Washington\u2019s role in the fascist putsch against an elected government in Ukraine will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore the historical record.\u00a0 Since 1945, dozens of governments, many of them democracies, have met a similar fate, usually with bloodshed.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cstrategic threat\u201d. The logic was simple; if the weakest slipped the leash, setting an example, who else would try their luck?<\/p>\n
The great game of dominance offers no immunity for even the most loyal US \u201cally\u201d. This is demonstrated by perhaps the least known of Washington\u2019s coups \u2014 in Australia. The story of this forgotten coup is a salutary lesson for those governments that believe a \u201cUkraine\u201d or a \u201cChile\u201d could never happen to them.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s deference to the United States makes Britain, by comparison, seem a renegade. During the American invasion of Vietnam \u2014 which Australia had pleaded to join \u2014 \u00a0an 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: \u201cWe have to keep the Brits informed to keep them happy. You are with us come what may.\u201d<\/p>\n
This dictum was rudely set aside in 1972 with the election of the reformist Labor government of Gough Whitlam. \u00a0Although not regarded as of the left, Whitlam \u2014 now in his 98th year \u2014 was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride, propriety and extraordinary political imagination. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country\u2019s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to \u201cbuy back the farm\u201d and speak as a voice independent of London and Washington.<\/p>\n
On the day after his election, Whitlam ordered that his staff should not be \u201cvetted or harassed\u201d by the Australian security organisation, ASIO \u2014 then, as now, beholden to Anglo-American intelligence. When his ministers publicly condemned the Nixon\/Kissinger administration as \u201ccorrupt and barbaric\u201d, Frank Snepp, a CIA officer stationed in Saigon at the time, said later: \u201cWe were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whitlam\u00a0 demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, ostensibly a joint Australian\/US \u201cfacility\u201d. 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. \u00a0Whitlam clearly knew the personal risk he was taking \u2014 as the minutes of a meeting with the US ambassador demonstrate. \u201cTry to screw us or bounce us,\u201d he warned, \u201c[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention\u201d.<\/p>\n
Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, \u201cThis threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House. Consequences were inevitable \u2026 a kind of Chile was set in motion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CIA had just helped General Pinochet to crush the democratic government of another reformer, Salvador Allende, in Chile.<\/p>\n
In 1974, the White House sent the 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\u2019s \u201cdeep state\u201d.\u00a0 Known as the \u201ccoupmaster\u201d, he had played a played a central role in the 1965 coup against President Sukarno in Indonesia \u2014 which cost up to a million lives. One of his first speeches in Australia was to the Australian Institute of Directors \u2014 described by an alarmed member of the audience as \u201can incitement to the country\u2019s business leaders to\u00a0 rise against the government\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pine Gap\u2019s 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 \u201cdeception and betrayal of an ally\u201d, 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 \u201cour man Kerr\u201d.<\/p>\n
In his black top hat and medal-laden mourning suit, Kerr was the embodiment of imperium. He was the Queen of England\u2019s Australian viceroy in a country that still recognised her as head of state. His duties were ceremonial; yet Whitlam \u2014 who appointed him \u2014 was unaware of or chose to ignore Kerr\u2019s longstanding ties to Anglo-American intelligence.<\/p>\n
The Governor-General was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by the Jonathan Kwitny of the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u00a0in his book,\u00a0The Crimes of Patriots,<\/i>\u00a0as,<\/i>\u00a0\u201can elite, invitation-only group \u2026 exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA\u201d. The CIA \u201cpaid for Kerr\u2019s travel, built his prestige \u2026 Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money\u201d.<\/p>\n
In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain\u2019s MI6 had long been operating against his government. \u201cThe Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office,\u201d he said later.\u00a0 One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, \u201cWe knew MI6 was bugging Cabinet meetings for the Americans.\u201d In interviews in the 1980s with the American investigative journalist Joseph Trento, executive officers of the CIA disclosed that the \u201cWhitlam problem\u201d had been discussed \u201cwith urgency\u201d by the CIA\u2019s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, and that \u201carrangements\u201d were made. A deputy director of the CIA told Trento: \u201cKerr did what he was told to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1975, Whitlam learned of a secret list of\u00a0 CIA personnel in Australia held by the Permanent Head of the Australian Defence Department, Sir Arthur Tange \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
On 10 November, 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\u2019s East Asia Division and one of the most notorious figures spawned by the Agency. Shackley had been head of the CIA\u2019s Miami-based operation to assassinate Fidel Castro and Station Chief in Laos and Vietnam. He had recently worked on the \u201cAllende problem\u201d.<\/p>\n
Shackley\u2019s message was read to Whitlam. Incredibly, it said that the prime minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country.<\/p>\n
The day before, Kerr had visited the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia\u2019s NSA whose ties to Washington were, and reman binding. He was briefed on the \u201csecurity crisis\u201d. He had then asked for a secure line and spent 20 minutes in hushed conversation.<\/p>\n
On 11 November \u2014 the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia \u2014 he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal \u201creserve powers\u201d, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. \u00a0The problem was solved.<\/p>\n
John Pilger<\/strong>\u2019s new film,\u00a0Utopia,<\/a>\u00a0about Australia, was released in Australia in January.\u00a0<\/i>www.johnpilger.com<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Washington\u2019s role in the fascist putsch against an elected government in Ukraine will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore the historical record.\u00a0 Since 1945, dozens of governments, many of them democracies, have met a similar fate, usually … Continue reading