SIS
SPIED ON PEACE MOVEMENT FOR DECADES
Peace Researcher 38 – July 2009
-
Murray Horton
Starting in 2008, the NZ Security Intelligence
Service (SIS) has been releasing censored versions of historic Personal Files
that it held on all manner of people, primarily but not exclusively, political
activists. I have been told that my now “moribund” Personal File covered the
years 1969-2002. At the time of writing I have only received three pages of it,
with no indication of when I will receive the rest (I have appealed to the
Privacy Commissioner about the length of time it is taking). To the best of my
knowledge, the only organisation to receive its SIS file is the Campaign
Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA). I wrote about this in a very long
article in Foreign Control Watchdog
120, May 2009 (“SIS Spied On CAFCA For A Quarter Of A Century”, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/20/06.htm). The following is a drastically
shorter version of that, covering historic SIS spying on peace groups and peace
activists.
Spying On Peace Groups &
Activists
A leading peace activist (who was not the
subject of a Personal File) got a January 2009 letter from SIS Director, Warren
Tucker (the only SIS member who can be legally identified) in which he said
that the SIS had kept files on the following peace groups: the NZ Foundation
for Peace Studies, Peace Movement Aotearoa,
Women for Peace, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
(NZ), and the NZ Nuclear Free Peacemaking Association. The small amount of SIS
file material released to that person included a 1987 newspaper photo of peace
educators newly appointed by the Ministry of Education and the SIS had
helpfully gone through all the names in the caption and written their various
classifications next to them (Personal File, In Records, Not In Records).
Tucker explained that it had been necessary to spy on these groups because they
had been infiltrated by “cynical Communists”.
Courtesy of reading various other people’s
files and the CAFCA one, I know that the SIS had a Personal File on Larry Ross,
veteran Christchurch
peace activist, tireless campaigner for a nuclear free NZ in the 1980s and the
leading figure in the NZ Nuclear Free Peacemaking Association. Larry, who was
active up until earlier this decade, is retired now and in his 80s but his
appetite has been whetted and he has applied for both his Personal File and the
one on the organisation which he founded and headed in his successful and
historic campaign to have NZ declared a nuclear free country. Peace Movement Aotearoa is thinking of applying for
its file. See Maire Leadbeater’s
article, below, which chronicles the SIS spying on a leading peace and
anti-nuclear activist for decades.
Owen
Wilkes
The late Owen Wilkes, NZ’s world famous peace
researcher and ABC founder, appears right throughout the SIS file on CAFCA and
he is recorded as being the subject of a Personal File. He is portrayed as
being some sort of mastermind. For example, the first of the ten SIS memos to
the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the US Embassy in Wellington about what was then called CAFCINZ
(1975) says: “Owen R. WILKES is the main organiser and activist in both CAFMANZ
(Campaign Against Foreign Military Activities In NZ and CAFCINZ (Campaign
Against Foreign Control In NZ)”. When I went overseas in 1978 the SIS attached
great significance to the fact that I (and my then partner) was going to visit
Owen in Sweden
(he spent six years working for Scandinavian peace research institutes).
The most fascinating report on Owen is a
December 1985 one entitled “PROTEST ACTIVITY AGAINST THE SERVICE: ASSESSMENT OF
CURRENT CAMPAIGNS”. In it they recognised Owen as a formidable foe. Some
extracts: “CAFCINZ and its leading personalities have had a longstanding
involvement in protest against this Service. Under the direction of Murray
Donald HORTON (Personal File), CAFCINZ was responsible for coordinating protest
and harassment activity against Service premises in Christchurch in the mid-to-late 1970s…The
Service regained prominence in CAFCINZ’s interests in late 1983 with the
acknowledgement by New Zealand Customs of its referral of WILKES’ incoming
overseas mail to the NZSIS. CAFCINZ took up the cause of one of its founding
members with gusto and apparently cooperated with WILKES in the formation of
the Christchurch Peace Research Institute (PRI)… For a variety of reasons, the
temperature appears to be rising in anti-SIS feeling over recent months.
CAFCINZ appears to be taking the lead and this may be because of WILKES’
personal vendetta as much as CAFCINZ’s need to find a new issue on which to
focus, now that the nuclear free and anti-ANZUS issues have become more widely
popular and self-sustaining. WILKES brings a sophistication to anti-SIS
activity that has not been much in evidence in the past. His Scandinavian
experience has already been evident in CAFCINZ and PRI activity and there is,
as yet, no reason to disbelieve that the type of information gathering
techniques WILKES claimed were being used against Government Communications
Security Bureau (GCSB) and Defence (irrespective of their success) were not in
fact undertaken and could not be used against this Service. The failure, by
CAFCINZ and others, to achieve any measure of success against the Service via
the Official Information Act does not appear to have dampened their
enthusiasm…A campaign to expose the activities of the NZSIS is being initiated.
