The CIA's specific contributions to the destabilization of Wilson included the agency's sponsorship
of a book wPostmaster General in Wilson's cabinet, of being an east bloc agent. Stonehouse later attempted toritten by a Czech defector named Josef Frolik. This tome accused John Stonehouse, the
go underground in Australia after feigning suicide. Stonehouse was later found and brought back,
although he still asserts his innocence of espionage charges. This affair, complete with a fugitive
cabinet minister, was a colossal embarrassment to Wilson.
Wilson, as indicated, was convinced that he was being bugged, possibly with CIA participation.
According to Chapman Pincher, "whether this surveillance extended to independent bugging by the
CIA and NSA is unknown, although the CIA has denied it. Under the Anglo-American agreeement
dating back to 1947, there had long been an exchange of suveillance information, including cable
and letter intercepts, but it is not impossible that the Americans agencies occasionally undertookactivities denied, by writ or circumstances, to the British." [fn 44] In other words, it was easier for (^)
the Anglo-American establishment to have the CIA handle the bugging in London, since this was
not illegal under the CIA's regulations. Was there reciprocity in this respect? Part of the
destabilization of Wilson was run through Private Eye magazine. Another likely participant was
Tory activist Airey Neave, who had wanted to replace former Prime Minister Edward Heath withThatcher when Heath fell in 1974. Ultimately, Thatcher would be the leading beneficiary of the fall (^)
of Wilson.
Another government destabilized through the CIA during the same period was the Gough Whitlam
Labor Party government of Australia. Whitlam threatened to deprive the CIA of its key Pine Gapelectronic listening post after he discovered that the Austrialian intelligence services had been
working with the CIA to bring down Allende. On November 8, 1975, with Bush's likely advent at
the CIA already public knowledge, Theodore Shackley despatched a telegram to the Australian
intelligence services threatening to cut off all exchanges, hanging the Australians out to dry. On
November 11, in a highly unusual action, the Royal Governor General dismissed Whitlam as PrimeMinister, bringing Malcolm Frase and the conservatives back to power. When Whitlam's Labor
Party majority in the lower housr responded by voting no confidence in Fraser, the Royal Governor
General dissolved the lower house and called a election. It was a coup ordered directly by Queen
Elizabeth II, and carried out with Bush's help. In the background of this affair is the Nugan Hand
bank, an Anglo-American intelligence proprietary involved with drug money laundering.
One of the most spectacular scandals of Bush's tenure at the CIA was the assassination in
Washington DC of the Chilean exile leader Orlando Letelier, who had been a minister in the
government of Salvador Allende Gossens, who had been overthrown by Kissinger in 1973. Letelier
along with Ronni1976 in the explosion of a car bomb on Sheridan Circle, in the heart of Washington's Embassy Rowe Moffitt of the Washington Institute for Policy Studies died on September 21, (^)
district along Massachusetts Avenue.
Relatively few cases of international terrorism have taken place on the territory of the United States,
but this was certainly an exception. Bush's activities before and after this assassination amount toone of the most bizarre episodes in the annals of secret intelligence operations.
One of the assassins of Letelier was unquestionably one Michael Vernon Townley, a CIA agent
who had worked for David Atlee Philips in Chile. After the overthrow of Allende and the advent of
the Pinochet ditatorship, David Atlee Philips had become the director of the CIA's westernhemipshere operations. In 1975 Phillips founded AFIO, the Association of Former Intelligence (^)
Officers, which has supported George Bush in every campaign he has ever waged since that time.
Townley, as a "former" CIA agent, had gone to work for the DINA, the Chilean secret police, and
had been assigned by the DINA as its liaison man with a group called CORU. CORU was the
acronym for Command of United Revolutionary Organizations, a united front of four anti-Castro