WELCOME to the second edition of Catcher, a new investigative eMagazine specializing in true crime, espionage and political intrigues from Australia and around the world. This edition exposes a CIA investigation into three foreign-born Australian women who became intimately entwined with three of the nation’s most powerful men.
Blackwattle Digital Media Sydney, Australia Editor: Peter Butt Associate Editor: Sarah Staveley Advertise in Catcher contact: editor2@catchermagazine.net Web: www.catchermagazine.net/home
Catcher Magazine is published by Blackwattle Digital Media - an imprint of Blackwattle Films. Copyright is reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited without written permission of the publisher. Opinions and views expressed by authors are not necessarily those of the publisher. 2
MAGAZINE ISSUE 2
CONTENTS 4 NEWS What’s on & Who done it.
8 THE HONEY POT CONSPIRACY Three attractive women close to three of Australia’s most powerful men - were they spies? The CIA thought so.
20 TATTOOED LADY MYSTERY What happened to Madame Wallona Aritta?
22 DANGEROUS MISSION A young Scotsman ventures into Berlin on the eve of war.
32 THE WATCHER The prime suspect in the Bogle Chandler Case reveals his astonishing secret.
40 TRUE BLUE OR SIMPLY RED Why the FBI investigated one of the world’s funniest men.
46 GHOST CITY HIROSHIMA Haunting images captured by Australians, who visited Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
54 STREET DREAMS Street art revolution.
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NEWS
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MEDIA LAW Welcome to the brave new world of media suppression. As of October 2014, three new national security laws passed by the Australian parliament prevent the disclosure of intelligence operations by whistleblowers and journalists. Moreover, anyone who publishes material, which any fair-minded person would consider of public interest, will be subject to a possible prison term of up to ten years. Australian history is littered with stories where our security services have been found wanting. In the 1970s and 80s, two Royal Commissions found that ASIO had regularly overreached its powers, had acted criminally and had become highly politicised. Anyone who thinks that this couldn’t happen in the 21st Century need only reflect on the bungled Haneef Case and the false WMD intelligence used to support the second invasion of Iraq. Quoted in the Guardian Australia newspaper, Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation said of the new laws: “All three of these dangerous and draconian bills strike at the heart of press freedom and free speech. There are two qualities, above all else, that make journalism so vital for free society: the ability to protect confidential sources at all costs, and the right to publish, without fear or favour, information in the public interest.” “These bills eviscerate Australian journalists’ ability to do each of these. Censorship and mass surveillance have no place in enlightened democracies. If these bills pass, Australia will set a terrible example for the rest of the world; they’re handing their government a turn-key for control that will make a lot of authoritarian governments envious.” In this edition, Catcher Magazine features a dark, previously untold story of what can happen when our spies turn rogue.
FILM For more than six decades the name of Rosaleen Norton has been synonymous in Australian culture with scandal and the occult. As one of the most reviled women in 1950’s Australian society, Rosaleen’s enduring reputation as an enemy of conservative religious values and middle class mores persists to this day. Norton was particularly despised for her supposed role in corrupting the celebrity conductor Sir Eugene Goossens. 4
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A new documentary in development, ‘The Witch of Kings Cross’ by writer/director Sonia Bible will paint a different, more honest picture of the artist and rebel, who heroically railed against the restrictions of conservative 1950’s society. Sonia is currently interviewing on camera people who knew Rosaleen Norton or fell under her creative spell. Sonia Bible is an award-winning director whose career achievements include Recipe for Murder, a documentary that won the Silver Hugo Award in 2011 at the Chicago International Film Festival. Sonia also wrote and directed Muriel Matters, which was nominated for Best Documentary Award in 2014 by the South Australian Screen Academy.
BOOKS Investigative journalist Frank Walker's new book Maralinga, published by Hatchett, is the must-read true story of the abuse of our servicemen, of scientists treating the Australian population as lab rats and politicians sacrificing their own people in the pursuit of power. With the blessing of the Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, the British government exploded twelve atomic bombs on Australian soil. RAAF pilots were ordered to fly into nuclear mushroom clouds, soldiers were told to walk into radioactive ground zero and sailors retrieved highly contaminated debris - none of them aware of the dangers they faced. But the betrayal didn't end with these servicemen. Secret monitoring stations were set up around the country to measure radiation levels and a clandestine decadeslong project stole bones from dead babies to see how much fallout had contaminated their bodies - their grieving parents were never told. This chilling expose drawn from extensive research and interviews with surviving veterans reveals the betrayal of our troops and our country.
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THE HONEY POT CONSPIRACY
EXCLUSIVE The Australian parliament has just voted in sweeping new laws, which prevent the media reporting on intelligence operations. Journalists and whistleblowers can now be imprisoned for up to ten years for attempting to keep our spies accountable. As we head blindly into a new era of diminished press freedom and extreme surveillance, Catcher presents a previously untold story about what can happen when a spy agency goes feral… ..........................................................................................................................................................................
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HONEY POT, INTELLIGENCE LINGO FOR RECRUITMENT OF A SPY THROUGH SEX.
n late 1975 respected Australian judge Robert Hope travelled to the United States for a meeting with the CIA. As the head of a Royal Commission into Australia’s intelligence services, Justice Hope was keen to discuss the CIA’s relationship with Australia’s domestic spy agency, ASIO. It was Washington’s concerns about a network of alleged spies in Australia which led to ASIO’s formation in the late 1940s. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, the CIA had worked closely with ASIO and trusted the agency’s long-standing director, Sir Charles Spry. Hope’s Royal Commission was now investigating what had become a chronically dysfunctional and highly politicised ASIO under both Spry and its then chief, Peter Barbour. During the meeting, CIA Director William Colby raised an area of major concern for his agency. Three foreign-born Australian women, he alleged, had weaved their way into the beds of three of Australia’s most powerful men - the Attorney General, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Director General of ASIO, Peter Barbour. All three women had worked for the same African airline and no proof of identity existed for any of them. The allegations sounded like a lurid ‘honey pot’ contrivance from a Cold War spy novel, but they were coming from the chief of the world’s most powerful intelligence agency.
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Honey Pot Conspiracy
T
he first woman on Colby’s list was Ingrid Gee, born Ingrid Grzonkowski in 1940 in the German town of Allenstein, which became part of Poland after World War II. Her father was a welder from Gdansk; her mother was a kindergarten teacher from Cologne. Ingrid’s family came to Australia in 1950 as refugees and settled in the sleepy, semi-rural township of Mulgoa, west of Sydney. Ingrid blossomed into an intelligent young woman endowed with Audrey Hepburn-like-beauty. At 19, she was crowned ‘Miss Western Suburbs’. Modelling and television offers followed, including a stint as a hostess on Dialling for Dollars. In 1967, Ingrid’s life dramatically changed course when she met barrister turned Labor senator, Lionel Murphy. They married in Hong Kong two years later. On their arrival back in Sydney, Ingrid told reporters, ‘I’ve always been interested in politics, but more since I met Lionel.’ On winning government in December 1972, new Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam appointed Murphy as Attorney General – the nation’s highest law officer and overseer of ASIO. Three months later, Murphy led a posse of Commonwealth Police in an inflammatory raid on ASIO’s head office in Melbourne. Murphy suspected ASIO of withholding information from the government about right-wing Croatian nationalists in Australia, who were blowing up Yugoslav businesses across Australia. Furious ASIO officers claimed Murphy also went rummaging through filing cabinets in search of proof that ASIO was spying on him. Two former Deputy Directors of ASIO, Jack Behm and Keith Turbayne, admitted decades later that a small group of hardliners had indeed
Ingrid and Lionel Murphy
investigated Murphy, suspecting him of being a KGB agent. In his definitive expose of the early years of ASIO, Australia’s Spies And Their Secrets, David McKnight revealed that the agency had also probed into the backgrounds of both Ingrid Gee and Murphy’s first wife, Nina, who was born in the USSR to White Russian parents: ‘The fact that both Murphy's wives were born in the Ea st fa scinated the hardline ASIO officers. By this time, Western intelligence discovered that a new kind of Soviet agent was being placed in the West. These agents were not recruited from highly placed individuals in the host country, but were Soviet or East European intelligence officers who inserted themselves in the West with a false identity. They looked for oppor tunities to work or live close to an intelligence target, be it a defence laboratory or an individual. Another possibility was that Nina Murphy might be blackmailed by the KGB to carry out intelligence activities. Such were the theories bandied about to explain Murphy and his wives.’
