NOTHING IS EVER AS IT SEEMS, THE LAPSTONE EXAMPLE...

Dr. JOHN BURTON

In 2004, Phillip Adams, introducing Dr. John Burton as a guest on his ABC show Late Night Live, said: "John Burton was probably the most controversial and visionary public servant of the 20th century. Branded a pink eminence of the Labor Party by conservative critics, he was clearly one of the most important intellectuals and policymakers associated with the Curtin Labor government of the 1940s. As a close associate of 'Doc' Evatt and head of the Department of External Affairs (now Foreign Affairs), he did more to shape Australian foreign policy towards Asia and the Pacific than any other person before or since."

But Burton was not without critics. Perhaps his progressive views invited suspicion? A prominent Australian National University professor, Desmond Ball, made the extraordinary claim that Evatt and Burton "were probably agents of Soviet intelligence" and very high-level ones at that. Ball was not alone in his views, others quickly gathered to participate in the feast.

THE LAPSTONE DEBACLE?

Dr. Burton, if we accept the ASIO Lapstone file account, deliberately obstructed the work of Hemblys Scales. But then again the whole Lapstone surveillance exercise was meant to be a test exercise, a dry run,  Personally, it is hard to imagine any serious intelligence organisation passing up the opportunity that the Lapstone conference presented what with all those high ranking KGB and other Soviet agency officialdom gathered together in one convenient location.

Bruce R McConkie  1915 - 1985
1946 Pic.

Just where were our US friends at the time? Mr. Bruce McConkie perhaps?

Mr. McConkie retired as a lieutenant Colonel US Military Intelligence in 1946 however he was known to have close links with the CIA after that date as did many senior members of the Mormon faith.

Records suggest that he was working in Victoria on Mormon business in 1948. In later years, 1961, he was President of the Mormon Mission to South Australia.


The cynic in me says that just maybe the apparent bumbling efforts of Hemblys Scales and the war between him and Australian Military intelligence was not so real after all, more likely a contrived distraction. Still to recover any CIA records for the 1948/49 period in Australia which may shed more light on the topic.

James Jesus Angleton

In an interview one-time counterintelligence man James Jesus Angleton willingly dispensed some words of deep wisdom, when he spoke of one of his favourite pastimes' Orchids:

He went into elaborate detail about the pollinating conditions for Dendrobium, Phalaenopsis,
Cattyleas, Cymbidium and other tribes of orchids, especially their deceptive qualities.

He explained it had not been the fittest but the most deceptive orchid that had survived. 

The perpetuation of most species of orchids depends on their ability to misrepresent themselves to insects. Having no food to offer the insects, they had to deceive them into landing on them and carrying their pollen to another orchid in the tribe.

Orchids are too dispersed in nature to depend on the wind to carry their pollen.

To accomplish this deception, orchids use color, shape, and odor to mimic something that attracts insects to their pods of pollen. Some orchids play on the sexual instincts of insects.

The tricocerus orchid, for example, so perfectly mimics in three-dimensional the underside of a female fly, down to the hairs and smell, that they trigger a mating response from passing male flies. Seeing what he thinks is a female fly, the male fly swoops down on the orchid and attempts to have sex with it-- a process called pseudo-copulation. In doing so, the motion causes the fly to hit the pollen pod, which attaches itself to his underside. The fly thus becomes an unwitting carrier. When the fly then passes another tricocerus orchid, and repeat the frustrating process, it pollinates that orchid.

It gradually becomes clear that the revered Mr. Angketon was not only talking about an insect being manipulated through deception but an intelligence service being similarly duped, seduced, provoked, blinded, lured down false trails, and used by an enemy.

But, I digress, we are discussing the revered but sadly often maligned Dr Burton and Professor Ball of ANU's claim that both Evatt and Burton were Soviet Spies.

In the attached PDF document, one of Burton's daughters, Canberra lawyer and author Pamela Burton, has subjected Ball's claims to meticulous scrutiny and appears to have demolished them with forensic skill. I recommend this document as essential reading for those who would seek to gain an in-depth understanding of how the political machine operated within Australia at the time and how people of good intent can quickly become its victims.

Nothing, and no one, is ever as it may first appear.

Acknowledgment: SMH Nov 4th.2014