By Philip Dorling
A PROMINENT Labor senator and Whitlam government minister was strongly suspected of being a Soviet intelligence collaborator during the Cold War, according to recently declassified Australian Security Intelligence Organisation files.
The top-secret files, released by the National Archives of Australia, have revealed details of a sex-espionage scandal involving left-wing Labor senator John Wheeldon, Soviet diplomat and identified KGB officer Ivan Stenin, and a junior French embassy official named Cecile Arnaud.
Then WA senator John Wheeldon.
Wheeldon's actions were assessed by ASIO director-general Charles Spry ''as consistent with those of at least a collaborator with the RIS [Russian Intelligence Service]. He may be a recruited agent.''
ASIO's files show that in August 1967 the security agency intercepted a phone call that revealed a close relationship between Stenin and Arnaud, who had arrived in Canberra five months earlier.
Cecile Arnaud: Offered to copy documents for John Wheeldon.
An alleged liaison with French ambassador Andre Favereau had prompted Arnaud's early recall to Paris, but when interviewed by ASIO before her departure she revealed that she had also been involved with Wheeldon. He had in turn introduced her to Stenin and another suspected Russian intelligence officer, Counsellor V. I. Popov.
Wheeldon, Stenin and Popov had questioned Arnaud about politics and personalities in the French embassy. The senator was especially interested in her relationship with ambassador Favereau and the degree of confidence he placed in her.
He also questioned Arnaud about France's nuclear weapon tests in the Pacific, and less than two months after her arrival in Canberra asked her ''if she could discreetly make photocopies in the embassy''. Arnaud indicated this was possible ''as she had access at any time and the use of the equipment''.
After several weeks, Wheeldon eased off his relationship with Arnaud, who later told ASIO that she then saw Stenin with increasingly frequency over four months, with the KGB officer ringing her from phone boxes to avoid ASIO surveillance.
However, ASIO's files show the security agency's hopes of confronting Wheeldon with the allegation that he had collaborated with Soviet intelligence were aborted due to diplomatic sensitivities with France, Arnaud's unavailability for further interviews owing to illness, and prime minister John Gorton's reluctance to pursue the matter without more information.
Wheeldon was not interviewed by ASIO. He served as minister for repatriation and compensation and minister for social services in the Whitlam government.
However, as late as August 1977, Wheeldon's ASIO file was still assessed as being of continuing ''security interest''.
Wheeldon left the Senate in June 1981 and was chief editorial writer for The Australian newspaper until 1995.
Last year, before the release of the newly declassified ASIO files, Wheeldon's son, James, categorically rejected ''scandalous accusations'' by journalist and author Mark Aarons that his father had been a secret member of the Communist Party, saying that ''if true, [it] would mean that my father lied every time he claimed to be a loyal, duly qualified member of the ALP, and that he cheated in every election in which he stood as an ALP candidate, and that he was elected to Parliament under false pretences''.
Former New South Wales Labor premier Bob Carr also defended Wheeldon's reputation, saying that if the former senator had been a covert communist, ''I would have detected it in our numerous conversations''.
John Wheeldon died in 2006. Large portions of ASIO's files on Wheeldon and Cecile Arnaud remain security classified.