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Honey Pot Conspiracy
With the help of British Intelligence, ASIO investigated the Murphys’ connections in Hong Kong. Other than discovering that the British High Commissioner attended their wedding, the probe came up with nothing. But there was one intriguing detail about Ingrid Murphy’s recent past that ASIO did uncover: she had worked as a public relations consultant for Ethiopian Airlines, as had Junie Morosi, the second woman on Colby’s list.
J
unie Morosi was born in Shanghai to a n It a l i a n - C h i n e s e f a t h e r a n d a Portuguese-Chinese mother. The family later moved to Manila where it endured life under Japanese occupation. While still a teenager, Junie married a Filipino and had three sons. The marriage ended in divorce and she supported her young family by working as a journalist and in advertising. In 1962, Morosi moved to Sydney where she met and later married David Ditchburn, the British-born regional manager of Ethiopian Airlines. Morosi went to work for the airline, where she befriended Ingrid Murphy. The Murphy connection ultimately led to a job in 1974 with former Labor government minister, Al Grassby, the Federal Commissioner for Community Relations. That same year she met Dr. Jim Cairns, the charismatic, intellectual Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister. When Cairns announced that Junie Morosi w a s j o i n i n g h i s s t a f f, t h e ‘ b e a u t i f u l ’ a n d ‘glamorous’ Morosi found herself thrust onto the f r o n t p a g e s o f n e w s p a p e r s a n d w o m e n’s magazines. But within days, the Opposition Liberal Party went on the attack, claiming that Mo r o s i w a s a f a i l e d b u s i n e s s w o m a n a n d
therefore unsuitable for the position. By week’s end, newspapers were alleging that Morosi and Cairns were having an affair. Cairns publicly defended Morosi as a woman of ‘integrity, honour and competence.’ But then came further allegations that she had also been sleeping with Lionel Murphy and was a ‘foreign plant’. Morosi called a news conference in Sydney to defend herself. Women’s Weekly columnist Ron Saw penned a frivolous portrait of Morosi as she arrived to find fifty salivating journalists eager to peruse the ‘femme fatal’ in the flesh: ‘Now she was walking in through the clustered cameras and lights and tumbled chairs and scrambled reporters; a tall (I’d guess 5ft 8in) woman, wearing unremarkable flounced dress and not, thank God, the trousers in which she’d been photographed before.’ A female reporter for the Weekly pursued an equally superficial tack: ‘Junie Morosi is what most Australians would describe as a "good-looker". At 41, she has the sort of slim, girlish figure most women wish they had even when they were girls: slim with the curves in the right places. Her complex multiracial ancestry shows in her smooth, slightly olive skin and high cheekbones. The eyes, dark brown, are very large, very expressive. Miss Morosi faced a packed room of Press and TV reporters - most of them male - with a cool and a charm that demanded civility.’ When the cacophony of camera flashes finally died away, Morosi confronted the allegations against her head on: ‘If I had been a white Anglo-Saxon male there would have been no story at all. One day, I was 11
Junie Morosi (c) Rennie Ellis Photographic Collection
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Honey Pot Conspiracy the most sinister, deadly enemy of Australia - a member of the KGB, the Chinese mafia, you name it.’ Even Britain’s Evening Times reported on the growing scandal: ‘The dark, attractive Miss Morosi, answering questions at a Sydney news conference said: “There is certainl y no tr uth in the sexual innuendoes. As a professional woman I find them hurtful as well as damaging.”’ Morosi was too green to realise that she was merely a patsy. The real target was Jim Cairns, the socialist intellectual, who was a heartbeat Dr Jim Cairns away from becoming Prime Minister and whom t h e c o n s e r v a t i v e s b e l i e v e d w a s a c l o s e t Police officers swooped as Felton exited the home. communist. In Felton’s possession they found a telephone ASIO had long held suspicions about Cairns, but the agency was prohibited from spying on index and a document, which had originated politicians. That didn’t prevent officers from from Dr Cairns’ office. Felton admitted he was filing away Cairns’ ‘friendly’ associations with looking for material to embarrass Junie Morosi, S o v i e t d i p l o m a t s a n d j o u r n a l i s t s o r h i s Jim Cairns and the Whitlam government. http://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l Stating the obvious, the hapless thief muttered appearances at anti-Vietnam War rallies. Jim Cairns’ political enemies profited from that there was ‘much more to this politically people from Morosi’s past who emerged with than meets the eye.' The following day, a newspaper suggested axes to grind. An employee who’d worked for her husband’s travel venture alleged that the couple Felton was associated with ‘a newly formed had gained a reputation for not paying bills and p o l i t i c a l g r o u p , w h i c h i n c l u d e d L i b e r a l employees’ wages. When newspapers ignored politicians and leading businessmen.' Bill Wentworth clumsily identified himself as t h e s t o r y, L i b e r a l p a r l i a m e n t a r i a n s B i l l We n t w o r t h a n d Jo h n Ho w a r d , t h e n a one of the political conspirators when he backbencher, used parliamentary privilege to produced a statutory declaration bearing Felton’s name in Parliament. Wentworth’s complaint that make the allegations public. Meanwhile, one of Wentworth’s informers the Attorney-General Lionel Murphy had used decided to dig a little deeper. In January 1975, the Commonwealth Police for political purposes Alan Felton, a former business associate of was greeted by howls of laughter. It was an embarrassing performance, but pure Morosi and Ditchburn, broke into Morosi’s townhouse in the Sydney suburb of Gladesville. Wentworth, who, like American Senator Joseph Following a tipoff, thirteen Commonwealth McCarthy, was known to abuse parliamentary privilege to make unsubstantiated allegations about his political opponents. As ASIO files
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Honey Pot Conspiracy In February 1975, Inside Canberra outlined what it thought was the source of the scuttlebutt about Junie Morosi: ASIO was leaking information about the Morosi affair to the Opposition. Another aspect of the matter wass the persistent questions being asked about the possibility of the US Central Intelligence Agency being involved in any way. In light of what CIA Director Colby was telling Justice Hope, Inside Canberra was on the money.
