Unholy Fury (42 page)

As Green had foreshadowed, the US would not make any substantive concessions on the North West Cape agreement. The most they would allow was the semblance of ‘joint operation and management'—thirty-five Australian service personnel were to occupy key supervisory positions; an Australian would be deputy commander; and the exclusive US land rights at the facility were to be restricted to a single communications building. An Australian flag would fly alongside the stars and stripes. And that was it. Smooth words were exchanged over greater consultation with Australia—to the point where the Foreign Affairs Department in Canberra believed that the new arrangements would ‘widen Australian opportunity
for influencing international events', but the changes were largely cosmetic. The Americans were more than happy to sign a joint communiqué where both countries accepted ‘the importance of effective and reliable deterrents for the promotion of stable relations among the major powers, for the maintenance of international security of the United States and its allies, including Australia'. And the station's function as part of a worldwide network of communications protecting the global balance was also reaffirmed.
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Whitlam had to make do with this. But he was far from happy with the outcome. His displeasure was made known in a curious, almost innocuous fashion. When in April the prime minister was asked in parliament about a proposal for the establishment of a joint Australian–Soviet station—it was to be principally for the purposes of photographing space objects—Whitlam was quick to pour cold water over the idea. He knew that any such move would have had serious implications for the alliance, but he was also eager to reaffirm party policy—and extend it. In words that immediately set alarm bells ringing in US diplomatic offices, he said that:

 

The Australian Government takes the attitude that there should not be foreign military bases, stations, installations in Australia. We honour agreements covering existing stations. We do not favour the extension or prolongation of any of those existing ones. The agreements stand, but there will not be extensions or proliferations.
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They were off-hand remarks, but enough to set hares racing. A hyperventilating Marshall Green raced across Canberra to a meeting with Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alan Renouf. The American reminded Renouf that the agreement on Pine Gap was due to terminate on 9 December 1975, and Narrungar in December 1978. Were the prime minister's words to be taken at face value, Green hastened to add, they represented a grave threat to the global western balance against the Soviet Union. Such a move would upset the whole relationship and ‘ANZUS would be called into question'. Those words were being uttered perhaps a little too often by US diplomats: often enough, in fact, that they were beginning to lose
their intended effect. Renouf listened patiently, but could only add that he did not ‘read the Prime Minister's remarks in the same dramatic and very far-reaching way as did the Ambassador'.
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Back in Washington, others were not so easily calmed. The Americans tracked down the original response drafted for Whitlam by Australian Foreign Affairs officials, so they knew he had personally added, in the heat of the moment, the final words about ‘no prolongations'. Was it a means of deliberately preventing the left wing from further opposing Whitlam? An angry retort to Barnard's failed efforts in Washington? Barnard, on Whitlam's behalf, privately withdrew the remark in a conversation with Marshall Green. But in the White House, only Whitlam's public statement mattered. As Robert Ingersoll, assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, told his colleagues, ‘we think this is [what] Whitlam believes'. At the same meeting, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Joseph Sisco raised the question as to ‘should we, among other things, as we look at this situation, be considering how we, as a government, at the upper reaches, really get at Whitlam? Because he is the man that is calling the shots'. Beyond using US access to senior bureaucrats in Foreign Affairs, or Green's ability to call on Whitlam at any time, it was never quite spelt out precisely what Sisco had in mind. But he was adamant that ‘we ought to be considering … how we get at Whitlam directly. Because I suspect we are going to have to deal with this fellow for a long time'.
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It is not suggested here that such words carried any kind of malicious intent—they were most likely talking about taking Whitlam aside the next time he was in the United States, possibly at the UN General Assembly meeting in September, and telling him the facts of life. But it did indicate that Washington's annoyance with the Australian prime minister had reached an altogether new level. They wanted to find ways of squeezing him, politically and diplomatically.

Even so, it does show US officials recognised the limits of their ability to directly influence Australian politics. Further proof of that reluctance came in June 1974 when Kissinger was informed about ‘a useful effort that has been going on under CIA leadership to assess the likelihood of various possibilities, deriving from Cairns'
new situation'.
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Those efforts were never precisely spelt out at this particular meeting, but the discussion did mention a ‘terrifying telegram' being sent to Marshall Green asking whether Cairns was a possible threat to Whitlam as prime minister. However, there was to be no intervention from the White House on the question of whether Cairns was to be given a security briefing on the nature of US installations in Australia. Cairns in any case had publicly said he had no plan to visit North West Cape ‘or elsewhere to see what is going on there'.
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The decision on whether Cairns was to be given clearance was left to Whitlam. And the reasons for doing so showed clearly enough that covert action in Australia had at the very least been contemplated. As Joseph Sisco remarked:

 

The problem [of Cairns's security clearance] is really the Prime Minister's problem to solve. And I think this is the proper and mature approach. So that we don't tear down the relationships we have by arbitrary action on our part, so that we don't engage in spooky fiddling with the situation, in which we might get caught—in some of the other proposals that have been made. They are logical to consider, but we think not logical to carry out. In other words, we are going to try and find a way to make sure that Whitlam takes responsibility for the clearance or nonclearance of Mr Cairns and for his abiding by the terms of our basic agreements and the long-term relationships that we hold.
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It is the clearest evidence to emerge yet that, while the CIA were planning specific operations in Australia, there was simply no appetite at the highest levels in Washington to give those plans any kind of green light. Instead, efforts were being made to identify those elements in the US intelligence exchange with Australia that were no longer needed, ‘particularly in a situation where we are not sure that the safeguards are going to be observed'.

