natural death without ever having been apprehended by British authorities. The crowning
irony is that Philby's old pal Lord Victor, Wright, and the obsessive Angleton were all in
a strange united front to villify Wilson for his links to Soviet intelligence, which were of
course massive but which had been well known all along.
The CIA's specific contributions to the destabilization of Wilson included the agency's
sponsorship of a book written by a Czech defector named Josef Frolik. This tome accused
John Stonehouse, the Postmaster General in Wilson's cabinet, of being an east bloc agent.
Stonehouse later attempted to 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 undertook activities 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 with Thatcher 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 Gap electronic 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 Prime
Minister, 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
- Letelier along with Ronnie Moffitt of the Washington Institute for Policy Studies