Top cop, bad times

For a shrewd political operator, the Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, suddenly finds himself swinging in the breeze, writes David Marr.

Mick Keelty's dream run is long over. Five years ago, as Australian police drove the operation to nab the Bali bombers, he was a national hero, the plain face of Australia's struggle against terrorism. But time has cut Keelty down to size. The past few days have shown what he has now become: a copper with a lot of problems whose future can't be guaranteed.

This was a week of humiliations for Keelty that culminated yesterday with the Queensland Legal Commission dismissing the aggressive complaint he had brought last year against the barrister Stephen Keim, QC - counsel for Dr Mohamed Haneef and a man widely applauded for publicly releasing interrogation transcripts that saw his client set free.

Keelty is no mean politician. In a little more than 20 years he raised himself from the lower depths of the Australian Federal Police to the very top. But he hasn't grasped that the politics of policing terrorism in Australia are shifting. His call this week for media blackouts to protect anti-terrorism operations were met with scorn. Not a friend came forward to support him.

He was attacked by Government and Opposition figures. Peak legal bodies put in the boot. Disowning the Commissioner's views, the Labor Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, delivered him a little lecture in Democracy 101: "Access to government information and decision-making are keys to a healthy and vibrant democracy. The media plays a vital role in helping to ensure governments remain accountable and always serve the public interest."

This is no time for Keelty to find himself at odds with Labor. Two issues are at stake here. First, his own survival. Second, efforts to resolve the culture wars between police and intelligence agencies, disputes that are at the heart of several of the controversies that have dragged Keelty off his public pedestal since the 2002 triumphs in Bali.

Though his comments this week stirred up an ants' nest of antagonism in the party, Labor has no immediate plans - and no grounds - to sack Keelty. But almost from the time he became commissioner in 2001, the party has been calling for judicial inquiries into the work of the force under his command. In the last two election campaigns, Labor went to the people promising to conduct such inquiries if elected.

The focus of the former Labor leader, Mark Latham, was on the role of the police and the Australian Security Intelligence Service (ASIS) in the "disruption" of people-smuggling boats in Indonesia. Latham has gone but the issue is not dead. The Special Minister of State, John Faulkner, remains on the record calling for an inquiry into the links, if any, between the program and the sinking of the refugee boat known as SIEV X with the loss of 353 lives.

Faulkner's approach was cautious but implacable: "At no stage do I want to break, or will I break, the protocols in relation to operational matters involving ASIS or the AFP," he told the Senate in 2002. "But those protocols were not meant as a direct or indirect licence to kill."

Faulkner is not an opponent any Canberra bureaucrat happily finds himself facing. In a move he may come to regret, Keelty responded at the time by accusing Faulkner of error, selective quotation and spurious allegations. "Senator Faulkner ... has chosen to sully the reputation of the AFP, and myself as commissioner, instead of availing himself of the facts."

Now the Prime Minister's right-hand man, Faulkner remains determined to uncover those facts.

More immediate for Keelty is the problem of Labor's election promise last year to hold a judicial inquiry into the fiasco of the collapsed case against the Gold Coast medico Dr Mohamed Haneef. The terms of the inquiry are being settled by the Attorney-General and Keim's victory over the Commissioner yesterday isn't going to encourage Labor to go easy.

Keelty's often opaque and often contradictory speech at the Sydney Institute that caused all the fuss earlier this week was part of a pre-emptive strategy by the Commissioner. But his preparations for dealing with the inquiry date back to the final days of the election campaign when Labor's victory was looking all but certain.

Haneef was one problem. But the AFP officers know they may also be facing scrutiny from the new government for their role in another fiasco: the acquittal last November of medical student Izhar ul-Haque after a joint AFP/ASIO operation that ended with a NSW Supreme Court judge accusing ASIO officers of "grossly improper conduct" including "false imprisonment and kidnapping at common law".

Two days before last year's poll, Keelty recruited the former chief justice of NSW Sir Laurence Street, the retired NSW Police commissioner Ken Moroney, and the one-time head of Australia's largest intelligence agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, Martin Brady, to conduct an internal review of police relations with national security agencies.

This is not an independent inquiry. The Commissioner's office has confirmed it was set up, staffed and funded by the police. It has no power to compel witnesses to answer questions or produce documents. In the two months of its operations, it has sought co-operation from the Attorney-General's Department, the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the Inspector-General of Security, ASIO and state police forces.

But Keelty's office is unable to say how much help they have actually received.

The point of all this is for the police to gather what ammunition they can in order to assert greater authority in the conduct of anti-terrorist operations. The albatrosses around Keelty's neck - the "disruption" program in Indonesia, the Haneef case and the ul-Haque debacle - all involve disputes between police and intelligence agencies.

