Whitlam rejects foreign link in his downfall

Press, 24 February 1988, Page 12

Whitlam rejects foreign link in his downfall

NZPA-AAP Sydney A former Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, has rejected theories of foreign intelligence service involvement in his downfall in the 1975 constitutional crisis. But he said he was in no doubt that the American C.I.A. had interfered in Australian domestic politics. Mr Whitlam was commenting on a Sydney radio station, 2UE, on claims by an expatriate journalist, John Pilger, in his television documentary, “The Last Dream.” The final episode, screened on ABC, alleged that the CIA and Britain’s MI6 had the ear of Sir John Kerr, the GovernorGeneral and former intelligence officer who sacked the Whitlam Government, to resolve a deadlock with the Senate on November 11, 1975. “Sir John Kerr needed no encouragement from outside forces to do what he did,” Mr Whitlam said. But security services were naturally conservative and preferred conservative governments, Mr Whitlam said.

He had no doubt that at times the C.I.A. interfered in internal Australian 1 events. “It is not just scuttlebutt, it is not just loose talk,” Mr Whitlam said. Whitlam referred to a” 1977 meeting with an envoy from President Jimmy Carter, who effectively had admitted interference by promising it would never happen “again.” During the constitutional crisis the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation had alerted him “quite correctly” of an attempt by the C.I.A. to deal direct with them instead of through the Government.

But he reiterated his belief that Sir John did what he did to cement his own position in the wake of Labour’s low popularity in 1975 and the rise of Malcolm Fraser as Opposition Leader. Both Mr Whitlam and the previous Opposition Leader, Sir Billy Snedden, had promised Sir John another five-year term, but Mr Fraser had made no such promise. “Sir John set out to put Malcolm Fraser under an obligation to him, to do Fraser a favour he would return,” Mr Whitlam said. Referring to the allegation by Pilger and an Australian defence journalist, William Pinwill, that the C.I.A. wanted aid from MI6 because of fears Labour might terminate the United States bases agreement, he said this merely showed they were out of the control of their own Governments. He had said categorically in Parliament on August 4, 1975, that he would not be giviqg the required one year’s notice of termination when the agreement expired on December 9 that year. Mr Whitlam added his voice to critics of the A.B.C. for deleting some of Pinwill’s comments about Sir John, in spite of having earlier been cleared three times on legal advice. “The A.B.C. seems to be running scared on some of these issues,” he said. “Rightly or wrongly the public believe they are being stood over and this would be very damaging to the news media in Australia.” Recent ownership changes had created the greatest concentration of news media control in the developed world, and the A.B.C. was a valuable alternative, he said.