Arthur Tange, page 42
During that day Tange fielded several further inquiries from journalists with similar results, but he subsequently spoke at length to Paul Kelly and Gerard Henderson. On 29 January Kelly published a front-page article in The Australian, establishing that Tange was the unnamed figure in the documentary and reporting that he denied the allegation. Tange was immensely pleased that Kelly repeated the comprehensive denials that both he and Farrands had made in 1982. Kelly concluded that:
Pilger’s latest recycling of this conspiracy theory fails, just as every previous attempt has failed, to establish any conspiracy—to show that Sir John’s dismissal notice had anything to do with the CIA, intelligence links with the US or the Pine Gap base.
Kelly noted that the CIA had had an ‘extraordinarily alarmist’ view of Australian politics, especially on Pine Gap, in late 1975, apparently fearing that Whitlam might not have renewed the agreement or that Dr Cairns might have replaced Whitlam, with the same result. These fears, Kelly noted, might well have been communicated to British intelligence circles. But, Kelly concluded, the ‘origins, course and resolution’ of the Dismissal crisis could be explained entirely within the parliamentary process. Despite the CIA’s fears and Tange’s manifest anxiety over the security relationship, there remained ‘no basis … for assuming that security affected Sir John’s decision to dismiss Mr Whitlam’. In particular, Kelly noted that there was still no evidence to prove that Tange, or any Defence official under his direction, was the crucial link who made the CIA’s concerns known to Kerr.567
On the following day the Weekend Australian published articles by Gerard Henderson and Pilger, both of whom had been prominent in media controversy throughout the week. Henderson used interviews with both Kerr and Tange to denounce Pilger for propounding a conspiracy thesis without evidence. Pilger claimed that he had not contended that ‘the CIA forced Kerr to sack Whitlam’, but merely that there were channels through which American and British intelligence agencies could make their concerns known. Pilger then referred to a ‘former top CIA officer’ who had briefed Pinwill. At this point, material from Pilger’s article was deleted ‘on legal advice’. The context suggests that the deleted material referred to the source who had, according to Pinwill, alleged that Tange was the CIA’s link to Kerr. While Pilger’s article took issue with Henderson’s, he made no attempt to challenge the more judiciously phrased, but no less authoritative, conclusions reached by Paul Kelly.568
Pilger returned to the fray the following year in his book A Secret Country. The chapter on the 1975 Dismissal portrayed it as a coup d’état effected by the CIA. Here, as in the 1988 documentary, Pilger quoted an American investigative journalist, Joseph Trento, who said that a former deputy director of the CIA had told him that ‘Kerr did what he was told to do’ by the British and American intelligence agencies. Pilger continued:
The senior Government official who was directly in touch with Kerr—and ‘directly in touch’ was emphasised by the CIA source—was neither American nor British, but Australian. He was described by the CIA source as a man with whom he had regular contact, ‘an honourable man’. He was the principal messenger, the ‘conduit’. As the source cannot be named, neither unfortunately can the official.
Anyone who had followed the controversy attending the documentary in January 1988, and again later that year when it was broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with a disclaimer dissociating the ABC from the views expressed, would have had few doubts as to the identity of the senior official. Four pages earlier Pilger had referred to Tange as ‘a conservative “mandarin”, [who] effectively ran Australian intelligence and was its principal contact with the CIA and MI6’. Pilger described Tange as being ‘enraged by Whitlam’s outspokenness’ and ‘frantic’ over Whitlam’s proposed answer to Anthony’s parliamentary question. While Pilger continued his vitriolic duel with Gerard Henderson, he said nothing about Henderson’s references to Tange’s categorical denials. Nor did Pilger make any explicit reference to Paul Kelly’s article. His counter to the demands for evidence of the conspiracy was to quote Pinwill, who had said in 1988 that good reporting could not be expected to ‘meet courtroom standards of proof. Journalism [Pinwill continued] is not a court of law; it is a process of weaving together, often from necessarily anonymous sources, the strands of history.’569
After this last outburst, the allegations against Tange died away. No ‘smoking gun’ was ever produced. While there was abundant circumstantial evidence that American agencies had been interfering improperly in the domestic politics of even friendly countries, neither Toohey nor Pilger could ever produce evidence to establish that Tange had been a conduit between the CIA and Sir John Kerr just before 11 November 1975. Their only evidence came down to Toohey’s understanding of his conversation with Farrands in 1977, and the information allegedly given to an American journalist by an unnamed senior official of the CIA. In the absence of anything more substantial, one can only speculate on what these sources actually said and to what extent their views were based on fact, rumour or genuine misunderstanding.
