Chapter five of "40 Years are Nothing" examines a largely hidden dimension of the 1973 Chilean coup: Australia’s intelligence involvement in the destabilisation of Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government and the enduring secrecy surrounding that role.

Drawing on archival records, declassified material, parliamentary documents, historical accounts and original interviews, the research traces how Australia’s foreign intelligence service, ASIS, established an operation in Santiago after the CIA sought Australian assistance in 1970. Australian operatives subsequently worked in support of US intelligence activities in Chile, with evidence showing that the Australian presence continued into 1973. The chapter also investigates the less understood role of ASIO officers operating in Chile, including agents working under migration cover, and the tensions this generated within the Whitlam government.

At its centre is a broader question of transparency and democratic accountability. Decades after the coup, significant parts of the Australian historical record remained secret or heavily redacted. The chapter contrasts this with the extensive declassification of US records documenting the CIA's role in Chile and examines the legal and institutional barriers preventing Australians from knowing what their intelligence agencies did overseas in their name. The research itself encountered those barriers: a formal request to ASIS was rejected, while legal advice warned of possible prosecution if information identifying intelligence officers uncovered during the investigation was published.

The chapter also considers the profound contradiction experienced by Chilean-Australians. Australia became home to people fleeing Pinochet's dictatorship, yet Australian intelligence had assisted the CIA operation against Allende, ASIO subsequently monitored Chilean political exiles in Australia, and people associated with the dictatorship were also able to make Australia their home.

That contradiction is brought into the present through the case of former DINA agent Adriana Rivas, whom I located in Sydney during my 2013 SBS investigation. The reporting generated responses from human-rights organisations and political activists in Australia and Chile and was followed by moves seeking her extradition to face allegations of crimes committed during the dictatorship.

Ultimately, the chapter connects intelligence, foreign policy, secrecy, human rights and historical accountability, asking what democratic accountability means when decisions made by intelligence agencies can remain beyond meaningful public scrutiny for generations—and when their consequences continue to be felt by the communities Australia later welcomed as refugees.

Read the chapter on Academia.edu