The CIA's role in the overthrow of the progressive govt. of Austrilia

[Ichingcarpenter]

On December 2nd 1972, Australia's first Labor Government for twenty-three years was elected. The new Prime Minister, Edward Gough Whitlam, quickly set about a series of historic legislations: wages, pensions and unemployment benefits were increased; equal pay for women was introduced; a free national health service was established; spending on education was doubled; university and college fees were abolished; and legal aid became a universal right.

The Federal Government assumed responsibility for Aboriginal health, education and welfare, and the first land rights legislation for Aborigines was drafted. Cultural initiatives for women, Aborigines and immigrants were set up. Imperial honours such as knighthoods and MBEs were scrapped. The "Commonwealth Government" was renamed the Australian Government and an Australian anthem replaced "God Save the Queen."

Conscription was ended. Australian troops were withdrawn from the Vietnam War and men imprisoned for draft evasion were released. Australian ministers publicly condemned the American conduct of the Vietnam War. The U.S. bombing of Hanoi during Christmas 1972 was denounced as the work of "maniacs" and "mass murderers". Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Jim Cairns, called for public rallies to condemn the bombing and for boycotts on American goods. In response, Australian dockers refused to unload American ships. Whitlam himself warned the Nixon administration that he might draw Indonesia and Japan into protests against the bombing.

The Australian Government also pressed for support for the Indian Ocean Zone of Peace, which was opposed by the US, and 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 into Australia (an irony in the light of Washington's retaliation against Whitlam).


And then:

"The CIA's aim in Australia was to get rid of a government they did not like and that was not co-operative… it's a Chile, but in a much more sophisticated and subtle form."
]- VICTOR MARCHETTI, ex-CIA officer, 1980


Long read:
http://www.american-buddha.com/cia.australia.htm


Also a video which on the same lines

[HeiressofBickworth]

1. Many thanks for posting this!

I lived in Australia from 1975 to 1976, during which time, the Governor-General (appointed by and representing the Queen of England) sacked the democratically elected Whitlam. My birthday was in December, at the time of the sacking. At my party were students from the university in Sydney and a collection of sheep-ranchers from the out-back. No one knew the details behind the sacking of Whitlam, but the discussion was about whether Australia was a subject of her Majesty or a sovereign nation with the right to have its own elected leaders. The students believed that the sacking was illegal. The ranchers were more in favor of British control. Made for a memorable birthday party!

This post clarifies for the first time (for me anyway) the background of why Kerr sacked Whitlam. If all the people at my party knew that the American CIA was behind it all, I doubt I would have had any friends left from either side.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. Murdoch's newspapers in Australia were instrumental

in spreading the CIA's false accusations and false documents which manipulated public sentiment.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

2. Hard-right wingers in MI5 attempted to depose UK PM Wilson

A clique of very right-wing MI5 officers with links to the CIA and Britain's Conservative Party convinced themselves that moderate-left PM Harold Wilson was a KGB agent.

Their plan was to destabilise Wilson's government in the event that it pursued "overly-socialist policies", the idea being that it would be replaced by a military coup headed by Prince Charles' uncle Lord Mountbatten.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. This story about Australia is well documented now

I don't doubt your story about GB but could you find some links? Otherwise ..... it won't be taken seriously by TPTB and the negative naysayers

[Anarcho-Socialist]

9. It was famously exposed by Peter Wright

Assistant Director of MI5 in his memoirs "Spycatcher" http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher

Respected author and journalist Seamus Milne also mentions it when he tracks the history of MI5 plots against the Labour movement in his book "The Enemy Within".

A general overview of the plot: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson_conspiracy_theories#Alleged_1974_military_coup_plot

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. THANKS!!!

It does tie into the thread these intelligence agency weave against the left.

[blkmusclmachine]

5. Not surprised the US is/was involved. "Change," and all.

"THE FAMILY," the shadowy far rightwing pseudo religious Cult in DC, says: "We work with power where we can, and build power where we can't."

[nikto]

6. America's been doing crap like this for a long time

I love this country.

But sometimes, loving America is like loving a psychopath.

My fear for America is growing faster than my love for it.

[nikto]

7. Kinda' makes you wonder, in retrospect, about...

The drowning/disappearance death of Liberal Australian PM Harold Holt in 1967.