Moreover, to make their case, Tange’s accusers relied on a distorted view of his place in the defence and intelligence system. As several passages in this book have shown, he was not simply a conservative mandarin, as Pilger called him, nor was he the ‘father-figure of the Australian intelligence community [whose position] had been strengthened by the removal of the ASIS and ASIO heads’, as Toohey and Pinwill described him.570 Tange was a staunch defender of the agencies that came within his responsibilities in Defence—DSD and JIO, later DIO. He was, by contrast, equivocal or forthrightly critical of ASIO (which fell within the Attorney-General’s portfolio), of ASIS (which came under Foreign Affairs) and, as observed in chapter 12, contributed to the severe constraints on the Office of National Assessments (which came under the Prime Minister). As Toohey and Pinwill themselves recorded, he had tried to close down ASIS in the 1950s and would try again in the late 1970s. Toohey and Pinwill wrote that ‘even the flinty Tange emerged white-faced’ from the meeting where Whitlam sacked the head of ASIS.571 In fact, Tange had no recollection of being involved.
It is much more likely that, as recorded by Kelly in 1976, the sacking was effected by Whitlam, his Foreign Minister (Don Willesee) and their respective departmental secretaries (John Menadue and Alan Renouf).572 In any event, Tange’s longstanding scepticism of the value of ASIS in general, and its involvement in covert operations in particular, made it unlikely that he held any grudge against Whitlam on this score. Australia’s principal official link with MI6 was the Director-General of ASIS (which had been formed as virtually the Australian branch of MI6), not the Secretary or any other officer in Defence. In November 1975 Shackley did not convey his ‘deep anxiety’ over the Pine Gap revelations to Tange, but directly to ASIO.573 By repeated statements like these, Toohey, Pinwill and Pilger encouraged damaging inferences to be drawn about Tange, but actually presented a distorted picture of the man and his place in the system. Furthermore, this picture, gaining credibility by repetition, affected judgments on Tange’s role in the third major crisis of the Spring of 1975.
Balibo 1975
During 1974 and 1975, tensions grew to a crisis in a part of what Tange liked to call Australia’s ‘archipelagic environment’. In April 1974 Portugal’s authoritarian, ultra-conservative regime was overthrown by a left-wing military junta. The old regime had strenuously resisted the post-1945 tide of anti-colonialism, clinging hard to the colonies that Portugal had ruled, with few concessions to liberalism or enlightenment, for centuries. The new rulers in Lisbon, after initial caution, swung to the opposite extreme, seeking to discard these colonies with indecent haste, disregarding complaints that they were ill-prepared for independence. Indonesia’s anti-communist government, headed by the former general Soeharto, feared that the former colony of East Timor, with which it shared a land border, might be taken over by a left-wing or pro-communist administration. Comparisons with Fidel Castro’s Cuba were commonly voiced. After months of political and military manoeuvring, the Indonesians intervened covertly in East Timor in October 1975 before openly invading in December and subsequently claiming it as Indonesia’s twenty-seventh province. At the time, most Australians gave much more attention to the domestic crisis leading to the dismissal of the Whitlam government. Not until 1999, when a reversal of Australian policy helped to precipitate the crisis that led to East Timor’s independence from Indonesia, did Australians fully debate the events of late 1975. During the intervening quarter-century the issue of East Timor’s fate was kept alive by a relatively small group of activists. Sympathetic media coverage to their cause was aided by recurring controversies over the deaths of five Australia-based journalists killed in Balibo early on 16 October 1975, during the first hours of Indonesia’s covert invasion.574·
Tange’s involvement with policy towards Portuguese Timor had begun in the early 1960s, when he was Secretary of External Affairs. Amid signs that Indonesian President Sukarno, who had just gained control of West New Guinea, might be harbouring ambitions towards East Timor, the Portuguese government headed by Dr Antonio Salazar sought Australia’s support in debates in the United Nations. Tange’s advice to Barwick and Menzies was robustly critical of Portugal’s unwillingness to prepare their colony in Timor for self-government and independence. Tange thus contributed to the firmness with which Menzies, usually conservative on colonial issues, supported the principle of self-determination in his correspondence with Salazar.
In typical fashion Tange established a working party, drawn from relevant areas of External Affairs. He noted that Portugal would do nothing for Timor; that the United States would not support this piece of European colonialism; that the Indonesians were likely to seek the territory and, if they were successful by force, that would be contrary to Australian interests; and that the United States and the United Kingdom were looking to Australia to take the lead in resolving the matter. One recommendation from the working party, whose members included Gordon Jockel, was that Australian public opinion should be prepared so that any Indonesian action that might eventuate should be seen as more than mere expansionism.575 This crisis was overtaken by Indonesia’s ‘Confrontation’ of Malaysia. As recorded in chapter 7, Tange, Jockel and their department, led by Barwick as minister, successfully argued for a policy that stood firmly against Indonesian ambitions, while exercising the maximum of restraint so as not to excessively antagonise Australia’s populous and potentially powerful neighbour.
When the fate of East Timor again surfaced as a major issue a decade later, in 1974–75, Jockel had returned from serving as Australian Ambassador to Indonesia and joined Defence as Director of the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO), exchanging places with another former colleague in External Affairs, Robert Furlonger. Jockel’s appointment to JIO had its critics, including some in the media and officers of ASIO who knew that, following the end of his first marriage, he was living with an Indonesian woman (who later became his second wife). He was also accused of being too close to Peter Hastings and other journalists. Tange, now Secretary of Defence, staunchly defended Jockel’s appointment against the critics. At the same time, he also had Bill Pritchett in his department, successively holding various senior positions but essentially as the department’s principal adviser on strategic policy.
