Original subtitles

Okay, we're all set.

We're rolling.

Rock and roll.

The nature of the inquiry was far beyond anything else any of us had worked on

before, far beyond a normal homicide inquiry.

And the government said, of the day, said, whatever you need, just ask the

question. And I think I might have related to you about the photocopier fax

machine. Did I tell you that story?

One day, a fax photocopier machine turned up, a brand new one.

Now, in 1985, we didn't have any faxes or photocopiers,

and it was about as big as this table, and it was wrapped with plastic, and we

were like, wow, that is so awesome.

Two of my police friends came up to me and they said, we heard you guys have

got a photocopier and fax machine. I went, yeah.

And they said, can we see it? And I said, yeah, come on.

And we walked around it and they were looking at it and going, wow, that is so

cool. And they went, how does it go?

And I said, I don't know. None of us knew how to work it.

So it sat there for months. I don't know if it ever got used. But we were very

proud as an inquiry to actually own a fax photocopier machine.

The resources that were given to that inquiry were spectacular.

With that, there was a certain pressure.

We were dealing with a serious crime.

We had to catch who did it.

In New Zealand tonight, police are launching a major investigation into the

explosions aboard the Rainbow Warrior.

Consider this to be a scandal of the nuclear age.

This was no accident.

Somebody, somewhere, decided they wanted to blow up our boat.

Things like this just don't happen in New Zealand.

When you're powerful, you don't have to pay for your crimes.

Murderers can't go unpunished.

They've got to be exposed.

We were one little South Pacific country.

We'd never had a crime like that. It was just huge.

The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior on the Auckland waterfront has now touched

off a police inquiry on a scale never seen in this country before.

I'd like to welcome you to Operation Rainbow.

The man put in charge of the inquiry was Detective Superintendent Alan Galbraith,

a Dallas Scotsman, very good leader.

As soon as it became known that this had been sabotaged, the investigation really

got ramped up.

The most important of my police career.

Are you optimistic of bringing the people who bombed the Rainbow Warrior to

justice?

Oh yes, we're very optimistic that we'll be successful in the end.

Why are you so optimistic?

Well, giving it everything we've got.

Operation Rainbow Headquarters, the Rainbow Squad, is handling a wide range

of inquiries.

Very quickly, Alan put together a huge team of detectives.

One of them was Detective Inspector Morris Whittam, a very clever guy.

We had a lot of staff from out of town, seconded to Auckland, just solely to

boost our numbers.

We were 140 officers at one stage.

Terry Batchita was my detective sergeant.

He was a bit of a feared man in criminal circles back in those days, tremendously

strong. From the police department, can you open the door, please?

We realised at one point the eyes of the world were upon little old New Zealand.

I mean, some people hadn't even heard of New Zealand.

And that in itself was a motivation.

And it was absolutely critical for everyone to find out who did it.

We were suddenly thrown into one of the biggest police inquiries New Zealand has

ever seen.

The inevitable speculation on who could be responsible has begun.

The list of enemies Greenpeace has made over the years is long.

Your guess is sort of mine.

Could be the Russians, could be the Chinese, could be the French, could be

the Americans, could be anyone.

One possible clue arrived by post.

A leaflet purporting to come from veterans of Vietnam and Africa

threatened a number of left-wing and liberal groups with the words, we'll

crude you all like the Rainbow Warrior.

Overseas organisations, foreign countries, they were all possible

suspects.

We even had a couple of unusual characters who were in Auckland at the

time.

I remember one was an American and he was particularly anti-Greenpeace. He was

pro-nuclear and he had been seen in Auckland.

The bombing obviously required an explosive device.

Well, in New Zealand, we've got a lot of rural activity and there's a lot of

explosives used.

A couple of sticks of gelignite might be quite handy if I had to.

move a little hill or change the direction of a riverside.

There's a lot of things being blown up all around the place.

What are your views at the moment as to the validity, if you like, of the Better

Dead Than Red document?

Do you think there's any chance that the people who sent that did in fact do it?

I don't know.

At this point, we didn't know why, who or how.

Have you got any leads which give you any hope at all?

Well, there's always hope.

The area is still cordoned off to the public, but from the other side of the

pier one can clearly see the partly sunken ship.

Stunned Greenpeace members say the vessel was priceless, but right now

they're still mourning for their dead colleague who went down with the vessel.

It was the first thing that led the news on the radio, on the television.

There was, you know, a little space to kind of let things process.

But we had a... It wasn't a service, it was just some

time with Fernando in a coffin in a

church in Auckland.

Just us.

It was all so unreal at that point.

