The British-American coup that ended Australian
independence
Prime Minister
Gough Whitlam watches ACTU president Bob Hawke drink beer from a yard glass
Melbourne, Australia, 1972. Photograph: News Ltd/Newspix/REX
In 1975
prime minister Gough Whitlam dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy. The
CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price
Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.
Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”. In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth.
Latin Americans will recognise the audacity and danger of this “breaking free” in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the US in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided “black teams” to be run by the CIA. US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington’s informants during the Whitlam years.
Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. The day after his election, he ordered that his staff should not be “vetted or harassed” by the Australian security organisation, Asio – then, as now, tied to Anglo-American intelligence. When his ministers publicly condemned the US bombing of Vietnam as “corrupt and barbaric”, a CIA station officer in Saigon said: “We were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.”
Whitlam demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, a giant vacuum cleaner which, as Edward Snowden revealed recently, allows the US to spy on everyone. “Try to screw us or bounce us,” the prime minister warned the US ambassador, “[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention”.
Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, “This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House … a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.”
Pine Gap’s top-secret messages were decoded by a CIA contractor, TRW. One of the decoders was Christopher Boyce, a young man troubled by the “deception and betrayal of an ally”. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union elite and referred to the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as “our man Kerr”.
Kerr was not only the Queen’s man, he had longstanding ties to Anglo-American intelligence. He was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his book, The Crimes of Patriots, as “an elite, invitation-only group … exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA”. The CIA “paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige … Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money”.
When Whitlam was re-elected for a second term, in 1974, the White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, sinister figure who worked in the shadows of America’s “deep state”. Known as “the coupmaster”, he had played a central role in the 1965 coup against President Sukarno in Indonesia – which cost up to a million lives. One of his first speeches in Australia, to the Australian Institute of Directors, was described by an alarmed member of the audience as “an incitement to the country’s business leaders to rise against the government”.
The Americans and British worked together. In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain’s MI6 was operating against his government. “The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office,” he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, “We knew MI6 was bugging cabinet meetings for the Americans.” In the 1980s, senior CIA officers revealed that the “Whitlam problem” had been discussed “with urgency” by the CIA’s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said: “Kerr did what he was told to do.”
On 10 November 1975, Whitlam was shown a top-secret telex message sourced to Theodore Shackley, the notorious head of the CIA’s East Asia division, who had helped run the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile two years earlier.
Shackley’s message was read to Whitlam. It said that the prime minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country. The day before, Kerr had visited the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia’s NSA, where he was briefed on the “security crisis”.
On 11 November – the day Whitlam was to inform parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers”, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The “Whitlam problem” was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.
•John Pilger’s investigation into the coup against Whitlam is described in full in his book, A Secret Country (Vintage), and in his documentary film,
Other People’s Wars:
From The Guardian
@ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence
CIA role in Australia's forgotten coup
Sir
John Kerr (left) and Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in the King’s Hall,
Parliament House, Canberra, for the swearing-in of Kerr as Governor General,
July 11, 1974.
Washington's
role in the fascist putsch against an elected government in Ukraine [or elsewhere] will surprise only
those who watch the news and ignore the historical record. Since 1945, dozens
of governments, many of them democracies, have met a similar fate, usually with
bloodshed.
Nicaragua is
one of the poorest countries on earth with fewer people than Wales, yet under
the reformist Sandinistas in the 1980s it was regarded in Washington as a
"strategic threat". The logic was simple; if the weakest slipped the
leash, setting an example, who else would try their luck?
The great
game of dominance offers no immunity for even the most loyal US
"ally". This is demonstrated by perhaps the least known of
Washington's coups — in Australia. The story of this forgotten coup is a
salutary lesson for those governments that believe a "Ukraine" or a
"Chile" could never happen to them.
Australia's
deference to the United States makes Britain, by comparison, seem a renegade.
During the American invasion of Vietnam — which Australia had pleaded to join —
an official in Canberra voiced a rare complaint to Washington that the British
knew more about US objectives in that war than its antipodean comrade-in-arms.
The response was swift: "We have to keep the Brits informed to keep them
happy. You are with us come what may."
This dictum
was rudely set aside in 1972 with the election of the reformist Labor
government of Gough Whitlam. Although not regarded as of the left, Whitlam —
now in his 98th year — was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride,
propriety and extraordinary political imagination. He believed that a foreign
power should not control his country's resources and dictate its economic and
foreign policies. He proposed to "buy back the farm" and speak as a
voice independent of London and Washington.
