by Brian Toohey
The telex messages ASIO headquarters sent back to Leslie—reinforced by strong advice from the heads of Defence and Foreign Affairs—urged him to hold off doing the interview. Referring to a redacted section in a 2 May 1977 telex to HQ, however, Leslie argued: ‘These and certain other items give the strong impression that [Boyce’s] comments on CIA involvement with the trade unions in Australia and his access to KW7 cypher equipment (which would partly account for his knowledge) are not without foundation.’4
Following US government claims that former CIA official Victor Marchetti had put Boyce up to making these allegations, Leslie telexed on 13 May, ‘There are more corroborative indicators that Boyce did know of CIA activities through his employment at TRW than that Marchetti put him up to it.’5
A top-secret telex from ASIO’s acting director-general on 16 May 1977 ordered Leslie to delay any interview, saying that he would appreciate that ‘This whole concern is a very hot political potato and I think it would be unwise for you to interview Boyce at this time. It could be seen as ASIO interfering, or ASIO trying to paper over alleged cracks, although it would be neither. There would of course be no guarantee that what Boyce told you was the truth and certainly no way of checking out his information.’6 Equally, there was no way for ASIO to know whether the CIA’s denials were truthful.
Leslie was not allowed to read a classified report from the CIA director, Stansfield Turner, to a congressional committee, but he telexed HQ on 22 June 1977: ‘There would appear to be no foundation to Boyce’s claims.’ Nevertheless, the New York Times Los Angeles bureau head, Robert Lindsey, regarded Boyce as credible after getting to know him while working on the book he wrote on the case, The Falcon and the Snowman. Boyce gave the FBI previously unknown details about what he had given the Russians, even though this resulted in him getting a longer sentence. He said he handed over photos he’d taken of encryption ciphers, data on the Rhyolite and Argus satellite programs, message traffic and a study of future intelligence needs—thousands of documents in total.7 He also told them that messages had sometimes been mistakenly sent about military traffic and other programs.8 Lindsey said Boyce was disturbed by the US’s behaviour when he read CIA telex messages showing its Australian agents had infiltrated the leadership of Australian unions.9 Using intelligence and other sources, Lindsey discovered that the election of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government in December 1972 sent jitters through the CIA, which ‘wanted Whitlam out’.10
Bill Pinwill, the first Australian journalist to interview Boyce in jail, quoted him as saying that CIA officers had a ‘deep distrust of the Whitlam government’ and took a close interest in the blocking of the 1975 budget.11 Pinwill reported in the same article that Boyce said, ‘Joe Harrison, the senior CIA “resident” at TRW, described the Governor General as “our man Kerr”.’ Boyce referred to this alleged CIA description of Kerr in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes program on 21 November 1982. He also told Australian journalist Ray Martin that the TRW security head, ex-CIA officer Rick Smith, had explained that he found out from a briefing that the agency withheld information from Australian governments.12 Referring to late 1975, Boyce said in the Martin interview that CIA officials complained that Whitlam wanted to know what was going on at Pine Gap and by ‘publicising it, was compromising the integrity of the system’. It was a typical arrogant presumption that the elected prime minister had no right to know what was happening on Australian soil. Whitlam didn’t reveal any secrets. Boyce, not Whitlam, compromised the system’s integrity—and he did so right under the nose of the CIA.
So what records did Defence give the NAA about Boyce’s activities? After I asked to see the archives, they replied on 29 February 2016 that they had been unable to locate any records relating to this request among the Defence records in their custody. Nor were there any records in the archives from the Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister’s departments about Boyce. Only ASIO was forthcoming with the documents quoted above.