T
he third foreign-born Australian woman on Colby’s list had also worked for Ethiopian William Wentworth Airlines before taking a secretarial position with testify, Wentworth regularly wrote to the spy ASIO. agency asking for information about his political According to William Colby, the woman was enemies. engaged in a sexual relationship with ASIO’s The unfolding Morosi Affair was closely Director General, Peter Barbour. watched in Washington. The dramatic events at Barbour’s personal indiscretions exposed him http://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l Morosi’s home came in the wake of another to blackmail and broke ASIO’s internal code of politically motivated break-in, the Watergate conduct. As a former ASIO officer put it: scandal, which had six months earlier ‘The clause is written in every ASIO officer’s culminated in the resignation of President individual contract – moral turpitude - and that Richard Nixon and imprisonment of dozens of was defined as “going and having a leg over.”’ people, including senior White House officials. But that was only half the story. The same While the Morosi break-in was not in the former ASIO officer alleges that Barbour, a same league, Washington cabled its diplomats in married man, was having sexual relations with Australia to be careful: ‘All members of mission not one, but two of his secretaries: scrupulously to avoid speculation or comment ‘Well, everybody knew that he had a secretary about this strictly Australian scandal’. in Melbourne, who was part of the social scene, Fortunately for Wentworth and the others and he had another one in Canberra and he used involved, Felton decided not to name his alleged to (sleep with) both of them. He had a suite, and co-conspirators and simply pleaded guilty to the sometimes when I went in early, as I often did, b r e a k- i n . Re m a r k a b l y, n o co n v i c t i o n w a s and you could smell bacon and eggs, and the registered. secretary had the look of a well-f**** woman, if you take my meaning. In my estimation, just
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Honey Pot Conspiracy The CIA’s revelations about the three women involved with Murphy, Cairns and Barbour had to be taken seriously; these men all had access to classified US intelligence and defence information. The CIA officials said that they could find no birth certificates for the women and that their connection with Ethiopian Airlines was suspicious. The previous year, Ethiopia’s military had a b o u t e v e r y d e p a r t m e n t a l h e a d d r o p p e d removed Emperor Haile Selassie from power, Barbour in it, including the overseas intelligence i n s t a l l e d a c o m m u n i s t g o v e r n m e n t a n d service, ASIS. One bloke overseas said he was appointed a colonel to take over the national driving from an airport down to Amsterdam and airline. But linking the careers of three women he was trying to talk to Barbour about some to these events was absurd; at the time they official business and he heard this noise and here were employed, Americans were bankrolling was this secretary giving him a blowjob on the Ethiopian Airlines. back seat.’ Instinctively, Justice Hope realised that ASIO According to the former ASIO officer, within officers were the source of the unsubstantiated months of his appointment as Director allegations. In the course of the Royal General in 1970, Peter Barbour fell foul Commission, he had interviewed dozens of his fellow spies: of ASIO officers and had heard of their ‘If ever a person in the history of hostility toward Peter Barbour and Lionel http://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l intelligence work has taken over from Murphy, who in their minds were to a second in command position to take blame for ASIO’s problems. charge with a greater reser voir of When Justice Hope returned to Australia, goodwill and piddled it away in three he cal led on Prime Minister Gough months, I have yet to discover. Once Barbour Whitlam. Following their meeting, Whitlam got there, morale went through the floor. In asked Barbour to come to his office and then three months he’d ruined his credibility and sacked him. shocked his staff. After the (Murphy) raid in The Sydney Morning Herald reported: 1973, Barbour sent a long telex message to the ‘ Pe te r B a r b o u r, A S I O ’s t h i r d D i r e c to r state offices saying he had written to the Prime General, had been dismissed by PM Whitlam on Minister personally objecting to the Murphy grounds of inefficiency, coloured by a great deal business to show he had a hairy chest. Of course, of unsavoury rumour.’ it had never been sent at all.’ The Age journalist Michelle Grattan implied Prime Minister Whitlam denied receiving any that Barbour’s dismissal was related to his ‘objection’ from Barbour. The incident painted personal behaviour: Australia’s top spy as both a liar and weak and ‘The contract between the Government and led to the resignation of numerous disgusted the Director General lays down conditions ASIO officers. under which he may be disciplined or dismissed,
“THE CLAUSE IS WRITTEN IN EVERY ASIO OFFICER’S INDIVIDUAL CONTACT – MORAL TURPITUDE - AND THAT WAS DEFINED AS “GOING AND HAVING A LEG OVER.”
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Honey Pot Conspiracy
Justice Robert Hope (left) with US Vice President Nelson Rockefeller
e.g. the Barbour contract includes dismissals for ''or anything else'' that was of benefit to the bankr uptcy and conviction for an offence agency.’ involving “moral turpitude”.’ Whitlam made no statement about Barbour’s The Chicago Tribune also reported Barbour’s indiscretions. Instead, he announced that dismissal: Barbour had been appointed as Australia’s new ‘A lthough it has never known revolution, a Consul-General to New York; a somewhat coup d’état or even a foreign invasion, Australia Machiavellian move, considering that America’s has long maintained a large and active counter- spies considered Barbour a security risk. espiona ge ser vice. But last month, Prime Numerous U.S. intelligence officials have since Minister Gough Whitlam gave ASIO its hardest confirmed publicly that the CIA had a long list knock yet by dismissing Peter Barbour, its dour of concerns about the Labor Government, Director General.’ including Gough Whitlam’s demand to ASIO In his memoir, Justice Edward Woodward, not to carry out security checks on his staff, his who took over ASIO in 1976, suggested that criticism of the U.S. bombing of Hanoi and his Barbour’s affair had played a substantial role in antipathy toward U.S. spy bases in Australia. http://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l his downfall: The CIA's chief of Counterintelligence Staff, ‘Mr. Barbour's sacking arose from a lengthy James Angleton, later revealed that following overseas trip. He had taken his “beautiful Murphy’s raid on ASIO, the CIA seriously Eurasian secretary'' with him and, after visiting considered breaking intelligence cooperation overseas security agencies, produced no report with Australia. Instead, it set about undermining the government.
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Honey Pot Conspiracy In mid-1975, Whitlam sacked Jim Cairns over considered an act of treason. But the rogue t h e ‘ l o a n s a f f a i r ’ . C a i r n s c l a i m e d t h a t ASIO officers implicated in the ‘honey pot correspondence, which led to his sacking, was a conspiracy’ were never brought to account. forgery fabricated by the CIA. Veteran CIA Mo r e o v e r, w h i l e t h e y we n t a b o u t t h e i r officer Ralph McGehee told the ABC that this mutinous undermining of the democratically fitted the CIA’s modus operandi: elected Australian government, they played into ‘The CIA’s National Intelligence Daily said, the hands of Soviet intelligence. In his final ‘some of the most incriminating evidence in that Royal Commission report, Justice Hope revealed period against the ministers in the Whitlam that he had found eleven ‘indicators’ of KGB government may have been fabricated.’ This is infiltration of ASIO, which had effectively about as strong as you get them to say so. It is rendered the spy agency itself a national security quite obvious that information was being leaked risk. about ministers Rex O'Connor and Jim The former ASIO officer suggests the Cairns and some of it was being forged, agency should have been disbanded: which is a standard CIA process.’ ‘Reading the findings of the Royal The former ASIO officer believes Commission, it might have been better some of his colleagues put America’s to close ASIO down and start again. interest above those of Australia: Instead of that, the Woodward-Barnet ‘I would say that there were too many team, who took over after Barbour was ASIO officers who were too friendly sacked, gathered the staff together and with CIA officers and would tell them anything. said that Justice Hope had delivered his report It was not in the national interest, put it that and implied that most, if not all, of us had been way. There is no such thing as ‘friends’. We guilty of criminal acts during our career. But a shouldn’t fool ourselves.’ line had been drawn under that. It was a fresh A n u n n a m e dhttp://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l C I A o f f i c e r t o l d D a v i d start. Before us it was chaos!’ Mc K n i g h t t h a t t h e C I A s t a t i o n c h i e f i n In September 2002, Jim Cairns admitted to Canberra simpl y ignored Peter Barbour ’s having had a sexual relationship with Junie briefings and was ‘in communication with the Morosi. But no evidence has ever been tabled to ASIO hardliners’: substantiate the allegations that Morosi, Ingrid ‘On an unofficial level, the CIA was well aware Murphy or Peter Barbour’s secretary were agents of the growing hardline dissatisfaction with of a foreign power. Barbour. They knew that a faction (of ASIO In an ironic twist, nine days before the officers) urged Barbour to resign, knowing full d i s m i s s a l o f t h e W h i t l a m g o v e r n m e n t i n well this would cause a crisis or maybe bring November 1975, U.S. President Gerald Ford down the government.’ sacked CIA Director William Colby. His crime? If any other group in Australia attempted to Colby had admitted to a U.S. Senate committee bring down the Director General of ASIO, their that the CIA had plotted the assassination of actions would be considered subversive and any v a r i o u s f o r e i g n l e a d e r s a n d h a d a c t i v e l y attempt to bring down a government would be participated in the overthrow of governments.
