Acknowledgements

Many people assisted this project in various ways — none more than John Grenville, who jointly conducted an extensive research endeavour with me in the early 1990s. His detailed knowledge and understanding of the history and internal workings of both the Catholic Church and The Movement have made it possible to tell this story. His own membership and eventual resignation from what was by then the National Civic Council forms an important element of the book’s denouement. I am particularly grateful for his attention to detail in reading the many iterations through which the book has gone, and his numerous helpful suggestions that have improved the text in major aspects.

John and I are especially grateful to Armando Gardiman AM and Anna Katzmann, now a justice of the Federal Court. In 1992, Armando was a senior partner in the labour law firm Turner Freeman (where he is now the managing partner) when he readily agreed to take a case pro bono in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to challenge the unnecessarily restrictive rules governing the release of ASIO records under the Commonwealth Archives Act 1983. His dogged persistence in pursuing the matter helped to shift the stubborn, conservative, and bureaucratic inertia within ASIO on the subject. Anna’s appearance — also pro bono — as our barrister was a skilled and forensic performance in the face of impossible odds imposed by the tribunal’s rules, which prohibit even the plaintiffs’ counsel from examining the records at issue in such a case. This made cross-examining ASIO’s expert witness almost impossible, but somehow her probing revealed layers that would otherwise have remained opaque.

We thank that witness — who cannot be named — for his good will in the face of our concerted attack on his organisation’s reactionary policies governing access to its files. His open-mindedness was key to a positive result. The opposing barrister — Stephen Gageler, now a justice of the High Court — assisted greatly in providing a bridge between the two sides that eventually resulted in a compromise settlement that achieved a remarkable liberalisation of the access rules, bringing Australia more into line with international standards — especially the liberal framework operating in the United States — for the release of historical intelligence files.

Our own expert witness was an American citizen and my co-author of two books published in the 1990s. John Loftus was able to bring his expert knowledge of the US system to bear in a revelatory manner, and, despite at times extremely rugged questioning by Mr Gageler, he kept his composure and earned the respect of all present at the hearings. His contribution to the eventual settlement was considerable.

The outcome of that case is reflected in almost every phase of the story that unfolds in this book.

Professor John Warhurst made a very significant contribution by preserving perhaps the only publicly available archive demonstrating The Movement’s daily modus operandi. In 1977, when I first began my inquiries into this subject, I came across a paper that Professor Warhurst had written as a young academic, in which he told a very small part of the story of the archives of The Show’s Adelaide branch. I visited him in Warrnambool, Victoria, to inspect those files, which were in his possession at that time. I copied a tiny selection of them, which he eventually lodged in the Australian National University, where John Grenville and I studied them in detail in the early 1990s. Several chapters in this book reflect the major importance of those papers in exposing the underside of the rock beneath which the details of The Movement’s intelligence operations are otherwise still well hidden.

Father Edmund Campion — one of the finest historians of Catholic life in Australia — provided advice and practical assistance that is reflected in the text, especially covering the birth and early development of The Show. Former Western Australian Movement priest John Challis opened a valuable window into the history of The Movement’s Perth branch, for which I am grateful.

Robert Manne and Bruce Duncan read the manuscript in earlier drafts, and provided generous and extremely useful comments that have improved the final product immeasurably. Lindsay Tanner also read an early draft and provided enthusiastic support.

The Australia Council provided me with a writer’s grant in 1991 to write a parallel history of The Movement and the CPA, which assisted greatly with the research that is reflected in the text.

I also thank Henry Rosenbloom for taking on this project and for his attention to detail in editing the manuscript. I am also grateful to the professional team at Scribe, who turned it into this superb book.

Finally, I acknowledge the professional assistance that John Grenville and I received from numerous archivists and librarians right around the country, including in the National Archives of Australia and various university and church libraries and archives. I am especially thankful for the assistance of Father Stephen Hackett, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference and his archivist/librarian, Leonie Kennedy, for providing extracts of key minutes of the bishops’ meetings of 1944 and 1945; Michael Taffe of the Ballarat diocesan archive; and former and current staff of the Mitchell Library in Sydney, also known as the State Library of NSW — in particular, Jim Andrighetti, Sally Hone, Ed Vesterberg, and Sarah Morley.

Santamaria’s son, Paul, was both courteous and extremely helpful in arranging access to those of his father’s papers in the publicly open date-range held in the State Library of Victoria, where Shona Dewar was professional in arranging for relevant material from this massive collection to be made available. Unfortunately, a significant part of these historically important papers is not yet available to researchers; only those files older than forty years are in the public domain. This has meant that I could not access much of the material I wished to consult, especially as it relates to the tumultuous events recounted in chapter twelve, dealing with the divisions and ultimate split in the NCC of the early 1980s.

John’s and my work would never have been possible without the support — and forbearance — of my wife, Robyn Ravlich and John’s, the late Mary Grenville, in whose memory I dedicate this book.