 The protest years is the second in a three volume series on the history of Asia. Volume one, which is Professor David Horner's volume, covers the period from Asia's inception in 1949, its creation then through to 1963. It covers a whole range of very significant events in Australian history. It covers the whole Venona experience, the issue of the nest of spies that led to the very creation of Asia. It talked about its successes and its controversies. The successes being the defection of Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov and also the expulsion of Ivan Skripov. And also the controversies, the Royal Commission on Espionage and the accusations of political interference and the fallout, the domestic political fallout with the split of the ALP that followed afterwards. So David's volume was controversial, but most of the people involved in it aren't around. So the level of controversy is perhaps a little more muted than that around volume two. But before I get to volume two, I just want to talk briefly about what's going to be in volume three. This is the period that covers from 1975 from the point that Malcolm Fraser becomes Prime Minister through to 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall which effectively marks the end of the Cold War. This will cover the Fraser Hawk years, the reforms initiated from the Hope-Raw Commission, the Kumi-Varnoff period, the Hilton Hotel bombing and so on. So I'm very excited about that and looking forward to that coming out in due course hopefully in October this year. And that's going to be called The Secret Called Cold War. Volume two covers an extraordinary period in Australian history from 1963 to 1975 from the Vietnam War through to the end of the Whitlam Government. And it is a great honour for me to have been chosen. Now the way it worked out is that Professor Horner won a contract an open tender contract with ASIO for ANU to publish a multi-volume history of ASIO. And he won that fair and square and part of the deal was that he would hire an additional historian to help him write the second volume and as it turned out subsequent volumes. I was hired along with Dr. Reese Crawley who initially started as the research assistant but who's gone on to help write volume three and he and I co-author volume three so watch this space for Reese's contribution. Because of the contentious nature of ASIO's role in Australia society as part of the arrangement a advisory committee was established with representation from the Liberal Party and the Labour Party and that was with Jim Carlton and Jeff Gallup as well as the Director General and of course the Deputy Director General of ASIO Kerry Hartland. This bipartisan committee was established because it was important to have both sides of politics if you like have some say and have some insight and oversight over what we were doing. But what they did was not so much interfere as help make sure that we weren't interfering and that was very important and in arranging the contract David Horner made sure that the process was at arms length so we were to write it off campus, off ASIO's premises and so we did that at ANU. We did that with full and unfettered access and that is to the credit of ASIO that they actually recognized it was a courageous move to actually in the yes minister sense to actually really be prepared to let's David and I and Reese read the files and write what we thought we should write about what was happening from ASIO's perspective during this period. Now having done that we were then required to give the manuscript to ASIO for them to review it and to consider any issues of libel, of legal implications or ongoing operational concerns bearing in mind that ASIO has a very significant responsibility and a contractual obligation to protect the identity of those people who have agreed to work for ASIO doing sensitive work and of course I was obliged and David was too to comply with that requirement, a reasonable one. But of course in writing about this there's a creative tension that we've had to grapple with this issue of being considered by the left as an apologia for ASIO and from the right as some kind of soft on communism excuse for what transpired and of course not surprisingly I have been accused of both. Along the way but the book itself it's really been a terrific process and thinking about how we were going to structure it. Part one covers the last of the Menzies years and the last years of the liberal government it covers the Vietnam War protests years and we'll talk about that in some detail about counter espionage, counter subversion and protective security and the three main sort of pillars of ASIO during this period the main rationale if you like for looking for spies and trying to counter their efforts looking for those who would try and undermine the state, the subversives and looking to protect peoples and institutions and documents counter espionage, counter subversion, protective security and then of course looking at techniques how ASIO went about its business and there's some very interesting aspects of that and of course a big part of this is looking at the Soviets and the Soviet bloc that was a lot of time spent doing that and also in addition to that some migrant groups and we'll talk about that in a moment. In part two we look at some issues concerning international engagement and the work that ASIO is undertaking in Papua New Guinea and Reese Crawley wrote that particular