Tony Abbott: America’s useful idiot Down Under

After Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s unfulfilled threat to physically “shirt front” Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 conference in Brisbane, Abbott did manage to undiplomatically insult the Russian head of state by telling him not to recreate the “lost glories of tsarism and the old Soviet Union.”

Abbott also used what is billed as an economic summit to tell Putin to apologize and pay compensation to the victims of the attack on Malaysian Airlines flight 17 even though the preponderance of evidence revealed so far strongly points to the putschist authorities in Kiev being responsible for the attack on the civilian airliner.

Like Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and British Prime Minister David Cameron, who also used the Brisbane conclave to insult Putin with undiplomatic rhetoric, Abbott represents a new breed of conservative political grandstanders who have sworn their ultimate fealty to the United States. Not only did Abbott insult Russia and its president, but Australian Labor Party leader Bill Shorten and Campbell Newman, the premier of Queensland, for which Brisbane is the capital, criticized Abbott for inviting Putin to the G-20 in the first place. Shorten is the latest in a long line of pro-corporate leaders of the Australian Labor Party, which sold out the trade union movement in that country long ago to become yet another cheerleader for globalization and corporate dominance.

Just before the G-20 conclave, Abbott was loudly booed by the public when he arrived at the Sydney Town Hall for the funeral of Australia’s last true Labor prime minister, Gough Whitlam. Abbott’s history as a provocateur for the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency is well-known to Australians who recall how the CIA engineered the ouster of Whitlam in a 1975 “constitutional coup,” in which the governor general, Sir John Kerr, an appointee of Queen Elizabeth II, dismissed Whitlam and his entire government. Whitlam had irritated the Gerald Ford administration by asking too many probing questions about the role of U.S. intelligence bases in his country.

At the University of Sydney, Abbott, a would-be Roman Catholic priest, organized pro-Kerr demonstrations after the dismissal of the Whitlam government. That bit of history was not lost on the public gathered for the Whitlam funeral who were revolted by the hypocritical presence of the Australian prime minister. Queensland Premier Newman’s father, Kevin Newman, was also a beneficiary of the CIA putsch against Whitlam, having been appointed to the conservative government appointed by Kerr after Whitlam’s ouster.

The coup against Whitlam, known as the “Dismissal,” is now widely known to have been engineered by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with the support of White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld and his assistant Dick Cheney. Nine days after Whitlam’s government was deposed, Rumsfeld moved to the Pentagon to become secretary of defense and Cheney replaced him as chief of staff. CIA director William Colby was already on shaky ground as a result of his disclosures about past CIA dirty political chicanery. On January 30, 1976, Colby was gone, replaced by George H. W. Bush who sought to cover up the CIA’s role in the ouster of the Whitlam government.

The Australian constitutional crisis was triggered by the sudden death from a heart attack of Queensland Senator Bert Milliner, which cost Whitlam his majority in the upper house. Milliner was replaced by Queensland’s ultra-right Premier Johannes Bjelke-Petersen with a known opponent of Whitlam who was later expelled from the Labor Party for assisting in the undermining of the Whitlam government.

The treachery by Kerr, and provocateur student activists like Abbott, would never be forgotten by members of the Whitlam government. Neither Kerr nor the queen had the authority to topple a duly-elected government, especially one that had been re-elected a year earlier. One of the provocateurs behind the coup that replaced Whitlam with the pro-U.S. Malcolm Fraser was an Australian newspaper owner named Rupert Murdoch.

Even as the prime minister-elect, Whitlam drew the scrutiny of the CIA. A Secret Central Intelligence Bulletin dated December 4, 1972, stated, “Although Labor has promised an examination of the agreements permitting U.S. military and scientific installations in Australia, it will probably determine that they fit within the framework of the US relationship. The Labor government will be more inclined to assert independent views within the alliance than was its predecessor . . . The new government will probably carry out its campaign promise to move quickly toward diplomatic relations with Peking.” [One sentence in declassified copy is redacted].

A Top Secret Central Intelligence Bulletin, dated January 22, 1974, highlights the CIA’s paranoia with Australia’s establishment of diplomatic relations with North Korea. The document states, “Australian recognition—the first by a major Western power—will give another boost to Pyongyang’s international standing.” It further states, “Besides being in line with his desire to broaden diplomatic contacts, Prime Minister Whitlam may look on recognition of North Korea as a concession to left-wingers in his party and another demonstration of Australian independence of the US.”

