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   Back to Note Books..                  The CIA and the dismissal of an Australian Government James Jesus Angleton   I n May 1977 I received a call to come to the ABC ( Australian Broadcasting Corporation ) office in New York for an assignment with Australia’s top television documentary program, Four Corners .  Ray Martin  landed an interview with James Jesus Angleton who had been head of counter intelligence at the CIA for twenty-five years, . Angleton was ready to spill the beans on the CIA’s influence in sacking Australia’s Labor Party Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. I’d heard speculation about CIA involvement in Australian politics but here it was from the horse’s mouth, from the man who knew the back-story. Gough Whitlam was a charismatic, ambitious and intelligent politician, He was loved by the left and hated by the right. After twenty-three years of cons...

Back to Note Books... © Andrew Leslie Phillips 011488 "When you're driving a yellow cab through New York City's streets at night,  sometimes you see your life in the bright lights and shadows - those you loved and those who died reflected in the streets. "Driving in New York at night behind the wheel of a yellow cab with your cheap old radio on the dash and cassettes rattling round -  Ginsburg and Gandhi - and a blue and white Greek take-out coffee cup and the New York Post." W hen you 've driven a cab through the good and the bad then you've seen life anew, the false and the true. You’ve lined up for the shape with your mates, white, black, yellow and brown, dollar bills in their hands: “here’s your trip sheet and keys. The cabs over there by the broken down fence, the one with the dents. Please take care”.

  Flying into Binghamton’s Johnson City airport and the trees are bare and gray and the green pines sprinkled with snow. It’s still winter here in the northeast, early spring.  Stanley’s leaning against the wall - one knee up - leaning back with his hand on grandson Nathaniel’s shoulder and he points and Nathaniel breaks out in a toothy smile like Sponge Bob.  He’s chirping like a happy bird as we slip past the sliding door outside into the cold.  The car smelt bad from cigarette smoke. I’d forgotten. I’ve been away in Asheville, North Carolina for a week. They hardly smoke at all down there. I saw one woman - the same woman twice - huddling in a corner outside the Kress Emporium on Patton Avenue, smoking. The building is full of individual stalls of high quality craft and art. It costs $400 a month to rent a hundred square feet of floor and wall space. There was a waiting list.The owners of the space take a percentage. It was crowded and the tourist season...

Advertising was not my first career choice. I’d wanted to be a traveler and a journalist. But I couldn’t get a job in journalism because I didn’t have a university degree. Advertising was my next choice - it was creative and better paid than journalism but I never got to the “better paid part”.  I spent five years in the ad business learning copywriting and media and printing and design and finally I was an account executive selling the American dream that had become Australia’s. I felt a dark cloud descending. And as it thickened around me I struggled to find a way to escape. I thought about inland Australia. Mining companies paid well and life was rough in the desert. I considered joining the army, something to initiate and toughen and help me escape the malaise I felt. But the war in Vietnam was in the headlines every day and Australians were dying in a distant land, that made no sense and I quickly dropped the idea. And then, one day an old school frie...