chapter and of course part three arguably the most exciting part of it is ASIO and the Whitlam years where we look at this very turbulent period where there are many changes in the way ASIO is required to operate in terms of counter espionage, counter subversion and protective security. There is the Murphy raid and I'll talk about that in some detail the fallout from that and then of course ASIO's involvement in the last days of the Whitlam government and what on earth was going on there and of course there are conspiracy theories are plenty and I address some of them the man who perhaps along with Sir Charles Spry shaped the organization the most was perhaps Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies who had a close and trusting working relationship with the Director-General of ASIO for much of the organization's history for most of the period in the first volume and for a large chunk of the second volume Sir Charles Spry who was the Director-General from 1950 to 1966. Chifley, Prime Minister and Chifley had founded the organization in 1949 but it was only Prime Minister for a short period until 1950 and then Menzies and Spry were the real shapers of ASIO and they were the ones who clearly articulated this three prong strategy if you like of counter espionage particularly on the Soviet block counter subversion against the Communist Party and its offshoots and protective security the tasks of vetting and worried about facilities and document protection. Interestingly enough while Menzies was a central figure Arthur Caldwell the ALP leader from 1960 to 1967 was also in on things. He denied having a close association with Spry but the two men met on numerous occasions about Communist Party of Australia penetration of the Australian Labour Party and about Croatian matters amongst other things. So he didn't want to really play that up in a public way but he appreciated the role that ASIO had to play in advising him and in advising government. Peter Barber who took over Charles Spry was like Spry was a World War II vet but he was a younger and more bookish man who took over from Charles Spry in January 1970 when Spry finally retired. Barber saw the need for reform and instituted an internal reorganization but it really faulted and the limited reform measures that he tried to implement pointed to the need for a wider ranging review and that would come in due course. The US President Lyndon Johnson visited Australia in 1966 his visit coming shortly after the introduction of National Service and the deployment of combat troops to Vietnam. This presented ASIO with significant operational challenges monitoring protest groups and reporting masses of data which quickly strained the organization and gave it an enormous amount of publicity as well. The period from 1963 to 1972 saw ASIO reporting to a range of attorneys general firstly Billy Stedden who later became opposition leader and Liberal Party leader Tom Hughes the father-in-law of current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Hughes later recalled that the affairs of ASIO formed a very minimal part of his workload very interesting observation given how contentious it was and how important it was for oversight to be effective. Nigel Bowen who like Prime Minister Holt recognized the need for ASIO and he was in office there for a couple of periods in 1966 and then in 1971. Ivor Greenwood who was Attorney General twice and was reluctant to see ASIO resources focused extensively on conservative voting croats and we'll talk a bit about that in a second as well. Sir Charles Spry who was the Director General until 1970 he confronted Menzi's successor by two Prime Minister Gorton over allegations concerning his association with Ms. Willise pictured here and relations between Spry and Gorton never recovered from this confrontation and it actually spoke to a problem that ASIO experienced in terms of the relationship between the Director General and the Prime Minister that was to a certain extent you could consider it cozy between Spry and Menzi's but subsequently things weren't nearly as rosy. We mentioned counter espionage and this was the main purpose of ASIO since its foundation and Ivan Skripov the Soviet Embassy official who was expelled as a Soviet spy in February 1963 is a subject of Volume 1 but he features in Volume 2 because many wondered whether poor ASIO tradecraft had tipped off his illegal contact who was supposed to have been met in Adelaide and the passport photo that was uncovered of Mr. X known subsequently identified as this man Andrew Hoover ASIO officers speculated about whether this was intended for use by a Soviet illegal in Australia and why was it so hard to figure that out? This was an enduring problem so fears of penetration were a big issue at that time but they were dampened down by the word of this man Anatoly Mikhailovich Golitsyn a Soviet intelligence officer who defected to the West in 1961 and visited Australia in 1967 he said that ASIO was not penetrated but there were those who simply refused to believe him how could this be true? As it turned out this man was a favourite of the CIA's deputy director James Jesus Angleton and his role was instrumental in the creation of an organisation called CASAP which was a counter espionage focused grouping of the Canadians, Australians, Zeelanders Americans and Brits in the counter espionage domain CASAP features in the book Of course people they were interested in following were