A Top Secret December 3, 1973, Central Intelligence Bulletin further raised Whitlam’s leftist drift in foreign policy. Titled “Canberra may be edging toward recognition of Sihanouk,” the report warned that “the US ambassador in Canberra believes that Prime Minister Whitlam will take this step if the Sihanouk government is admitted to the UN during the current session of the General Assembly . . . Australia has been a staunch supporter of the Lon Nol government, but doubts about its future have led to a cooling of relations in recent months. Last summer Canberra stalled for over a month before accepting the credentials of Phnom Penh’s new ambassador.”

A Top Secret Central Intelligence Bulletin dated April 5, 1974, appeared ecstatic over the calling of a sudden early election by Whitlam. The document states: “The Whitlam government may be suddenly forced into early general elections . . . The opposition, which until now has held back from pressing the government too far because of its own internal problems, may have been emboldened by a series of Labor government misfortunes:

  • “Labor lost a state election last Saturday;
  • “the Prime Minister has come under sharp criticism for some blatant political maneuvering in making an ambassadorial appointment;
  • “the government’s consideration of a Soviet request for a joint scientific station in Australia has drawn sharp opposition and press attacks.” [One sentence is redacted in the declassified copy].

A CIA “Staff Notes” on East Asia, classified Top Secret UMBRA, Handle via COMINT Channels and dated April 7, 1975, states, “Australia’s Prime Minister Whitlam has publicly looked forward to the demise of the Thieu government and his Labor government is not uneasy over the political consequences of its collapse.” The UMBRA designation indicates that the CIA was likely eavesdropping on Labor government officials to glean their view of the falling Saigon regime. Whitlam understood that Australia played host to significant CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) facilities and likely believed that Australia was hosting stations that were listening in on him and other Australian citizens. The CIA Staff Notes also stated, “New Zealand’s Labor government, while not as critical of US Indochina policies as its Australian counterpart, is basically too insular in outlook to feel much impact from the current situation.” New Zealand and Australia, once again, have Labor governments. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark should realize that any cross-Tasman solidarity with the Rudd government will result in the same animosity from Washington that was evident in 1975 with regard to Whitlam and then-New Zealand Prime Minister Bill Rowling.

An earlier Top Secret CIA Central Intelligence Bulletin, dated April 7, 1973, warned of the leftist influences in Whitlam’s parliamentary majority, something that would later be used by the CIA to undermine Whitlam. The document states, “The election of an outspoken anti-US Labor senator as chairman of the key parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and defense could further complicate US-Australian relations.”

It further states, “Senator John Wheeldon has been a sharp critic of US Indochina policy and of American defense and scientific installations in Australia . . . Most immediately, Wheeldon’s concern can be expected to focus on the proposal for the construction of an OMEGA navigational aid station in Australia.”

What had been viewed as a “conspiracy theory” about the CIA’s involvement in the 1975 coup against Whitlam became an established fact in 1977 when Australian newspapers gave front page coverage to the revelations that the CIA organized and funded the opposition to Whitlam and his Labor government. Revelations from former CIA agents Victor Marchetti, K. Barton Osborn, and Christopher Boyce (convicted of spying for the Soviets in the “Falcon and Snowman” case) revealed that the CIA provided funds to the Country Party, the other partner in the conservative coalition with the Liberal Party. Soon, it became apparent that the CIA also funded the Liberal Party, as well as Labor Party and Australian trade union leaders via the CIA’s secret relationship with the AFL-CIO. Marchetti claimed the CIA bribed Whitlam’s own ministers and Labor officials in the 1975 move to oust Whitlam.

Shortly before the coup against him, Whitlam said that the CIA’s top spy in Australia, Richard Stallings, was acting in concert with Country Party leader Doug Anthony in plotting against the government. It is widely believed that the secret findings of a Royal Commission on Australia’s intelligence services, led by Justice Robert Hope and appointed by Whitlam, discovered that the Australian intelligence services acted together with the CIA in fomenting the ouster of Whitlam’s government.

And, although then a minor player in the events that ousted Australia’s democratically-elected government, Tony Abbott continues to wear the uniform and jack boots of CIA fascist treachery brought down on the people of Australia in 1975.

This article originally appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

One Response to Tony Abbott: America’s useful idiot Down Under

  1. Australia, US’s useful idiot,. US, Israel’s useful idiot. Tommy Rimes