ARTICLE – SUBMITTED TO FAIRFAX by James Wheeldon 20 June 2011 -------------------------------------- Newly declassified ASIO archives raise intriguing and disturbing questions about the conduct of the spy agency's Director General, Sir Charles Spry, during a peculiar episode in the 1960s. The files suggest Spry gave Prime Minister John Gorton misleading advice in support of an absurd theory that my father, the late Senator John Wheeldon, was a KGB agent. It is not news that Spry sought to foment suspicion of my father, who was an ALP senator from 1965 until 1981. Gorton himself liked to tell the story of how, in 1968, Spry had lobbied him to deny my father’s American fiancée (my mother) entry to Australia: Spry had a half-baked notion that she had shared top secret military plans with her father, a member of the Communist Party, USA. Gorton would have none of it. He knew my father well. They were friends, and Gorton trusted him, despite their political differences. He gave Spry a dressing-down, using unprintable language: Gorton’s biographer, Ian Hancock, euphemistically recounts that the prime minister “brusquely dismissed both Spry and his file”. My mother, now Judith Wheeldon, was granted her visa. (In 2001, she became an Australian citizen and, in 2006, she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to education.) The newly released ASIO materials reveal that this was not the first time Spry had launched a futile effort to smear my father. In 1967, a young Frenchwoman, Cecile Arnaud, came to Canberra to work in the French embassy – not as a diplomat, but as an assistant employee in the cinema, radio and TV section. She met my father, who was separated from his first wife. She eventually came to ASIO’s attention when she suffered an emotional breakdown, apparently following an affair with a suspected KGB officer at the Soviet embassy. ASIO brought the distressed woman in for interrogation. There is no public record of what she actually said, but the files suggest she admitted to amorous relationships with my father, a French diplomat and the suspected KGB man. Shortly after being interrogated, she was fired by the French embassy and flew to England, where she checked into a psychiatric hospital. Then, in early 1968, Spry gave Gorton his version of what Arnaud had said under interrogation. Spry’s feverish conclusion was that Ms Arnaud was "probably" working for the KGB and that my father “may be a recruited agent”. If Spry had any solid evidence for this, the files don't show what it was: there is no evidence of anyone spying, or trying to spy, or even talking about spying. Spry did flag, however, Ms Arnaud's claim that my father discussed French politics with her, and "often turned the conversation" to “Marxist literature", but that is as strong as it gets. Spry’s ludicrous theory flopped. There was no follow up. My father was never even asked to respond to the accusations, and nor, it seems, was Ms Arnaud. It is disturbing that Spry would make such grave accusations against a member of Parliament on the basis of such flimsy evidence. Also troubling is a “top secret” June 1974 ASIO minute paper, addressed to the Deputy Director-General of ASIO. The minute reviews the Arnaud file and concludes that, “in retrospect”, there are “considerable doubts” about Ms Arnaud’s truthfulness that are not reflected in the file prepared under Spry’s supervision, but that only emerged later, through discussions with the case officers. In other words, Spry briefed the prime minister on a flawed and misleading file. Spry was at least careless with the facts, and he was certainly reckless in the conclusions he drew. His conduct strikes me as, at best, grossly unprofessional. But why was Spry so obsessed with John Wheeldon? In large part, no doubt, because my father was a zealous opponent of the Vietnam war who used the Senate floor for diatribes against Australian foreign policy that were eloquent and erudite, but often bitterly sarcastic. The Hope royal commission would later show that ASIO under Spry drew little distinction between critics of the war and disloyal communists. Also, my father had close friendships with an astonishing range of world political figures, including many on the far left, which gave an opening to practitioners of guilt by association. But John Wheeldon’s political views could not be discerned from the company he kept. He was one of the earliest and most determined critics of the apartheid regime, yet he had very good friends within the South African government. He was as fierce and outspoken a critic of the Soviet Union as anyone in the Australian parliament, yet he had cordial relationships with Soviet diplomats. He was a good friend of both B.A. Santamaria and Harry Bridges. The ASIO files from the 1960s do include a small number of anonymous, hearsay claims that John Wheeldon was a “communist”, but the best actual evidence of his involvement in communist activities is a single visit to a communist party bookstore in 1960, and a cup of tea with two Australian communists in King’s Hall of Parliament House in 1972. Fortunately, ASIO’s imprecations against my father - which ceased once Spry left office - were not credited by those who knew him. When he died in 2006, politicians from all sides spoke of my father's intellectual honesty and his commitment to democracy. No one who knew my father has suggested he was a communist, or disloyal. John Wheeldon’s reputation is secure, but it seems there is still much to learn about Sir Charles Spry. James Wheeldon is a lawyer. .