{"id":24151,"date":"2016-01-18T12:30:40","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T01:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=24151"},"modified":"2016-01-13T14:17:48","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T03:17:48","slug":"arthur-tange-the-cia-and-the-dismissal-a-response-to-peter-edwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/arthur-tange-the-cia-and-the-dismissal-a-response-to-peter-edwards\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur Tange, the CIA and the Dismissal: a response to Peter Edwards"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n There are important aspects of Arthur Tange’s 20-year career at the top of the departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence. None include Peter Edwards\u2019 unfounded allegation in The Strategist <\/em>on 22 December<\/a> that I\u2019ve claimed former governor-general John Kerr\u2019s dismissal of the Whitlam government \u2018was instigated by US and UK intelligence agencies\u2019 as part of a conspiracy in which Tange \u2018was the link between Langley and Yarralumla\u2019.<\/p>\n The allegations are a distraction from serious issues about Tange\u2019s behaviour. I\u2019ve never written that Kerr sacked Whitlam on 11 November 1975 at the behest of the CIA, let alone UK intelligence. Instead, I\u2019ve always been clear that I didn\u2019t know what part, if any, the CIA\u2019s concerns about Whitlam played in Kerr\u2019s decision. Nor did I see Tange as conniving in any of the CIA\u2019s \u2018dirty tricks\u2019. Instead, I wrote, \u2018Tange, it should be stressed, acted from a deep-seated anxiety about Australian security as he saw it\u2019.<\/p>\n I considered his anxieties misplaced in 1975, but admired his procurement and other reforms. Nor was my view of Whitlam one-dimensional. My chapter \u2018The Unjust Dismissals\u2019 in Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>a book I co-authored, heavily criticises Whitlam for sacking the ASIO head Peter Barbour and the ASIS head Bill Robertson in 1975.<\/p>\n James Curran\u2019s book Unholy Fury<\/em><\/a> reveals \u2018some kind of covert CIA activity in Australian domestics politics\u2019 was at the very least considered in 1974 by senior US policymakers, including Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger. Curran said CIA planning was underway, but apparently abandoned. It\u2019s plausible that similar action was considered after senior CIA officials were highly disturbed by Whitlam\u2019s behaviour in 1975 when Kissinger and Schlesinger still held sway.<\/p>\n Given that the CIA was partly set up to engage conspiracies, it\u2019d be unsurprising if it tried to destabilise the Whitlam government during 1975. Again, this doesn\u2019t prove it did. Yet Peter Edwards, and a like-minded author Paul Kelly, don\u2019t even mention the proposed use of the CIA in 1974, but focus on Curran\u2019s statement that he found no evidence of CIA involvement in Whitlam\u2019s dismissal. Curran has since made clear he meant there\u2019s no documented evidence available, which isn\u2019t the same thing as claiming nothing happened, particularly when the CIA archives are incomplete.<\/p>\n One attempt to interfere in Australian politics failed, at least initially. A retired CIA station chief in Australia, John Walker, told me he had urged Barbour in early 1973 to publicly brand Whitlam a liar. Barbour refused. (Others within ASIO then leaked supporting material.) Walker greatly admired the CIA\u2019s counter-intelligence chief James Angleton, whom he said considered Whitlam a serious threat to the US. Angleton, who frequently visited Australia during the Whitlam period, was eventually sacked for making preposterous accusations about respected Western leaders. He even suspected Kissinger was a KGB agent.<\/p>\n Edwards and Kelly also ignore an important statement from Labor\u2019s Defence minister in 1975, Bill Morrison. Andrew Clark reported in The Sunday Age<\/em> that in October 2000 he interviewed Morrison who said Kerr \u2018sought and received a high-level briefing from senior defence officials on a CIA threat to withdraw intelligence cooperation from Australia\u2019. Morrison said, \u2018I don’t think [the briefing] was decisive, but I think it reinforced his position\u2019.<\/p>\n According to Edwards, Tange was \u2018hugely agitated\u2019 over Whitlam’s handling of US concerns in November 1975 about the CIA\u2019s satellite station at Pine Gap. Although Edwards disagrees, the evidence following Whitlam\u2019s December 1972 election clearly suggests Tange displayed an unprofessional mix of arrogance and ignorance in controlling what the Labor government could say about Pine Gap.<\/p>\n