The ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service) wanted to hold a mock surveillance and hostage rescue because in March of the same year they had started training a covert team whose role would be to protect or release Australians captured by terrorists overseas.

This wouldn’t be a small operation, the Sheraton raid involved 10 ASIS operators, 4 ASIS officers, 6 civilian trainees, two Australian Army Reserve commandos and one Australian Army sergeant participating as an observer in the foyer of the hotel and they were all heavily, heavily armed.

Remember, absolutely no one told the Sheraton management or the owners, or the staff, they told no one that they would be walking into a hotel armed to the teeth for a pretend raid. The junior ASIS operators had only had three weeks worth of training and given a lot of freedom to plan and execute the operation. Too much maybe.

The mock hostage rescue was staged on the 10th floor of the hotel, again, without the permission or even *knowledge* of the hotel's owner or staff. When the ASIS agents were refused entry into a hotel room, they broke down the door with sledgehammers as they were trained to do.

The then hotel manager, Mr Nick Rice, was told that there was disturbance going on the 10th floor and when he went to investigate, he was forced back into the lift by an ASIS agent who rode the lift down to the ground floor and forcibly ejected Mr Rice into the lobby. Only the agent knew he was an agent, Mr Rice would have been terrified.

Again, because no one had told them there would be a pretend operation with very real weaponry the staff thought a robbery was in progress and they called Victoria Police. The lift went back up to the 10th floor so that ASIS could finish their mock exercise, remember only ASIS knew it was a mock exercise.

After ASIS did what they needed to do on the 10th floor, they caught the lift back down to the lobby where Mr Rice and the Army officer who was just watching the whole thing, were waiting. ASIS burst through the lobby wearing balaclavas and brandishing 9mm Browning pistols and Heckler & Koch MP5 machine guns with silencers.

The agents forced their way through the lobby to the kitchen, where two getaway cars were waiting outside the kitchen door. Victoria Police had arrived by this time, they stopped and arrested 2 ASIS agents and 3 civilian trainees who refused to identify themselves. Since Victoria Police didn't know what the ever loving fuck was going on either they arrested the ASIS as far as VicPol were concerned they were terrorists claiming to be spies. Victoria Police wanted to press charges but ASIS didn't want to name their agents because they were meant to be secret officers.

The whole thing led to a Royal Commission and Victoria Police also conducted their own investigation into this whole mess on which ASIS refused to cooperate and still refused to give the names of the agents involved so they could be charged, or at the very minimum, identified. Without identifying your suspect you can’t charge them.

The Minister responsible for ASIS offered to provide the real names to Victoria Police, in confidence, but the then Premier of Victoria, John Cain said "as far as the [Victorian] police were concerned, there was no such thing as information in confidence". The Royal Commission named the agents but their identities were redacted in its final report, however the Sunday Age disclosed the names, or the assumed names, of five of the people involved. In the case of A v Hayden, the High Court held that the Commonwealth owed no enforceable duty to ASIS officers to maintain confidentiality of their names or activities.

Because of this bungled and total cock-up ASIS agents are no longer armed and are banned from undertaking covert operations in Australia again.

Or are they?