http://truth-out.org/news/item/27025-the-forgotten-coup-how-america-and-britain-crushed-the-government-of-its-ally-australia
John Pilger | The Forgotten Coup - How the US and Britain Crushed the
Government of Their "Ally" Australia
Saturday, 25 October 2014 09:52
By John Pilger, Truthout | News Analysis
Across the political and media elite in Australia, a silence has
descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough
Whitlam, who has died. His achievements are recognized, if grudgingly,
his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his
extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him.
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 toward 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 land rights legislation, his
government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history,
Britain’s colonization of Australia, and the question of who owned the
island-continent’s vast natural wealth.
Latin Americans will recognize 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 United States 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 organization, 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 long-standing 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 was to the Australian
Institute of Directors and 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 November 10, 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 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 Whitlam problem" was solved, and Australian
politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.
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