In the later months of 1975 another phase of anti-American fervour erupted. This led to a renewal of American concerns about the security from public disclosure of those defence activities known to the Minister and the Department but not made public.

Whitlam it seemed had a deep antipathy to the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement in destabilising left-wing governments. The toppling of the elected (Salvador) Allende Government, and its replacement by the repressive (Augusto) Pinochet military government, in Chile was such a case. The Prime Minister ordered that the names of all Central Intelligence Agency personnel in Australia be supplied to him. No doubt scenting political advantage, he publicly declared the tenant of Doug Anthony’s house in Canberra to be a retired Agency employee, and former Director of the Joint Defence Space Research Facility at Pine Gap. As I said earlier, it was not until the 1980s that it was revealed by the then Labor Government that the so-called space research activities at Pine Gap employed intelligence officers; and as explained earlier, I considered it important in Australia’s interests, for several reasons, that the Soviet Union should not be informed in this way of the information-gathering functions of this highly classified and valuable facility.

The Prime Minister was about to make a public address in Melbourne and I tried to contact him to warn him about the security implications of his campaign to embarrass Anthony by declaring the former senior American at Pine Gap to be a member of the American intelligence organisation. But I met again the obstacle of my attempt to make contact being filtered by his personal staff. In this case, my attempt was treated with derision and a leakage to the press.

To make matters worse, a ham-fisted American intelligence official, Ted Shackley, in Washington fired off a telex to his contact in our Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, extravagantly predicting serious consequences for Australia’s relations which could follow the Prime Minister’s disclosures. When I saw a copy I decided that this man’s threats were not a matter for concern and that higher level policy people in Washington could be relied upon to hose him down. But I did not count upon the mischief of some person publishing the message, perhaps deliberately using the Australian media to regenerate hostility to the Government’s defence ties with the Americans. A few copies were distributed within the Department (and possibly Foreign Affairs) and at the political level. I reported to my Minister by having a copy sent to Morrison’s electoral office in Sydney where he and some of his personal staff were located. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation took the message to Whitlam.

Knowing Whitlam as I did, I did not share American concern, and certainly not their excited reaction, except in respect of one aspect of our intelligence sharing arrangement with the Central Intelligence Agency. The problem grew, unwittingly, out of the Prime Minister’s distrust of the Agency, which was widely shared in the Labor Movement. I was not in a position to know whether there was any basis for suspecting domestic interference in Australia by the Agency, this being the responsibility of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. But I was completely aware of a fully disclosed Agency activity of benefit to Australia. It was one that would be held to be so by members of government of any political persuasion who were made privy to its nature and purpose.

Our principal Defence Department intelligence liaison was with the parts of the American systems which provided us with intelligence, on a reciprocal basis where that capability existed. The liaison gave us intelligence gathered by technology that we did not possess. Some informed us of the state of the nuclear balance between the superpowers on which stable peace depended.

The Defence Department did not have, or need, liaison with any Central Intelligence Agency operations by individuals working under cover in other countries—the most notorious and, to some, objectionable activity of the Central Intelligence Agency. One of the valuable elements in the Hope Report was certification of the value to Australia of ‘close intelligence links with some of the major intelligence agencies in the Western world’. During one of my meetings with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, I told him of the burden of popular obloquy that partners had to carry, because of the lack of public awareness of the Agency’s work in independent analysis of situations in addition to its covert illegal activities on the ground by its agents which attracted criticism and notoriety. I suggested that he could do more to publicise the difference in the multifaceted activities of his organisation. I have no reason to believe that my suggestion had any practical effect.