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By revisiting the past, Bill Robertson has reminded us how little is known about ASIS and its role in Chile and East Timor
ABOUT 34 years after the event and at the age of 93, the last surviving founder of the Australian intelligence community, W. T. (Bill) Robertson, has reopened one of its great controversies: his sacking by prime minister Gough Whitlam, when Whitlam was in the middle of his own, terminal, dismissal crisis.
Robertson, dismissed in October 1975 as director of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, has placed in the National Archives a statement that disputes the reasons Whitlam gave for sacking him.
For a spy chief to lodge a personal statement to the archives in this fashion is unprecedented.
While not saying so explicitly, it strongly implies that Whitlam, now also 93, lied about the circumstances of Robertson's dismissal. Whitlam rarely makes public comments now and his office, asked for a comment on Robertson's statement, said: "Mr Whitlam declines to respond."
This dispute between the two old men raises a significant contemporary issue: the continuing and absurd shroud of secrecy that surrounds ASIS, with agents overseas, and its history.
The documents relating to such events as Robertson's sacking and ASIS activities as a proxy of the CIA, to which Robertson guardedly refers, are still heavily censored, well beyond the needs of national security and the 30-year rule that ring-fences other government documents.
A heavily expurgated version of justice Robert Hope's royal commission report on ASIS, commissioned by the Whitlam government and delivered to the Fraser government in 1976, was released only in 2008. But most significant events after the immediate foundation years were blacked out, including Hope's entire account of the Robertson dismissal -- despite the fact the report was leaked to Brian Toohey and William Pinwill in 1989 and largely published in their book, Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
Indeed, Robertson's statement lodged in the archives has clearly been censored, to the point where his note is sometimes almost incomprehensible. Robertson would not add to his account when contacted this past week.
His career and reputation were rather covertly restored by Malcolm Fraser and Hope after the Fraser government came to office.
But Robertson, bound by a spook's professional discretion, for some years -- and with growing impatience, according to one source -- sought permission from ASIS and various governments to publish his side of the story before he dies. Robertson's challenge to Whitlam underlines the need for a disinterested account of the activities of ASIS.
The service might start with the removal of the blackout on the Hope report on ASIS, given that it has already been leaked. But it could and should go further, as its overseas counterparts such as the CIA have done.
IT was on October 21, 1975, that an enraged Whitlam sacked Robertson, who was one of the founders of the ASIS in 1950 and who for most of the following 25 years was variously chief of operations, deputy director or director.
The main reason given by Whitlam for sacking Robertson was that he had not informed the Labor government that ASIS was running an agent in East Timor. This was at a time when civil war was threatening in East Timor and armed incursions by Indonesian paramilitary forces had begun, preparatory to the full invasion in December 1975. The Balibo Five -- the Australian journalists shot by invading Indonesian troops at the border town of Balibo in East Timor -- had been killed only five days before the meeting in Whitlam's office.
Unaware that ASIS was debriefing the Australian citizen and Dili resident publican Frank Favaro after he flew to Darwin in his light plane, the foreign minister, senator Don Willesee, took a dorothy dixer from his party whip on October 16 to address a newspaper report that Favaro was an Australian spy and honorary consul in Dili. Willesee told parliament: "Mr Frank Favaro does not represent the Australian government in Timor in any capacity whatsoever, either officially or, as the report claims, as de facto consul -- a term which in itself in meaningless. He is a private Australian citizen who lives in Timor."
When Whitlam subsequently discovered that ASIS had been using Favaro, he considered that Willesee had misled parliament, or at least that Fraser and the opposition could make it appear that was the case.
Whitlam had sacked two ministers -- Jim Cairns in July and Rex Connor only two days before Willesee's statement -- for misleading parliament and this was an important plank of Fraser's claim that "reprehensible circumstances" justified the opposition in defying parliamentary convention and blocking the budget in the Senate to try to force an election.
ROBERTSON'S note says he was walking towards the prime minister's office in Parliament House for their meeting. "Mr Whitlam came up behind me . . . shouting loudly: `What is this I hear about you arming the Fretilin Party?' Needless to say this outrageous statement took me completely by surprise . . . As far as I can recall this subject was never raised in any way during the meeting."
Robertson recounts that, after a quiet start, the meeting was interrupted and Whitlam spoke to someone who knocked at the door. "Whatever had been said to him . . . had made Whitlam completely lose his temper. Red in the face, he shouted at me: `You are finished. That's the end of you and I will probably dispose of your service, too."'
Less than three weeks later, Whitlam was sacked by the governor-general, John Kerr.
Robertson was cheering.
In his archive note, he comments: "I would hardly be human if I did not feel some satisfaction when the Whitlam government was itself dismissed by the governor-general and I was able to witness Whitlam's emotional performance on the steps of Parliament House." His note underlines how concerned the governor-general was with intelligence matters.
