Book Review: SECRET by Brian Toohey

Toohey describes how in 1948 a US traitor named William Weisband gave the Russians information on how to protect their secret cables from US decryption. Although the USA knew Weisband had done this, they decided not to tell their Australia partners. So Australian spies wasted some 20 years diligently protecting a secret operation that Russian spies already knew about. The truth was not revealed for over 50 years. This was the first of many post-war incidents where the USA declined to share critically important information with Australia.

Based mostly on hearsay from upper class Conservatives, the Americans became convinced that post-WW2 Australia was full of Communists. From 1948-50 the USA stopped sharing classified information with the Chifley Labor government, citing a US Navy claim for which there was zero evidence, and which was disbelieved by the US Army and Air Force. The USA even refused to give the Australian government information about the rocket tests they were performing in Woomera, South Australia.

Part Two is titled "An Ideal Place For Dangerous Tests And Dangerous Bases". It covers the post-WW2 use of nerve agents and chemical weapons tests, British nuclear tests at Maralinga, Emu Field and elsewhere, and the establishment of US spy bases such as North West Cape and Pine Gap.

Toohey is concerned about the enduring impact of British nuclear tests in Australia, which were deliberately misrepresented and then covered up. Many Australians dying of cancer today could have been affected by fallout from these massive tests, which were never cleaned up properly. The British used bulldozers to turn over radioactive topsoil, sending clouds of dust into the atmosphere, and left many kilograms of radioactive material uncovered, some of it with a half-life of 24,000 years.

Statistics in this section are truly shocking. For example: "the last Mosaic test at Monte Bello [in 1956] had a yeild of 98 kilotons - over 60 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb." Or this: "22,000 bones, mostly of babies and young children, were removed from corpses in morgues" for tests on radiation effects between 1957 and 1978, mostly without parents' consent or awareness. Or how about these statistics on our US allies, backed up with citations:

The USA has used its armed forces overseas 215 times, including 160 times since 1991. The USA has around 800 overseas bases and interfered in foreign elections 81 times between 1946-2000.

Toohey also exposes how the USA repeatedly lied to Australia about the North West Cape base, which was originally of critical importance in communicating with underwater US nuclear submarines anywhere from Africa to Panama. Now the base is critical to the US militarization of space. 1,200 km north of Perth, North West Cape (which most Australians have never heard of) was a huge Cold War military target for China & Russia, but the US and Australian governments and military repeatedly lied to citizens about that.

Chapter 19 covers Defence Depertment head Arthur Tange’s ridiculous attempts to keep the Pine Gap base a secret. Toohey explains why the Pine Gap "Joint Defence Space Research Facility" was not really "joint", was used for neither "defence" nor "space", and never did any "research" at all. Following chapters reveal how Tange thought he could tell PM Whitlam what to do and say, how Pine Gap boss Richard Stallings was unmasked by Toohey as a CIA agent, and how Whitlam got conveniently "dismissed" just weeks before the Pine Gap treaty was due for renewal on 10 December 1975.

Part Three looks at the worthless ANZUS treaty, how New Zealand has done very well without it (despite remaining locked into the Five Eyes) and how the USA repeatedly ignores its treaty obligations. Toohey condemns former Labor Party leader and Defence Minister Kim Beazley in particular for morphing into a blatant US warmonger on Lockheed Martin’s board.

Toohey recounts many important details along the way. For example, Australia is now paying the USA $7 billion for six unarmed Triton drones to patrol the South China Sea. We could instead buy thirty weapons-capable US Reaper drones for $3 billion and use them for real "defence" tasks like coastal patrol & even bushfire assistance.

Part Four covers "The Whitlam Era" and begins with a chapter titled "The Irrational US Hatred of Whitlam".

In 1973 the highly educated and intelligent Gough Whitlam became Australia’s first Labor leader for 23 years. His independent foreign policy was hardly radical but it shocked US officials who had become used to Australian Coalition governments quietly doing whatever they were told. US President Richard Nixon told Mashall Green, his ambassador to Australia, what he really thought of Whitlam:

"Marshall, I can’t stand that c*nt."

Whitlam rejected South African apartheid and abolished the White Australia policy. He granted independence to Papua New Guinea, improved relations with China & Japan, ended military conscription, and brought the last Australian troops home from Vietnam. He also "abandoned the doctrine of forward defence and cut trade barriers."

