Australia/1975 coup d'état
 Sir John Kerr, who on the CIA's orders invoked "reserve powers" and dismissed the democratically elected Prime minister. | |
| Date | 15 October 1975 - 11 November 1975 |
|---|---|
| Location | Canberra, Australian Capital Territory |
| Perpetrators | CIA, MI6, Le Cercle?, Marshall Green |
| Exposed by | Christopher Boyce |
| Description | A CIA/MI6-backed covert "constitutional coup" to remove Gough Whitlam whom they saw as a loose cannon. |
On 11 November 1975, the day the Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in the country, he was summoned by Sir John Kerr, who invoked archaic vice-regal "reserve powers" and summarily dismissed him.[1]
William Blum has written that Sir John Kerr acted on behalf of the CIA in procuring Whitlam's dismissal.[2]
In 1966 Kerr had joined the Association for Cultural Freedom, a conservative group that was later revealed to have received CIA funding. Christopher Boyce claimed that the CIA wanted Whitlam removed from office because he threatened to close US military bases in Australia, including Pine Gap. Boyce said that Kerr was described by the CIA as "our man Kerr".[3]
Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal noted that the CIA "paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige... Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money".
Contents
CIA, Marshall Green
In 1974, the White House sent as ambassador to Australia Marshall Green, who was known as “the coupmaster” for his central role in the 1965 coup against Indonesian President Sukarno – which cost up to a million lives.[4]
Whitlam said that in 1977 Warren Christopher, the United States Deputy Secretary of State , made a special trip to Sydney to meet with him and told him, on behalf of US President Jimmy Carter, of his willingness to work with whatever government Australians elected, and that the US would never again interfere with Australia's democratic processes.[citation needed]
In interviews in the 1980s with the US investigative journalist Joseph Trento, CIA agents 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.[1]
MI6
In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain's MI6 had long been operating against his Government. He said later: “The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office." One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told John Pilger “We knew MI6 was bugging Cabinet meetings for the Americans."[1]
A Australia/1975 coup d'état victim on Wikispooks
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Gough Whitlam | An Australian Prime minister who tried to tread an independent path and rein in the nascent SDS. Ousted in 1975 by a CIA backed coup. |
Related Quotation
| Page | Quote | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia/1975 coup d'état | “There were a number of points of tension between Whitlam's government and the United States intelligence apparatus. Whitlam had close ties with the United States, in 1964 receiving a "Leader" travel grant from the U.S. Department of State to spend three months studying under U.S. government and military officials.
After coming to power, Whitlam quickly removed the last Australian troops from Vietnam. Whitlam government ministers criticised the US bombing of North Vietnam at the end of 1972. The US complained diplomatically about the criticism. In March 1973, US secretary of State William Rogers told Richard Nixon that "the leftists [within the Labor Party would] try to throw overboard all military alliances and eject our highly classified US defence space installations from Australia". In 1973, Whitlam ordered the Australian security organisation ASIS to close its operation in Chile, where it was working as a proxy for the CIA in opposition to Chile's president Salvador Allende. Whitlam's Attorney-General Lionel Murphy used the Australian Federal Police to conduct a raid on the headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in March 1973. CIA Chief of Counter-Intelligence, James Angleton, later said Murphy had "barged in and tried to destroy the delicate mechanism of internal security". Australian journalist Brian Toohey said that Angleton considered then Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam a "serious threat" to the US and was concerned after the 1973 raid on ASIO headquarters. In 1974, Angleton sought to instigate the removal of Whitlam from office by having CIA station chief in Canberra, John Walker, ask the director general of ASIO, Peter Barbour, to make a false declaration that Whitlam had lied about the raid in Parliament. Barbour refused to make the statement. In 1974, Whitlam ordered the head of ASIO, Peter Barbour, to sever all ties with the CIA. Barbour ignored Whitlam's order and contact between Australian and US security agencies was driven underground. Whitlam later established a royal commission into intelligence and security. Jim Cairns became Deputy Prime Minister after the 1974 election. He was viewed by US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and defence secretary James Schlesinger as "a radical with strong anti-American and pro-Chinese sympathies". The US administration was concerned that he would have access to classified United States intelligence. Whitlam instantly dismissed ASIS chief WT Robinson in 1975 after discovering ASIS had assisted the Timorese Democratic Union in an attempted coup against the Portuguese administration in Timor, without informing Whitlam's government. Whitlam threatened to reveal the identities of CIA agents working in Australia. He also threatened not to renew the lease of the US spy base at Pine Gap, which was due to expire on 10 December 1975. The US was also concerned about Whitlam's intentions towards its spy base at Nurrungar.” | Wikipedia | 2022 |
Known Participant
All 1 of the participants already have pages here:
| Participant | Description |
|---|---|
| Marshall Green | US coup master |
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Australia - The Forgotten Coup | article | 16 March 2014 | John Pilger | The November 1975 dismissal of duly elected Australian Prime minister Gough Whitlam by Queen Elizabeth's governor general Sir John Kerr. And Australians STILL think they live in an independent democratic country |
References
- ↑ a b c https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/us-dominance-and-australias-secret-coup,6300
- ↑
Blum, William (1998), Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA interventions since World War II, Black Rose Books, ISBN 978-1-55164-096-9, retrieved 2010-06-06 Cite uses deprecated parameter
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Martin, Ray (23 May 1982), A Spy's Story: USA Traitor Gaoled for 40 Years After Selling Codes of Rylite and Argus Projects. (60 Minutes transcript), williambowles.info, archived from the original on 17 June 2009, retrieved 2006-09-24 Cite uses deprecated parameter
|deadurl=(help)Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto"). - ↑ Cited in Pilger, John The British-American coup that ended Australian independence The Guardian 22 October 2014 (in which it is further alleged that Britain's MI6 participated with the CIA in endeavours to destabilise the Whitlam government).