people like Dick Ellis who was an Australian born MI6 officer and in March 1971 information arose pointing to Ellis having been both a Russian and a German agent in the interwar period extraordinary this generated concerns about possible penetration of ASIO in Australia and other organisations The Russian Embassy pictured here as well on the right across from the Kingston Hotel near the Marnica shops pictured here in 1964 was a focal point for ASIO's surveillance work over decades Soviet espionage was one of ASIO's top priorities monitoring them in and around the Embassy absorbed much of ASIO's attention the operational base establishment, the OBE monitored clandestine meetings like this one between Soviet consul Vladimir Alexev, a KGB man and an unidentified man in an overcoat the photos are taken at Black Mountain Peninsula in 1970 I love these photos, they're great, the old Canberra no trees, nowhere to hide, what do you do? how do you conduct counter espionage and counter espionage in this kind of, you know, treeless environment your parker bought Falcon by the lake geez, how obvious is that? what are you doing by the lake? two blokes sitting in a car the problem was also that the cars weren't changed over very frequently and a good Soviet officer working out of the Soviet Embassy here in Canberra became quite familiar with the cars and the looks and often on occasion at least would turn and wave and take a photo of the tailing ASIO car made it very difficult for the ASIO officers but I guess that was part of the picture too the sense of that you were disrupting ASIO by making yourself even the KGB really couldn't get away with it they knew that they were being monitored and therefore they had to rely on others such as the Soviet block counterparts the people from the Czechoslovakian Embassy and eventually the East German Embassy and others such as that and there were people like Ivan Stenin on the right there who's meeting with Geronty Lazovic Stenin was the second secretary for press and information at the Soviet Embassy and ASIO looked at these guys really pretty close they took a lot of photos of them and here we have former ALP leader Arthur Corwell in November 1969 he's having a chat there with Stenin and on the right there ASIO took this photo of the Communist Party of Australia member Wilton J. Brown he's in a car with Lazovic in Sydney in 1972 and this was shortly after Brown was involved in establishing the SPA the Socialist Party of Australia as a breakaway from the CPA so there's a bit of an interesting moment there in this tiny little Toyota having this meeting where everybody if you're in the know can see who's there I mentioned the Soviet block countries Karel Frank who's the Consul General for Czechoslovakia the scene here on the left with Billys Nedin in 1969 well after the Soviet suppression in 1968 Frank opted to stay in Australia you can't really blame him he stayed with his family Frank indicated in his debriefs that there were 25 inactive Soviet intelligence officials in positions in Australia in case of war let's put the window now Frank, unlike with the Petrov defection in the mid 1950s Frank was encouraged to apply for permanent residence rather than political asylum and this is because Asia is really trying to depoliticise the process we know that there was quite a toxic fall out from the way the Petrov defection worked out politically for Asia and they were trying to avoid that recurring but there were other controversies and other controversial figures such as Australian born journalist Wilfred Graham Bircher who spent much of his career overseas he has shown him with some Viet Cong people in Vietnam in 1967 but Asia kept files on him extensively Birchit wanted a passport to visit Australia and this was eventually issued by the Whitman Government but eventually documentary proof would emerge that Birchit was on the Soviet payroll now looking at some collection methods I love these this is really terrific and there's a number of collection methods that Asia would use humans primarily and technical as well and of course when we talk about humans we're talking about officers, Asia officers and their agents and sources they go out and enlist to help them in collecting information and of course technical you've got this wonderful photographic example and there's voice recordings I'll show you in a moment but this surveillance camera was built inside two absolutely named books Christ and Communism and The Nature of Capitalism Fanta I mean somebody had a sense of humour and they did that and the books were cut out to fit the camera in as you see on the right hand side there and there's the little click below press the button below and take the photo it's brilliant, just love it and then there was radios, we used to hide cameras as well here's a Fijika camera it's built into a national Panasonic radio, similar idea that you just carry this radio around and point it around and click it's, you know, makes you smile it eats your heart out and then of course there's movie cameras too and these are sometimes used as well and here this is one hidden inside a panel van, everybody loves a panel van I used to anyway the van was used to conduct surveillance on a range of activists associated with the communist party of Australia, so this you see it pointing through the front window and here's the back which I could point through the back there's a hole at the back there but this is kind of the camouflage