The dismissal of the Whitlam Government by Governor-General John Kerr on 11/11/1975 still rankles at the heart of Australian democracy.

Overtly, the dismissal was all-Australian affair: Malcolm Fraser pursuing power, John Kerr’s self-obsessed view of his constitutional powers, and Gough Whitlam seeking to crash through with a progressive agenda that had roused powerful opponents.

Yet one intriguing question remains: was the CIA involved?

Will we ever find the smoking gun, the indisputable evidence that foreign interests were at play with no regard for Australian sovereignty?

Recently I’ve been writing 1975: The Ballads of the Whitlam Dismissal, retelling those troubling events in rollicking bush ballad style.

I had the opportunity to review available evidence, particularly material from US presidential libraries, and I have found that the smoking gun is there, in plain sight, and has been for a decade.

It is all there in the Gerald Ford Presidential Library in the report to National Security Study Memorandum 204 which reviewed US policy about Australia in mid-1974. ( Part 1; Part 2)

Whitlam’s double dissolution election on 18 May 1974 produced a left-wing caucus which chose firebrand Jim Cairns as Whitlam’s deputy. This shocked Washington; Labor’s staunchest critic of US foreign policy was a heartbeat away from the top job.

President Nixon responded by ordering Kissinger to issue NSSM 204 and the report it required was delivered just a few days before Watergate brought Nixon down.

That report remained top secret until 2014 when a heavily redacted version was released.

While the report is sometimes read as benign, a deep dive into the detail shows:

1. motive: why the US intervened

2. method: their plan to overthrow the government and

3. means: how the CIA took over the running of the operation.

First, motive. The report inadvertently explains the significance of Pine Gap, the “joint space base” near Alice Springs. Its lease was due for renewal beginning December 1975 and Whitlam had raised the possibility of not renewing it several times.

The report often contains a descriptor phrase after mention of Woomera/Nurrungar (“our only ground link with early warning satellites”) and NW Cape (“a key command and control communications relay to US ballistic missile submarines”). After mention of Pine Gap, the similarly placed phrase is usually redacted except for one occasion on page 17 where it is described as “the only ground station for a classified military satellite". Pine Gap was the only way some top-secret data got to the US at a point in the Cold War when every fragment of intelligence mattered enormously.

Second, method. Whitlam’s lack of Senate support is weaponised on page 2 of the report:

“There remains a clear possibility that a general election will again be forced within the next three years. Given an opportunity to charge that the government has badly mishandled some major issue (more likely a domestic than a foreign policy one), the opposition might be able to line up the independents, who hold the balance in the Senate, and force new elections.”

From this point on, communications from central powerbrokers (Kissinger, Green, Murdoch) refer to an early election and Whitlam’s demise within a year, a year in which the Senate became more precarious, the Loans Affair commenced and Kerr was emboldened.

The third significant point, means, becomes apparent in additional documents prepared by National Security Council (NSC) staffer W.R. Smyser for a Senior Review Group meeting on 24 August. The covering memo says the meeting should lead to a National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) which typically lays out the NSC’s future actions in response to an NSSM. However, there is no NSDM and the reason is obvious in the details.

That covering memo explicitly recommends following a moderate line of negotiation and removal of the bases to keep the US-Australian alliance alive.

But the CIA had other plans: “On the Pine Gap installation, CIA wants to postpone the decision, apparently hoping there might be a chance of leaving it in Australia into the 1980s,” Smyser writes in his analytical summary.

Given that no further action was recorded, any decision was clearly postponed and, as the base is still there, it appears the CIA took their chances and their apparent hopes prevailed.

We see from Kissinger’s talking points how that happened. The talking points indicate that Kissinger intended, early in the meeting, to hand over to CIA director, Bill Colby for his opinions on Whitlam, Cairns, the bases, Australia’s foreign policy generally and whether Whitlam was likely to serve his full three-year term. The CIA had the floor and no formal decision was taken.

It is interesting how Smyser sets out the “do-nothing” Option 5: “Observe and test the Whitlam Government’s intentions for at least several months before approaching it on the future of the Pine Gap agreement. In the meantime,” then there is a large, redacted space that clearly canvasses what to do while doing nothing.

Australia was not really on Colby’s “do-nothing” list. His memoir tells of international “crises” he faced as CIA chief: in the Middle East, Cyprus and Portugal, and a still mysterious nuclear explosion in India. But, added to his list of woes: “a left-wing and possibly antagonistic government in Australia”. Australia was a crisis very high on his agenda.

The archival record is silent on what happens next, probably because matters were referred to another NSC sub-committee Kissinger chaired, the 40 Committee responsible for supervising covert operations by the CIA. We do, however, know that by mid-1975 the NSC had tight control of the situation in Australia because when Presidential aide, Russ Rourke, raised the question of a visit by Opposition leader Malcolm Fraser, Smyser required a “detailed breakdown” of Rourke’s activities and Rourke notes: “I went to great lengths to advise Smyser that, under no circumstances, did we have any intention of crossing into NSC’s obvious jurisdiction…”

We may conclude that by late 1975 the NSC and CIA had an agenda for Australia without regard for its sovereignty or democratic conventions.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.