The US has long deployed undercover intelligence officers in Australia. But in the 1970s Australian officials didn’t want to know about this any more than they wanted to know about Boyce. The CIA’s long-serving head of counterintelligence, James Angleton, ran a network of subordinates designated as ‘labor attachés’ in US overseas posts.13 Not all were undercover CIA officials, but they all came under Angleton’s effective control. The US used these and other channels to fund supportive unions and politicians, and counter communist influence in other unions. It also funded trips to the US for selected unionists. The historian David McKnight found US archival documents revealing that dozens of Australian union leaders took advantage of these ‘freebies’.14 He said the distribution lists for typical cables from the labor attachés in Australia showed that the CIA received over three times more reports from the attachés than the US Labor Department, which supposedly employed them.15
Even though some of the US labor attachés were undeclared CIA officers, both the official ASIO history and the Hope Royal Commission stated that there were no undeclared CIA officers in Australia. The denials were naive, although qualified in Hope’s case by a statement that ASIO ‘had very little information on these matters and still less curiosity’.16 The official ASIO history states that the royal commission’s secretary, George Brownbill, said US senator Frank Church told him that Australia was ‘exempt’ from US intelligence collection activities.17 This is demonstrable nonsense. As noted in Chapter 31, in 1975 Dunning Idle IV was collecting and sending back intelligence on Australia’s political situation for the CIA’s National Intelligence Daily, even though collecting intelligence on Australia was not an authorised part of his declared job of liaising with Australia’s JIO. Moreover, CIA officials had interfered directly in Australian politics in the 1960s.18
Before stating that clandestine US intelligence operations never occurred in Australia, the official historian should also have looked at a December 1973 ASIO minute written after Defence Minister Lance Barnard directed his departmental head, Arthur Tange, to conduct an inquiry on whether there were any US intelligence activities directed against Australia’s military interests. The acting director-general, Colin Brown, said in the minute that Tange’s inquiries followed the CIA’s decision to take court action to prevent publication of the book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Marchetti and John D. Marks. Brown said the CIA told Tange that the book’s original text made numerous references to Australia and New Zealand. The CIA required all such references to be removed from the draft, with one exception: a statement that US military forces ‘used secret agents in Australia for obtaining information’.19 Tange asked Brown ‘whether ASIO had any means of checking on the likelihood of such activities having taken place in the past or currently taking place’.20 Brown said, ‘I pointed out that to identify undercover agents of the US in Australia (if any) would be as difficult as it is to identify Soviet illegal residents since the high standard of training of both make detection difficult.’21
Brown, who was an admirer of the CIA and its station chief’s wife, with whom he had an affair, said, ‘To the best of my knowledge we were unaware of any US intelligence activity directed against Australia.’ A more candid answer would have been that ASIO didn’t know because it didn’t try to find out. Even so, it was hardly a blunt denial.
Because Marchetti had been a special assistant to the CIA’s deputy director, Richard Helms, and his co-author, Marks, had a similar job with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, they were able to provide a wealth of information in The Cult of Intelligence. The CIA initially deleted over 300 sections of the book, and following court action 168 remained redacted.
There is little doubt the US had adequate resources to undertake clandestine operations in Australia. Bill Darcy reported in the Sydney Sun on 4 May 1974 that Marchetti had told him the US had twenty to thirty clandestine operatives in Australia. Marchetti also said that his close friend Richard Stallings found out while heading Pine Gap that some of
these operations included funding the Liberal and Country parties. Given that the agency’s head, Bill Colby, described the election of the Whitlam Government as a ‘crisis’, it would not be surprising if he allocated ample resources to the ‘crisis’.22
To my knowledge, one undeclared CIA officer, Claire Hutchings, was in Canberra from early 1974 to late 1977. Now long retired, she held a more senior position than her husband, Burt Hutchings, a declared CIA liaison officer with ASIO. The official diplomatic list for that period simply refers to her as Mrs Hutchings, wife of Burt. The NAA has located records of his arrivals and departures, but none for Claire Hutchings (or Hutchens)—although illegal undeclared officers commonly use an assumed name for travel. Hutchings used her married name in her social activities in Australia. I know that one ASIO officer knew about her clandestine role while she worked as a language specialist at ANU. This officer, who was a friend of both the Hutchings, should have told the director-general that Claire was an undeclared intelligence official of a foreign power. His failure to do so illustrates the difficulties of relying on ASIO to conduct an effective counterintelligence operation against its dominant partner. It also demonstrates why there is no reason to believe ASIO assurances that there are no undeclared CIA officers in Australia. The specifics of Hutchings’ undercover work are unclear, but apparently it didn’t include spying on ANU academics.
