The next step in the plan to demolish Gorton was resolutely undertaken by Malcolm Fraser. Frank Packer's media outlets were fully mobilised for the onslaught. A story was leaked to the Bulletin, and it also appeared in the Daily Telegraph, accusing the army of subverting government civic aid policy in Vietnam. Fraser denied responsibility for the leak and was immediately charged publicly with the 'lie direct' by Maximillian Walsh and also the editor of the Bulletin.

It transpired that Fraser had even vetted the article before it was published. The leaked account was quite damaging to the junior army minister, Peacock, though this was a matter of no account to Fraser. ...

The sordid little incident grew out of all proportion to its importance. The Canberra journalist, Alan Ramsay, wrote that Chief of the Army General Staff, Lieutenant-General Thomas Daly, had complained to Gorton that Fraser was 'guilty of extreme disloyalty to the army and its junior minister, Mr Peacock' by leaking this story. Gorton and Daly denied this report.

Ramsay declared Gorton had seen and cleared this article before the publication. Gorton repudiated this. Packer's Daily Telegraph kept the issue on its front page for several days, steering the thrust of developments away from Fraser and directing accusations at Gorton, until Gorton was finally destroyed.

What was an unedifying, squalid attempt to manipulate the media for grubby personal ambitions suddenly boiled over into parliament. ... Fraser's response was 'skillful' and 'clever', answering nothing and evading all the important accusations. Gorton's statement in reply seemed a reasonable and convincing riposte to Fraser.

In his comments Gorton denied the Ramsay report. Ramsay interjected from the gallery, 'You liar'. The interjection ran through the chamber like the deadly shot of a skilled marksman. Gorton was finished. Noone listened to him after that.

Gorton left the prime ministership but surprisingly re-emerged as deputy to his successor, McMahon. Packer publicly declared that Gorton 'would be the next for the chop', after several of his supporters had been ejected from the Cabinet by McMahon. Packer was right, three days later Gorton was gone. This political massacre appears to have been the culmination of extended plotting between McMahon and Packer, with the willing connivance of Packer's hatchet man in Canberra Alan Reid.