Whitlam ministers sometimes sent mixed messages to their US contacts. Toohey resigned as an aide to Whitlam’s deputy Lance Barnard, who stupidly told US officials that the PM would have no problem if the US stationed ICBMs at Pine Gap. Other ALP officials were more anti-US and joked about nationalising the whole Australian economy.

After Nixon’s horrific 1972 "Christmas Bombing" of Vietnam, Whitlam sent a polite letter to Washington saying both sides needed to cease hostilities and talk (which is what eventually happened). The entirely sensible letter enraged both Nixon & Kissinger, who expected Australia not to put "an ally on the same level as our enemy".

In January 1973 Whitlam told US Ambassador Rice that US bases could stay as long as there were no attempts to "screw us or bounce us".

Whitlam wanted to withdraw Australian troops from Singapore but agreed to an extension after learning they were doing important signal interception work. But when a US magazine reported that this was the reason for the delayed withdrawal, angry US officials falsely accused Whitlam of leaking. Australia’s ambassador in USA had to explain to CIA heads James Schlesinger & James Angleton that the US magazine had in fact named the source of the leak in their article, and it was a US intelligence officer.

In October 1973 the USA used the North West Cape base to send a nuclear alert to all US forces in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean. When Whitlam rightly complained that the US had failed to inform Australia about this potentially critical danger, Kissinger & Schlesinger were again angry with him.

CIA agent James Angleton was a rabid lunatic who conspired with disgruntled ASIO officers in a failed attempt to overthrow Whitlam in 1973. The plan was to trap the PM in an apparent lie about his Attorney General’s raid on ASIO headquarters, which was prompted by valid concerns about the security of Yugoslavia’s visiting leader. The CIA plan only failed because ASIO’s director refused to co-operate.

The same disgruntled ASIO staff then launched a rumour that the ASIO director was having an affair with his secretary, eventually convincing Whitlam to sack him in September 1975. Meanwhile one of those disgruntled ASIO staffers was actually having an affair with the wife of the CIA station chief in Canberra.

In April 1974, after Russia proposed a joint base to photograph space objects, Whitlam said that Australia opposed the hosting of foreign bases but would honour existing deals. He said he did not favour the extension of any such deals, which sent alarm bells ringing in Washington. The Pine Gap lease was due to expire a year later, in December 1975.

Nixon’s security team then came up with a dramatic plan to interfere in Australian domestic politics by closing US bases, cutting off intelligence sharing, and imposing trade restrictions until a Coalition government was re-elected. But the plan was rejected because there was not enough time to replicate the Pine Gap base in another suitable location (such as Guam). Instead the USA put pressure on Whitlam, who later said US bases could stay.

Even so, and despite the fact that there was never any co-operation between Russia and Whitlam’s ministers, by early 1975 the USA was convinced that "maintaining the ALP government was essential to Soviet planning" in the region.

Meanwhile, Whitlam’s Energy Minister was chasing huge loans via a con-man named Tirath Khemlani, who many suspect had CIA links. A Coalition source with no reason to lie later told Toohey that the CIA had offered Khemlani $400,000 to visit Australia on 14 October 1975 and tell lies about the cancelled loan deal.

Whitlam sacked the head of ASIS on 21 October (after sacking the head of ASIO a month earlier). He then publicly stated that the CIA was funding the Coalition opposition’s junior partner, the National Country Party. Toohey says this was not an unlikely possibility: 32% of CIA covert action in the 70s was reportedly "election support".

In response, the National Country Party leader challenged Whitlam to prove allegations (first published by Toohey) that Pine Gap boss Richard Stallings was a CIA agent. Whitlam was due to provide the evidence for this in parliament on 11th November 1975, but he was dismissed from powerby the Governor General Sir John Kerr that same morning.

Meanwhile, a CIA analyst in Canberra had been warning Washington that Opposition leader Malcolm Fraser was increasingly unlikely to win the next election. Fraser was willing to delay the election by six months because his decision to block supply was backfiring in the polls and even angering his own MPs.

In the fortnight prior to "the Dismissal" on 11 November, Whitlam had again been warning that he would close Pine Gap. The USA were not sure if he was bluffing. The head of the CIA’s East Asia division, Ted Shackley, sent a blunt telex message to ASIO’s director warning that "the CIA feels grave concerns" about Whitlam’s behaviour.