On the day
after his election, Whitlam ordered that his staff should not be "vetted
or harassed" by the Australian security organisation, ASIO — then, as now,
beholden to Anglo-American intelligence.
When his
ministers publicly condemned the Nixon/Kissinger administration as
"corrupt and barbaric", Frank Snepp, a CIA officer stationed in
Saigon at the time, said later: "We were told the Australians might as
well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators."
Whitlam
demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near
Alice Springs, ostensibly a joint Australian/US "facility". Pine Gap
is a giant vacuum cleaner which, as the whistleblower Edward Snowden recently
revealed, allows the US to spy on everyone. In the 1970s, most Australians had
no idea that this secretive foreign enclave placed their country on the front
line of a potential nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Whitlam
clearly knew the personal risk he was taking - as the minutes of a meeting with
the US ambassador demonstrate. "Try to screw us or bounce us," he
warned, "[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention".
Victor
Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me,
"This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House.
Consequences were inevitable ... a kind of Chile was set in motion."
The CIA had
just helped General [Augusto] Pinochet to crush the democratic government of
another reformer, Salvador Allende, in Chile.
In 1974, the
White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an
imperious, very senior and sinister figure in the State Department who worked
in the shadows of America's "deep state". Known as the
"coupmaster", he had played a central role in the 1965 coup against
President Sukarno in Indonesia — which cost up to a million lives.
One of his
first speeches in Australia was to the Australian Institute of Directors —
described by an alarmed member of the audience as "an incitement to the country's
business leaders to rise against the government".
Pine Gap's
top-secret messages were de-coded in California by a CIA contractor, TRW. One
of the de-coders was a young Christopher Boyce, an idealist who, troubled by
the "deception and betrayal of an ally", became a whistleblower.
Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade
union elite and referred to the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr,
as "our man Kerr".
In his black
top hat and medal-laden mourning suit, Kerr was the embodiment of imperium. He
was the Queen of England's Australian viceroy in a country that still
recognised her as head of state. His duties were ceremonial; yet Whitlam - who
appointed him - was unaware of or chose to ignore Kerr's long-standing ties to
Anglo-American intelligence.
The
Governor-General was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for
Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his
book, The Crimes of Patriots,
as, "an elite, invitation-only group ... exposed in Congress as being
founded, funded and generally run by the CIA".
The CIA
"paid for Kerr's travel, built his prestige ... Kerr continued to go to
the CIA for money".
In 1975,
Whitlam discovered that Britain's MI6 had long been operating against his
government. "The Brits were actually de-coding secret messages coming into
my foreign affairs office," he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde
Cameron, told me, "We knew MI6 was bugging Cabinet meetings for the
Americans."
In
interviews in the 1980s with the American investigative journalist Joseph
Trento, executive officers of the CIA disclosed that the "Whitlam
problem" had been discussed "with urgency" by the CIA's
director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, and that
"arrangements" were made. A deputy director of the CIA told Trento:
"Kerr did what he was told to do."
In 1975,
Whitlam learned of a secret list of CIA personnel in Australia held by the
Permanent Head of the Australian Defence Department, Sir Arthur Tange — a
deeply conservative mandarin with unprecedented territorial power in Canberra.
Whitlam demanded to see the list. On it was the name Richard Stallings who,
under cover, had set up Pine Gap as a provocative CIA installation. Whitlam now
had the proof he was looking for.
On November
10, 1975, he was shown a top secret telex message sent by ASIO in Washington.
This was later sourced to Theodore Shackley, head of the CIA's East Asia
Division and one of the most notorious figures spawned by the agency. Shackley
had been head of the CIA's Miami-based operation to assassinate Fidel Castro
and Station Chief in Laos and Vietnam. He had recently worked on the
"Allende problem".
Shackley's
message was read to Whitlam. Incredibly, it said that the prime minister of
Australia was a security risk in his own country.
The day
before, Kerr had visited the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate,
Australia's NSA whose ties to Washington were, and remain binding. He was
briefed on the "security crisis". He had then asked for a secure line
and spent 20 minutes in hushed conversation.
On November
11 — the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in
Australia - he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal "reserve
powers", Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The
problem was solved.
From GLW issue 1002
via Green Left
Weekly @ https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56105
For more information about the Australian coup see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/Gough%20Whitlam
For more information about Pine Gap see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/pine%20gap
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