"There is profoundly increasing evidence that foreign espionage and intelligence activities are being practised in Australia on a wide scale… I believe the evidence is so grave and so alarming in its implications that it demands the fullest explanation. The deception over the CIA and the activities of foreign installations on our soil… are an onslaught on Australia's sovereignty."

The CIA was involved in further activities designed to undermine the Whitlam Government. In July 1975 the Australian media reported that the Mercantile Bank and Trust Company, based in the Bahamas, had issued a letter seeking $4,267,365,000 "for and on behalf of the Government of Australia." The bank did not claim to be acting with the approval of the Australian Government and cabinet ministers had never heard of it. But the implication was enough to fill the newspapers with another "scandal". Much later, an ASIO officer was to publicly state: "some of the documents which helped discredit the Labor Government in its last year in office were forgeries planted by the CIA."

And that was exactly what happened. On November 11th, the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament fully about the CIA and American bases in Australia, he was summoned by Kerr from Parliament House. Without warning, Kerr dismissed Whitlam as Prime Minister, dissolved both houses of Parliament and appointed Malcolm Fraser, leader of the Liberal Party, to head an interim government until new elections could be held in December. An unelected official (whose position was traditionally only that of a figurehead representative of the Queen of England) had, in one arbitrary and unconstitutional act, overthrown a legitimate and democratically elected government.