Another CIA agent, Victor Marchetti, later said that Shackley (sacked in 1979) might have been less concerned about Pine Gap and more worried about the lucrative drug trade he was running: huge transport planes full of heroin from Indochina, dodging customs by picking up Pine Gap data en route to the USA.

In 1977 Whitlam pointed out that Shackley’s message to ASIO had included instructions for the ASIO director not to share his telex with the PM. This was "a foreign intelligence service telling Australia’s domestic security service to keep information from the Australian government." Totally unacceptable behaviour from a supposed "ally".

Whitlam’s Defence Minister later revealed that Kerr had sought and received (on 8 November 1975) a high-level briefing on the CIA’s threat to withdraw US intelligence sharing. Kerr denied that this briefing ever took place, and also denied ever meeting with US intelligence officials (which was a blatant lie).

Citing declassified US National Security Council documents, James Curren later revealed that the USA had considered "some sort of covert CIA activity in Australian domestic politics" in 1974. Toohey suggests the abandoned plan may have been resurrected due to Washington’s urgent concerns in late 1975.

Toohey also reveals that Bernie Houghton, a key figure in the notorious CIA-run Nugan Hand Bank, had flown into Sydney without a valid visa in 1972 and immediately got an ASIO clearance to stay as long as he wanted. Toohey says Houghton, who later ran a night club in Sydney’s Kings Cross, used to help Ted Shackley launder CIA drug money in Indochina. A former CIA officer named Kevin Mulcahey phoned Toohey, offering to provide more information about what the CIA had done in Australia in 1975, but he died before Toohey could go visit him. Mulcahey was also a prosecution witness who helped indict ex-CIA arms dealer Ed Wilson. Ted Shackley got sacked from the CIA in 1979 for not revealing his relationship with Wilson, who had met with Houghton in Switzerland five times that same year. A tangled web indeed!

Toohey strangely does not mention that Fraser’s Liberal Party accepted a $2.6 million donation from the Nugan Hand bank prior to blocking supply in the Senate, or that Frank Nugan was found dead on a bush road in Australia in 1980, or that Australian Federal Police decided not to seek the arrest and extradition of Michael Hand after he was found alive and well in the USA in 2015.

The final chapter of Section Four is aptly titled "Embracing Ignorance". It starts by noting how Australian officials totally ignored Christopher Boyce’s revelations that the CIA was deceiving our government and interfering with our politics and unions (remember that future PM Bob Hawke was a senior union leader at the time). There was one honourable exception: ASIO’s man in Washington, Mike Leslie, was determined to go talk to Boyce, but was repeatedly warned not to do so by the heads of Defence and Foreign Affairs. He was then ordered to stop seeking a meeting by his ASIO boss in 1977.

Luckily a few Australia journos were also curious. Boyce told Bill Pinwill that CIA staff used to refer to Sir John Kerr, who had worked with CIA staff before becoming Australia’s Governor General, as "our man Kerr." Boyce also told 60 Minutes' Ray Martin in 1982 that the CIA were angry at Whitlam for repeatedly "publicising" the existence of Pine Gap by talking about it.

Toohey says he requested archive records about Chris Boyce from the Australian Defence Department, the Foreign Affairs Department, and the Prime Minister’s office. But there were none to be found. It seems the ASIO warnings not to interview Boyce (above) are the sum total of the Australian government’s interest in his important revelations.

CIA bosses like James Angleton ran networks of agents in Australia but both the official ASIO history and the 1976 Hope Royal Commission declared that there were no undercover CIA agents here. US senator Frank Church said Australia was "exempt" from CIA activity, which Toohey calls "demonstrable nonsense". Toohey provides several accounts of ASIO turning a blind eye to undercover CIA agents in Australia, including one well known female CIA agent who had an affair with a senior Whitlam Minister.

When I interviewed Chris Boyce in 2013 he told me that he had long been proud that US President Jimmy Carter had sent his Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Australia expressly in order to promise Gough Whitlam that the USA would "never again interfere with the domestic affairs of Australia". But the Snowden revelations demonstrated that if this anecdote was ever true, the USA was lying again.

As Boyce said to me:

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