We had an hour.

At the end of the hour, the priest or whatever he was came in and said, gosh,

you got to go. I got to make room for the next group.

And we had to physically pick up this coffin and walk it out the door. And

that's when the weight of the world sank down on my shoulders and I think

everybody else's.

Because then it was,

100% sure they were picking up the body of a dead friend and presenting him on

his last trip.

And it was rough.

He and I did watch together a couple of times.

Those kids were young.

He talked about them quite a bit.

Yeah, he was a...

The dad who loved his kid.

The evening after we carried Fernando out of the church, we had a party and

danced and people just burned off steam and frustration and anger.

I just remember being so completely overwhelmed by the whole situation.

Having lost a friend, having lost a ship.

It just made no sense at all.

When we found that the New Zealand public were very, very happy to try and

help the police.

Thank you.

One moment, please.

The next day, suddenly the members of the public started ringing in, reporting

sightings, and it really started to go quite crazy.

Yes, Hastings, would you hold the line for Auckland, please?

But then that afternoon, the late shift inquiry sergeant came to see us.

And just as a matter of passing, he said, oh, did you hear about the thing

that happened down the wharf last night down near the waterfront?

Some guys at the yacht club had been having a number of thefts off boats in

the middle of the night.

So a few of them decided to stay overnight at the yacht squadron

headquarters and just keep an eye on things and see if they could perhaps

identify who was responsible for the break-in.

During the course of their observations on the night of the bombing, they

noticed a camper van that looked extremely suspicious.

The people in sight, they were assisting somebody in pulling up a dinghy from

the sea up into a sort of a raised sloping bank before leaving.

The Neighbourhood Watch then called the police.

Police went down there, found the Zodiac tied to a tree, and they seized the

Zodiac.

But on the night, it didn't mean a great deal to anybody, as it was before the

actual bombing.

But fortuitously, the Neighbourhood Watch, they were able to get the

registration number of that van.

The camper van was registered to a company called Newman's.

They were contacted and they were able to identify from the records that the

vehicle had been rented by Swiss Tourists.

A married couple, Alain and Sophie Tourange.

This was the first really significant lead.

We were, from that point, on the lookout for that vehicle.

wanting to speak to this couple.

In 1985, I was 21.

I'd been working at Newman's Rentals for about three or four months, and I was a

meet-and-greet girl.

So I met Alan and Sophie Terange.

They'd already had their camper van for a few days, and then they'd got a broken

windscreen.

And so they turned up at the depot.

We'd put them into a replacement vehicle, and that was that.

A few days later, I got a phone call.

It was the police, and they asked me about the meeting that I'd had with Alan

Terenge and Sophie Terenge a few days before.

Can you describe what they looked like?

Did they say where they'd been?

They gave no indication what it was about, and I didn't ask.

You know, I assumed it wasn't my business.

The next morning, I arrived at work about 8 o'clock, and I said to another

girl, I said, oh, do you remember the two rangers?

And she said, yeah, that's them over there.

They were all sitting in the waiting area.

Yeah, it was a big shock to see them.

So that was when it got a bit interesting.

The other girl, she said they were dropping off their vehicle early and I

said, look, I had a phone call last night about them.

They're wanted by the police.

And she just immediately reached for the phone.

I remember it was a rainy day in Auckland. It was a rainy, dark, sort of

gloomy day.

We had a phone call quite early from Newman to say...

those people you are looking for in the cabavan are in our office now.

What would you like us to do?

Basically, we were like, keep them there. Think of whatever reason you can,

but keep them there.

He said, OK, we've got to keep them.

And then very quickly, I thought, if someone brings a vehicle back early,

they actually get the money refunded.

So I thought... We could use that as an excuse to keep them.

I mean, my faith, I'm not good at telling lies, you know, and hiding

things.

But at that stage, I think I just knew I had to stay calm.

And so I walked over to them.

Alan Turing was very friendly, very charming, chatty.

and we said, we owe you some money because you're dropping off your vehicle

earlier than you'd booked it, and we need to wait for a manager to come in

and sign the cheques.

I think it was only about $130.

If they had said, look, forget it, just take us to the airport, I don't know

what I would have done.

But they accepted that.

And then I was sort of seeing other customers and waiting for the police to

arrive.

We had to get there at speed.

This was huge for us.

So we dashed down to the car park, which was about four levels below us.

And we got to our car, but we didn't have the keys.

Have you got the keys?

No, I thought you had the keys.

We're going to lose them.

And we're like, ah!

In the washing bay, there was a guy.

who used to look after all the cars, he had a brand-new Commodore sitting in

there which belonged to one of the big bosses.

