MEDIA baron Rupert Murdoch and former prime minister Malcolm Fraser exchanged secrets, including intelligence information, in efforts to politically destroy Labor leader Gough Whitlam.

Documents released by the National Archives, including a personal file compiled by Murdoch and notes of Fraser's attorney-general, Bob Ellicott, show that the media magnate and prime minister worked together on Murdoch's biggest personal scoop - a front page revelation in The Australian of February 25, 1976, that Whitlam had secretly sought a massive election campaign donation from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Baath Party.

Rupert Murdoch (left) and Malcolm Fraser (right) worked to politically destroy Gough Whitlam.

What was called the Iraqi Money Affair was a political sensation that nearly cost Whitlam the Labor leadership in humiliating circumstances.

Murdoch's personal file and Ellicott's notes have revealed intimate collaboration as the publisher sought to confirm claims by French-Australian businessman Henri Fischer that he had been enlisted by left-wing Labor figure Bill Hartley, ALP national secretary David Combe and Whitlam to raise Iraqi funds for Labor's 1975 election campaign.