Robertson reveals that his successor as ASIS director, Ian Kennison, learned that Kerr would not sign the executive committee minute confirming the departure of Robertson and the appointment of a successor. Robertson had briefed Kerr from time to time -- without legal advice -- as the governor-general imbibed an 11am whisky. A hint perhaps for those who had eyes to see, of Kerr's suspicions of Whitlam: Kerr wanted formal advice from the solicitor-general, Maurice Byers, to confirm the head of ASIS could legally be sacked by the prime minister.
ROBERTSON'S note challenges all the grounds Whitlam has quoted for his dismissal from ASIS. He says the meeting began with Whitlam asking about Favaro. "I responded and offered him the short note about the matter. He glanced through [it] and then accused me of allowing my minister to make a misleading statement to the Senate. I replied by saying that I had no way of knowing such a statement was to be made . . ."
Robertson says he told Whitlam that there did not appear to be anything wrong in Willesee's statement: Favaro, to his way of thinking, was not, as Willesee put it, "a representative of the Australian government in Timor".
His note then adds the italicised comment: "I did not remind the prime minister that ASIO had had contact with Favaro nor did I tell him that we knew a Foreign Affairs officer had also had contact with Mr Favaro."
According to the leaked version of the Hope report, the inquiry accepted that ASIS had been tasked by the Defence Department intelligence bureaucracy to gather information on East Timor and was not alone in using Favaro, and Hope accepted that ASIS knew nothing of the minister's plans to make the statement.
Hope's support for Robertson's version of events appears, from one of the few bits not blacked out in the officially released report, to depend entirely on ASIS documents. A historian might take the inquiry to documentation from other government departments.
(In Whitlam's 1985 book The Whitlam Government, he implies Robertson's principal crime was to have an agent in East Timor who would have been known by the Indonesians to be working for Australia, and which therefore would have "gravely diminished Australia's credibility with Indonesia". Robertson's note does not refer to this charge and, given Hope's sympathy with ASIS breaking the law in foreign countries, it would not have impressed him.)
ROBERTSON says that at the meeting Whitlam also accused him of disobeying his instructions in 1973 to withdraw ASIS agents from Chile, who were acting as proxies for the CIA. This is one of the most controversial of the known operations by ASIS, totally obscured in the expurgated version of the Hope report officially released, though Robertson in his note offers some confirmation of its details, as Whitlam had previously in his memoirs. When Whitlam was elected in December 1972, an ASIS officer and assistant were assisting the CIA by running three of their agents in Chile.
The CIA had sought ASIS assistance in 1971, in case its embassy was shut down and its agents lost their cover.
It is now known that the CIA in 1972 and 1973 was involved in arranging a coup d'etat against the elected government of Salvador Allende -- Marxist in its policies and highly unpopular with the Nixon administration in Washington -- which led in September 1973 to the death of president Allende when rebel military officers, encouraged by the US, attacked the presidential palace. The CIA-supported coup installed the Pinochet military government, which used death squads and torture to suppress its opponents.
The Robertson note says that the Chile station was opened in July 1971 after it had been approved somewhat earlier by the foreign minister (Bill McMahon, before he became prime minister) and had the support of the secretary of Foreign Affairs (Keith Waller). In Oyster, the authors say Robertson opposed opening the station on the grounds that Australia had no intelligence interests in Chile, an important point surprisingly missing from the statement; still censored, but why?
"The approval was given with the proviso that ASIS personnel were only to engage in the collection of intelligence," Robertson's archive note says. That implies ASIS was not involved in the coup plotting, but it must surely have been aware of it. Was Canberra advised of what ASIS knew of events in Chile? That's another pertinent question that might be addressed by an official historian.
Whitlam learned of the ASIS activities in Chile on behalf of the CIA in February 1973 and ordered the ASIS station to be closed in April 1973; and as recently as his evidence to the inquest in 2008 into the murders of the Balibo Five, he alleged Robertson misled him about the Chile station.
The intelligence chief's version in his archive note has to be translated from the clumsy euphemisms that sanitising has produced. Chile, for instance, is never referred to by name. Instead it is referred to as "another country" or "one particular country". The CIA is referred as "our intelligence allies" and "one of our principal liaisons".
Robertson's note says that when he first met and briefed Whitlam in February 1973, he brought along a submission to be signed by the prime minister that would have ordered ASIS to withdraw the Chile station. "Mr Whitlam took the submission but declined to sign it at the time, expressing concern that our intelligence allies [read CIA] might react adversely," the note says.
"After a delay of several weeks, the signed submission was returned by Peter Wilenski, the PM's private secretary, in April 1973. In doing so Wilenski said the prime minister had agonised over it for some time. The order to cease operational activity as soon as practicable and to prepare to close the station was sent to the ASIS station on May 1."