He did support LBJ in the Vietnam War,
but favored some policies elites may not have liked...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Holt

[Ichingcarpenter]

8. If you think they are not involved

in the US internal affairs let alone friendly government just look at how there is even less oversight now and have grown even more in scope.

THEY HAD THEIR OWN BANK IN AUSTRALIA BACK THEN.

[socialist_n_TN]

10. This shit has been going on for a LOOOONG time........

Even to supposed "allied" countries.

[Ichingcarpenter]

12. The CIA even opened up their own bank for this back then

Imagine today's power they stroll for the elite.



Wolff.


The elites are fully focused on preserving and expanding their fortunes, and the structure of the contemporary economy puts in the hands of a very few people in large corporate enterprises “both the incentive and the resources to roll back whatever adjustments a movement from below is able to make.”

[Octafish]

13. The Playbook

Using a bank to help destroy a government is SOP for one set of players. Cough. Nugan Hand. And Banco Nazionale del Lavoro. And BCCI. And UBS. And just about every major bank since.

Odd how one prominent CIA family name publicly and privately links these. The late, great Jonathan Kwitny also wrote how Poppy was able to weasel out of any public culpability during Iran-Contra:

Who Gave Bush His Teflon Coat in the Iran Contra Scam?

LosAngeles Times
November 04, 1988|JONATHAN KWITNY |

EXCERPT...

But the way George Bush has been let off the hook sickens me--as does the notion that he could be an acceptable candidate for the presidency, let alone leading the polls, less than two years after the Iran-Contra scandal broke.

The Bush-Reagan team rode to office on the issue of terrorism, pledging to halt it by never negotiating with terrorists and stopping others from doing so. For much of their Administration, federal law prohibited waging war on Nicaragua. Yet Bush attended dozens of meetings at which were discussed either our active role in starting and sustaining the Contra war or the secret supply of arms to Iran, which in public he called a leading terrorist state. Bush's assertion now that he didn't know of these activities is preposterous. An aide's minutes show him being briefed on arms shipments to Iran as they were in progress. He says that he misunderstood; he thought that the sales were Israeli. If so, he was muddleheaded on this linchpin issue and lacked leadership, considering our influence over Israel. Alternatively, he is simply lying; records show that he had been told earlier that Israel was acting as our front in the transactions.

In fact, Bob Woodward has reported, and Bush hasn't (to my knowledge) denied, that Bush was with Reagan when the President signed the Bible that was delivered as a gift to the "terrorist" ayatollah along with a planeload of missiles and other arms.

Nor was Bush just a loyal confidant who kept his mouth shut when Reagan erred. Bush, a former CIA director, hired career CIA officer Donald Gregg as his personal vice presidential adviser. When Contra military aid was banned, Gregg began phoning and meeting with an old CIA pal of both men, Felix Rodriguez, who, allegedly as a private citizen, went to the Salvadoran military base where arms were transferred for shipment in small craft to Contra bases.

Guns, ammo, mines and explosives were collected by men close to White House aide Oliver North and used in a terror war against civilian farm cooperatives in Nicaragua. Rodriguez ran the arms depot, at times talking almost daily with Gregg and meeting at least three times with Bush--whose office says that they only discussed other things, and that the presence of the arms deals on the agenda for one of those meetings was a typing error.

It gets worse. As his own assistant Rodriguez hired, under an assumed name, Luis Posada Carriles, another former CIA colleague who had just been sprung from a Venezuelan jail--with his help, Rodriguez has hinted. Posada was in jail for the mid-air bombing of a civilian Cuban airliner that took 73 lives. That surpasses all the Arab terrorist acts that Bush and Reagan have complained of.

Bush's office has said that he didn't know of Posada's background. Nonsense. Posada bombed that airliner on Bush's watch, in October, 1976, and Castro's howls of CIA culpability and U.S. denials were big news. Surely a CIA director worthy of the title would have called for the file on Posada.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-11-04/local/me-984_1_contra-arms

The players may change, but the game stays the same.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1344760

Nugan Hand was one of "Those Things." Poor Australia. Poor America. Poor Planet Earth. The rich get richer and the rest of us pick up the tab.