The CIA in Australia anym: This has been posted elsewhere: "1975 Australia — The CIA helps topple the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Prime Minister Edward Whitlam. The CIA does this by giving an ultimatum to its Governor-General, John Kerr. Kerr, a longtime CIA collaborator, exercises his constitutional right to dissolve the Whitlam government. The Governor-General is a largely ceremonial position appointed by the Queen; the Prime Minister is democratically elected. The use of this archaic and never-used law stuns the nation." ----------------------------------------- Do (m)any Australians believe that the CIA was instrumental in precipitating a constitutional crisis in 1975?  Outbackjack: Yes it is pretty much accepted that nefarious forces were at work and possibly the CIA. The CIA were very active at this time elsewhere in the world.Only two years earlier the CIA had installed Pinochet in Chile and who can forget the infamous Bay of Pigs a decade earlier. anym: What threat or ultimatum is thought to have been given to Kerr, that would cause him to dissolve the Australian government? Outbackjack: This was all before my time of so I can really only tell you what I have heard and read but of course this has been a well discussed topic here for the past four decades. In a nutshell the general opinion is that Kerr by the 1970s was a very unstable person who drank too much and thought too highly of himself. He had turned against the Labor party in Australia who ironically had appointed him as Governor General. Kerr also was aware that this had happened before at a state level in New South Wales when the Governor had deposed Jack Lang as Premier in the 1930s.It is said he worked for the C.I.A and that is entirely possible when you consider that some of our politicians are so far up americas ....! My opinion. Its a New South wales thing.There is so much corruption here.Money changing hands for grubby deals.Here are some highlights and i recommend if you have the time to take a look as it will make you laugh your head off at how brazen some of it is: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Rogerson en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_the_New_South_Wales_Police_Service en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neddy_Smith en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underbelly:_A_Tale_of_Two_Cities There is so much more I could post but I would be here all night. The rot set in in the 18th Century when the government started appointing "reformed" convicts to the police force ( yes you read it right). We are still living with the repercussions of that to this day. Kerr was just another greedy grub.He was a former judge who was a part of the corrupt elite of N.S.W .So unless someone had some serious dirt on him then he was bought off.Either way he didn't live to long enjoy his spoils but maybe that was a conspiracy too.We may never know. anym: Thanks, OBJack, for the info & references. I skimmed them enough to get the "flavour" but didn't go into all the detail. It's a sad old world where this kind of stuff goes on; but I'm afraid it does everywhere - to greater & lesser extent at various times & places. I was hoping you'd have more details of how/why (or whether) the CIA is thought to have been involved in Kerr's decision to dissolve parliament. Maybe someone else can fill in some more. Here in Canada we had the makings of a similar crisis a few years back when P.M. Stephen Harper asked G.G. Michaelle Jean to prorogue parliament; quite obviously so that he could avoid a vote of confidence he was going to lose. After a long one-on-one secret meeting she agreed to do so. Of course the actions of both of them were highly controversial but it blew over with time. I don't think we came as close to becoming a republic then as maybe Australia did (?) in '75. Large segments of the Canadian public still seem to have a sentimental "thing" for the Monarchy. Personally I don't care a lot either way - there are more important issues one could get worked up about. I suspect that any move by the Queen or her rep. to independently influence government would result in a major constitutional upheaval.  lori100: Operation Mockingbird /CIA propaganda directed at ...--------- https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/.../messages/435 --------------------------------In the run-up to the 1972 election, Murdoch's paper The Australian was a keen Whitlam supporter, donating some $75,000 in free advertising. Murdoch's role was part of a longer-term CIA operation to destroy Labour's powerful leftwing and anti-Vietnam war movement. From 1960 until early 1967, the Australian Labor Party opposed conscription and then in November 1964, the dispatch of troops to Vietnam. There emerged a modest anti- Vietnam war movement and the conflict with Edward Gough Whitlam over the Party leadership led him to toughen his initial stance which was based on the conviction that the Government's decisions to support the US policy in Vietnam were mistaken. In May 1966 the Parliamentary Labor Party endorsed Calwell's commitment that a Labor Government would pull conscripts out 'without delay' and regular forces 'as soon as possible. CIA officer Ted Shackley, who "had a good relationship with Murdoch when he was CIA station chief in Australia between 1972 to 1975. Murdoch was facing the likely closure of his newspaper THE AUSTRALIAN. This was around the time that Murdoch's fortunes changed. Murdoch was running a failed national newspaper in Australia. Then suddenly he becomes a US citizen literally overnight and goes on an endless buying spree. The Ruppert Murdoch's press now launched a massive propaganda campaign against the Labour Party and the National Country Party won the new election. The Shadow CIA gave Murdoch covert funds that saved his nearly bankrupt newspaper. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7532 One of the most successful CIA covert operations concerns the removal of Gough Whitlam, the prime minister of Australia. As leader of the Labour Party he advocated the abolition of conscription and Australian withdrawal from the Vietnam War. In 1971 he visited China promising to establish diplomatic relations. This left-wing stance was popular with the Australian people and on December 2, 1972 won election. The CIA had been running a variety of covert operations in Australia, involving Nugan-Hand bank. The CIA and National Security Agency operated a Signal Intelligence base called Pine Gap, near Alice Springs in the Australian outback with collaboration of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, ASIO. Many of the CIA's Australian initiatives were directed at keeping the Labor party out of office. When Gough Whitlam Labor party candidate became Australia's new prime minister, he began doing what any new chief of state would, moving to bring ASIO under his own control. As time passed Whitlam found alarming indications that the ASIO might actually be conspiring with the CIA to bring his government down, including leaking information designed to embarrass members of his cabinet in order to force their resignation. Whitlam began sacking people at ASIO that he felt were responsible, including some of the CIA's best friends in Australia's foreign intelligence service. The CIA helps topple the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Prime Minister Edward Whitlam. The CIA does this by giving an ultimatum to its Governor-General, John Kerr. Kerr, a longtime CIA collaborator, exercises his constitutional right to dissolve the Whitlam government. The Governor-General is a largely ceremonial position appointed by the Queen; the Prime Minister is democratically elected.-----------------On August 18, 1985 CIA officer Thomas Cline and a 6-man CIA team begin installation of subliminal television equipment in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. In the book Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion by Martin A. Lee, he reports that a former unnamed CIA officer stated the CIA was committed to investigating whether or not subliminal messages could be used to influence the outcome of a political campaign. They were especially interested in using of subliminal in this way on television and radio. In a January 17, 1958 declassified document, Operational Potential of Subliminal Perception, the CIA stated that it might be possible to include a subliminal message such as "Obey" in their subliminal projection and added that subliminal messages had achieved some success in commercial advertisements! The CIA did experiments on subliminal messages under the MK/ULTRA program. http://www.articlegarden.com/Article/The-CIA-Subliminal-Program/76873 (Edited by lori100) Outbackjack: I am not sure about some of that Lori but en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nugan_Hand_Bank was real. anym: " Operational Potential of Subliminal Perception" Haha, I remember in the 70s (?) when allegations of subliminal advertising were all the rage, I nearly ruined my eyesight trying to distinguish hidden words like sex & death (and worse) within, for instance, the photographed ice-cubes in the advertised glass of Johnny Walker. I swear I found them too - you can find anything if you look hard enough! anym: Thanks all for the comments & links about past corruption in Aussie politics. Very interesting although I didn't read all of it - too much depressing detail! What a shame that people with humanitarian ideals - like Whitlam seems to have had, seldom last long enough to make those ideals become the norm. Who was it said he wanted the epitaph "Killed by small men"? But I'm sure there are Australians who'd disagree. F*** them if they can't take a joke. Oops, sorry! (Edited by anym)  (Post deleted by MJ59 ) MJ59: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/04/after-us-senator-asks-public-imagine-cia-interfering-foreign-elections-historians  chronology: Most of these stories about the CIA are just urban myths. People still think the CIA overthrew the Chilien Government of Mr Alande. A CIA Officer who was in Chile at the time still insists he and his colleagues had nothing to do with the coupe against the Government down there. The CIA actually found itself loosing valuable networks of street information when their information folks were rounded up and thrown in prison. Even when they got out of prison these regular folks were often still disgruntled and would not believe the CIA Officers knew nothing about the coupe and the round up of prisoners. | Politics Chat Room 78 People Chatting Similar Conversations |
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