if you like, to hide the real purpose of the van and one of their favourite targets was Lawrence Sharky Lance Sharky, here he is taken when he was the former general secretary of the communist party of Australia photographed in February 1966 in the front of CPA headquarters where Asia conducted regular and extensive surveillance so if you ever walk past this spot chances are there's a photo of you on an Asia file another one was his successor, Laurie Lawrence Evans who took over from Lance Sharky as CPA general secretary in 1965, Mark Arons wrote a fascinating family file which I've cited demonstrating the incredible number of files on this man and on the family that Asia kept over the years then there were other interesting figures like Senator Jim McClellan who often featured he was close to Lionel Murphy and he was a really harsh critic of Asia claiming it was riddled with right-wing extremists who act like keystone cops they're so paranoid they see communists behind every bush he wasn't far wrong and then of course Arthur Geetzel he was a prominent member of the Australian Labour Party he was also suspected of being a member of the communist party of Australia and he was closely associated with its leader, Laurie Arons Aron and Geetzel met in secret in March 1973 shortly after the Whitman Government was taken office at the motor in in Wollongong and Asia conducted extensive surveillance of the meeting of course this would eventually blow back on Asia politician when Labour is in office Tom Uren another interesting figure seen here participating in a protest march in front of Gowing's menswear store in downtown Sydney in the early 1960s Uren was reported by an Asia agent as a CPA member he was seen to be in touch with the Czech Consul General Carol Frank as it turned out in Sydney in 1962 while Frank was still doing the good work of the Soviets another interesting figure who features in the book a little bit is Bob Santamaria a strong-minded Catholic lawyer who I don't need to introduce to people here who headed the National Civic Council a fiercely anti-communist organisation seen by Asia as closely linked to the DLP Asia was wary of information provided and of the NCC's interest in information from Asia and there are those who are quite unhappy with what I said about him a picture just here because really I rely, and this is one of the points about this book, I rely on the Asia records I'm not relying on others it is looking at the world through the Asia prism and I may be accused of not having captured the full picture that's not for the point of this book this book is telling the story the way Asia saw it and that's what I sought to do in this instance and of course the way Asia saw the world was largely about the Communist Party the Communists, the Soviets and their protégés in Australia who were funded by the Soviets through to the late 1960s the Communist Party of Australia in 1969 and by this stage the Soviet funding has really dried up the Soviets are no longer seeing the CPA as reliable and are looking around for alternatives so Asia was actively involved in monitoring the CPA activities with agents participating surveillance teams photographing and identifying key identities using the equipment I touched on before the CPA was instrumental anti-Vietnam war protest activity particularly early on but by the late 1960s the protests were much more than just events run by the CPA and it took a while for that to sink in a range of other protest groups were monitored including this sweet group of ladies here on the left save our sons who were labelled I couldn't quite work out if the label was facetious or not but there's a a cell of dangerous subversives and of course there was a degree of concern about save our sons and what effect they were having in terms of the anti-Vietnam war protest movement but it goes to the issue of how much how much credence you give how much weight you give to some of the reporting Asia officers are getting in from the field from their sources and agents and how reliable is it how do you step back and digest this and put this into context in a society that is actually transformed as the baby boomer generation is coming to age and people are contesting established truths the other picture is of a Hiroshima Vietnam protest march in Newcastle in August 1968 Asia routinely monitored such protests photographing participants and confirming details through corroboration from agents and contacts and the files have plenty of information to that effect now the Vietnam war moratorium demonstrations in Melbourne in 1970 this was one of the biggest ever while the CPA was involved the communist party of Australia was involved it became increasingly difficult to explain away the scale of the protests in terms of agitation by members of the CPA or even of its linter groups there's just too many people here to explain it away that way now this one is of Vietnam war moratorium demonstration in Canberra so even here in Canberra we're getting large numbers of people turning up but the momentum from the demonstrations helped convince the McMahon government to withdraw the combat troops from Vietnam at the end of 1971 and that really does take the wind out of the sails of the protest movement at that stage in the meantime Asia had actually seconded officers working in Vietnam itself and this is the little known story here's a picture of Don Prouse on the left who was seconded as a member of the