TRANSCRIPT - ASIO, CIA & MI6 de facto coup d'état - Whitlam Government, Australia

"US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington’s informants during the Whitlam years. Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. 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." JOHN PILGER Investigative Journalist Source |  here Australian Association for Cultural Freedom Member:  John Kerr, Australia's Governor-General “an elite, invitation-only group … exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA” [ Jonathan Kwitny - WSJ ] Theodore Shackley notorious head of CIA’s East Asia division Shackley:  1972 CIA coup vs Salvador Allende in Chile TELEX message, deeming Gough Whitlam 'security risk' to Australia “Our man Kerr” - ie CIA Man BRIEFS  - Defence Signals Directorate, Australia’s NSA about ...  “security crisis” ... Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers” Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister SOURCE John Pilger Investigation | coup against Whitlam Book:  A Secret Country (Vintage) Documentary film:  Other People’s Wars VIEW ON  http://www.johnpilger.com/ TRANSCRIPT [for quotation purposes, confirm audio] ASIO, CIA & MI6 de facto coup d'état Whitlam Government Australia VIDEO Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kxVVWfRPiA Duration: 9:59 NARRATOR The coup against Gough Whitlam's Labour government in Australia 1972 (sic) exposes a wide variety of dirty tricks used by intelligence agencies to undermine democracy. GOUGH WHITLAM We will not yield to blackmail. We will not be panicked. We will not turn over the government of this country to vested interests, pressure groups and newspaper proprietors, whose tactics would destroy the standards and traditions of parliamentary government. SCREEN TEXT "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 NARRATOR In Australia 1972, a Labor government was elected for the first time in 23 years. It would be brought down in a de facto coup d'état, conducted by the CIA in liaison with Britain's MI6 and, most shockingly, Australia's own intelligence services. Since assuming power in Australia, Whitlam's labour government had enacted series of reforms. These included: raises in wages, pensions, and unemployment benefits, free national healthcare, equal pay for women, the abolishment of tuition fees, new services for Aboriginal peoples, and the replacement of 'God Save the Queen' with Australia's own national anthem. Most disturbing to Washington, however, was the withdrawal of Australian troops from Vietnam, the support of Palestinian rights, and the proposal of an Indian Ocean zone of peace. Worst of all, Whitlam hinted that he might shut down a number of American military bases, including Pine Gap. When CIA Director William Colby petitioned his counterpart at MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, for help, he stressed that Australia was traditionally Britain’s domain and that if Pine Gap were closed, the alliance would be blinded strategically. Unbeknownst to Australia's new Prime Minister, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had not only been working closely with the CIA, they had been illegally passing on dossiers, concerning every member of the Labor Party, as well as union leaders, peace activists, and other Australian citizens. A slush fund was set up to provide money to both opposition parties, via the Nugan Hand Bank, a CIA front company. [Cut to footage of Malcolm Fraser, Liberal Party] This was followed up by a promise to the main opposition Liberal Party of unlimited funds. CBS NEWS CLIP - SEPT 22, 1982 ANNOUNCER [American Accent] In recent years, there have been charges from time to time that the CIA has involved itself in illegal activities. Some of the most bizarre to date involve a bank in Australia known as 'Nugan Hand,' and tonight Gary Shepherd has a report. [2:57] GARY SHEPHERD [American Accent] When the Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney, Australia, collapsed in 1980, it appeared at first glance to be just another bank failure. Cut to EXHUMATION at cemetery Burial marker reads: In Loving Memory of FRANCIS JOHN NUGAN But after Australian authorities began taking a closer look, they discovered a tangled web of intrigue, with all the elements of a best-selling spy novel: a mysterious death, the body later dug up from its grave, illegal currency transactions, big time drug operations and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). NEIL EVANS FORMER BANK EXECUTIVE [Australian accent] We were to become the paymasters of the CIA around the world. In other words, we were putting ourselves in a position to disburse funds for the CIA to whoever they were directed. ANNOUNCER Former bank executive Neil Evans, given immunity from prosecution agreed to talk about the Nugan Hand operation on Australian television. From his account and others, the Bank had its genesis during the Vietnam War. Four of the original stockholders were Americans who listed their addresses as: Air America, Army Post Office (APO), San Francisco, [Ca.]