Peace Researcher 34 – July 2007
2006 marked the 50th anniversary of the woebegotten New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS), which is now headed by Warren Tucker (previously the head of the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau [GCSB), which operates the Waihopai and Tangimoana spybases). For many years now Peace Researcher has regularly detailed the misdoings of the SIS, most recently in PR 33, November 2006, “SIS – New Boss But Same Old Story”, by Murray Horton, which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr33-134.html
50 is a milestone is anyone’s
life (one receding into the past in my case), so the SIS and Government decided
to throw a party to mark the occasion. Naturally, it had to be a secret party,
held at Government House in Wellington in November 2006 and hosted by the
Minister in Charge of the SIS (Helen Clark) and the Governor General, with
senior Government officials in attendance. It was only made public after it was
over and the special guests had all left. And what special guests they were –
star billing went to General Michael Hayden, Director of the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). Hayden, the former head of the US National Security
Agency (NSA, which is the GCSB’s biggest Big Brother and the recipient of
Waihopai’s electronic intelligence) flew in his own US Air Force C-17
Globemaster jet, which sat on the tarmac at
What a wonderful bunch of
villains, all gathered in little old
This was a celebrity party where the celebrities didn’t want their photos taken, nor do we know what presents they all gave the birthday boy. We can only hope that they all heartily sang the old birthday song: “Why was he born so beautiful, why was he born at all? He’s no bloody good at anything, he’s no bloody good at all”. That sums up the feelings about the SIS by an awful lot of New Zealanders, ABC included.
Muslims Are The New Communists
Richard Woods was SIS Director
from 1999-2006 inclusive (for details, see PR
33, November 2006, “SIS – New Boss But Same Old Story”, by Murray Horton, which
can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr33-134.html).
On his last day in office, he told the media that
In his final Annual Report (not tabled in Parliament until February 2007, by
which time Warren Tucker had been SIS Director for several months) Woods
highlighted “the use of the Internet by Islamic extremists poses a real
challenge to all Western Intelligence agencies. The Service is no exception” (
Woods’ final Report did name some names of this faceless “enemy”.
Of course the “Islamic terrorist”
who was the prize catch of Woods’ term of office is poor Ahmed Zaoui, the
fugitive Algerian MP who is now into his fifth year of being slowly ground through
the bureaucratic mill of prison and courts, with no end in sight while he is
out on bail but stuck in a legal limbo, subject to restrictions, unable to work
or receive any income and separated from his family who are in hiding in South
East Asia. PR has reported Zaoui’s
case in great detail for years now, most recently in 33, November 2006, “SIS –
New Boss But Same Old Story”, by Murray Horton, which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr33-134.html).
Zaoui is the first person to be the subject of a Security Risk Certificate
issued by the SIS. This was set down for an August 2006 review hearing by Paul
Neazor, the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence. However, weeks
beforehand, Neazor postponed the hearing indefinitely, saying that he needed
more time to prepare. “However, sources close to the case said one of the
reasons for the delay was a story in the
In June 2007 Neazor announced
that the review process would start in July and August, held in private,
although it will be dealing with unclassified information only. This first
stage involves evidence from Zaoui and witnesses for him, both from NZ and
overseas. Zaoui’s special advocates (lawyers given security clearance) have
already been to
While Zaoui interminably waits
for the SIS “oversight” system to resolve his case (and the Government cruelly
refuses to allow his family to join him in NZ), he has won a legal battle with
the Police. In February 2007 the Police Complaints Authority upheld his complaint
against the Police for their actions immediately after he was first arrested,
upon arrival at
The Privatisation Of Spying
In May 2007 the Sunday Star Times (27/5/07, “’I was paid to betray protesters’. Finding the enemy within”, Nicky Hager and Deidre Mussen) broke the story of how Solid Energy, a State Owned Enterprise (SOE), had employed a firm of private investigators which in turn had recruited and paid a spy to infiltrate the Save Happy Valley Campaign, which is very successfully stopping Solid Energy from being able to mine coal in an area of the West Coast where there are endangered native snails (it’s a long story and the best way to find out about it is to go to http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz). The spy’s name is Ryan Paterson-Rouse and, unusually, he fessed up when confronted with irrefutable evidence of his treachery (the private eye company was hoist with its own petard when a computer glitch bounced back all incoming e-mails to their unknowing senders, who thus discovered that their private e-mails were being read and by whom). The article also named an identical spy in Peace Action Wellington, who had started off within the animal rights movement (unlike Ryan, she denies being a spy, despite being confronted with the same evidence. However, she has since vanished, believed to have gone overseas). Ryan’s motivation? The measly $100 a week Solid Energy paid him, which came in handy for a student.
Anti-Bases Campaign joined the
chorus of groups condemning this corporate spying on behalf of an SOE. Saving
Spies, of the official GCSB and SIS variety,
are our bread and butter, of course. We also know a thing or two about spies of
the infiltrator variety, having encountered a few of them in the two decades
that we’ve been campaigning to close the Waihopai spybase. Having been a
political activist for several decades, I’ve encountered these people in a
number of groups with which I’ve been involved. On the very first activity of
the Campaign Against Foreign Control (CAFCA), namely the 1975 South Island
Resistance Ride, an undercover police officer was outed. In CAFCA’s early years
we had a committee member who had no “back story” (to use today’s jargon) and
who was very interested in looking after our membership records. He duly
vanished, only to resurface in another part of the country as a policeman
(finishing up as a senior detective). Other people with no back stories have
appeared on the scene when major protests have been planned, then just as
suddenly disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again. My all time favourite
example is the fellow who turned up, a total stranger, at a 1990s’ ABC meeting
which was planning a protest at the Waihopai spybase, complete with video
camera. When asked to stop filming he protested that he was doing a project to
film how people run meetings! Yeah right! That particular cowboy rode off into
the sunset too.
The Save Happy Valley Campaign spy saga has two
different features to the ones I’ve mentioned. In this current case, the spy
has confessed, unlike the other infiltrators (we knew what they were, because
they fitted the profile to a T). And this is not (directly) official, State,
spying but one done by a corporation, on behalf of an SOE (therefore paid by
us, the taxpayer, and supposedly accountable to us). This privatisation and
contracting out of spying represents a deplorable new trend and one which needs
to be stamped out by the Government which is responsible for SOEs. What
happened to the self-confessed
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