That Time The US Coup'ed Australia

New article: You won't learn about this in history class.

Article and voice over by Lee Camp

You’ve probably heard about the US coup’ing or regime-changing places like Iraq, Libya, and Syria. You know about the times we assassinated or kidnapped the leaders of countries like Chile, Haiti, and the Congo. If you’re the rad nerdy type, you might also know about our “assistance” over the past five years in coup’ing places like Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, and Pakistan.

But do you know about the time we coup’ed Australia? …I didn’t either.

First, let’s establish the why. Gough Whitlam was prime minister of Australia from 1972 to 1975. (And as far as I can tell his first name is pronounced like you’re coughing suddenly and harshly.) Although Australia had been an eager sidekick in the American war in Vietnam, things changed under Whitlam. The Aussie troops were ordered home and as investigative reporter extraordinaire John Pilger put it:

“Whitlam’s ministers publicly condemned U.S. barbarities as ‘mass murder’ and the crimes of ‘maniacs’. The Nixon administration was corrupt, said the Deputy Prime Minister, Jim Cairns, and called for a boycott of American trade.”

From day one of the Whitlam years Australia’s foreign policy tacked away from the United States and United Kingdom. Whitlam’s gov even spoke up for Palestinians at the UN and welcomed refugees from the recently CIA-upended country of Chile.

Then Whitlam did something truly unforgivable. He began talking about the rights of the indigenous people of Australia. His government drafted the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation — Asking the question of whether the indigenous people might actually have a claim to Australia’s natural wealth (which the US and UK very much enjoyed extracting). Whitlam also introduced disgusting commie things like universal (free) medical coverage and free college education.

But it’s probably his next move that put the nail in Whitlam’s coffin, so to speak. Whitlam began shining a light on the US / UK / Australian intelligence services that quietly filled his government like termites in the walls of a house. The reason Australian intelligence services (ASIO and ASIS) were a problem is because they weren’t working for Whitlam — instead they were in bed with the CIA and MI6. (Maybe bed bugs would’ve been a better analogy than termites.)

Back to Pilger:

“ASIO’s real power derived from the UKUSA Treaty, with its secret pact of loyalty to foreign intelligence organisations – notably the CIA and MI6.”

That’s right, Australia’s intelligence services’ allegiance was not to Australia — It was to the Western empire.

“…in the early hours of March 16, 1973, Whitlam’s Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy, led a posse of Federal police in a raid on the Melbourne offices of ASIO.”

Whitlam went on to cut off the heads of both Aussie intelligence outfits. (I just mean he fired them. He didn’t really decapitate anyone — though that would’ve been interesting.) Next he turned his ire toward the CIA. He wanted to know about the Pine Gap spy station — which we later found out from Edward Snowden’s leaks in 2013 is one of the most important US spy nodes in the world.

John Pilger wrote for Consortium News:

“Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, ‘This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House… a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.’”

So how did the US / UK sink Whitlam’s career six feet under?

At this point in the story, we have to explain an unusual office in Australian government that makes roughly zero sense to any American — The Governor-General of Australia. It’s a post that technically represents the monarch of Australia. (This is the point when the American reader says, “The WHAT of Australia? Monarch?!”)

Technically King Charles — yes, the King of England — is also the King of Australia (and the King of Canada, etc.). We hardly ever think of Australia as having a king or queen because the position is largely meaningless. Hell, it’s basically meaningless in the UK as well (except as a conduit for sex scandals). Hence, the Governor-General position is also rather meaningless. It’s essentially a rubber stamp for everything the democratically elected government of Australia wants to do. …Except when it’s not.

In 1975 the Governor-General of Australia was a man named Sir John Kerr.

“Kerr was not only the Queen’s man and a passionate monarchist, he had long-standing ties to Anglo-American intelligence.”

According to Pilger, the CIA internally referred to Kerr as “our man Kerr”. They paid him, built him up, and facilitated most of his career.

When Prime Minister Whitlam demanded a list of CIA agents operating in his country, the CIA decided they couldn’t wait any longer to make a move. On the morning Whitlam was prepared to tell parliament about the secret CIA presence in their country, Kerr summoned him to his office and fired him.

Yes, a largely ceremonial position, the Governor-General, disposed of the Prime Fucking Minister of Australia. I don’t know about you, but my next thought upon hearing that was, “How often does that type of thing happen?!”

Never before or since has the Governor-General fired a sitting Prime Minister.

Pilger reported:

“In the 1980s, senior CIA officers revealed that the ‘Whitlam problem’ had been discussed ‘with urgency’ by the CIA’s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said: ‘Kerr did what he was told to do.’”

Essentially the CIA used a bureaucratic nuclear option to subvert democracy in an allied country and get Whitlam out of their way. If they hadn’t possessed this unheard-of option, who knows whether they would’ve resorted to more intense measures — Ones that go “bang”.

Gough Whitlam was not even exceedingly left-wing. He wasn’t calling for redistribution of wealth or an end to capitalism. Yet clearly all one needs to do to be coup’ed by the US/UK imperial powers is turn your back on their foreign policy of endless war and try to reclaim your country’s sovereignty.

Just that is too much. Just that will lead to your demise.