‘DOWN THE HATCHET'

In this kind of environment even the most ludicrous of left-wing attacks on American interests in Australia were always going to cause a sensation. In late June, Victorian Senator Bill Brown, the
chairman of the federal parliamentary Labor Party, used a speech at the declaration of results for the Senate election in Victoria to attack Marshall Green as the ‘top US hatchet man' in Australia. Looking at the record of Green's diplomatic postings, Brown claimed that ‘with few exceptions, wherever he has been posted, or otherwise involved, there has been a bloodbath and/or a coup, of some description'. Green was depicted as nothing less than a Trojan horse for American financial interests and a nefarious CIA operative out to bring down the Whitlam government. Brown wanted all Australians to heed his words and ‘be ever vigilant to ensure our nation does not become another Chile'.
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He was referring to the fall in September the previous year of the leftist Chilean president, Salvador Allende: an event that followed a concerted attempt by the Nixon administration to apply economic pressure and the use of covert CIA funding to support his domestic political opponents.
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Brown had not delivered the speech himself: he had asked a trade union official to read it in his absence.

Brown's remarks were almost universally dismissed: the ‘wild thoughts of Chairman Bill', ‘rambling', ‘mischievous and laughable', the ‘mental meanderings of a Labor party lightweight'.
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He produced no hard evidence of any kind to warrant the making of such allegations. Politicians from both sides lined up to pour scorn and ridicule on the remarks; the most colourful being Bob Hawke, who simply labelled the senator an ‘imbecile' and the comments ‘literally unintelligible'. Many called Green personally to disassociate themselves from the remarks and to assure him they were an aberration. A flood of supportive telegrams flowed into the US embassy.
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But Brown continued to make allegations, including that Green had interfered in the 1974 federal election campaign by urging businessmen to vote Liberal, and that he was a senior adviser to a ‘clandestine' organisation in Washington—one which turned out to be a public think-tank at Georgetown University. Others were more inclined to feed American paranoia. Malcolm Fraser, fresh from a fishing trip in Alaska, had ‘gnawing doubts about what was really afoot', and in a private telephone conversation with Green, alleged that the whole affair was symbolic of Whitlam and Labor's desire for a ‘non-aligned
position in world affairs'. In fact, he added, ‘Whitlam and others may be trying to cause the US to take the lead in abandoning ANZUS'.
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It was an absurd suggestion, but showed that the calculating Fraser never missed any conceivable opportunity to paint the Labor Party as anti-American.

If Whitlam was culpable in any respect it was his delay in responding to Brown and putting the renegade senator in his place. Just as it had during the trade union strikes of December and January 1973, the pressure for Whitlam to respond mounted each day that he remained publicly silent. Again, the stance of not wanting to bestow any kind of legitimacy on the remarks only had the reverse effect. Again, the issue became about Whitlam's judgement as prime minister. Meanwhile, Brown was becoming even more outlandish in his speculation, telling the media that US interests would use any means to topple the Labor government, and that US intelligence agents would discredit him by trying to involve him in a ‘compromising situation with my secretary'. That latter claim prompted Green with some relish to include in his cable back to Washington the crude remark that the ‘press photo of his dog-faced Secretary suggests CIA will have tough job'.
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At a reception for the Papal Nuncio three days after Brown's speech, Whitlam told Foreign Affairs Deputy Secretary Richard Woolcott that if he was asked about the senator's comments at his press conference the following week, he would ‘bucket the bastard'.
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A week after the attack, Woolcott confided to Green that Whitlam had ‘realised he had made a mistake in not having spoken up at the beginning'.
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Whitlam duly got the question at his press conference. He said it was a ‘miserable—in fact a cowardly thing' to attack an ambassador, going out of his way to praise Green's experience and his appointment to Australia as a ‘singular indication of the importance that America attaches to her relations with Australia'.
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And at the reception hosted by the US embassy in Canberra for the 4 July celebrations, Whitlam finally found the right words to bury Brown once and for all. After staying at the reception for much longer than usual, the prime minister emerged to tell journalists that the toast on the occasion should have been ‘down the hatchet'. Green was delighted.
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Not all elements of the left entirely bought into Whitlam's fourth of July pun. On the same day a number of US companies and consulates around the country were targeted by demonstrators. Outside the US embassy in Canberra, an effigy of President Nixon and an American flag were burned, whilst in Adelaide, the headquarters of the US consulate was daubed with anti-American slogans, including the allegation that the consul general was a spy. A tutor at Monash University in Melbourne believed he had identified the CIA station chief in Canberra—the finger was pointed at the wrong man—while two unidentified males burst into the American Chamber of Commerce and threw paint on walls, overturned desks and broke some of the electric lights. The intruders escaped apprehension. Media outlets were subsequently telephoned by members of a group calling themselves the ‘People's Liberation Front for Free Australia' who were protesting the ‘American domination' of the country. The consul general in Melbourne received a delegation from this group on its ‘Annual fourth of July pilgrimage', where a letter demanding Green's recall, the closure of all US installations and the prevention of further American interference in Vietnam was duly handed over.
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As John Ducker, the president of the New South Wales Labor Party, put it to the US consul general in Sydney, Brown had unintentionally performed a useful service by identifying anti-Americanism as an ‘emotional, silly expression lacking in substance and characteristic of the silly left-wing fringe of the ALP'.
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Or, as one British official reported back to London at the time, the whole affair made ‘good headlines, but it is clear from the editorials that the press do not in any way support Senator Brown's attack, nor is there any evidence of a strong anti-American feeling among Australian people'.
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Here lies a deeper truth about Australian political culture in the 1970s: for all the troubles in the alliance during this era, the idea of loyalty to America as the great power still tapped deep roots in the community. To be cast as ‘anti-American' was, in a very real sense, to risk being seen as sympathetic to the communist enemy, or just plain unhinged. The Brown affair had demonstrated the virtual impossibility in Australia of generating a ‘hysterical campaign of persecution around an anti-American cause'.
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