I thought, well, here's a car. He had the keys on his belt, so I took the keys

like that, and he turned around like this, and I said, big case, big case,

and we drove away.

He was most put out, but we were on a mission.

So the time was dragging on, waiting for the police.

The other girl and I were both getting a bit nervous.

Ellen Tarrant, she came up to the counter a couple of times to ask how

things were going.

So I was starting to feel a little bit of pressure.

There was heavy traffic.

We were driving in a police car that didn't have sirens and lights and all

that sort of stuff.

It was taking ages to get there.

It was a terrifying thought that we could miss them.

After a while, men started arriving at work who were obviously managers.

You know, they're wearing suits and ties.

I looked up and Alan Terange was standing looking at me very intently.

That was really frightening.

At that moment, I did have a bit of a flip of the stomach.

But I tried to be really cool about it.

And the next thing, the room just seemed to be filled with cool men in suits.

We burst into the reception area behind Terry.

As little as guys could hide behind him.

I just said, they're right behind you.

They walked over to Ellen and Sophie to range.

We identified ourselves as police officers and told them that we wished to

speak to them about an unspecified matter.

Unfortunately, with some reluctance, they said yes.

What did you think they'd done?

In my mind, I decided they'd been poaching trout in Lake Taupo.

We returned with the Teronges to Auckland Central Police Station where we

prepared to formally interview them.

I was in charge of questioning Alan Teronge.

So I interviewed him off and on for about 22 hours.

They were kept apart so that their stories could be given individually.

They couldn't collaborate.

You had to be...

methodical, meticulous.

If you're too hasty, you miss things.

And so I asked them logical questions.

What is your full name?

Alain Turange.

What is the purpose of your visit?

Holiday.

Sophie, can you tell me where you were born?

Geneva.

What was the date of your marriage?

6th of September, 1975.

Well, how long have you been married?

Ten years.

What date did you get married?

September, about the 6th.

Ellen Turon was cool, calm, collected.

There's a thing called a Gaelic shrug, where they go, and he come out with it a

lot.

She wasn't very cooperative either.

It would help us if we knew more about you.

What do you want to know?

Tell us about your husband.

What did you mean?

What does he like to do?

What are his interests?

I do not talk about my husband.

Then I started to ask him about the waterfront. What were they doing there?

And he said that they had had an argument. So he got out of the van to

cool off a bit.

And then he saw a fisherman who was dragging a dinghy up on the rocks.

I want to get back to this night in question.

Where and when did you see the man that you helped?

When I was walking back to the van.

And what did he say?

He said for me to help him pull his dinghy out of the water.

He said his name was Peter.

What happened then?

I helped him pull the boat from the water and asked him where he was going.

He said he had his car near there and he was going to it.

What then?

I offered to take him to it.

You offered him?

A complete stranger?

You in a foreign land? That was very good of you.

Yes. Why?

I don't know. I can say.

Perhaps you knew him, Alan. That would explain it.

No.

And so I asked him, Peter the fisherman, where did he sit in the van?

At the front.

Why in the front? Why not in the back?

So that he could tell my wife where to drive to?

While Perry was speaking with Alan, Sophie was also asked about the man they

had picked up from the waterfront.

When the man was in the van, where was he sitting?

In the back.

Your husband said he was sitting in the front.

I don't know.

He was in the back.

They were giving conflicting accounts and it was a simple question. Where did

the guy sit in the van?

And they couldn't get it right.

That, of course, is overwhelmingly suspicious.

Your wife says you were next to her in the front and the man you helped in the

back. Which is it?

I am sure I was in the back.

What do you want me to say?

How about the truth?

You're getting it.

So even from that early stage of the interview, you start to build a picture

that you're talking with two people who are not telling the truth.

I think throughout that process, as a detective, you're looking for signs

The way they interacted with each other was surprising.

They didn't comfort each other to any great extent.

They didn't behave like married people.

So all these little bits, they all created a huge suspicion in our minds.

But we had nothing concrete on them at all.

Detective Superintendent Alan Galbraith briefed his team of 66 detectives at the

start of another day in the search to find the bombers of the Rainbow Warrior.

We were still questioning the taronges and it soon became clear that we needed

more solid evidence.

So we went public.

Police are releasing only little information, but it's known they're

keenly interested in this Newman's rented camper van seen in the area not

long before the bombings.

We want to locate where this vehicle has been, hopefully trace people who have

had any contact with the occupants. What areas was this van in? We suspect in

Auckland, North Auckland, and down as far as perhaps Hamilton.

