November Surprise 1974 - Henry Kissinger, The Nugan Hand Bank and the Dismissal of the Australian Government

November Surprise 1974 - Henry Kissinger, The Nugan Hand Bank and the Dismissal of the Australian Government from Spike EP on Vimeo.

"Jerry Aaron's interpretation of the Shackley Cable is shared by former CIA agent Ralph McGehee. Was Shackley in a position to be ordering ASIO about, I mean, you worked under Shackley in Vietnam. Is he a senior CIA officer?"

Ralph McGehee: Oh, yes, he was a top CIA officer. He was also one of Ed Wilson's closest friends. Ed Wilson, of course, was head of Task Force 157. Prior to that, Wilson had been in the CIA. And there are all sorts of evidence that Task Force 157 was also orchestrating the efforts to overthrow the Whitlam government.

Clyde Cameron: Well, ASIO has always been a compliant service for the American CIA. They have always done that. They have been quite sympathetic towards the CIA and let's not forget that the Australian intelligence organisations were the ones who were responsible for acting as a conduit for the CIA and Pinochet in 1973 when the CIA-backed Pinochet Junta moved in and overthrew the elected government of Chile.

I know that members of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) were active in Santiago at that time and were acting in cooperation with the CIA because the CIA weren't able to function in Chile under President Allende. They had to do their dirty work through somebody else and they chose the Australian intelligence organisations.

When I became Minister for Immigration I was appalled to discover that we had an immigration officer in Santiago who was in fact an ASIO spy. He wasn't a genuine immigration officer at all but was an ASIO spy who had been put on by my immigration establishment as a bona fide immigration officer and I sought to have him removed but the Prime Minister intervened and prevented the removal from taking place.

I remember that when the Prime Minister discovered that ASIS had been active in Santiago he ordered that the ASIS operative in that area be withdrawn that they just ignored it, refused to do anything about it, and it wasn't until Whitlam took firm action and threatened to put the knife through a lot of these people who were responsible for ignoring his direction that they were withdrawn. But by that time, of course, the coup had occurred, Allende had been assassinated and Pinochet had been installed.

Ian Wood: That was former Whitlam Cabinet Minister Clyde Cameron. Before that you also heard former CIA agents Victor Marchetti and Ralph McGehee, Jerry Aaron, the co-author of Rooted in Secrecy, and Kelly Johnson of the Christopher Boyce Alliance. Next week, Watching Brief looks at the CIA interference in Australian and New Zealand trade unions.