Boyce still believes CIA dismissed Whitlam

    The Australian
    February 18, 2014 12:00AM

Troy Bramston
Columnist
Sydney
https://plus.google.com/114564655396899327990

CHRISTOPHER Boyce, who spent nearly 25 years in jail for selling CIA secrets to the Russians in the 1970s, has repeated his claim that the US spy agency was involved in the dismissal of Gough Whitlam's government in 1975.

He asserts that governor-general Sir John Kerr was a CIA "flunkey" and that he was known within the CIA as "our man Kerr".

Mr Boyce says the dismissal was "a coup" executed by the US tantamount to "the velvet glove version of the government overthrow in Chile".

In an interview with journalist Mark Davis for the SBS program Dateline tonight, Mr Boyce also claims the CIA infiltrated the top echelons of the Australian trade union movement in the 70s.

Mr Boyce worked as a telex operator for TRW, which was contracted by the CIA to manage the spy satellite, and he decoded and distributed messages from the joint intelligence facility at Pine Gap in central Australia.

What triggered his decision to steal and sell documents to the Russians was his belief that the US was deceiving Australia. "My government betrayed me long before I betrayed it," Mr Boyce says.

In 1977, Mr Boyce was arrested, sentenced and imprisoned. Three years later, he mounted a daring escape from a maximum-security prison in California. After 19 months on the run, he was recaptured and sent back to jail.

His life story was the subject of a bestselling book and later made into a Hollywood film, The Falcon and the Snowman, starring Sean Penn.

Mr Boyce's claims about CIA interference in Australian politics and labour unions were aired in an interview with journalist Ray Martin for Nine's 60 Minutes in 1982. Ten years since he was released from jail, Dateline has revisited the claims in a rare television interview.

The once high-profile fugitive and traitor says the CIA was worried that the Labor government would withdraw from the Pine Gap Agreement, threatening intelligence co-operation.

"Whitlam was viewed as an Australian Ho Chi Minh," Mr Boyce says. "He was taking Australia into socialism. You couldn't mention Whitlam's name without the spooks in there just looking nauseated. He was a threat. He was viewed as a threat to the program."

When Kerr dismissed Mr Whitlam, there was "jubilation" and "relief" within the CIA, Mr Boyce claims.

"To me, that was a coup. You Australians can call it whatever you want. I cannot sit here and prove it, but I believe it."

Mr Boyce reveals in the interview that he has never been asked by MPs at the time or since for details about his allegations.

Mr Whitlam has downplayed suggestions of CIA involvement in his dismissal.