Next day.

We get a ring from a couple of forestry workers up in Tipuni Forest and said,

oh, are you interested in a camper van? I'll tell you a little story about a

camper van.

The man said a couple of days before the bombing he was working in a forest car

park when he saw a Newman's camper van pull up, wait a short while and then

drive off.

A short time later, a grey estate car arrived with several men in it.

The workman felt...

it was a little suspicious.

So he wrote down the registration number of this grey estate car on his truck in

the dust.

I said to the guy, oh, is the number still there? He said, oh, we've had some

thunderstorms and it's probably washed off by now.

There it is there.

LR8114.

We find out it had been rented from a hire company.

The rental car company had rented it out to people with French passports.

There was four people in total. There was Xavier Manigay, Eric Audron, John

Michelle Patello and Raymond Oltz.

And they'd given their addresses, a yacht, the Ouvier.

So the Ouvier...

immediately became of interest to us.

The bombing occurred on the night of the 10th of July and when we contacted

customs they told us that the Ovea yacht had left New Zealand the day before the

bombing on the 9th of July.

So they couldn't have been the actual guys who planted the bombs.

But we were sure at that stage that somehow these people could be connected

with the bombing.

We wanted to know about all their movements over the period that they were

in the north of New Zealand, which is sparsely populated.

You might think you could operate there at leisure almost and wouldn't be

detected. People wouldn't be...

that police wouldn't be able to investigate because, after all, it was a

backwater.

Well, they were totally wrong.

The Ovea crew attracted attention to themselves by various things that they

did that were unusual.

The story essentially was that they were on holiday on a diving trip, although

there was no evidence of any diving having been done.

Because it was midwinter in New Zealand.

New Zealand in July, it's very cold, the seas are rough, it's not good for

diving.

It was suspicious, very suspicious.

French-speaking males in northern New Zealand, they were rather exotic,

noticeable, shall we say.

They certainly appeared to have enjoyed themselves when they came ashore.

They mingled very freely and openly with locals.

One character had a romantic interlude with a policeman's wife.

They had a great old time.

They were getting photographed by females on many occasions.

Made their presence felt, if you like.

here for a job, but something didn't seem right.

We needed to speak to those people pretty quickly.

Inspector Galbraith, who was in charge of the investigation, was determined not

to screw it up.

Within two or three days of the explosion, Nobody was allowed on the

dock or near the boat.

He controlled who was coming and who was going and what was happening.

But the boat was heeling over on the dock.

And the police didn't want the masks on a boat that they didn't know how strong

was anymore.

So we went out there and took the masks down.

Peter, you went aboard the Rainbow Warrior this morning. What sort of scene

greeted you?

Well, primarily everything was covered in diesel fuel, soaking wet.

It's smelly.

Very slippery just to walk around.

It doesn't look good.

I think all the woodwork on the boat will have to be redone, torn out.

To be taking all that stuff apart and at some point realizing it was probably

never going back on, it was just really, that was tough.

And I was sitting there just bummed out and depressed.

I remember being very upset about Fernando.

But I remember thinking he enjoyed being a part of Greenpeace, being a part of

trying to change these issues that we were changing.

And I started picking up the pieces and going on.

I decided I don't want to sit around and do nothing.

We have to get to Maroa.

I didn't want to be stopped by the people that did it.

All I know,

If there were people who didn't want to see a failure, then we're wrong.

But if they think, if they can stop this, it's a big mistake.

Because you can kill people.

You can send shit.

You can't kill spirit.

And the spirit of the warrior is still there.

to make a statement we had to sell.

We weren't going to give up.

By that stage, there was obviously questions about international

involvement.

The Taronges and the Auvers crew were all native French speakers.

In terms of Greenpeace's enemies, if you will, the hot topic at that time was the

French nuclear testing at Moura Atoll. So in terms of people being upset with

Greenpeace, I would say France at that time were the number one contenders.

The Taronges were remanded in custody, but the Auvers crew...

We needed to get our hands on them pretty quickly.

Customs told us that the Ovea had been located in Norfolk Island, which is a

small island close to Australia.

We were flown across to Norfolk Island and we'd tracked them down to one of the

local motels.

And, you know, to be fair, we were just a motley group of police that were

available. to suddenly fly out of New Zealand. So we weren't like some

trained, highly trained team of motel stormers or anything else like that.

So we liaised with the motel owner.

It was getting quite late at night at that stage.

And we put a bit of a plan together.

A couple of teams of us were going to storm the two units that the members of

the OVEA were then at that time asleep in.

