The cloud of American involvement in the events of November 1975 is unlikely to ever clear. Especially while US presidential libraries continue to block access to critical documents that might shed light on the shenanigans.

A repost from 12 November 2025

Consider how Australia was seen in Washington in 1975.

When US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and his senior advisers first discussed the Australian political crisis in early July 1975, Kissinger seemed more interested in the fact that a “good-looking woman” — he was referring to Junie Morosi, Jim Cairns’ principal private secretary — had been “thrown into it”. But the firing of Jim Cairns and the “financial skulduggery” involved in the loans affair played second fiddle to who might replace Gough Whitlam if an election were held.

Kissinger could not recall whether he had ever met Opposition leader Malcolm Fraser, but he had even more difficulty remembering the identity of the “last conservative prime minister” in Australia.

Nor could his advisers, until one of them suddenly recalled: it was “the guy with the wife – McMahon”. If that underlined what was really remembered about William McMahon’s time in office — Sonia McMahon’s eye-catching dress at a White House state dinner in 1971 — his successor as Liberal leader, Billy Snedden, was referred to in millinery terms: “Stetson”.

Yet Fraser and shadow foreign minister Andrew Peacock passed Kissinger’s test: the former described as ideologically “way over to the right side”, “smart” and “well disposed”; while the latter had “done a lot of travelling” and was “very vigorous”. Such was the American checklist of sound Cold War values. Kissinger’s final........

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