Is the Nation of Australia Merely the South Pacific Branch of the CIA? Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has accused the ruling government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard of being agents of influence of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency which - he claimed - were working through the Rockefeller Foundation.  Australian officials denounced Palmer’s claims, however, the accusation comes one month after it was revealed the U.S. State Department had been briefed of Gillard’s plans to unseat incumbent Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2010 during a leadership dispute, weeks before then chief-of-government Rudd found himself ignominiously displaced.  While media have dismissed Palmer’s accusation that the Rockefeller Foundation is a front group for U.S. covert action, the billionaire’s assertions are not without some basis in historical fact. In the early 1980s it was revealed that Harvard University Middle East expert Nadav Safran had accepted more than $100,000 from the CIA for the agency’s right-of-review of a book he had written about Saudi Arabia, and that these funds were supplemented by additional monies paid by the RAND Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation, purportedly at the agency’s direction. Safran ultimately resigned from Harvard in disgrace. 
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Is the Nation of Australia Merely the South Pacific Branch of the CIA?

Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has accused the ruling government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard of being agents of influence of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency which - he claimed - were working through the Rockefeller Foundation. 

Australian officials denounced Palmer’s claims, however, the accusation comes one month after it was revealed the U.S. State Department had been briefed of Gillard’s plans to unseat incumbent Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2010 during a leadership dispute, weeks before then chief-of-government Rudd found himself ignominiously displaced. 

While media have dismissed Palmer’s accusation that the Rockefeller Foundation is a front group for U.S. covert action, the billionaire’s assertions are not without some basis in historical fact. In the early 1980s it was revealed that Harvard University Middle East expert Nadav Safran had accepted more than $100,000 from the CIA for the agency’s right-of-review of a book he had written about Saudi Arabia, and that these funds were supplemented by additional monies paid by the RAND Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation, purportedly at the agency’s direction. Safran ultimately resigned from Harvard in disgrace. 

Sydney Hilton Bombing, 1978

Today, February 13, marks the anniversary of the 1978 Sydney hotel bombing. The unsolved blast, at a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Goverment, killed three and wounded eleven when a trash bin bomb detonated after being emptied into a garbage truck. 

“Conspiracy” looks at the lingering questions left by the bombing. For instance, police disposed of bomb fragments immediately after the attack at an unrecorded location, Australian Army bomb-sniffing dog teams were called off from securing the Hilton for reasons unexplained and at least one Sydney police detective made public claims of a cover-up. A 1991 resolution of the New South Wales parliament requesting a new inquiry into the attack was not acted upon by the Australian federal government.

Almost Nuclear

Switzerland, Sweden, Romania, Brazil and Australia are among more than a dozen states that once pursued nuclear weapons programs.