2012-03-23 "Is The CIA Funding Australia’s Green Groups?" by Paul Canning
[http://www.care2.com/causes/is-the-cia-funding-australias-green-groups.html]
The CIA has tersely denied a claim by one of Australia’s richest men that it is funding Australian green groups [http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3460797.htm].
Billionaire mine owner Clive Palmer has claimed that America’s spy agency is attempting to destroy Australia’s coal industry.
Palmer named the Green Party, which is part of the governing coalition, as well as Greenpeace and a leading green activist Drew Hutton. He said that legal action against mining developments is CIA-funded.
The Australian conservative opposition, financially supported by Palmer, have tried to laugh off his comments but the influence of Australia’s version of Russia’s oligarchs, those made mega-wealthy from Australia’s resources boom, is no laughing matter as far as the Labor-led government is concerned.
Australia’s Federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, recently launched a broadside at the mining chiefs after they campaigned against a planned tax on their super-profits with a huge advertising campaign [http://www.themonthly.com.au/rising-influence-vested-interests-australia-001-cent-wayne-swan-4670].
Palmer is also part of the chorus against Australia’s carbon tax, due to be implemented beginning on July 1.
Allegations about US covert influence in Australia are nothing new. They were there over the removal of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s government in 1975 and revived again recently with the news revealed by Wikileaks that a prominent former Senator ‘informed’ to the US embassy [http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/yank-in-the-ranks-20101208-18pwi.html]. Palmer overtly played on the folk memory about Whitlam’s removal.
The CIA told the ABC, “Simply put, these allegations are false.”