Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the_Whitlam_dismissal
Like I guess we all just collectively agreed to not talk about this?
Apparently the Queen and the CIA thought Australia was getting a little too progressive in 1975. They were pulling out of Viet Nam and doing things like welcoming refugees from Chile (who were fleeing a different coup engineered by the CIA).
The 50th anniversary of the coup just passed (Nov. 11th), and Consortium News republished an article originally written in 2020:
Gough Whitlam was driven from government on Nov. 11, 1975. When he died six years ago (2014), his achievements were recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. The truth of the coup against him, it was hoped, would be buried with him.
During the Whitlam years, 1972-75, Australia briefly achieved independence and became intolerably progressive.
The last Australian troops were ordered home from their mercenary service to the American assault on Vietnam. 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. In response, Australian dockers refused to unload American ships.
Whitlam moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement and called for a Zone of Peace in the Indian ocean, which the U.S. and Britain opposed. He demanded France cease its nuclear testing in the Pacific. In the U.N., Australia spoke up for the Palestinians. Refugees fleeing the C.I.A.-engineered coup in Chile were welcomed into Australia.
Things are kind of going a little off kilter in the U.S. lately, and it’s led me down a bit of a CIA history rabbit hole because reasons…
Anyway, I always knew the CIA did plenty of fucked up shit abroad (and at home), but really sitting down to just skim some of it (and that’s the stuff we’re actually allowed to know about) … good night nurse. Where do you even find the time to do this much bullshit? To soooo many countries all over the world?
Somehow ending up on the receiving end of our very own coup just makes me want to say, A. Sorry and B. We probably should have seen this coming.
You should check out the book Legacy of Ashes. It’s a very detailed account of CIA fuckery. I don’t remember if this comes up, because I listened to it on tape quite a while ago. So long ago it was literally on tape!
Tape? Like, actual cassette tape? Oh, if thats the case, there’s so much more new additions since then. You’d need like 5 more tapes!
And also…ya know…transfering them over to a more modern format.
Book dates from 2007, and is followed up by “The Mission” where Tim Weiner details the more recent quarter century.
People focus on the bigger crimes but I also enjoy reading the smaller ones like when the CIA tried to bribe some guy in Singapore.