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THE GIRL WITH THE
TITANIC TATTOO
Madame Wallona Aritta, ‘the beautiful human picture gallery,’ appeared in the Wonder Exhibition and Animal Circus in Adelaide in February 1913. Entrepreneur Mr.A.E.Martin discovered Wallona in Cologne, Germany, after ‘ransacking the biggest fairs in Europe for novelty shows.’ Newspapers waxed about the tattooed lady who had bedazzled Paris, London, Berlin and Hamburg. But we know little of her life before or after 1913. Did Wallona return to Germany? If so, did she survive The Great War? Catcher is offering a free subscription to any sleuth able to crack the mystery.
Madame Wallona Aritta, who is a member of the Wonder Show Company, is reported to be the most beautiful and artistically tattooed lady in the world. Certainly a glance at the designs that have been worked into madam's skin bear out the claim. At first sight the many-colored pictures she possesses on her body resemble a close-fitting garment, but a closer inspection reveals the beauty of tattooing. Up to the present, however, Madame has only shown the designs on her arms and shoulders, and has refrained, through a fueling of delicacy, from exposing the work on her lower limbs, which has been embedded on her outer skin by an artistic hand. Yesterday Madame held a private exhibition for ladies, and those who were present expressed genuine admiration at the singular beauty of the tattooing. Daily Herald, 26 February 1913
Miss Wallona Aritta, one of the attractions at the Wonder Exhibition, is a walking art gallery. She is said to be covered from head to heel, not with the crude devices that are usually associated with tattooing, but with the finest examples of the tattooist's art. On her breast is the portrait of a woman in an elaborate frame, and across her back there is a Roman chariot and three horses in full career. Her arms are covered with wonderful floral designs, and her nether limbs are adorned with numerous different devices, including 'the head of a warrior on a background of scarlet, a gaudy butterfly, and a picture of the ill-fated Titanic. The Advertiser, 26 February 1913
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Photograph courtesy of State Library of Victoria, W. G. Alma conjuring collection.
DANGEROUS MISSION
Carl von Ossietzky was the Edward Snowdon of his day. In the early 1930s, he spoke out against the illegalities and brutalities being carried out by the rulers of his own country, Germany. Only days before the Second World War broke out, a twenty-year-old Scotsman was despatched to Berlin on a dangerous mission to lay the groundwork for the escape from Germany of von Ossietzky’s widow, Maud. Sixty years later, Ian Paton, a retired human relations counsellor living in Australia, recalled his nail-biting boy’s own adventure in Stories of a Fortunate Life in War and Peace.
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DANGEROUS MISSION H
ow dangerous can it be to look for someone and give them some money? That was the question confronting me in the hot European summer of 1939. But when, as a student during the summer vacation, I agreed to carry out such an assignment in Berlin I didn’t at first appreciate the risks I was running. There had been a telephone call one evening from a man I had never heard of; Runham Brown. He was, he said, Secretary of War Resisters International and a member of the Society of Friends, or the Quakers, as they are known to most. I was, at that time, a unilateral pacifist, a core position of the Quakers. 'Do you know the name Ossietzky?' Brown had asked. 'Isn’t he the German pacifist and writer who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in a Nazi concentration camp?' I replied. 'He was', Brown corrected me, 'he died in hospital last year from tuberculosis contracted while in the camp. He had refused to flee when Hitler came into power, and in 1933 was arrested as an enemy of the Nazis and sent to Papenburg concentration camp. A man of fifty, he had often been forced to dig drains in deep water. He was transferred to hospital, suffering from advanced tuberculosis. He died last year.' 'The Sorting, as the Norwegian parliament is called, awarded Carl von Ossietzky the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935,' Brown went on: 'It was widely reported in the international press, to the fury of Hitler, who issued a decree in 1937 forbidding Germans to accept any Nobel Prizes. Because of Carl's fame, his widow Maud has been put under house arrest in Berlin and is now being watched by the Gestapo - or Secret Police.' 'We want to find Maud and help her to escape to her daughter in Sweden. I’m inviting you to help us to do this during the next vacation. We will brief you thoroughly. Please think this over and if you agree to help, I would like you to come up to London one day soon for that purpose.' This request took my breath away at first. I said I
would think it over carefully and call him back. I thought of Duncan, my medical student roommate, as someone who might go with me. Within 24 hours we had decided we would agree to go. Brown thought it was an excellent idea to go together and gave us a date to meet in the city. During the briefing in Brown's office in Golders Green, he stressed that there would be risks involved, not so much for us as for Maud, if the police knew she was receiving visitors from overseas. For the success of this part of the operation our search for, and any contact with her must be completely secret. I thought that this kind of thing happened only in spy stories, but we both realised how important
Maud and Carl von Ossietzky
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Dangerous Mission Brown’s instructions were for her safety – indeed for our own. The most recent information about her location was that after some time spent in a mental hospital she was now living in a flat above a friend's bakery in South Berlin. We were given the address, but told not to carry it in writing. Anything we needed to record was to be pinpricked, each letter on different pages of a small bible. The baker's shop was only to be approached after checking out any obvious surveillance and then from a back lane. Our task was to find out her fitness to travel and her willingness to travel a prepared escape route to her daughter in
Sweden with help from friendly individuals. If she was ready, we were to give her money for the journey. Brown had an extra task for us. Jewish refugee friends of his in London had money in a Berlin account. We were to withdraw it on their behalf with a cheque, use some of the money for her travel expenses and bring the remainder back to London. This extra element of the plan nearly proved disastrous. In Brown's armchair, it all sounded quite feasible. I had been in Germany before. I spoke some German and understood rather more; that would help. However, I was warned that in our guise as students
The Paton Family in 1936 with Ian third from the right
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Dangerous Mission on holiday there might be occasions when we should plead ignorance of the language. Two days before we were due to leave, Duncan phoned to say he was suffering a bad attack of flu and the doctor told him he could not go. This was a shocking setback for me as I had been counting on him for support. I could not delay the visit, as relations between Britain and Germany were deteriorating daily, and there was fear of war breaking out at any time. So, at the end of August, I caught the boat train for Harwich and was soon on the cross-channel steamer. As we rolled in a gentle swell I watched with mixed feelings as the English coast gradually disappeared. I was both excited and apprehensive for what lay ahead. Soon the Channel swell gave way to a sheltered Dutch harbour. Disembarking, I found the Berlin Express and soon we were rushing past the empty tulip fields towards the German border. Customs officers in the uniform of the S.S. (Blackshirts) boarded the train. Passports were inspected and forms filled in as we moved on into Germany. In the next few days I was to see plenty of both the S.A. (Brownshirts) and the dreaded S.S. (Hitler's crack storm troopers). Their National Games were being held in Berlin at that time, and they were everywhere. If you had been watching visitors booking in at the Europaischerhof Hotel in the Unter den Linden, you would have seen an English school boy in grey flannel shorts and a school blazer; short in height, very youthful in appearance and looking like a fourteen year old, speaking to the hotel clerk. 'Here for a holiday, son?' he asked. 'That's right' I replied, starting to get used to my cover. The hotel clerk suggested that I should be sure to attend the Games while in the city. Prominent in the Games would be the S.A., S.S., Army and the Hitler Youth. Many Blackshirts and Brownshirts were booked into the hotel. I decided to go to the shops and get tickets for a couple of afternoon sessions. I also bought a transport map of Berlin and while eating a light meal familiarised myself with the city plan. In the morning I decided to get on with the job and travel by underground to the last known address for Maud in Charlottenburg, a suburb in South Berlin. I practiced the routine I had been given to detect anyone following me. From the hotel I walked to a newsagent and bought a daily paper, observing people around me; then to another shop for a chocolate bar, again
