Scott Cooper mixes fact and fiction to create his book Ripple Effect which is based on the disappearance of former Australian prime minister, Harold Holt.

Nicholas Falconer

FORMER Australian prime minister Harold Holt was kidnapped and murdered - by our own people, according to a Sunshine Coast novelist and former spy.

But you won't read about it ... well, not quite as clearly as you'd like.

While his book Ripple Effect is fiction, Twin Waters resident Scott Cooper says it is based on facts handed to him by a former colleague in the organisation which preceded ASIO and ASIS, the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD).

Ripple Effect, chronicling a mythical version of the events surrounding Holt's mysterious drowning on December 17, 1967, is a story Mr Cooper said he had been “living with for 42 years” and he wanted to write the “truth” of what happened.

He claims he has been forced to write the account as fiction, not only because of the Official Secrets Act but also because of threats made against his son, a former army officer.

Mr Cooper describes the kidnapping as Operation Reed, the details of which were given to him by a friend and fellow spy who died in unusual circumstances in 1974.

“We've been led to believe a 57-year-old man in sandals (Harold Holt) went for a swim where seas were running at five or six feet,” he said.

“The Navy divers could not get out beyond 20 feet (that day).”

Mr Cooper said the “impeccably credentialed” socialite and one of Holt's lovers, Marjorie Gillespie, had wrongly added her daughter and her boyfriend in as witnesses.

He believes Holt's disappearance came about because he was about to announce mandatory conscription would be introduced, after a visit from US president Lyndon Baines Johnson.

“LBJ told Holt he was going to increase US troops in Vietnam by one million on the ground, and Australia must send three battalions,” Mr Cooper said.

“Australia did not have three battalions and we were already having problems to deal with in Indonesia.

“The belief at the time was Holt was popular; he was not.

“When Military Intelligence heard about (the conscription plan), they knew Vietnam could not be won with firepower.

“There were also rumours about Holt with different women, and everyone was trying to stick the knife in.”

Plan A, concocted by a mix of powerful business and political people, was a plot to kidnap Holt and make him see reason.

Mr Cooper said that went horribly and fatally wrong as Holt died of asphyxiation during the kidnapping.

“Plan B was to say he drowned. No-one expected people would swallow that story but they did.

“(But) people wanted to believe what they were told.”

Mr Cooper was one of the soldiers who combed the cliffs on that fateful day, not knowing what had really happened until 18 months later.

“One thing - no human could have gone for a swim that day (at Cheviot Beach),” he said.

But Mr Cooper's “inside knowledge” doesn't stop with the disappearance of Harold Holt.

He claims the dismissal of prime minister Gough Whitlam's was a plan based on Britain's MI5 “having studied a state double-dissolution” setting a precedent.

Scott Cooper's book Ripple Effect is published by New Holland, retailing at $29.95, available at major retailer.