Other Foreign Bases in New Zealand
HAREWOOD
US Airforce Starlifter,
Christchurch Airport
Operation
Deep Freeze, the American military base at Christchurch Airport
The American military occupation of
Christchurch International Airport (Harewood) has its roots in the 1950s. The
scientific International Geophysical Year (1957-58) brought military air and
logistics support in the form of the US Navy and Air Force. The Navy left in
1998, but the Air Force continues its military/intelligence support operations
to this day. The American military
operates under the cover the Antarctic Agreement of 1961. Both overt and covert
military and intelligence support operations that have little or no
relationship to Antarctic science and logistics (Operation Deep Freeze) have
gone on for years both in Christchurch and Antarctica. The New Zealand
government has never questioned the scope of US military activities at
Christchurch – the only Australasian city to host a foreign base within its
bounds.
The US government regards the US
area at the airport as sovereign US territory and not subject to NZ law. New Zealanders in the employ of the US
military engaged in Antarctic logistics have long been denied the option of
belonging to a trade union in their own country. Customs and agriculture
officials may not set foot on any American military aircraft; they too are
sovereign US territory under international law.
Military research in the Southern
Hemisphere and in the Antarctic was frequently supported from Operation Deep
Freeze in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Antarctic Treaty.
The USAF Air Mobility Command (formerly the Military Airlift Command) supports
Antarctic operations in the southern summer. But its large Starlifter and
Galaxy cargo aircraft also supply vital US military/intelligence bases in
Australia (such as Pine Gap) year-round with several flights a month through
Christchurch. This has gone on since the early 1960s with the planes covered by
the American neither-confirm-nor-deny nuclear weapons policy – the same policy
that saw US Navy ships banned by law from New Zealand since 1987. The NZ
government gives these aircraft annual blanket clearance for unlimited flights
and no questions asked.
Despite New Zealand having been
expelled from ANZUS since the 1980s and supposedly frozen out of a direct
military relationship with the US, because of our nuclear free stance, there
has never been the slightest suggestion from the US of it relocating or closing
the Harewood base. Why? Because it values having a medium level multi-purpose
US military transport base in New Zealand. Harewood has always been the only
actual US military base in NZ, as opposed to specialist installations. The US
values having a sovereign base here, and it has served as host for all manner
of US military and political figures for decades, to the very highest level of
the US Government. From CIA Director Richard Helms in the 1970s to President
Bill Clinton in 1999, they've all come to Harewood.
TANGIMOANA
Aerials at Tangimoana
New Zealand’s Government
Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) operates a radio communications interception
facility called Tangimoana. The station is located 150 km north of Wellington
in sand-hill country on the West Coast of the North Island. The sophisticated
antennae are designed to pick up high frequency (or ‘short wave’) radio signals
from ships, aircraft and land-based transmitters around the Pacific.
Beyond high barbed
wire-topped fences, electronic sensors, security cameras and barred windows,
the neon lights in the operations building can be seen shining day and night.
Here, rows of intercept officers sit at control panels with headphones,
searching for, listening to and recording radio messages picked up through the
different antennae.
At any time one officer
may be recording Vanuatu telex messages, another monitoring military communications
in New Caledonia and another tuning in to a Russian ship's radio frequency at
its usual reporting time to get a direction finding ‘fix’ on its position.
Until the discovery and expose of
the station by Owen Wilkes in 1984, New Zealanders had no idea that their
country was involved in spying on other countries' communications.
For example, the French
communications targeted by Tangimoana are French military communications: radio
messages between French Polynesia and Paris, between French territories
including Mororoa Atoll (site of nuclear weapons testing) and military
communications in New Caledonia. Tangimoana also monitored the French terrorists who sank the Rainbow Warrior. The interception
occurred in mid-July 1985 as they sailed away from New Zealand on the yacht Ouvea. Their radio messages were
translated by GCSB personnel, but this was only after the police had already
identified the yacht and it was too late to catch them.
Another major area targeted
by Tangimoana is communications between and within South Pacific nations and
their communications with the rest of the world. This includes a wide range of
political, economic and military communications: from political telexes in
Melanesia, to Fiji army communications, to Tongan patrol boats communicating
with their headquarters. There is even some monitoring of private ham radio
operators in the South Pacific if they are in a position to know about subjects
of interest (e.g., internal conflict within a Pacific Island nation). However
by the mid-1990s most of the
non-military South Pacific communications have been replaced by satellite (see Waihopai).
Since
the second half of the 1980s computer technology has dramatically altered the
operations at Tangimoana. The station's Dictionary computer and the internal
station computer network are now central to its work. One of the staff asked
the interviewer (Nicky Hager):
“…you
do realise that Tangimoana and Waihopai collect for the other agencies?”
This comment partly
refers to special requests where Tangimoana may have better reception than
other stations in the network or is doing special interception work for another
agency. Mainly, though, it refers to
the regular interception-sharing coordinated within the ECHELON global
intelligence system of the US National Security Agency.
The Tangimoana collection
schedule (i.e., schedule of whom to spy on when) optimises collection for the
whole network and the Dictionary computer automatically sends raw intercept to
the overseas agencies according to their keyword specifications.
(Adapted from “Secret Power: New
Zealand’s Role In The International Spy Network” by Nicky Hager, with
permission.)