watching in case there was a follower. And so to the 'Underground, still on the alert. On arrival at Charlottenberg, I made for Heidrich Strasse and Schmidt the Baker, a shop with flats above. I approached cautiously from a service lane at the rear. I rang the bell. A middle-aged woman opened the door. 'Frau Schmidt?' I inquired, tentatively. To my relief she nodded. 'That's right; what do you want?' When I replied in English that I was looking for Maud Ossietzky, she hustled me in the door with an anxious glance behind me. After two flights of stairs, she beckoned me into a darkened room. A woman with black hair and of dark complexion was lying in a large bed. 'An English visitor to see you, Maud,' Frau Schmidt said, as she left closing the door behind her. Maud sat up slowly, beckoned me to come closer and offered a frail little hand, which I touched gently. A smile was squeezed from a heavily lined face as her eyes filled with tears. 'I am so glad that there are friends in England who think of me,' she said in perfect English. I told her my name, and that I was a student. ‘It is very brave of you to visit me, Ian, as I am being watched by cruel people, so you must be very careful' she said. I told her about the organisation which sent me and the purpose of my visit. 'Yes,' she said as she straightened the bed covers, 'I would be very grateful for some money to repay the friends who have given me so much help. As for escaping to my daughter in Sweden, that would be very difficult. I would have to give that some thought. ' Maud recounted the events which led to her husband's death at the hands of the Nazis. Unable to hold back the tears, she wept bitterly as I held her bony little hand. Then with a proud smile wrinkling her wet cheeks, she exclaimed, 'Carl just had to accept the Nobel Prize for his writings on peace and freedom. Even Hermann Goering could not make him refuse.' We talked for a while. I promised to return with the money and to have another talk about her options. I left through the front shop with other customers. There appeared to be no obvious surveillance of the place. The next task was to withdraw the money belonging to the refugees in England, a step which, as it was to turn out, endangered the main purpose of my visit. The substantial cheque I had brought from England bore the name of a bank in central Berlin and was made out to cash. It would enable me to give Maud some thousands of marks and take the rest back for the 26
Dangerous Mission Jewish family in London. In a they did not really trust me and confident mood I entered the wondered whether they might plan to bank and presented the cheque to have me watched. I obtained the a teller. He asked for identity, and money from the bank and decided to I gave him my passport. This book out of the hotel early next prompted him to seek advice morning. I would then make a quick from his superiors, while I visit to Maud to give her the money. waited. Eventually he returned This entailed a significant risk to her, and said that, as an alien, I would and I would have liked my absent have to go to an office across the friend to have been with me to square in Alexandra Platz to get discuss the problem. It might have permission for the transaction. allayed some of my anxiety. My heart sank. This money As I ate the evening meal in a noisy seemed vital for Maud' s recovery cafe beside the hotel, I thought over and escape. Would they let me the risks to Maud, and how I could have it? reduce them. One option was to post the money to her in a plain I walked across the busy square unregistered package. The trouble and was unpleasantly surprised to with that was my promise to visit her find that the building I was again. I realised she would be very directed to was the Police Headquarters. I was directed to ‘Foreign Currency upset if I did not arrive, fearing that I had fallen into Transactions’ and told to wait. Soon, a middle-aged the hands of the Gestapo. I was alarmed at the turn of man with close-cropped hair took me to a room along events and, surrounded by young Nazis laughing, the corridor. I gave him the form I had been given by shouting and singing to the accompaniment of an the bank, and which required his endorsement, all the accordion, I was in no state to think clearly. Maybe time talking in English. 'Why do you want this bed and a good sleep would be the answer; so I went money?' he asked in German. 'I don't understand,' I up to my room. said, gesturing. 'Can you speak English?' He turned Just as I was undressing, with my pants round my and went out of the office to find someone else. ankles, the door burst open and two S.S. men rushed A young girl returned with him and repeated his in. No chance to run or fight. This would be the classic I question in English. I replied, speaking very fast to Gestapo arrest. I stood paralysed with fear. make it difficult for her. 'I have a debt to pay to people hardly heard the apology as the young men withdrew. have been kind tohttp://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l me, and I want to go to the Games It translated as 'Sorry, wrong room.' I slumped onto the and have a really good holiday in Germany,' I lied. She bed. No one to laugh with, no one to help relieve the translated for him and he came back with the comment tension! Of course, these were the lads here for the 'but that is a lot of money.' Pretending to look Games. The unexpected contact with the police had exasperated, I said that I had heard at school that the really rattled me. What the heck was I to do? Admit Third Reich was very efficient and welcomed visitors, failure and return to England? Eventually I got to especially from Britain. I suggested that they were sleep. making things very hard for me without any apparent I woke early, with the dappled sunlight on the reason. Further discussion followed between them. famous linden trees brightening the room. After a Finally, she said that this was unusual but that they good sleep, confidence returned, and with it the would approve the payment. I realised that they knew determination to finish the job I had been given to do. where I was staying, the address being on the bank After breakfast I booked out of the hotel. Leaving form. He stamped it with a long, typically German my bag in the cloakroom I took with me the money, portmanteau word that I had never encountered. Later, my tickets, passport and other documents. with the help of a dictionary, I translated it as I slipped out of the hotel. There didn’t seem to be 'approved in exceptional circumstances'. I sensed that anyone hanging about outside to follow me as I made
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Dangerous Mission for the nearest shops. I went into the newsagents to get to raise his green light and made the fastest dash of my an English paper. As I waited for the change I looked life to cross the platform and get into the sliding doors carefully at the few people in the vicinity. just before they closed. Then I walked smartly to another shop nearer the Safely on the train, I saw 'green check' make a futile Underground station to buy some chocolates. When I dash to follow me. It took a little while for my heart, came out there was a man in a green check suit that I thumping in my chest, to return to normal. Greatly had seen in the newsagents who was now looking into relieved, I sat down. I really had shaken him off, and an adjacent shop window. A tail? I had better check‌ he had no way of knowing my destination. Maud was Were my nerves getting the better of me? I wandered delighted to see me. She had been very anxious for my into another shop and had a look around. As I came safety and was very grateful for the money. She told out I saw to my dismay that 'green check' was standing me that when she had recovered some strength she reading a newspaper under the shade of a tree. would be ready to travel to her daughter in Sweden. Somehow, before I could go to see Maud I had to I told her that friends would be in contact with her shake this man off. Perhaps I could lose him in the later and that all the arrangements would be made for busy Underground station Certainly there was no way her to be passed down the escape-line by the German that I was going to let him follow me to resistance movement in neutral Sweden. Charlottenburg. I walked quickly to the station and Naturally, I did not tell her of my adventure with the went down the long police, but I was keen to stairs. leave Germany as quickly Shoppers and people as possible. So I told her late for work were being my plans had been changed d i s g o rg e d o n t o t h e and took my leave after a streets as I walked short visit and an emotional quickly to the platforms. farewell. She gave me a I found myself on the pink handbag to post to her northbound side. That daughter in Sweden and was not the direction I promised to send me a http://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l wanted, but it gave me postcard within a week. I an idea. I got into a was deeply afraid my visit position where I