In the hierarchy of Canberra, intelligence officers are the elite who tend to regard gathering intelligence as an end in itself. Police are traditionally lower down the ladder of power. Ultimately, they measure their success by gathering evidence that holds up in court. The underlying claim of police is that the clash of these two cultures is impeding the fight against terrorism.

The Commissioner's office has told the Herald the Street review is looking at the Australian Federal Police's "current interoperability arrangements" with its national security partners and will report at the end of February on "the roles and responsibilities of the AFP and other national security agencies and the adequacy of existing practices policies and legal frameworks".

No public report is expected. All the Commissioner will promise is to comment on Street's findings when appropriate. The word in Canberra is that the formal and public judicial inquiry into the Haneef matter won't get under way until Street has finished his work, which is expected at the end of February. Whatever the review achieves, it will buy Keelty time to repair his tangled relations with Labor.

Being lucky is no bad quality in a police commissioner. Keelty arrived in Canberra at a time when long-planned strategies against heroin syndicates saw the start of Australia's heroin drought. He was not directly responsible, but it added lustre to his reputation as a drug buster. Drugs were the AFP's main game back then. But five months after his appointment came the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Under the pressure of terrorism, this cash-strapped force of 2800 would see its budget more than quadruple and its strength rise to more than 6500. Keelty rode the political wave that delivered the federal police fresh resources, fresh legislation and fresh prestige. But he did more, radically transforming the structure of the Australian Federal Police, breaking down the old state-based commands and creating a national force with power concentrated in Canberra.

He was demanding, shrewd and a clever political operator. No one credited Keelty with a big abstract intelligence. That wasn't his strength. He was seen as modern, a man with a good nose for the next big issue. He grasped change. He's formidable, but because he breaks suddenly and finally with officers who disappoint him, those at the top of the force are reluctant to take him on. High-ranking officers talk of colleagues too eager to agree with Keelty, too keen to tell him what he wants to hear.

The networks developed by the federal police in South-East Asia to combat drugs, were available - and then expanded - in the fight against people-smuggling and terrorism. Australian and local police, Australian spies and agents were all at work, tripping over themselves with tangled and conflicting lines of authority.

Who was doing what up there became an urgent issue in the last fortnight of the 2001 election campaign when the SIEV X went down in international waters, which were under heavy surveillance. Faulkner used Senate estimates hearings in 2002 to try - unsuccessfully - to compel Keelty to reveal details of Australian operations against the boats. The row between the two men was submerged within weeks by the first Bali bombings.

Labor can't quarrel with the laws Keelty and the then head of ASIO, Dennis Richardson, promoted over the next three years to widen the security net and cut back traditional legal protections. Police and intelligence agencies always want such laws. Suddenly the government was willing to enact them. Some were amended under pressure from the Opposition and backbench Liberal dissenters, but in the end Labor endorsed the bulk of the laws.

What worries Labor from that time was Keelty's decision to put his professional judgment aside to knuckle under to the Howard political agenda. A few days after the Madrid bombings in March 2004, the commissioner made the not very remarkable observation to Jana Wendt that the attacks may be connected to Spain's involvement in the Iraq war.

The sky fell in. He was challenged privately by the prime minister - though news of this broke within days - and publicly by the minister for foreign affairs, Alexander Downer, who accused him of giving voice to al-Qaeda "propaganda". But he did not resign. Instead he issued a grovelling "clarifying" statement endorsing government policy.

"My strong view, which I have stated previously and which I repeated as recently as last week in my Commonwealth Day address, is that terrorism seeks to attack the liberal democratic values that are central to our Australian way of life," intoned Keelty. "This is the case no matter what our involvement in East Timor, Afghanistan or Iraq. As I have said before, we cannot allow terrorism to dictate national policy."

None of this touched Keelty's popularity. His slip from public grace was all about drugs and Indonesia. He staunchly defended Indonesian police and judicial processes after good-time girl Schapelle Corby was caught with a boogie-board bag full of quality dope at Denpasar Airport in October 2004. Time would bring most Australians round to his point of view that this was a fair bust.

But he remains widely unforgiven for alerting Indonesian police to the efforts of nine Australian drug mules who were arrested, some with wads of heroin strapped to their bodies, in April 2005. Six of the nine face execution under Indonesia's cruel anti-drugs regime. Keelty's argument is that telling the Indonesians nothing and arresting the couriers when they reached Australia would be taken as a sign of distrust. What really mattered here was the big picture: Indonesian police co-operation in the fight against terrorism.

Locked into the election cycle last year, Labor's response to Haneef in July and ul-Haque in November was low key. But with the tide of public fear about terrorism ebbing, and the breaches of both good policing and fair prosecution so evident in both cases, the failure of these "anti-terrorist" operations damaged the reputation of the Howard government, ASIO and the Australian Federal Police.