In 1974 and 1975 ministers and senior officials conducted a vigorous and sustained debate over the East Timor issue. An ambiguous view emerged; that the best result for Australia would be for East Timor to be part of Indonesia, by means that would render this outcome acceptable to the East Timorese. The inherent contradiction between the two halves of this goal was never resolved and the relative weight to be given to one side or the other was contested at length. The debate was primarily conducted by the Prime Minister, Whitlam, the Foreign Minister, Don Willesee, and officials in their respective departments, with the dividing lines cutting across departmental divisions. Tange appears to have minimised the role of the Defence Department in this debate.
In August 1974 Pritchett put forward the argument that, if a freely accepted integration into Indonesia was not possible, a self-governing East Timor, with certain guarantees to protect Indonesia’s security interests, would be a good outcome. Foreign Affairs disagreed, arguing that this underestimated the importance to Australia of good defence relations with Indonesia.576 In February 1975 Pritchett proposed that Australia should encourage Portugal, Indonesia and East Timor to work towards an independent East Timor with a ‘treaty relationship’ with Indonesia.577 Much later, in a document that was subsequently leaked, he again put forward the idea that, while an accepted integration with Indonesia was the best outcome from Australia’s perspective, an independent East Timor could still be an acceptable result.578
During this period of intense debate, other views were also being expressed by senior Defence officers. Jockel, for example, urged that the terms of a proposed letter from Whitlam to President Soeharto in February 1975 be toned down, to soften the terms in which Indonesia was advised that integration must be achieved by acceptable (that is, non-violent) means.579
Amid these contrasting views, Tange maintained an unusual degree of distance from the issue. He was consistently firm with the Portuguese, telling them that their interests would best be served by preparing Timor for self-government and independence.580 But he was less clear in his attitude towards Indonesia itself. During talks in Jakarta in December 1974, Tange warned two senior generals that the use of force by Indonesia would prejudice their defence relationship with Australia. But when General Benny Moerdani said, in a ‘tough and unqualified’ manner, that ‘Indonesia intended to acquire control’, Tange apparently did not pursue the matter.581 He did not prevent Pritchett from intervening in Australia’s interdepartmental debate, but neither did he press Pritchett’s view as a Defence position against the contrary views espoused in Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister and Cabinet. Nor did he adopt and promote the approach taken by the successive ambassadors in Jakarta, Jockel, Furlonger and Richard Woolcott. Tange’s own recollection and the surviving evidence suggest that he took an uncharacteristically restrained view. He had recruited Pritchett from Foreign Affairs precisely to boost Defence’s capacity to contribute to such debates on strategy, but he also greatly respected Jockel’s expertise and views on relations with Indonesia. Moreover, he could see that this was a matter being driven personally by Whitlam, with strong (but not unanimous) support from officials in both Whitlam’s and Willesee’s departments. In all the circumstances, Tange seems to have decided that this was a matter that Defence should leave to the Prime Minister and the relevant officials, especially those in Foreign Affairs.
Much later the argument was made that the Australian government’s attitude towards the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in October 1975 was fatally compromised when officials in the Jakarta embassy accepted secret forewarning from senior Indonesians, but this criticism was always directed at Foreign Affairs rather than Defence. In 2000 Desmond Ball and Hamish McDonald alleged that senior ministers and officials, including Tange, suppressed an Indonesian message, intercepted by the Defence Signals Directorate, that should have given warning of the danger to the five journalists.582 In 2002 an inquiry into this allegation by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, William Blick, found that no such message was ever intercepted, thus exculpating Tange and all others supposedly involved.583
Several accounts of this episode mention that, at an early stage of the Indonesian covert invasion, Jockel took to Morrison the first intelligence intercept that indicated that the five journalists had been killed. On the evening of the same day Tange gave Morrison an intelligence analysis of the information available. He urged, with his customary emphasis, that this knowledge be kept secret. This is entirely consistent with Tange’s views and never denied by him. He made no secret of his high regard for, and the need to protect, DSD’s capabilities. By the time this message was received, however, the newsmen were already dead, so there can be no suggestion that his actions prevented their extraction from the danger zone. Indeed, while several unchallenged accounts had said that Jockel and Tange conveyed this information to Morrison on 16 October, the Blick inquiry found that it was in fact the 17th, and therefore more than 24 hours—in Tange’s case more than 36 hours—after the journalists had been killed.584
Ball and McDonald further referred to an episode that, they claimed:
has gone down in the folklore of the Australian intelligence community. Sir Arthur Tange made a very rare visit to Building L and addressed a gathering in the conference room on the 6th floor of selected JIO personnel who had handled Timor material. He told them that, although he understood that people could be very upset by the killings, it was imperative that they did not become emotional. The critical point was to preserve the integrity of the signals intelligence source—which was by then providing the only detailed intelligence about the Indonesian operations in East Timor. Jockel has since described this as a ‘morale-booster’. Another who was in the audience likened it to a ship’s captain ‘bringing out the cat o’ nine tails’ in a situation in JIO that was ‘almost a mutiny’.585