could had jeopardized her safety. look back and see the stairs. Soon I saw 'green check' She told me that if she wrote that the weather was fine, coming down. Yes, there was no doubt he was tailing I would know that everything was all right. She also me. Soon he saw me, came to a halt and stood reading promised to write to me from Sweden. This persuaded his paper. me that she was thinking very positively about her Although I was standing on the northbound side, I escape from Germany to a new life with her daughter. could see across and monitor the arrival of the train I The train for Holland did not leave until the afternoon, needed to take on the southbound side. On my so I had some time to put in. I decided not to return to previous journey I had noticed how the system the hotel in case someone was watching for me there. I worked. The guard travelling at the rear of the train had taken money and my passport with me so I was dismounted and observed the passengers alighting and prepared to 'forget' my bag and leave without it. The boarding. When all had boarded and the train was weather was hot. I bought some cheap bathing shorts ready to depart, he raised a green light which the and set out for the nearest park to have a dip in one of driver upfront could see; the automatic doors were the famous lakes. Quite a number of people had the closed and the train moved off. My idea was to rush same idea and were spread out on the grass around the across to the southbound train at the last minute and water. board before the doors closed. Luck was with me. A number of people were watching soldiers With a rush of air the southbound arrived first. This establishing an anti-aircraft battery near some trees – a was critical to my plan. I waited until the guard started powerful reminder of the international tension and of
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Dangerous Mission the efforts Chamberlain was making to avoid war with did not notice it as they examined my papers. To my the country I was now trying to leave. Others were in distress they asked me to leave the train and go to an the water as the afternoon was very hot. So I changed office along the platform. I joined a short queue of into my shorts and hid my valuables in my shoes. people waiting to be interrogated. I wondered if the After a short and very refreshing swim I returned to Berlin police had contacted the Border Control after my little pile of clothes to find that, to my annoyance, the interview at Alexanderplatz, or when I had shaken someone had taken my trousers! Anxiously, I picked off their tail. The queue seemed to be moving so up my shoes and socks to check for my concealed slowly; I was anxious to get back on the train. Then to valuables and documents. Fortunately, everything else my horror the train started to move off alongside me. was safe. So I hurried off in shirt and jacket with a wet There was nothing I could do. My chance of leaving costume underneath to find a shop where I could find Germany safely had gone. some slacks. With the help of local residents I found a I watched it move slowly forward. As the rear coach shop nearby and bought some roughly fitting trousers, slipped past me and out beyond the end of the together with a small travel bag, which made me feel platform the opportunity of jumping onto it passed. more intact. A tram took me to the mainline station. I Then it seemed to be slowing down instead of was in good time for the Westbound express which gathering speed. To my great relief, I saw that the would take me to Holland and the boat for England. http://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l engine was stopping to take on water. As I came to the I could not wait for the train todepart and remove me front of the queue, I saw the train was reversing into from Germany where I felt so vulnerable. I had the platform again. 'Sonny, they all get worried when arranged to catch the late evening crossing from the the train takes water,' the friendly official said in Hook of Holland to Harwich and thence to London. German. 'You'll get on it again in a minute or so.' In We arrived at the German border in the evening. The halting English he explained that they wanted to know Nazi officials in their black shirts were checking our why I was taking more money out of Germany than I passports and other documents as they came through came in with. I told him that some friends had repaid a the train. I was very much on edge, and I hoped they debt so that I could have a holiday - I was talking
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Dangerous Mission English very fast. He seemed a bit confused, but readiness of the balloon barrages which were seeing I was the last in the queue and obviously sprouting like mushrooms around many sensitive looking upset, he waved me onto the train again, not targets. wanting further discussion with a young schoolboy. I In Scotland I watched for the postman every day. It collapsed into my seat as the train moved off towards was two weeks before the long-awaited postcard the border. arrived from Maud. She wrote that “the weather was Next stop was in Holland. I could have leapt up and fine in Berlin”, and that she was better and out of bed. hugged the friendly Dutch border officials as they I was so relieved that my contact with her had not came on board to check our papers. I really was out of come to the notice of the secret police. That was the Nazi Germany, and safely on my way home. The relief real meaning of her message. I had set the wheels in was so great that I felt tears streaming down my motion for her to escape to her daughter in Sweden cheeks. I hoped the people sitting opposite were not with the help of the resistance movement. I had longer going to ask me what was wrong. How could I explain to wait to hear from Sweden. Two months later, I was that everything now was just so right? thrilled to receive a letter from Vigbyholm, in Sweden. You know, even as I sit here, in this safe, democratic Maud had arrived safely after a long and difficult country writing the story of what happened sixty- journey. She was overjoyed to be safely with her seven years ago, I’m aware that I am tense, sweating family and was so grateful to all the people involved in fact. I’m going through some of the physical signs in helping her. All's well that ends well! of fear, the residues that were not dealt with at the time; the counselling and debriefing that we provide today for people that have been through a traumatic situation were not available then. I bottled it up and got on with whatever was next. But I did have bad dreams. I must finish the story. I got home to Alloa quite exhausted and decided not to tell my parents the details of my adventure, except to say that I had found Maud von Ossietzky in Berlin, had given her money to http://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l help her escape and that I would report to Runham Brown that she was ready to go when arrangements could be made. The next day, September 3rd, with our family around the wireless set at 11.15am we listened to the Prime Minister announcing that Britain was at war with Germany. Dad looked sad, and my mother was looking across at my sisters and me wondering, I suppose, how this would affect us all. In the background we then heard on the wireless a strange, prolonged wailing noise, afterwards to become all too familiar - the air raid sirens. The announcer said that on looking out the window across the roofs and spires of London on this clear September morning, he could In Stories of a Fortunate Life in War and Peace, Ian see all around cylindrical silver balloons slowly rising Paton, describes his life’s journey from his earliest into the sky. This was the barrage to prevent low years to living with families of unemployed coal flying aircraft attacking the city. miners to Oxford University and registering as a Completely unprepared as the British Government conscientious objector - and then his change of was for war with an enemy well prepared for modern heart, leading to six years in the Royal Air Force as warfare, credit must be given for the immediate an instructor and fighter pilot.
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www.okunevmusic.com 31
THE WATCHER
Year’s Day, 1963. The discovery of the bodies of brilliant physicist Dr Gilbert Bogle and Mrs Margaret Chandler in a lovers’ lane beside the Lane Cove River set into play a massive police investigation. The half-naked victims were strangely covered, but there were no clues how the victims died. Despite drawing on the expertise of the FBI and New Scotland Yard, no cause of death, motive or killer was identified and the Bogle Chandler Case was elevated to pantheon of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic unsolved crimes. For many years, the media and the general public remained convinced that Margaret Chandler’s husband, Geoffrey, was the culprit, despite his watertight alibi and no evidence linking him to the deaths. But Geoffrey Chandler did have a secret, which had it become public at the time, would have caused a sensation and derailed the investigation. The following is an edited extract from the recently released book on the case, Who Killed Dr Bogle & Mrs Chandler?