Last November the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Ian Carnell, began one inquiry. Labor promised another once in office. Keelty put out feelers to Street while publicly defending the actions of the federal police. He has not taken a step backwards. Even this week, the commissioner was insisting Haneef remains under investigation.

Mick Keelty gives speeches, lots of them. He's not a great orator and he doesn't leave his audiences in stitches. Entertainment is not his aim. The Commissioner speaks "to maintain the confidence of the community and the Government" in his force and to advance his policing agenda.

In this spirit he accepted last November an invitation to speak at the Sydney Institute. A fortnight ago he nominated his subject: "Terrorism: Policing's New Paradigm". What he delivered last Tuesday night was a half-thought-through plea that something be done to prevent lawyers fighting their clients' cases through the media.

"Call me old-fashioned," he told his audience, "but I don't believe anyone accused of, or charged with, a crime can receive a fair trial if the matter is tested first in the court of public opinion."

First among the legion of those dissenting this week are the lawyers Keelty was talking about -but not naming - in that speech: Peter Russo and Keim. By releasing transcripts of police interrogation of their client Mohamed Haneef, Russo and Keim did better than ensuring he had a fair trial: the charges were dropped. He faces no trial at all.

While politicians backed away from Keelty's vague proposal for media blackouts, the press launched a broadside from coast to coast. Hedley Thomas, the journalist to whom the first of those transcripts was leaked last year, is a hero of the trade. He won journalism's highest honour, a Gold Walkley, for stories Keelty is calling to be banned.

Tough contempt of court rules already prevent any media commentary that threatens a fair trial. Any press discussion of police or ASIO investigations that would put a trial at risk is absolutely verboten. Keelty appears to be proposing blanket bans without saying how they would operate or - on the evidence of his speech - fully understanding how the present rules work either here or in Britain.

He cites British law as the way we should go, but the president of the Press Council, Ken McKinnon, disputes Keelty's grasp of the law. From London, Geoffrey Robertson, QC told the Herald: "Mr Keelty has been badly misinformed about UK contempt laws, which do not produce any 'media blackout': they only postpone publications which would cause a 'substantial risk of serious prejudice' to the administration of justice."

The principles are the same here and there. Trials are already protected.

Keelty's contract runs until 2011. Sacking a police commissioner is a major undertaking. It's not under discussion, though his critics in Labor ranks are waiting to see what the Haneef inquiry might turn up. He's helped by having been careful in his dealings with party leaders over the years to suggest - without ever saying so - that he's a Labor man at heart.

As the hullabaloo over Keelty rose to a crescendo yesterday, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, expressed full confidence in his Commissioner, but put daylight between their positions: "I err on the side of the media giving full and frank coverage. I think the media's role in the Haneef case was in the national interest."

TURBULENT TIMES

1954 Born in Sydney. 'I was brought up in the western suburbs of Sydney in the days when we used to call the local Italian snack bar the wog shop. But all immigrants have given us a rich culture ... and what a strength that is.'

EDUCATED: Marist Brothers College in Parramatta.

1974 Joins ACT police, spending five years in the Accidents Squad.

1976 Married Susan. Has two daughters and a son.

1979 Transfers to AFP when it was set up following the 1978 Hilton bombing.

1991 Led AFP drug operations in Sydney.

BIG BUSTS: Caught Adelaide drug dealer chief inspector Barry Moyes.

Put Sydney hitman Lennie McPherson behind bars.

1995 Assistant Commissioner based in Brisbane.

1998 Steers AFP's East Timor mission.

2000 Deputy Commissioner to Mick Palmer.

2001

APRIL: Succeeds Palmer.

SEPT: US terrorist attacks.

2002

SEPT: First clashes with Senator John Faulkner over the sinking of SIEV X.

OCT: Bali Bombing - AFP plays key role in finding the bombers.

2003

JUNE: AFP mission to Solomons.

AUG: Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta. 12 killed.

OCT: Deportation of French terrorist Willie Brigitte.

2004

MARCH: Madrid bombing: Australian Government rebukes Keelty for suggesting having troops in Iraq makes Australia a greater terrorist target.

OCT: During the Schapelle Corby case in Bali, Keelty resists vigorous pressure from Corby's defence team for the AFP to help free their client.

SEPT: Operation Auxin, child porn crackdown.

469 raids identifying 700 suspects and the laying of 2000 charges

SEPT: Bombing of Australian embassy in Jakarta. Nine dead and 180 hurt.

2005

APRIL: Arrest of the Bali Nine.

OCT: Second Bali bombing.

NOV: Operation Pendennis - 400 police swoop in Victoria and NSW in anti-terrorism raids. 22 charged.

2006

APRIL: Begins second term as commissioner.

2007

JULY & AUG:

Haneef case erupts.