special police advisory group in Saigon he had a hair-raising tail to tell which is captured in this part of the book on the international engagement chapter here he is shown being awarded a Vietnamese medal for developing courses for the government of South Vietnam similarly Mike Leslie pictured here was honored with US and Vietnamese medals for his work particularly for assisting the Vietnamese police with a number of projects Leslie was not given any Australian government award for his work now one of the other things that we found in terms of the perceived counter-subversion task was this issue of monitoring Croatians Shreco Rova pictured here in this snapshot of a TV interview on Channel 9 in 1972 he was a leading Croatian troublemaker he appeared on TV in this interview defending the Croatians and attacking Yugoslav authorities but this man had a clouded history and Mark Aaron talks about it in his book Asia was never quite sure who Rova worked for but his story would occupy Asia Mines for years and it goes to the nature of the problem that they were facing how do you substantiate the evidence, how do you prove how do you categorically get to the number of the issue, very difficult to do and of course here we see a picture of a Croatian protest in 1971 this shows Croatian demonstrators at the Yugoslav consulate in Sydney in December 1961 Croatian migrants resented the Serb dominated Yugoslav government and they saw what they were doing in Australia through their diplomatic representation as manipulative and deceitful indeed the Yugoslav authorities appeared to have been implicated in numerous incidents of violent incidents in Australia and once again with very carefully covering their trails to make it hard to prove categorically that it was them who were involved but often enough it was the Croatian extremists themselves and their actions that were most obvious here you have a photo of Tomaslav Lesic his legs were blown off when a bomb he was carrying in a bag accidentally detonated prematurely before he got to his intended designated target now as incidents mounted cooperation, trust and mutual understanding between the commonwealth police force what we now know as the Australian Federal Police and ASIO tended to falter this set the groundwork of mistrust that informed Lionel Murphy in the lead up to the raid of ASIO in March 1973 we'll get to that in a minute so that was part one really there's a lot there an enormous amount to cover in a short amount of time and space we talked about liaison a little bit with the Kazab with the other countries and the number of them I mentioned in the book and of course particularly Australia's Cold War frontline written by Riz Crawley on Papua New Guinea chapter on the life of New Guineans as we're involved in helping launch New Guinea and provide them with professional advice to establish their own security intelligence space an important legacy of the Whitlam years was the granting of course of independence to Papua New Guinea in 1975 and ASIO had responsibilities there in terms of particularly protective security and preparing a counterpart organisation to be raised for when independence is granted and that story is a very interesting one as well but perhaps the most interesting one is part three the Whitlam government from December 1972 to November 1975 in this period we have three attorneys general and they're all pictured here on the left Gough Whitlam who as part of the duombrate with Lance Barnard for the first two weeks essentially is the attorney general makes a lot of the calls he then hands over to Lionel Murphy once they are appointed by the Governor General in late 19th of December and then eventually kept end of be pictured there on the right and we'll talk a bit more about these folk in a moment now early on Whitlam invited the Yugoslav Prime Minister not sure I'm going to pronounce this correctly but forgive me if I don't get it right Gemel Vagedic on an official visit to Australia in March 1973 now in light of rumours of Croatian extremists plotting to kill him Whitlam and Murphy were concerned that Asia was not sufficiently concerned itself and this was fed by the views of a former police officer who had been working in a slightly adversarial sense with and against Asia if I can put it that way during the earlier years in monitoring Croatian extremist activities and we're figuring out who do you blame do you blame the Yugoslavs or do you blame the Croatians and it was always very opaque, very hard to figure out exactly who to pin things on but on the night of the 15th and 16th of March Lionel Murphy visited Asia's Canberra office on the night of the 15th with the former CPF commonwealth police officer Kerry Milty and he finds some of what he's after there but he suspects there's more being held in the files in Melbourne and Milty feeds this suspicion that Asia is holding something back from him so he goes down on the morning of the 16th of March he telexes early we as the ODAR 100 for the the commonwealth police force to go and close down Asia headquarters and they do that and he goes gives a talk to a mystified audience of Asia offices who are in the auditorium at Asia headquarters he looks through the files he realizes that what was on the filing camera is exactly what's on the file in Melbourne and of course the media has been alerted and this gets to be a tad embarrassing not only is Asia traumatized by this the links internationally people what's