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n late February 1963, some eight weeks after the deaths of Dr Bogle and Mrs Chandler, the NSW Police contacted their federal counterparts for assistance. They wanted to know if Geoffrey Chandler had ever been involved in secret defence research. The Commonwealth Police sent Sergeant A.G. Tilton to meet with Colonel Graham, the Director of Military Intelligence. Tilton asked whether Geoffrey Chandler had ever been engaged in defence work at the Standard Laboratories in Melbourne. If so, he said, ‘all possible information was required concerning his work or studies, in particular, that concerning chemical warfare or development of any viruses.’ Colonel Graham promised immediate action. That day, Sergeant Tilton called on a Mr Edmunds at the Federal Attorney General’s Department also to discuss Geoffrey Chandler and a possible chemical weapons connection. The intriguing aspect of this inquiry was that Australia was not officially undertaking either chemical or biological warfare research in the 1960s. In the end, a joint Commonwealth Police - Military Intelligence investigation found no evidence to connect Geoffrey
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The Watcher Chandler with the mysterious Melbourne laboratory or chemical weapons research. It makes sense that the police wanted to know everything they could about Chandler. He was the most likely suspect, after all. While Military Intelligence and the Commonwealth Police were happy to cooperate with the investigation, Australia’s spy agency, ASIO, took eight years before it revealed its connection with someone under investigation. In 1971, the NSW Government demanded the police ask what ASIO knew about Dr Bogle. Their answer was unexpected and until now has never been made public. ASIO said it had nothing on Dr Bogle. But it did have an interest in someone else associated with the case. From the outset of the atomic age, scientists were pawns in the business of espionage. Their knowledge was almost as valuable as military intelligence, particularly in the area of weapons and atomic research. Chandler and Bogle’s employer, the CSIRO, was itself a product of espionage fears. In 1947, United States and British spy agencies became concerned that its predecessor, CSIR, employed communists, some of whom were allegedly aiding the Soviet Union. Indeed, about a dozen CSIR scientists were members of the Communist Party of Australia and at least one was known to be in contact with Soviet officials. A crisis emerged in 1948 when America stopped passing classified information to Australia. The ban threatened defence cooperation not only with Washington but also with London and put at risk the Top Secret British/Australian missile project at Woomera, in South Australia. British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, and the head of MI5, Sir Percy Sillitoe, convinced
Geoffrey Chandler
the Australian Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, to set up an intelligence agency along the lines of MI5 to ‘ensure the security of the Empire.' Chifley also agreed to make ‘reasonable adjustments in the constitution of the scientific o rg a n i s a t i o n s s e r v i n g t h e A u s t r a l i a n Government.’ The following year, the CSIR was replaced by the CSIRO and its employees were to be vetted by the new security agency, ASIO. Theoretically, if ASIO held suspicions about any applicant for a position with the CSIRO being a Communist, he or she would have been denied employment. In the early 1950s, well before joining CSIRO, Chandler had worked with electronics firms, AWA and EMI. During his tenure at EMI, Chandler underwent ASIO vetting:
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The Watcher ‘I was working for EMI on transponders for Long-range Weapon establishment in South Australia. They were firing their rockets down the range and they had transponders to send back data during the course of the flight of the rocket. I was involved with the very early stages of integrated circuit design and construction, so I had to have a security clearance for that. I was just a junior technical assistant, but you had to be classified. So ASIO had investigated me and found that I was pure white and 21, and satisfactory to work on long range weapons classified material. So the answer should have been, ‘he’s clean.'’ When Chandler applied to join CSIRO, ASIO provided further clearance. But Geoffrey’s acquaintances in the Push had an uneasy feeling about him. In her book Sex and Anarchy, Anne Coombs suggests it was a common suspicion within the Push that Geoffrey Chandler was a ‘watcher’: ‘Chandler was known as someone who hung around. Some people found him a little strange, somewhat closed off, watchful. Later, when his wife’s death had brought him notoriety, there was even speculation that he might have been an ASIO plant.’ Those suspicions were well founded. While ASIO said it had no interest in Dr Bogle, it admitted that Geoffrey Chandler was an informer. In 2006, I interviewed Geoffrey Chandler on camera and asked him if he had ever been an ASIO agent. Chandler immediately went silent. He asked to have the camera turned off and said he needed to go to the bathroom. I assumed that was the end of the interview. Ten minutes later he returned to the studio and said, ‘roll camera.' He then proceeded to tell me about how a couple of ASIO officers came to see him:
‘ASIO asked me questions about this person and that person. So, I suppose in that sense you could say I was working for them. They asked me questions about my associates - what I did with them and so on. What were my views, what were their views? Because they were pretty toey about things in those days when you were in a sensitive area. I suppose it was sort of cross character referencing. No doubt they probably asked somebody that knew me, about me. So in that sense I suppose you could say that I worked for them, but specifically as a sort of paid job, no.’ In 1971, ASIO told the police that Chandler was an informant embedded inside the Communist Party of Australia. After working with EMI, Chandler had moved to the Department of Civil Aviation, then to a private
Margaret Chandler
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The Watcher picked up the two men walking along a city street together. Gould alleged Chandler encouraged CPA meetings to be held in his Inner Western Sydney home. It wasn’t until Chandler rented his residence to a visiting British Socialist that his motives were discovered. An intermittent overhead light resulted in the visitor calling an electrician. Within the ceiling, the electrician allegedly found that every room in the house was bugged. According to Gould, from that point on Chandler was persona non-grata within the Communist Party. I asked Geoffrey Chandler to comment on Gould’s allegation. He said he could not recall holding CPA meetings at his home and denied any knowledge of his house being bugged, though he did admit informing on the CPA. Geoffrey Chandler believed that his ASIO company as assistant to the chief engineer. But the recession of 1952 had landed Chandler on connections did have an impact on the Bogle the dole. It was then that he flirted with Chandler Case. Within days of the deaths of his wife and Dr Bogle, prominent Sydney barrister, Communism: ‘There werehttp://www.catchermagazine.net/#!preview/c1l6l mass strikes and big recession, Kevin Murray, approached him: ‘He made an appointment to see me out of and lots and lots of people out of work. So I the blue. We met at the Forest Lodge Hotel after had no hesitation whatsoever in joining them.’ Despite his connections with the Communist work and he said something like, “There’s Party of Australia (CPA), Chandler received going to be an Inquest. Do you have any He said, “Unless you are ASIO clearance to work for the CSIRO. On the representation?” surface, this defies logic since Communists represented you are going to be churned up into were strictly forbidden from employment with mince meat.” I said, “No, it never occurred to the science body. Unless, of course, he had been me that I would require a representative.” My ‘turned.' This may have come in the form of a attitude was that only guilty people required simple inducement. We know you are a representation and I wasn’t guilty so why Communist. Help us by becoming an informant should I require representation? But being a little bit more worldly-wise he pointed out the and you keep your job. error of that view and offered his services for Former leading Communist Party member, free. So I accepted. Then, of course, later one Bob Gould, believed that Chandler was a very wonders why Kevin Murray turned up and active agent. Gould’s own massive declassified offered his services. Was he really being ASIO file contains references to Geoffrey Chandler. On one occasion, surveillance officers Dr Gilbert Bogle
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The Watcher altruistic or was there sinister motivation behind his generosity?’ Kevin Murray, who was building a reputation as a criminal lawyer, had a military establishment background. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Sydney University Regiment – one of the oldest infantry regiments in the Australian Army. In 1971, despite representing many of Sydney’s most high profile crooks, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. In his reflective years, Chandler began to suspect Murray was under instructions from ASIO:
‘I think it is highly likely and highly probable that Murray was acting on instructions from higher up and he was designed or intended, directed to keep this and that out of the newspapers or from public presentation. That’s quite feasible. And after all he was a good barrister and he probably got paid quite well for doing all this for free for me.’ Chandler’s secret association with ASIO was never revealed. One can only imagine the sensation this information would have caused had the media got wind of it at the height of the investigation into the death of his wife and Dr Bogle.
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Nominated 2014 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction
Available in bookstores or as an eBook for Kindle & iPad www.newholland.com.au
TRUE BLUE or simply
RED
A
ny list of the most popular one-liners of comedian and movie star, Groucho Marx, would have to include, “I won't belong to any organization that would have me as a member.” So it is a curious fact that the FBI suspected Marx to be a closet member of the Communist Party. At the height of McCarthyism in America, when entertainers were being blacklisted in Hollywood, the FBI received a report from an ‘reliable informant’ stating that Marx ‘contributed heavily to the Communist Party of America.' FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, ordered his officers to investigate Marx. They were to listen carefully to Groucho’s radio and television shows, including "You Bet Your Life" for Communist propaganda. They were also to document his quotes in the press going back to the 1930s. In all, the FBI compiled a whopping 202 page dossier on Marx. The FBI file states that Marx was ‘reported to be affiliated or otherwise interested in varying degrees of Communist front or influenced organizations, including League of American Writers, American Council of Soviet Friendship, Hollywood Democratic Committee, Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, and others.’ According to the report, Goucho was opposed to the Spanish Civil War carried out by Franco, the Fascist. In 1934, Marx was quoted in The Daily Worker, "The battle of the Communists.... is one that will be taught in Soviet America as the most inspiring and courageous battle ever fought." Soviet America? Heavens to Betsy! Oh, well, as it turned out, the Soviet Union became America’s ally during WWII in the fight against Fascist Axis.
