Wilfred Burchett was denied access to his native Australia as a direct result of his reporting 'from the other side'.
The first journalist into Hiroshima against the wishes of the allies resulted in an accurate record of the devastation and carnage wreaked on the civilian population and his subsequent coverage of the Vietnam war earned him exile by a revengeful and spiteful Australian Government who denied him access to Australia to visit his dying father. He did not regain his passport until the election of a Labor Government.
I am not aware that Soviet Union records have now become acceptable as reliable research documents. I vaguely recall that the West did not attach much credence to anything they claimed,citing most statements as Soviet Propaganda.
On the other hand, Burchett reported extensively on the American use in Vietnam of chemical warfare which can be confirmed by evidence of the effects of Agent Orange, not only on defenceless Vietnamese civilians but also upon Australian and American troops.
Evidence is out there in the public record that America also supplied chemical agents for Saddam Hussein to use on defenceless Kurds. I don't know about claims of insect infestation but I would not discount the claim without other independent research.
I am looking forward to reading Burchett's Memoirs. I consider him to be among the top Australian War Correspondents in the old tradition rather than the Imbedded reporters currently utilised to sanitize American atrocities perpetrated on a defenceless population in the name of freedom and introducing 'democracy'.
Perhaps the good Doctor might turn his research skills to writing a history on George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Thanks maracas,

Can't comment on all of the points raised in Brendan O'Connor's article. However, in regard to the biological warfare allegations, let's not forget that at the end of the Second World War, the Americans gave amnesty to all of the members of the sadistic Japanese Unit 731 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731) in return for their knowledge of biological weapons. It would have been with the help of this knowledge that the biological weapons said to have been used in Korea by the US would have been manufactured.

Even if we were to discount the allegations of biological warfare, the devastation that the U.S. inflicted upon North Korea with its aerial and naval bombardment was horrific, as Brendan O'Connor, himself, acknowledges. On top of this, a dam vital to North Korea's food production was destroyed resulting in widespread flooding and drownings and crop failure.

Also, it's a fact not widely acknowledged that there is strong circumstantial evidence the South may have actually started the war. with reported fighting some distance north of the border on the day of the outbreak of the war. The fact that the southern army so quickly collapsed and was only saved by the intervention of the US would strongly suggest that there was little popular support for the Southern regime which was, at the time, largely based on pro-Japanese collaborators. Only shortly before the outbreak of the war, a whole battalion of the South Korean Army had defected to the North.

"The evidence is 12 documents from the Soviet archives, including high-level memos between senior officials as well as a memo to Mao. The correspondence to Mao from the Soviet government states that the “accusations against the Americans were fictitious” and recommends that Mao cease “accusing the Americans of using bacteriological weapons in Korean and China”."

I can'y help wondering why the USSR would do this?

Kenny wrote "I can't help wondering why the USSR would do this?"

Brendan O'Connor is suggesting that this he has evidence that those in the know within the Soviet Government, when talking amongst themselves, knew the accusations of biological evidence to be false.

If Jon Halliday, who wrote of the allegation in his book, co-authored with Bruce Cumings, "Korea The Unknown War", now disputes the allegation, then we have to take it seriously. "Korea The Unknown War" was one of a number which demolished the myth that the war was simply an unprovoked act of aggression against a legitimate democratic government in the South. I would suggest that, otherwise, the essential message of the book still stands.

Even without the allegations of biological warfare, the ferocious US aerial and naval bombardment of the Korean peninsula from 1950 until 1953, should be considered one of the great crimes against humanity of the twentieth century.

If the allegations of biological warfare were fraudulent after all, perhaps they shold be viewed as an act of desperation by a society under a murderous assault, in order to win sympathy from the rest of the world in order to end their suffering. The already appalling reality should have been sufficient to do this, but obviously it did not.

I was unaware of this individual so I looked him up briefly.

His biographical notes read like he was, as Lenin would have put it, one of the "Useful Idiots" and that is putting it politiely.

Thank God his life was a failure. He would have sold everyone down the path his KGB masters would have commanded of him.

To be honest, I think the only reason this bloke should be remembered is as a warning to others. Like we have warnings on weedkiller and rat poison.

A couple of quotes from his wikipedia write up

"Burchett also praised the postwar Stalinist purges in Bulgaria, writing that the "Bulgarian conspirators were the left arm of the Hungarian reactionary right arm"."

"In 1975 and 1976 Burchett made a number of dispatches from Cambodia praising the government of Pol Pot."

A "Useful Idiot"?, more like a "festering pool of toxic waste, pollution the earth and corrupting anything which it touches".

A write up for dioxin would contain greater humanity and social acceptability.

Well, at least Col Rouge doesn't have the pink-tinted spectacles worn by the immediate respondents on this blog. Far too many people want to forget the Cold War and the menace of an expansionist USSR. Wilfred Burchett was a secret member of the Communist Party and work hand in glove with KGB disinformation specialists for a long time, slandering and degrading the country of his birth or because like so many, he believes in the idea of Soviets new man "homo Sovieticus." Personally, I have nothing but contempt for those trying to rewrite history with pinkwash -- they've had to field to themselves for too long. Instead of venerating traitors, they should be exposed for what they are or were. It is quite remarkable that those who lionized Burchett in the past would pour scorn on those who fought to defend the country, passing other conflict as "other people's wars."

I'm surprised at the questioning about the archives referred to by Dr. Brendon O'Connor. They were those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and were opened for a brief period during the Yeltsin era. Some can still be found on the Internet. What has been quietly hidden is how the USSR regarded Australia as the "strategic hinterland of Asia," and spent a great deal of time trying to detach us from the ANZUS alliance. We also featured in their war-fighting plans but little is heard on this subject. Those plans were based on a massive first strike, which almost came to fruition in 1984. As George Santyana and others have said, those who do not heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Look carefully at Vladimir Putin and then those who in this country regard what he is doing as perfectly legitimate. He is an unreconstructed Marxist with imperial ambition. Lest we forget.