going on in Australia and of course the papers have a field day and cartoonists went to town you see there the caption that Gough is supposed to be saying to Margaret worrying about Lionel Murphy coming to visit and several cartoons featured over the next few days and Pickering's cartoon on the right here shows how the Whitlam and Murphy rivalry was accentuated by the raid and it's fallout so there's really no love lost here now during this period Joan Coxage led a group known as the committee for the abolition of political police now this is a misnomer Australia isn't like countries like the US or Canada who have an intelligence service that's linked to the police Australia's security intelligence organization has non-executive during this period very clear a demarcation between the police executive powers and asia's powers so calling it political police was a political stunt really in a sense but cap demonstrators tried to embarrass and expose asia officers photographing and then publicizing the details of these asia officers that had exposed putting glue in the locks of their cars going to the auctions of their houses making a ruckus being larricans but this caused quite a lot of consternation not surprisingly within asia and subsequently the asia act of 1979 prohibited the revealing of the identity of an asia officer so jones remit was curtailed but certainly caused quite a lot of resentment inside asia over how this group could operate with relative impunity although there are some stories of asia officers in the book resentfully tipping buckets of water out through the windows and running it having little scuffles in lifts and things like that that are in the book you'll see now while that's happening the first incident of reported middle eastern terrorism activity in Australia occurred in september 1973 this man Abdul Hamid Abdullah Azam was arrested and deported for links with the black september terrorist organization now in the picture on the right you see azam's case which was fitted with a false bottom it had apparently been used to carry a submachine gun and three grenades and you can barely make out the shape of the bombs and the weapon that were used in that case and this in effect was a bit of a turning point we saw the beginning of asia starting to re-conceptualize what it had been seeing as primarily the counter-subversion role against the communists and we saw the dipping in terms of potency if you like of the communist movement as it fractures and as the prior spring really sucks the life if you like the zeal of good soviet communists because the Prague model was the one that the communist party of Australia was starting to identify with and it seemed to be the future of communism you know if you do that maybe we'll actually get communism in Australia of course the crushing of the crash screen is incredibly demoralizing for the CPA but this happens roughly about the same time as Azam visits and there's a sense of with the Munich terrorist incident at the Olympic Games in 1972 a growing awareness that maybe asia's got some other responsibilities initially it's not something asia particularly wants to get involved in but increasingly the government's expecting it to act in this space at the same time we see a normalization of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China to the arrival of their first diplomatic delegation here kindly photographed by an asia officer on this 2nd of March 1973 the increase and expansion of diplomatic premises of communist and soviet bloc countries presented asia with a significant challenge as its resources were stretched and effectively we're not seeing a budget grow we've got a mindset in asia that's quite frugal and even with barba and particularly with spry this kind of world war 2 we can do this on a shoe box type mindset that works for a crisis but is unsustainable in the long term and leads to people taking shortcuts and not being trained properly and not being prepared for sustained campaigns and of course not surprisingly therefore we find ourselves in the situation with goff witlam appoints robert marston hope as a royal commissioner mid 1974 and he is tasked to conduct the royal commission on intelligence and security now hope's report isn't completed until 1977 and is not surprisingly therefore a significant focus for volume 3 which is coming out later this year hope's work would lay the groundwork for extensive reforms within asia and this will be explored in the future so we had under goff witlam we had keppen to be I mentioned was appointed as attorney general following lionel murphy's appointment to the high court in february 75 now jim cans pictured in the middle here was a leading figure in the anti-vietnam war protest movement during the vietnam war and incidentally a target of asio's focus because cans meets with people who asio is looking at and so cans is all frequently crossing the scopes if you like of asio's officers tasked with monitoring the subversive groups particularly the communist party and he was identified as having contact with communists his appointment as witlam's deputy prime minister in 1974 unsettled asio and international partner senator john wielden pictured on the right there was a friend of jim cans and a frequent contact of ivan stenin this concerned not only sir charles prime the late 60's but also peter barba in the 70's who suspected that wielden was a cpa member I explore that issue a little bit in the book