The Washington Post reported incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn was in contact with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak. It was a clear attempt to damage President-elect Donald Trump and Flynn.

Neoconservative columnist David Ignatius reported, “According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking.”

A senior U.S. government official, eh?

White House Spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters the White House was not the source.

Incoming Trump Administration Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed calls were made but dismissed darker interpretations saying the calls were benign condolence and holiday-based communications.

The Post hit comes shortly after a dossier, compiled by a former MI6 official, Christopher Steele, was reported on by CNN and published in full by BuzzFeed.

The dossier included unverified and incorrect claims but became a viral sensation and provided further provocation for a congressional investigation into Trump’s alleged Russian ties.

Is Steele really a former MI6 official, with no current relationship to the British intelligence agency? And if the White House did not leak the information about phone calls between Flynn and Kislyak, who did?

A recent Shadowproof interview with David Chibo on the deep state might provide some answers. As we learned, if there is a convergence between U.S. and British (and any other) intelligence agencies to take down a Western politician, it would not be the first time.

The so-called Five Eyes intelligence alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States was caught at least twice undermining elected Western leaders-Australian Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975 and British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1976.

The operations to take down Whitlam and Wilson were what could be called models of international cooperation.

In Whitlam’s case, CIA Director William Colby admitted in the course of the Church and Pike Committee investigations that the Australian prime minister was taken down because he threatened key U.S. interests in the region by pulling support for the U.S. war in Vietnam, pursuing friendlier relations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), attempting to remove U.S. naval domination in the Indian Ocean for a “Peace Zone”, and most importantly for Colby, trying to shutdown U.S. military bases in his country, including a vital communications intercept station known as Pine Gap.

Colby believed, with some considerable evidence, that if Pine Gap were shutdown U.S. signals intelligence in the region would be severely crippled. Given that intelligence was fed into the Five Eyes network, the British and others were also concerned.

So it was, starting in 1972 with the election of the Labor government, the CIA, working with MI6 and Australian intelligence, embarked on a campaign to bring Prime Minister Whitlam down using forged documents, media manipulation (with the help of a young Rupert Murdoch), and a host of other dirty tricks. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) illegally passed dossiers on members of the Whitlam government, peace activists, and other Australian citizens to the CIA and MI6.

But it was not enough just to undermine the Whitlam government. The intelligence agencies also sought to strengthen the opposition and used a CIA-backed bank, the Nugan Hand Bank, to launder money to opposition parties, with a blank check to the Australian Liberal Party. Some of the money that came into the bank came from CIA operations in the area, including Air America, which was allegedly involved in drug smuggling in the Golden Triangle.

The quiet coup worked, and Whitlam was ultimately dismissed in 1975 under legally dubious circumstances and replaced with the CIA and MI6-friendly Liberal Party.

The coup was later exposed by U.S. congressional investigations as well as the collapse of the Nugan Hand Bank in 1980. The collapse revealed much of the bank’s role in taking down the Whitlam government.

According to the BBC, a similar program was carried out against British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. In the 2006 documentary “The Plot Against Harold Wilson,” it is alleged the CIA, MI5, and the South African intelligence agency BOSS ran a dirty tricks campaign against Wilson, forcing his resignation in 1976.

Is this happening again? It would certainly explain intelligence officials passing on phone intercepts and MI6-related dossiers to the U.S. press.

There’s no doubt many in the intelligence community fear and despise President-elect Donald Trump. The feeling appears to be mutual. The question then is how far would they and their friends be willing to go to undermine Trump’s authority or remove him from office.