Hutchings conducted a sexual relationship with a senior Whitlam Government minister of interest to the US. Later, in Washington, I confirmed the relationship. The minister told me Hutchings sometimes brought along another woman friend to join these activities, which he described in convincing detail. He also said he was aware, and amused, that Hutchings was married to a CIA official in the embassy. I only learnt later that she was also a member of the CIA, so I couldn’t mention this added appeal to the minister. It is not clear if Hutchings’ ministerial liaison related to her CIA job or was strictly recreational.
PART 5
AUSTRALIA’S SOVEREIGNTY CLAIMS—THE AMBITIOUS TO THE SUPINE
34
AUSTRALIA’S EXPANSIONIST AMBITIONS
‘No nation owns Antarctica. A passport is not required to enter … [There is] free access for scientific investigation and other peaceful pursuits.’
US State Department1
Despite fears that some other country will seize its Antarctic ‘territory’, Australia doesn’t own any part of that continent—never has and never will. Its claims have always lacked international recognition except from a handful of other countries with claims. The reality is that Australia ratified the 1961 Antarctic Treaty that put all territorial claims on indefinite hold, demilitarised the continent, and promotes international scientific cooperation. The treaty, which excludes any new claim, or the enlargement of an existing one, during its unlimited life, was achieved mainly because US president Dwight D. Eisenhower and USSR president Nikita Khrushchev talked to each other in the interests of international cooperation.
Hardly any countries recognised the earlier territorial claims to Antarctica, including Australia’s continuing claim to 42 per cent of the continent. Six other nations—Argentina, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the UK—claim a total of around 38 per cent, and about 20 per cent is unclaimed. Australia, Chile and Argentina also claim exclusive economic zones (EEZs) to offshore areas around the Antarctic mainland. Australia’s claim to this extra 2 million square kilometres is audacious, avaricious and invalid.
Australia also claims EEZs around Heard Island and McDonald Islands in the sub-Antarctic, about 4100 kilometres south-west of Perth, and around Macquarie Island, about 1500 km south of Hobart. Macquarie Island is closer to New Zealand’s Invercargill than to Hobart. When Australia’s claims elsewhere are included, it has the largest jurisdictional claim to an area of the earth’s surface—around 27.2 million square kilometres. About half of this is over ocean or sea.2
The Antarctic Treaty’s ban on enlarging an existing claim explains why almost no other country accepts Australia’s EEZs. The US State Department sent a formal note to the Foreign Affairs Department on 31 March 1995 pointing out: ‘It is a well-established principle that the sovereign rights over an EEZ … derive from the sovereignty of the coastal state over adjacent land territory … The US must reiterate its long-standing position that does not recognize any claim to territories in Antarctica.’3 The US also stated the accepted international position on Antarctica: ‘No nation owns Antarctica. A passport is not required to enter … [There is] free access for scientific investigation and other peaceful pursuits.’4 These facts did not stop the Sydney Morning Herald’s international editor, Peter Hartcher, writing in that paper on 29 January 2019 that Australia ‘has sovereignty over 42 per cent’ of the Antarctic. The fact that it doesn’t have sovereignty suggests the US would not spend blood and treasure to protect Australia’s imaginary 42 per cent. It also means that Australia can’t stop any other country establishing scientific research facilities there. Australia’s own research efforts are meagre, which is why its scientists welcome the chance to collaborate with American, Chinese, Russian, Indian and South Korean research facilities within Australia’s defunct claim.