now after peter barba's sudden resignation in september 1975 frank mani who had been a deputy secretary in the attorney general's department is appointed interim director general of asio mani stayed through until the transition he stays until march 1976 now developments in late 1975 saw asio on what i call in the book asio on the brink this is when relations with us intelligence are on ice this is when asio is asked for a list of cia officers operating in australia in october that list sees no mention of richard stallings who has been working on pine gap at working through the defense conduit and in early november on the second the fourth and the sixth of november witlam reacted in private then in parliament and then on tv to this apparent misinformation or apparent deception on the fifth of november the u.s. authority sent a letter denying the u.s. funding any australian organization quite worried about what's going on on the sixth of november the u.s. assistant secretary of state edwards passed the same message to his interlocutors the liaison officers in washington on the eighth of november the east asia division chief in washington american intelligence fellow ted shackley relayed what effectively was termed labeled as a dimash and that was passed to mani in canberra and he quickly makes sure that he gets the message to witlam witlam reads it and dictates a response mani cables a reply on the tenth of november approved by witlam seeking to allay american concerns and then of course the dismissal happens on the eleventh now this is a point of much conjecture many conspiracy theories which now the saratha tang the secretary of the department of defense who has oversight for the pine gap responsibility and therefore the connection with stallings his biographer peter edwards speaks to this and the point that even got witlam mentions in his his writings is that while the conjecture about the renewal about pine gap that was supposed to come up for the tenth of december was a point of contention that apparently was going to be some would argue was that one of the reasons why a coup had to happen so the conspiracy theorists would have us believe witlam himself acknowledged that he had actually agreed for that and didn't see that as a trigger now i talk about the book in the book about the meeting between warren christopher the envoy for jimmy carter in july 1977 who meets with got witlam with richard butler in attendance and richard reads a conspiratorial line into a message that can be read a number of different ways about the message from jimmy carter that don't worry you know the united states is not going to do anything like that again the sense of oh you've done it before that's proof that's happened before and of course jimmy carter and for that matter warren christopher weren't part of the of the administration it's conjecture as to exactly what that meant of course i interviewed malcolm frazer as part of this process and asked him specifically what he made of all this the conspiracy theorists jimmy carter was about to publish a book about the united states alliance dangerous allies was the title a provocative thought provoking challenging book about our relationship with the united states he was an opportunity to put the knife in and twist it and demonstrate that they really were dangerous and his response when asked about the conspiracy theories crap total crap so we have a sense here of the mcknights the twoies who said no one has yet proved the cia played a role in in the dismissal and that's true no one has yet proved it i can't prove one way or the other in fact i don't think anyone ever will but in terms of what the asia record say they lent no additional support to the conspiracy theorists interpretations and but like all good conspiracy theories this one likely will never die so ladies and gentlemen i have given you a tour of the book i hope if you have not yet read it that you enjoy it and that you get engaged with it and that you come back from all with volume 3 but and let me say i don't get any royalties from this this is the royalties for me this is the fact that an you got the contract i've employed by an you and the asia owns the copyright but as i reflect on on what was happening there's a number of dimensions to this this period of political change the transition from the liberal country party to the labour party social change the baby boomer phenomenon that is challenging the boundaries making asia having to rethink that was a cozy pretty straightforward arrangement from the earlier cold war years to one that's much more contested one that's much more opaque there's the demographic change with more and more migrants coming changing the dynamics of security concern demonstrated by the visit of azam and of the Croatians there is the economic changes with the downturn in the mid 1970s internationally it's a period of detente mixed with ongoing cold war rivalry that's pretty palpable in Canberra right through this period as the number of identified soviet and soviet block intelligence officers mushroom in the mid to late 1970s and administratively it's a significant period because most of the public service which in the 1940s and 50s has been in Melbourne has transitioned to Canberra asia is still in Melbourne and this presents a significant obstacle for asia's integration into government to being appreciated an integral part of the government machinery and it's one that gets addressed in bulletin 3