So we were talking about kicking in the doors and all of that sort of drama.

And I remember the motel owner saying, would you like the keys for the door?

And we go, oh yeah, that'd be great, thanks.

It was dark.

They were in bed asleep.

So we quietly opened the door and then we burst into their unit.

They were immediately alert.

They were ready for action.

They were guys that could have provided a fair bit of resistance or fought back

at us had they decided to.

Fortunately for us, they didn't.

They were detained and then returned back to the Norfolk Island Police

Station.

We took their passports to have them checked out.

But Norfolk is administered by the Australian government, so we were under

a 24-hour deadline.

At the end of 24 hours, you had to either charge them with an offence or

release them.

The pressure was on all of us involved in the interviews.

We needed something significant or we had to let them go.

You're looking for signs, their body, their facial expressions, how they

react to different questions.

Sitting in the room with these guys, we became aware that these men were very

capable, quite military, quite trained.

And after talking to them or being with them for a little while, you could

clearly see they were anything but tourists.

And gradually you start to wonder, who the hell am I dealing with here?

Because we are real professionals.

We know the risks.

We know the consequences.

It's our job.

It's not the feeling of having done something criminal.

It's not that I'm lying, I'm sure of it. It's to serve.

The death of a man and those who are taken will end up in prison.

When the New Zealand police, who had landed in Norfolk, stopped

us, we imagined the worst for them, years in prison.

We were prepared for that kind of thing.

crew of the OVR, these men were very staunch, evasive.

They would revert back to French speaking when any question became

difficult. You couldn't find an angle that could get past that frontage on

them.

We had not learnt anything of any significance.

Nothing had come back on the passports.

We just didn't have enough to arrest them.

Clearly, if you've got no evidence, then they need to be released.

We had to let them go.

It's one of the most disappointing moments of my police career, watching

them rowing out to their boat, to the Ovea.

I remember standing there thinking, I'm sure these guys work for the French

Secret Service, but can we prove it?

On the day that we picked up the torologies, we sent the details of both

the passports and the licences to Interpol.

The Swiss came back very quickly and said that these are good forgeries, but

both the passports and the licences were totally false.

It meant we could charge them with immigration charges.

But who were these people?

How did they fit into the bombing?

And who were they associated with?

Where do we need to look next?

What is your real name?

I want to talk to you by your real first name.

Just Sophie.

Who do you work for?

I think you know.

From the way you talk, you must work for the French Government Intelligence, or

something similar.

Yes.

But I cannot tell you.

I want to know what your involvement in the bombing is.

I cannot say.

If you're not the main person in this bombing, we can try to get immunity for

you. Do you understand that?

Yes.

But it is a trick.

But it's murder.

Someone has died.

We must know your involvement.

You must help yourself.

If you were not the one that put the bomb on that boat, it is better for you.

You understand?

Of course.

I want to know who has been working with you besides Alan.

That is not for me to say.

Mr Galbraith, are you any closer to solving the crime?

I think we are reasonably close, but there's a great deal of work we have to

do yet.

We've collected a lot of evidence. It really just needs the right piece of

evidence and perhaps the thing would fall into place.

We'd been working tirelessly, but still had no idea who was part of that

demolition crew who actually attached these bombs to the boat.

There was some detailed examination of the wharf divers looking for clues

and other things that might help the inquiry.

So far about 500 pieces of material have been brought up from the harbour floor.

Even the minutest objects are being examined.

One vital clue is an outboard motor found submerged in Hobson Bay.

Here we can see the Yamaha outboard engine that was dumped in the water.

That was obviously connected to the zodiac that was recovered.

But we couldn't believe what we found next.

We found a dive bottle just dumped in the grass.

The oxygen bottle would have been used by divers, and they were pure white.

On one of the oxygen bottles located was a black, heavy denier pantyhose.

They'd only assume that it was a camouflage thing.

Here we have the equipment that was probably used by those who were

responsible for placing the explosives on the boat.

But who was it that actually wore it?

The crew of the OVR left New Zealand the day before.

The Rainbow Warrior was actually blown up.

Clearly they'd fulfilled their part of the mission.

We think at this time that was delivery of the gear required to carry out the

operation.

The Torongas were present at the waterfront the night of the bombing, the

fact that they uplifted the Zodiac out of the sea. We think it was their job to

transport that stuff after the bombs went off.

But who was this diver?

or person that they'd picked up out of the water, who actually planted the

explosives, to carry out the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.

The net was closing in and we

were really confident that we were going to find them.

They identified him as a French secret agent.

It would be state terrorism.

He did it.

He was the summer leaflet.