The wish to be credulous is central to the fraudulent scheme. The one playing the fraud can always rely on some connivance and collaboration from the tricked and the gulled. Many an art curator is bound to turn scarlet at the prospect that their expertise was utterly subverted by a counterfeiter of Picasso and Matisse. The Hungarian painter Elmyr de Hory, immortalised in Orson Welles’s F for Fake, is but one such example. Claiming to be a dispossessed aristocrat with a lucrative stash of originals, he could whip up a Matisse in a matter of minutes. The rest was seduction. And you can hardly blame those who purchased his masterful forgeries, which were, in some cases, arguably the equal of the original masters whose style was so sincerely imitated.

Peter Cowell is yet another one of these figures of the conjuring trick. For 25 years, he was able to pose as an admiral of a fictional fleet. Hardly odd, given that the defence forces of the world are stuffed and oiled on fantastic assumptions and inaccurate assessments on threats and exaggerated notions of insecurity. In the industry, people fell for “Admiral Cowell.” There was nothing off about him, even when there was. A picture published by the ABC shows a uniformed buffoonish character with ill-fitting spectacles on a filled out, expansive face, suggesting that he might be taking his role just a bit too seriously. But that is in the nature of these projects: an appreciation for the costume and the custom. Wear the costume well, and you might be able to get away with murder.

The central project of deception was the mercy fleet dubbed the IntSAR (International Sea/Air Rescue), pitched as a scheme requiring an annual contribution of $16 million from partner nations. The sheer scale of the project seemed to resist questioning: in the realm of charlatanry, it makes sense to go big.

In 2022, Cowell found himself in the company of then Fijian opposition leader Sitiveni Rabuka, the High Commissioner for Fiji Ajay Amrit, and retired Colonel Sakiusa Raivoce, one of the founders of the People’s Alliance Party. The ABC news report notes the discussion’s agenda: the hatching of possible plans to establish a base of operations for the mercy fleet to operate in the region. A defence contractor pseudonymously named “Joel” was also in attendance. Cordial as the meeting was, nothing was etched.

But another meeting was scheduled to take place in March 2023, this time with Rabuka as Fiji’s prime minister. Interest in the IntSAR program had lingered, and a letter acknowledging Cowell’s urgings to pursue the project revealed Rabuka’s agreement to meet him along with the Admiralty delegation in the capital. That meeting never took place, Cowell being, by that point, stranded in Thailand and short of cash for a fare to Fiji. Well and truly deceived, Rabuka was terse in his responses to questions from the ABC. “I recall attending a meeting in Fiji around 2022 with a delegation from Australia regarding a proposal to establish a search and rescue operation in Fiji,” he stated. “However, nothing concrete resulted from that discussion – no agreement was signed, and neither were any funds or land handed over, or promised.” Notice, in these words, the false note of circumspection and prudence that evidently failed to manifest in 2023.

In 2021, Cowell sought to interest the Federal Coalition government in the IntSAR project. While it is not clear whether the brief outlining the proposals was received, let alone taken seriously, it claimed to have secured $521 million in funding from 30 member states, with the ultimate goal of obtaining contributions from a further 120. “We request that the Morrison government, as a cabinet, fully support this diplomatic initiative as the Primary Diplomatic Sponsor Nation and Host to the IntSAR Commission,” it read. Were this to happen, Cowell and his team would “happily support Australia taking the credit for the initiative.” In May 2022, we find a frustrated Cowell lamenting a lack of government interest in his enterprise, a missed opportunity costing thousands of “Aussie jobs.” IntSAR would therefore take “its shipbuilding needs to Asia. Our water bombers, too. $2.4 billion per year is missed from the economic recovery.”

The Bathurst Regional Council also confirmed that representatives of the IntSAR commission approached it in 2020 with a proposal to develop an empty parcel of land at the Bathurst airport in central New South Wales. From it would spring a private airport and training facility. Cowell even sought to recruit a few individuals for his phantom effort. One of them, former NSW police detective Scott Rogan, now claims to have detected something smelly. “There were a few things that just didn’t feel quite right about it all.”

Even now, Cowell flashes as a poster boy for the fooled, an advertisement for the deluded. On LinkedIn, that platform where the lie becomes digestible fiction, he advertises himself rather grandly as the former chairman of the IntSAR Admiralty Board. In his listed experience about a fantasy, we get such offcuts as “diplomatic coordinator” in efforts to establish the “IntSAR Commission by Treaty.” We see him promoting himself as the “original theorist of asymmetric industrial relations,” thrown in with the flatulent title of “geostrategic military consultant.” This is the gold gibberish that makes sense in a social media world of ennobled mediocrity and marked flattery. In the end, you are almost impressed by the man, having given legs to a fictional scheme that lasted for a quarter of a century with virtually no demurral.