Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New – a shoddy Murdochian attempt to deny history

Written by: Nick G. on 13 November 2025

It really could only have been done by a seasoned Murdoch reporter.

Troy Bramston has been a senior writer and columnist with the Australian since 2011.

He has written political biographies before: Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny; Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics; and Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader.

His new book on Whitlam is a very lengthy 720 pages, of which a massive TWO (!) are devoted to the CIA’s role in the constitutional coup that saw a British representative sack an elected Australian Prime Minister.

Or not. Because the index entry for pages 553-4 reads “CIA – fake narrative of involvement in Gough’s dismissal”.

And what do we find on those two pages?

They read like something that Rowan Dean might say on Sky News After Dark. 

For example, Bramston takes issue with Richard Butler’s recollection of a discussion between Whitlam and US President Jimmy Carter’s Assistant Secretary of State for Asia and the South Pacific, Warren Christopher on Wednesday, 27th July, 1977.

Whitlam used Butler’s notes of the talks to write about the meeting, unannounced and held at Sydney Airport where Christopher had stopped enroute to New Zealand for an ANZUS meeting, in his 1984 memoirs.

Whitlam wrote that Christopher said he had “made a special detour in his itinerary for the purpose of speaking to me. The President had asked him to say: That he understood the Democratic Party and the ALP were fraternal parties. That he respected deeply the democratic rights of allies of the U.S."

Christopher continued quoting the President, saying that “The US Administration would never again interfere in the domestic political processes in Australia’; and ‘that he would work with whatever government the people of Australia elected."

Bramston queries Butler’s memory of the event, and goes on to say: “No corroborating evidence has ever been presented to justify Butler’s claim.  If you remove a single word  - ‘again’ - it is a straightforward policy statement of the Carter White House. In the post-Watergate era, and with evidence having emerged of the CIA interfering in the politics of other countries, it was a clear message from a new administration that the United States would restore integrity to its foreign relations. This was the message Christopher gave other nations.”

It may suit Bramston to remove the word “again”, but it begs the question of why Christopher would request a special and unscheduled discussion with Whitlam if his purpose was merely to pass on a general statement of US policy, not to the Australian Prime Minister, but to the Leader of the Opposition. Does Bramston have “corroborating evidence” that Christopher’s intention was anything other than to pass on a personal apology from Carter to Whitlam for the US role in his sacking, and to reassure Whitlam that it would never happen again?

Throwing around accusations of “fake news” is a shoddy Murdochian slur that hardly makes the reading of the other 718 pages of the book worth its cost.

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