Australia/1975 coup

 Australia/1975 coup (coup,  US/Sponsored Regime-change efforts since 1945,  structural deep event)

Sir John Kerr, who on the CIA's orders invoked "reserve powers" and dismissed the Australian Prime minister.
Date	15 October 1975 - 11 November 1975
Location	Canberra,  Australian Capital Territory
Exposed by	Christopher Boyce
Description	A UK/US deep state-backed covert "constitutional coup" to remove Gough Whitlam whom they saw as a loose cannon.
Planners	US Deep state, UK Deep state, CIA, MI6, Le Cercle?
Participants	Marshall Green

The 1975 Australian coup (also called the Canberra Coup) was a covert regime change concluded on 11 November when Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was summoned by John Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal "reserve powers" Kerr summarily dismissed him on behalf of his deep political masters. William Blum wrote in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II that Sir John Kerr acted on behalf of the CIA in procuring Whitlam's dismissal.

Official Narrative

Did the CIA and the Queen Overthrow the Australian Government? - BadEmpanada

The official story is that Whitlam took risks refusing to approve a new budget for the government, even refusing to work something out before the government went on vacation. The official Wikipedia page that addressed the claims hints that something else was going on.

“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) 

Background

Christopher Boyce, the code clerk who exposed the CIA's role in the 1975 coup, is arrested before being tried for espionage.

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". 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".

CIA

On the day he was dismissed, Whitlam was due to inform the Australian Parliament about the secret CIA presence in the country.

Marshall Green

Full article: Marshall Green

'Coupmaster' Marshall Green, the US ambassador to Australia.

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.

Apology from Carter

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.

MI6

In 1975, Whitlam discovered that the UK deep state had long been operating MI6 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."

Exposure

CIA funding

Prior to the Dismissal, Kerr requested and received a briefing from senior defence officials on a CIA threat to end intelligence co-operation with Australia. During the crisis, Whitlam alleged that Country Party leader Doug Anthony had close links to the CIA. Later it was alleged that Kerr had acted for the United States government in dismissing Whitlam. The most common allegation is that the CIA influenced Kerr's decision. In 1966, Kerr had joined the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a conservative group that had secretly received CIA funding.

Witnesses

In 1982, Christopher Boyce stated on 60 Minutes that Kerr was the mastermind, an Australian Channel Nine TV program. He outlined the coup, stated that the CIA had engineered it, and that senior CIA officials referred to Governor-General Sir John Kerr, who dismissed Whitlam’s government, as “our man Kerr.” The response the commercially-controlled media was a new blackout. "In 1985, however, his story became the subject of a movie, called The Falcon and the Snowman, starring Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn, based upon the 1979 book of the same title by Robert Lindsay".

Victor Marchetti, a CIA officer who had helped set up the Pine Gap facility, said that the threatened close of US bases in Australia "caused apoplexy in the White House, [and] a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion", with the CIA and MI6 working together to get rid of the Prime Minister.

CIA Officers

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 CIA director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, and that "arrangements" were made.

Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II

Full article: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II

William Blum wrote in 2013 that the most detailed account of the coup of which he was aware was in his Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II.

John Pilger

Full article: John Pilger

In 2014 Australian journalist John Pilger published an article The British-American coup that ended Australian independence in The Guardian, which began "In 1975 prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died this week, dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy. The CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price". The article observes that on "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".

Early Cover-up

In its page about Whitlam, the Australian National Museum makes no mention of the CIA or other forces which planned the Canberra coup. In 2019, it summarised his downfall by stating that "Economic woes and political mistakes resulted in the Opposition refusing to pass his government’s Budget Bills in the Senate. In 1975, he became the only Prime Minister to be removed from office by the Governor-General."

Wikipedia

As of January 2019, the Wikipedia article only uses the word "coup" in the following sentence, which occurs in a subsection on Alleged CIA involvement: "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." After an article in The Guardian in 2022 highlighting the suspicious circumstances and testimony of several deep state operatives involved, Wikipedia gives the CIA involvement an own page and subsection on all involved pages.

Continuing efforts

The Washington Post has twice published that the Canberra Coup was an internal matter that lead to a government shudown. Columnist Max Fisher wrote in 2013 that "there actually is one foreign precedent [of the US government shutdown]: Australia did this once. In 1975, the Australian government shut down because the legislature had failed to fund it, deadlocked by a budgetary squabble. It looked a lot like the U.S. shutdown of today, or the 17 previous U.S. shutdowns." In January 2019, Rick Noack "once again uses a US government shutdown as an excuse to lie about the CIA coup that overthrew Gough Whitlam, the Labor PM of Australia who was trying to shut down the CIA base at Alice Springs."

 

A Australia/1975 coup 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.

 

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

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