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True Blue or Simply Red Los Angeles informants familiar with Communist Party activity in Hollywood throughout 1940s declared that Marx was never affiliated with the Communist Party and was never a contributor ‘so far as informants are aware.' Groucho was dismissive of the Hollywood Communists, but in 1953, he was openly affiliated with a group of actors, writers and directors who opposed the communist witch-hunt then being carried out by Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee's investigations in Hollywood. Rather than rant against McCarthyism, Groucho simply philosophized in his inimitable fashion; ‘Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.’ In 1960, a television viewer wrote to Hoover suggesting, ‘that the TV entertainer Groucho Marx be investigated as being a Communist. Last night on his program both my husband and I understood him to pronounce `The United States' as “The United Snakes.”’ Unlike many of his compatriots, Groucho wasn’t blacklisted, but the FBI continued to watch him closely. French playwright, Antonin Artaud described the Marx brothers’ films as "a hymn to anarchy and whole hearted revolt" and according to writer, JB Priestley, "Karl Marx showed us how the dispossessed would finally take possession. But I think the brothers Marx do it better."
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Groucho Marx was not the only star to soak up the FBI’s resources. Add to the list: John Lennon; Jimi Hendrix; The Monkees; and Lucille Ball for marrying Cuban Desi Arnaz.
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LISTEN FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD HTTP://EASTSIDEFM.ORG/LISTEN-ONLINE/ 45
GHOST CITY
HIROSHIMA
At the end of the Pacific War, thousands of Australian servicemen were stationed close to Hiroshima, which had been obliterated by an atomic bomb. Many returned home with photographs, postcards and impressions of the devastation.
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‘The explosion caused 129,558 casualties, razed 67,860 buildings, littered 148,000 metres of streets with rubble, burned and broke 6,771 telephones. It knocked out 9,350 metres of overhead wires, three reservoirs, the sewerage systems and 40 bridges carrying pipelines, and it flung locomotives aside like shattered toys.’
‘Fantastic stories were told about radioactivity, and the likely future effects of the blast on surviving human beings, livestock, and plant life. Most of these stories have now been denied by scientists who have lived months in the area to study the after effects.’
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‘Just opposite this memorial and next door to the large cupola of the city building, which was the marker for the bombardier who launched the atom bomb, an enterprising Japanese has set up a bookshop. His sign reads, "Bookseller Atom" His small business is one of the most prosperous in Hiroshima...’
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‘At the site of the centre of the explosion the children of Hiroshima have erected a large monument on which has been inscribed “Erected by Hiroshima Children's Cultural Association in memory of the explosion, and to make the event the cornerstone of the eternal world peace.”’
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Walker, and others like him, are doing their country a great service by bringing both the bad and good deeds of Aussie diggers out of the shadows and into the light.
Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Banksy, ‘Wall and Piece’
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few years back, while wandering about the historic cemetery of St. Stephen’s Church, in the Sydney suburb of Newtown, I was approached by a middle-aged American couple. “How could they allow this to happen?”, pondered the man in a soft, distinctly New England accent. I was about to reassure him that I had nothing to do with all the deaths, when his wife piped in, “It’s so horrible and disrespectful.” She pointed to the graffiti covering the high sandstone wall, which enclosed the church and cemetery. “Yes, it’s a bit of a shame,” I said, “It’s been that way for decades. I have to admit that I’m used to it.” The couple volunteered that they had travelled to Sydney especially to visit the grave of Eliza Emily Donnithorne, who legend has it was the inspiration for Charles Dickens’ character of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. Like Miss Havisham, Eliza Donnithorne was left at the altar on her wedding day, after which she became a recluse. Until her death she left her wedding banquet table set, in the hope that her beloved would one day return. The Americans said they liked to find purpose in their travels. Alas, their ‘great expectations’ had been considerably diminished by
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Street Dreams Coherent composition? Much of what we see around Sydney is tagging; a scribble-like signature that projects no meaning to the passerby. One enlightened soul suggested, ‘It’s animal instinct to mark a place, like a dog pisses on a tree.’
the mishmash of graffiti covering the St Stephen’s Church wall. Since that brief encounter, I have become m o r e a w a r e o f g r a ff i t i a n d t h e p u b l i c ’s antipathy towards it. Derived from the Greek ‘graphein’, meaning ‘to write’, most sources suggest that graffiti dates back to Roman and Greek times. In truth, Aboriginal peoples in Australia and elsewhere have been making walls for tens of thousand years, but who am I to rewrite the Eurocentric history of the world? I love the story of a prehistoric site in the Northern Territory, where a rock is adorned with hundreds of unique motifs. When asked for his interpretation of the site, an Aboriginal elder declared that it was a meeting place for many tribes and each design belonged to a different visitor, ‘just like a business card,’ he said. The Dictionary of Art describes ’Graffiti’ as ‘an arrangement of institutionally illicit marks in which there has been an attempt to establish some sort of coherent composition: such marks are made by an individual or individuals (not generally professional artists) upon a wall or other surface that is usually visually accessible to the public.’
Psychologists interpret it in different ways: territorial; antiauthoritarian; subversive; and s i m p l y v a n d a l i s m . D r. J e ff e r y C h a s e , a psychology professor at Radford University in Radford, Virginia, says many times people, especially children and adolescents, will use vandalism to vent. ‘Vandalism to me is basically anger,’ he writes. ‘It can be displacement — displacement in the technical sense is that (vandals) wish to do something against a more threatening object or individual, so they vent their anger on something safer.’ To the average eye, the majority of graffiti carries no discernible message. For all that effort, why not say something meaningful? I recall a time in the early travelling by train, passing painted on a brick wall, ‘What w a l k s a n d t a l k s t o m o r r o w. ’ message still resonates today.
1960s, while a sign handyou eat today, That simple
In the late 1960s came a spate of anti-Vietnam War and antinuclear graffiti. It may not have changed public opinion, but it certainly reflected a growing sense of disquiet during the Cold War. Older Sydney-siders speak fondly of the ephemeral chalking of ‘Eternity’ on footpaths across the city from the 1930s to the 1960s. A r t h u r S t a c e ’s s i m p l e m e s s a g e , i n f i n e copperplate script, etched its way into our hearts and minds to such an extent that a multistory rendering of ‘Eternity’ adorned the 56
Street Dreams Harbour Bridge to mark New Year's Day, 2000.
authorities see as the perfect antidote to both tagging and advertising signage - street art.
These days governments and councils across the country are at war with graffiti practitioners. Sales of spray cans are banned and perpetrators are hunted down, forced into overalls and assigned to council teams to rid graffiti from their neighbourhood. Even a two metre high ‘GOD‘, which adorned a wall at a Sydney light rail station, was removed in minutes with a roller and a bucket of paint.
Banksy - the UK-born creator of satirical and political stencil works – has almost singlehandedly redefined public art. His philosophy? ‘Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.’
So what of the poorly designed or inappropriate signs that degrade the character of streetscapes and public spaces? If graffiti is vandalism, why do we accept advertising signs as legitimate? Now there is a new trend sweeping cities around the world, which some local
Greeks are embracing that notion. From semiderelict squat localities to the international consulate and university districts, Athenian graffiti artists are venting the populace’s frustration over the country’s economic and resultant social problems. A similar movement began back in Sydney in the early 1990s, well before Banksy came on the radar. The most graphic example is the mammoth, “I Have a Dream” mural on King Street, Newtown, a few hundred metres from St Stephen’s Church.
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Wa l k i n g t h e s t r e e t s a n d b a c k l a n e s o f Newtown and nearby Sydney suburbs these days, it is difficult to find a wall not adorned with striking, highly graphic murals, some of which are simply entertaining, while others are curiously existential or courageously political. M a r r i c k v i l l e C o u n c i l M a y o r, J o H a y l e n , believes murals are proving to be an effective deterrent to tagging and illegal graffiti. The Council is now setting up a program to fund mural artists. Is street art worthy of public support? Take a walk around Newtown yourself and make up your own mind.
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“BLOODY BRILLIANT!” ERIC WALSH, POLITICAL JOURNALIST
Sources Cover – Graffiti art, Athens National Archives of Australia Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive National Library of Australia State Library of Victoria State Library of NSW Sarah Staveley Paton Family Geoffrey Chandler Catcher Magazine Street Dreams, Newtown - artist Magee Athens street art – artists unknown Newtown street art - artists unknown
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