NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas. Credit:Peter Rae There was so much material, it made me nervous. Many of those named had done nothing wrong; indeed they'd never even been questioned about any alleged wrong doing. I booked into a hotel at Darling Harbour, spread the documents out on the floor, and started reading. It was explosive stuff.

One of those bugged all those years ago was Nick Kaldas, now Deputy Commissioner. Another was journalist Steve Barrett. Fellow Deputy Commissioner, Cath Burn, was a team leader at Special Crime and Internal Affairs, the unit doing the bugging. Commissioner Andrew Scipione had, at one stage, been in charge of SCIA. On September 9, 2012, I broke the story in The Sun-Herald. A series of articles revealed serious concerns about the legality of the bugging. In October, 2012, the state government, announced the NSW Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, would investigate the claims of illegal bugging.There would be no public hearings.

The suitcase full of documents that had made its way to Rozelle led to the Ombudsman's inquiry. The Ombudsman then embarked on a course that involved investigating the allegations of illegal bugging by some within SCIA and the NSW Crime Commission but he would also do his utmost to find out the identity of the whistleblower. Fast forward to this year. In late January, a NSW Parliament select committee, concerned at the amount of time being taken by the Ombudsman and the direction of his investigation, starts its own inquiry, in public. Sitting in the hearing room, I was astonished to learn that on September 21, 2012, nine days after my first article, the NSW Police had set up Strike Force Jooriland to investigate me, to find out, among other things, who gave me the documents. I already believed my phone records had been examined to see who I was talking to.Was my phone bugged, was I under surveillance and did that mean my family was as well?

As it turned out, the NSW Ombudsman had taken over Jooriland. Exactly what covert inquiries he made about me, if any, remains unknown. What this does is make my job a lot more difficult. Police are now, more than ever, reluctant to talk over the phone. Information is curtailed. Not that they have done anything wrong, but they fear that speaking to a journalist will, or may, be used against them at some time in the future. Even writing this potentially makes everything more difficult. It's all about control. I have been a reporter for more than 40 years. It's never been worse. The Strike Force Jooriland revelation was nothing compared to what hit my colleague Barrett when the Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, gave evidence to the committee.

On February 3, he revealed Barrett was named on 52 warrants. Barrett was not only angry, he was visibly shaken. At the same time, Barbour said Deputy Commissioner Kaldas had been the subject of 80 warrants and 35 affidavits so his conversations could be recorded. Kaldas later quipped that he didn't think notorious Sydney crime figure Neddy Smith, now in jail for murder, had ever had 80 warrants against him. Nick Kaldas has said he was not asked crucial questions when he appeared before the Ombudsman. He was not told he was the subject of a staggering 80 warrants aimed at recording his conversations. Nor was he asked a single question about them.

Not asking victims such basic questions was a fundamental failure, Kaldas said. Which raises a question not many people seem to want to ask. What were the judges of the NSW Supreme Court doing during this bugging? We know that the key asset for SCIA and the NSW Crime Commission was M5, the corrupt detective who wore the body wire and recorded his colleagues at work and at social functions. He was de-briefed by Cath Burn in January, 1999, and according to the evidence, 19 possibly corrupt officers were identified for investigation. Just weeks later, on March 12, Justice Graham Barr approved a listening device warrant which contained the names of not 19, but 119 people, again mostly police. In the inquiry's hearings, Burn has defended her integrity saying she has never pursued a vendetta against Kaldas. She also defended her view at the time that there was reasonable grounds for Kaldas to be targeted, though accepts he has been cleared.

Scipione told the inquiry he was under the impression nothing more could be done to investigate the scandal because the NSW Crime Commission would not release key documents for secrecy reasons. He said he had acted the first time he was alerted to potential problems. And Barbour rejected claims his inquiry was targeting whistleblowers, declaring it a "rigorous" and impartial search for the truth. He also defended the time he has taken, stating it reflected the complexity of the issue and that it involved more than one million pages of documents and thousands of pages of hearing transcripts. Loading

Has the Ombudsman called any Supreme Court judges to his long running inquiry to ask a question or two, maybe along the lines of 'how could this possibly happen?' We are not allowed to know: his inquiry is in secret.