. Air America was the CIA airline in Indochina, hauling men and supplies on clandestine missions and, according to former CIA agents, even drugs out of the so-called Golden Triangle where the borders of Burma, Laos, and Thailand, converge. Nugan Hand sent Neil Evans to the Thai city of Chang Mai, the commercial centre of the drug trade. He claims the CIA made millions and used the money to advance its secret projects. NEIL EVANS FEB 1981 The idea was that the money would be deposited by the Nugan Hand Bank by the CIA through various channels and, also, that the Nugan Hand Bank would be the repository for funds coming in from various CIA enterprises, namely, drugs in Thailand --marijuana in particular -- and that the Nugan Hand Bank would then be responsible for re-routing that money to an account in America with the New York Bank. ANNOUNCER Nugan Hand was not your ordinary bank: there were secret numbered accounts and hardly any of its top people were bankers. Many were American civilians and former high-ranking military officers with ties to US intelligence. When they found the body of Australian businessman, Frank Nugan, the Bank's chairman (shot to death a few months before the Bank went under), they discovered in his pocket, the business card of this man: William Colby, former Director of the CIA. Nugan's partner was Michael Hand, an American Green Beret, who served two tours in Vietnam. One of them for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He disappeared a short while after the bank collapsed and is now believed to be dead. Australian newspapers reported a connection between Nugan Hand and the US Navy's super-secret intelligence unit, known as Taskforce 157. Among it's top agents, CIA man, Edwin Wilson (now under indictment for selling arms and explosives to Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi), and a man named Patry Loomis has also been implicated. He was the apparent CIA-Nugan Hand go-between. It was Lumis who helped Wilson recruit a team of Green Berets to train terrorists in Libya. GARY SHEPHERD CBS News, Los Angeles The Nugan Hand affair has caused an uproar in Australia, where authorities are trying to find out what involvement the bank might have had in the 1975 downfall of the labour party government. Meanwhile, investigators on three continents are attempting to trace $50-million missing from the accounts of depositors, including many Americans. Here in this country, the CIA denies any involvement with drug operations in Indochina, the Nugan Hand Bank itself, or the deaths of the two men who ran it. Gary Shepherd, CBS News, Los Angeles. NARRATOR In addition to the slush fund, the CIA created a series of forged documents implicating high ranking members of the Labor Party in a succession of scandals. No hard evidence was ever produced to substantiate the allegations, but a complicit Australian media, spear-headed by a young Rupert Murdoch, fanned the flames of discontent. AUSTRALIAN INTERVIEWER/REPORTER Do you think the newspaper would have any political orientation like The Sun and its predecessor, The Daily Herald? RUPERT MURDOCH Receding hairline prominent T-shaped furrow on forehead - furrow commencing between the eyes prominent dark eyebrows weak jawline jowls narrow upper lip oversized lower lip left-hand side hair part RUPERT MURDOCH [Shaking head] No, no fixed orientation, in the sense that it would be allied to any party. Certainly not. It would be quite independent. NARRATOR One of the most damaging of the forgeries was a report indicating that Labor ministers had received kick-backs during the so-called 'loans affair.' In 1981, a CIA contract agent, named Joseph Flynn, admitted that he had forged these documents at the behest at Michael Hand, co-founder of the CIA's Nugan Hand Bank. As the contrived scandals escalated, a state of emergency was declared. Invoking the authority of the British crown, Attorney-General John Kerr dismissed Whitlam as Prime Minister [Silent Footage of Whitlam] [Cut to American Actor] Soundtrack 'God Save the Queen', Sex Pistols: God Save the Queen The fascist regime It made you a moron Potential H-Bomb God Save the Queen She ain't no human being There is no future And England's screamin' ... SCREEN TEXT One American intelligence officer, Christopher Boyce, became so outraged at the CIA's actions in Australia that he began passing on secret documents to the Soviets. [Cut to Christopher Boyce at hearing] SCREEN TEXT In 2006, the BBC aired a documentary entitled "The Plot Against Harold Wilson". It revealed that a similar campaign of dirty tricks was used against the British Labour government of Harold Wilson. [Soundtrack 'God Save the Queen', Sex Pistols] SCREEN TEXT The campaign was carried out by the CIA in liaison with Britain's MI5 and the South African security service, BOSS. [Soundtrack 'God Save the Queen, Sex Pistols] Cut to: 'Welcome to News International'   [Vertical Venetian signage opens exposing ...] The Sun We Love It News of the World Big On Sundays SCREEN TEXT Though Wilson was a moderate, he was the object of a relentless smear campaign in the British press in which he was painted as a soviet agent. [Soundtrack 'God Save the Queen', Sex Pistols] SCREEN TEXT At one point, a coup was contemplated. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India and a member of the Royal Family, was to head up the new government. Daily Mirror press baron Lord Cecil King planned "an emergency government" that would include leading conservative politicians and prominent businessmen. [Soundtrack 'God Save the Queen', Sex Pistols] SCREEN TEXT Suffering from early onset Alzheimer's, Wilson resigned in 1976. Margaret Thatcher was elected three years later. The British-American coup that ended Australian independence John Pilger EXTRACT 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 Across the media and political establishment in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam. His achievements are recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him. Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing. Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”. In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth. [ ...] MORE AT SOURCE http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence ꕤ