we had been using to work on the volcano at Rabaul was found after our collapse, much to the surprise of some, to have been used to ferry Papua New Guinea troops around Bougainville, and had been fired upon and had returned fire.”
Australia already has been embar rassed to find Australian Iroquois heli copters used as gun ships by the PNG Defence Force and being used to drop bodies off in the sea off Arawa. The Australian government would very much like to forget the issue during his visit to Fiji last month, Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Senator Gareth Evans responded with annoyance to PlM’s questions on that incident by saying adequate answers had been given at the time, and it was “a dead issue”.
But the Bougainville issue itself re mains unresolved, and the revelations in Friedrich’s books may be a further source of embarrassment for the Australian government, and ill-feeling toward Aus tralia by Bougainville secessionists and the PNG Defence Force, who suspect outside parties were interfering even before the closure of the mine.
The NSCA’s US-made Bell 212 can be
seel as a military or civil-utility hclicop r. It can be fitted with rescue hoist and mergence dotation gear and converted )r use as a gun ship.
Even though the NSCA Victorian was in receivership in July 1989, loyd Helicopter, an Australian firm, ad acquired the former NSCA 'ictorian Division helicopter and was sing it in charter work lor the Papua iew Guinea Army, Friedrich stated.
Uith the Declaration of the State of mergence on June 22, security forces 'signed to Bougainville were increased ► 2000. There was an urgent need for 'licoptcrs and the Australian govern ent was pressured to deliver the four omised Iroquios. These were delivered i July 12, 1989.
Papua New Guinea defence sources mfirmed that both a Bell 212 and a korsk) helicopter were contracted from e end of April 1989 through May 1989 lei i y troops from Rabaul to Bougain- He. I his was before the Stale of ■nergencN was declared and before July ►B9, when Friedrich claims Lloyd clicopter acquired the Bell 212.
Defence Force sources add there was
no government-sponsored programme to use helicopters to evacuate civilians since Air Niugini maintained operations to Bougainville throughout 1989.
PNG Defence Force officers are puzzled about the role ofjohn Friedrich and the Bell 212 in Rabaul. According to one officer: “The government gets very uneasy about these kinds of develop
ments. Things happen mysteriously and
we never find out the full story.”
In the Appendix to Friedrich’s book, his solicitor Zig Zaler says Friedrich claimed he was “a CIA operative and the NSCA was a sleepy vehicle which he turned into an organisation available for counter-espionage activities”. Friedrich claims to have taken the identity of a German, Johann Friedrich Holcnberger, after Holenberger died in a skiing accident. He explained that it was “part of normal CIA practice, whereby in order to become useful to the CIA as an operative one would adopt a false
identity”.
Freidrich names other characters in volved in the NSCA Victorian Division and wonders who they are. Of one member of the Board of the NSCA, Mr
Maxwell Else, he says:“l know he had close links with the Australian govern ment, particularly the Attorney Gen eral’s (the department to which ASIO is attached) and the Defence Department”.
Friedrich claimed that the Senate inquiry into the collapse of the NSCA Victorian Division revealed that a lot of prominently placed and powerful people were not about to begin talking about their association with NSCA Victorian Division.
Michael o‘Connor of the Australian Defence Association cautions against taking the use of the Bell 212 in Bougainville too seriously. He said that it just happened to be in Rabaul at the time when the PNG Defence Force needed to transport troops.
Friedrich was arrested in 1990. With his alleged suicide, the case was closed.
Questions about who he was and who he was working for remain unanswered.
The taxpayers of Victoria are left with a huge debt and Pacific Islanders might wonder: were Friedrich’s activities part of his own magnificent obsession, or was he one player following instructions in larger covert operations? □.