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Whitlam, the CIA and Nugan Hand
Sunday, November 21, 2010
By John Jiggens
Protest in support of Gough Whitlam after the constitutional coup, Sydney. Photo: Qu1j0t3/Flickr
Rumours (which turned out to be true) that Kerr was moving to call out the army.
Former
Australian prime ministers Robert Menzies, Howard Holt, John Gorton,
Bob Hawke and John Howard all compliantly sent Australian troops to
fight US wars. But in the early 1970s, Whitlam’s government had the
courage to bring Australian soldiers home from the US war in Vietnam.
For
this audacious action, Labor would never be forgiven by then-US
president Richard Nixon, the CIA, Rupert Murdoch, the CIA, and corrupt
conservative premiers Bob Askin (NSW) and Joe Bjelke-Petersen
(Queensland) — who all hated Whitlam as though he were Che Guevara.
Whitlam’s
election in 1972 began a short-lived era in which the stated aims of
the new Labor government were to promote equality and involve the people
in decision-making processes.
Within two weeks of Whitlam’s
election, conscription was abolished and draft resisters released from
jail. Voting rights were extended to all Australians over 18, and
university fees abolished.
Whitlam’s youth constituency also
gained community radio stations, and the Whitlam government intended to
decriminalise marijuana. Aborigines were granted land rights in the
Northern Territory.
Whitlam was less subservient than his Liberal
predecessors to Washington’s foreign policy directions. He took a more
critical line in foreign policy, condemning Nixon’s 1972 bombing
offensive against North Vietnam and warned he might draw Indonesia and
Japan into protests against the bombing.
The People’s Republic of
China was recognised and the Whitlam government spoke up in the United
Nations for Palestinian rights. The French were condemned for testing
nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, and refugees fleeing the
CIA-backed coup in Chile were welcomed.
Nixon and the CIA found
such independence intolerable. After Whitlam was re-elected in 1974, and
Jim Cairns became his deputy, Nixon ordered the CIA to review US policy
towards Australia. Although the CIA’s response to Nixon has never been
released, it seems it began a covert operation to destabilise the
Whitlam government began then.
The puppet masters who led the coup
were Ted Shackley and Marshal Green. Nixon appointed Green as US
Ambassador to Australia in 1973. Nick-named “the coup-master”, Green had
been involved in several countries where the CIA had masterminded
coups, such as Indonesia (1965) and Cambodia (1970).
Green’s goals were to maintain US bases in Australia and to protect US economic interests.
Green
let it be known that if the Labor government honoured one of its key
election pledges to reclaiming ownership of oil refineries and mining
industries, the US would respond. Green carefully cultivated the
Fairfax, Murdoch and Packer dynasties that controlled the Australian
media.
Ted Shackley, known as the “Blond Ghost”, joined the CIA in
1951. Over the next two decades, he emerged as the agency’s “dirty
tricks” specialist, directing the CIA’s campaign against Cuba and Fidel
Castro’s government in 1962.
In 1966 he became Chief of Station in
Laos and directed the US secret war there — earning his other nickname,
“the Butcher of Laos”.
In 1971, he became head of the CIA’s
Western Division (covering North and South America) where he plotted the
overthrow of Allende. In 1974, Shackley became head of the Eastern
Division of the CIA, covering Asia and Australia.
Shackley’s
speciality was financing black operations through the drug trade and he
learned the dark art of running drug armies during the secret war in
Laos. One of his foot soldiers in Laos was Michael Hand, co-founder of
the Nugan Hand bank.
Michael Hand helped forge documents used by
the media to discredit the Whirtlam government, while his partner Frank
Nugan was the conduit for CIA money to the Liberal Party. Millions of
dollars flowed to the conservative parties via Nugan Hand.
Shackley
played a key role in the security crisis of November 1975, which
revolved around the US military base at Pine Gap. Whitlam had threatened
that if the US tried to “bounce” his government, he would look at the
presence of US bases in Australia.
The lease for Pine Gap was due
for renewal in December 1975. On 10 November 1975, the day before
Whitlam was sacked, Shackley sent an extraordinary cable from the CIA to
ASIO’s director general, threatening to remove ASIO from the British-US
intelligence agreement because he considered Whitlam a security threat.
The
cable was published by the Financial Review in 1977 and has been widely
reprinted. It shows Shackley’s involvement in the security crisis.
Shackley
was furious that Whitlam had accused the CIA of funding the opposition
conservative parties and had claimed CIA money was being used to
influence domestic Australian politics. In particular, Whitlam was
asking questions about the close relationship between Richard Stallings,
who ran the so-called joint facility at Pine Gap, and National Party
leader Doug Anthony.
“The CIA has grave concerns as to where this type of public discussion may lead”, Shackley’s cable said.
In
his 1977 speech calling for a royal commission into the activities of
the CIA in Australia, Whitlam called Shackley’s cable “a clear example
of the attempted deception of the Australian Government by the American
intelligence community … The message was offensive in tone, deceitful in
intent and sinister in its implications.”
For the Australian
media, the message of Remembrance Day 2010 was clear: sleeping dogs must
be allowed to lie. There could be nothing nobler to aspire to than the
service of our imperial overlords, and to remind the Australian people
that these imperial overlords had subverted a democratically elected
government was well off message.
[John Jiggens has been involved
in civil liberties and anti-corruption campaigning for many years. He is
the author of a number of books, including the recently released The
Killer Cop & the Murder of Donald Mackay, about the drug trade,
Nugen Hand Bank and the overthrow of the Whitlam government.]
