Chapter 14 argyle - State Law Publisher

FINAL REPORT
In response to the request to make overseas telephone calls, Dalton maintained that he
said, “No, you’re not going to phone [name suppressed]. There is a protocol in place; you
follow that protocol. If there’s somebody over there, commit it to paper, get the federal
police or whoever the authorities are over there, get them to do it and then we’ve got
something on paper that we can hang our hat on”.
Corfield said that, on 6 March 1990, Thoy and Gwilliam came to his office and conducted a
telephone interview with a person overseas. They said that they were conducting this
interview from his office as they did not have the resources at their own office and that he
had a loud speaker telephone and an STD line. Corfield said that his office was used on a
number of occasions for overseas calls.
Whilst the control of resources is no doubt an important consideration, there appears to
have been a degree of pettiness and personality clashes in these matters. The question that
arises is whether Trewin and Dalton allowed their concern to exert tight control over this
inquiry to obscure the merits of the particular requests. This level of control was liable to
antagonize the investigators and to cause them to question the motives of their superiors.
TAPED COMMENTS BY DALTON TO TERMINATE THE INQUIRY
In a taped conversation between Dalton and Thoy on 27 March 1990, Dalton said, “[w]ell,
that’s what we’re working for to see − we’re surmising now because unless something
comes from Newton and Roddan, it really needs to be important and then written off for
future intelligence or whatever we have”. Dalton said that he meant that a particular
segment of the investigation should be worked through and, if it went nowhere, it should
be referred to BCI for intelligence purposes.
Dalton made a further comment to Thoy to the following effect, “I don’t want you to put
your heart and soul into it”. Dalton could not remember exactly what he meant by this, but
suggested he was just concerned for Thoy and did not want him to “get tied up in knots” or
“sick” over this particular investigation. Dalton denied that he was trying to encourage Thoy
to give less than his full attention, and further stated that, from his point of view, if Thoy
could get a prosecution out of it, or successfully conclude the investigation, that would be a
desirable outcome.
As to the comment to “kick a couple of doors in”, Dalton said that, if the investigation had
been pursued, but was going nowhere, or if Thoy was not putting his best effort into it, he
could have spoken along those lines to get him motivated. He added that, if an
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