In 1991, the treaty was amended to impose a ban on minerals exploration; this is due for renegotiation in 2048. The widely anticipated outcome is that no country will be able to unilaterally begin mining or petroleum production. If the new agreement doesn’t preserve the Antarctic as an international wilderness, it is likely to allow limited commercial development with the proceeds partly shared on a global basis. Australia’s chances of reviving its implausible claim to own 42 per cent of the continent are nil.
Australia’s claims to waters around islands near Indonesia may be more precarious than many assume. Christmas Island is only 360 kilometres south of Java, but it is 1560 kilometres from the closest part of the West Australian coast, at Exmouth. Once a British colony administered from Singapore, the island was only handed over to Australia in 1958. Its population of about 1400 are mainly descended from indentured labourers brought from Malaya to work in the island’s now-depleted phosphate mines. The Indonesian parliament has so far refused to ratify a 1997 treaty to establish an EEZ with Australia, even though the Indonesian government accepted the dividing line back in 1997. Growing Indonesian power suggests the line will eventually be redrawn.
Indonesia accepts Australian sovereignty over the Ashmore and Cartier islands south of the Indonesian island of Rote. These islands are 320 kilometres off Australia’s north-west coast and less than 80 kilometres from Rote. In 1933, Britain handed formal administration of them to Australia, which initially allowed controlled access for traditional Indonesian fishers whose forebears had lived there intermittently. The CIA’s 2018 World Factbook notes: ‘Australia has closed parts of the Ashmore and Cartier reserve to Indonesian traditional fishing; Indonesian groups challenge Australia’s claim to Ashmore Reef.’5 Although it might seem to undermine its emphasis on protecting the nation’s sovereign borders, the government excised Christmas Island and the Ashmores from our immigration zone in 2001 to prevent anyone who reaches them from claiming asylum in Australia.
The potentially lucrative rights to petroleum resources that Australia won in a favourable seabed agreement with Indonesia in 1972 no longer seem politically viable. Back then, Australia conducted illegal espionage to gain inside information about Indonesia’s negotiating position. Although this was not the only factor, the 1972 agreement gave Australia rights to what was on or below the seabed, covering a much bigger area than would have occurred if the boundaries had been based on the median line.6
Changes in international law, and the strategic imperative for Australia to get along with Indonesia in future, have altered the negotiating context. An Indonesian push for a boundary that reflects the 1994 Law of the Sea’s clear preference for a median line will be hard to resist, especially after Australia was forced to accept a fairer seabed boundary with Timor-Leste following the exposure of our ruth
less treatment of that country. Shortly before the fledgling nation gained its hard-won independence in May 2002, Australia behaved like a big power by withdrawing from the Law of the Sea tribunals and other maritime jurisdictions to stop Timor-Leste taking legal action over disputed petroleum fields. (This did not inhibit Australian governments from lecturing China about the importance of adhering to the global rules-based order in that nation’s claims in the South China Sea.) In 2004 the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, authorised ASIS to bug East Timor’s Cabinet room while it discussed its negotiating position on offshore resource boundaries. The gist of the illegally obtained information was passed to Woodside Petroleum, which had offshore leases near the small island. An ASIS whistleblower exposed the bugging after learning that Woodside had later hired Downer as a consultant. Australia’s subterfuge had the perverse result of ensuring that new boundary lines and revenue-sharing arrangements were agreed in 2018.
35
CHAINED TO THE CHARIOT WHEELS OF THE PENTAGON
‘It is almost literally true that Australia cannot go to war without the consent and support of the US.’
Gary Brown and Laura Rayner1
The republican movement in Australia is irrelevant: Australia could become a republic tomorrow and nothing of substance would change. The British monarchy has no say in Australian government decisions. It’s a different story with the head of the American republic. A US president presides over a military-industrial-intelligence complex with a huge say in whether Australian governments go to war, buy particular weapons, host US-run military and intelligence bases, and ban imports from certain countries. The upshot is that Australia has surrendered much of its sovereignty to the US.