Robertson's note says that at his dismissal Whitlam accused him of disobeying instructions by delaying the closure of the ASIS station in Chile. "I said that on the contrary the station commander had been instructed to cease operation immediately after the prime minister's signed instruction to close the station was received and I had also immediately advised one of our principal liaisons [read CIA] of Mr Whitlam's decision by personal telegram. Any delay in returning the ASIS staff to Australia had been for security reasons and at the specific request of Foreign Affairs." (The Oyster authors say the ASIS officer in Santiago, after taking 12 months to learn the language, was the only Spanish speaker in the embassy.)
Robertson comments: "Whitlam seemed almost as if he was acting a part. The way the meeting had been conducted leads me to believe that I was being set up. None of those present spoke in my favour and nor, given the atmosphere of the meeting, could I have expected this."
LOOKING at the event from the outside and with hindsight, it appears Whitlam was searching for a way of saving Willesee and his government. On the night of Willesee's October 16 statement, the Senate voted 29-28 to defer the budget, heightening the pressures on Whitlam. That same night at Government House, over drinks before a dinner in honour of the Malaysian prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, Whitlam made the famous, and perhaps fatal, quip to Kerr on how the constitutional crisis might be ended. In his memoir The Truth of the Matter, Whitlam recalls his "flippant" words: "It all depends on who gets to the phone first, he to dismiss me or I to have him recalled."
The critical question in the Robertson controversy is whether the Department of Foreign Affairs and its minister made clear to Whitlam that it had not specifically advised ASIS of the planned Willesee statement, and that it had not asked ASIS direct questions about the status of the service's connections with Favaro.
The answer to these questions is presumably available in Foreign Affairs documents. A historian with access to those documents might then make a considered decision on whether Whitlam, in simple expediency, sacked Robertson to save Willesee, or ordered the dismissal in the midst of managing a far larger crisis and without a full knowledge of the circumstances -- or whether the dismissal was justified.
Similarly, the question arises whether Foreign Affairs advised Whitlam or his office that the delay in withdrawing ASIS staff from Chile was at its request. If this was not the case the implication is that ASIS preferred to continue assisting the CIA rather than accepting a prime minister's instructions.
Willesee and the department secretary, Alan Renouf, were present at the meeting but, according to Robertson, said nothing.
Given Whitlam's high stress levels at the time, Willesee and Renouf, both now dead, may have glossed their own department's behaviour at Robertson's cost.
The leaked version of the Hope report appears to accept that Robertson was sacked without reasonable cause. It seems that the only surviving witness of the dismissal in Whitlam's office that day, apart from the two men themselves, is John Menadue, at the time secretary of the Prime Minister's department. The authors of Oyster, who had received the leaked version of the Hope report, record Menadue as being there. Robertson's archive note says Menadue was there. However, Menadue says that if he was at the meeting, he would remember it: he says he remembers nothing of it.
WHETHER Robertson's sacking was justified was, and curiously in a minor way still is, an issue in Australian intelligence circles.
Robertson, extremely well connected in the post-war years through family, schooling and war service, remains well respected in the public service, armed forces and intelligence communities in Canberra. Now that he has got his side of his dismissal on the record, the public might reasonably expect to be informed of other significant issues of the era.
ASIO has commissioned a history of itself for publication from military historian David Horner. Christopher Andrew has just published an official history of ASIO's British counterpart, MI5, to widespread praise.
The CIA has a program to review its documentation after 25 years, accepts many freedom of information requests and in 2007 released its so-called family jewels, 500 pages of material reviewing breaches of the CIA charter, ordered by then director James Schlesinger in 1973, which includes details of CIA association with the mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro and the internal spying of the Watergate plumbers.
It is time ASIS acknowledged similar obligations and commissioned for publication a historian's work on the major issues of ASIS's history, despite the greater sensitivity of ASIS because of its activities abroad.
Aside from the Chile activity on behalf of the CIA, a similar proxy operation on behalf of the CIA was carried out in Cambodia by ASIS in 1965, when the CIA was undermining its head of state Norodom Sihanouk and his government -- at a time when the Australian government was expressing support for Sihanouk.
Did the then foreign minister, Paul Hasluck, and prime minister Robert Menzies sign off on this double-cross? Did ASIS tells its Australian clients of CIA activities in Cambodia? About 45 years after the event, this too is a suitable issue for the historian.
Yet we only know of this activity because of a leak; the facts are still officially suppressed.
In the US, it is now accepted that much of the dirty work that the CIA carried out was authorised and often ordered by the White House, from president Dwight Eisenhower onwards. We have never had any clear understanding here of what ministers have sought from the secret services and what have been independent enterprises. Nor do we have a clear account of how Australian and foreign intelligence agencies affected the political and diplomatic relations of Australia with key nations such as the US, Indonesia, China and Japan.
Max Suich was chief editorial executive of John Fairfax (now Fairfax Media) from 1980 to 1987.
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