It is possible that a degree of sophistication and perseverance not previously
seen may be employed by individuals involved. There is an apparent climate of
support from the radical Left for such a campaign”. Owen’s family is applying
for his Personal File. It will be a whopper and it will make fascinating
reading. Peace Researcher devoted a
special issue to Owen, after his 2005 suicide. It is number 31, October 2005,
online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/prcont31.html
Spying On MPs A Step Too Far
The
most high profile and controversial Personal File to have been released is that
of Keith Locke, the Green MP, veteran
ABC activist and Waihopai spybase protester (as one of the children of Jack and
Elsie Locke and brother of Maire Leadbeater, Keith had also been the subject of
a Personal File since he was 11 and onwards for 50 years). The most
controversial aspect of his file was that the last entry was as recently as
2006, seven years after he was elected to Parliament as a Green MP. The SIS
took a close interest in his meetings, as an MP, with members of NZ’s Tamil
community and a factfinding trip that he made to wartorn Sri Lanka earlier this decade.
Keith made the point that the SIS was spying on meetings that he was holding
with his constituents. Unlike me, and others, Keith hasn’t received an
assurance from SIS Director Tucker that the SIS has stopped spying on him; nor
(unlike me) has he received an assurance from Tucker that “…you have never
encouraged unlawful activity such as sabotage, subversion or terrorism…”.
Spying on “old Lefties” (Tucker’s phrase) is one thing, but spying on a sitting
MP is quite another. The revelation led to uproar in Parliament, the media and
among the public. John Key, as Minister in Charge of the SIS (it’s always the
Prime Minister) ordered Paul Neazor, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and
Security, to investigate. He produced an unusually speedy report recommending
that the SIS should not spy on MPs, but gave the spies a great big escape
clause by saying that if they have to it should be cleared with the Speaker (a
member of the governing party). Neazor also dipped his toe into the broader
issue of the SIS files and said: “Historically, because of the extensive
cross-referencing system, when a Personal File existed, information from any
source about that person could find its way to the file. It could produce a
vacuum cleaner approach to collecting” (Press, 18/3/09;
“Watchdog slates scale of SIS files”, Mike Houlahan). So that’s where all us
“old Lefties” et al are – we’ve been sucked up into the dustbag of (the SIS
version of) history.
One of
the last entries in Keith’s Personal File is the handwritten word
“Eeeexcellent!” accompanying a selection of letters critical of him published
in various papers in very recent years. The Inspector-General of Intelligence
and Security wrote in his report: “Mr Locke suggested that some at least of
this material might have been gathered because of his critical stance in
Parliament on intelligence issues. All I can say is that one notation which
could have given that impression was certainly unprofessional and ought not to
have appeared on a file of a neutral intelligence service”. I would like to
hear the SIS’ definition of neutrality.
Waihopai
Barely Mentioned In The Files
CAFCINZ grew out of the anti-Vietnam War
movement and the original anti-bases campaign of the 1960s and early 1970s. As
such, there is a lot of material in the SIS file on CAFCINZ/CAFCA relating to
those anti-bases protests (along with nonsense such as trying to prove
allegations that CAFCINZ was responsible for the 1970s’ “sabotage” of the US
military communications aerials situated in the disused former Royal New
Zealand Air Force base at Weedons, near Christchurch. They were apparently
dropped as a protest against NZ port visits by US nuclear warships but nobody
ever claimed credit for it and nobody was ever charged with it. Neither I nor
CAFCA had anything to do with it, nor knew anything about it. In fact, I was
living in Sydney at the time and that was known to the Australian Security
Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), proven by the fact that two of the three
pages of my SIS Personal File thus far released to me consists of 1970s’ memos
between the Directors, no less, of ASIO and the SIS, about me living and being
politically active in Sydney at that time.
And ABC grew out of CAFCA, in the late 1980s
and has conducted a campaign against the Waihopai spybase ever since. I find
it fascinating that the word “Waihopai” is barely mentioned in the 400+
documents released to CAFCA, so obviously all that stuff on the movement to
shut down that spy base is held by the GCSB (which operates Waihopai and whose
immediate past Director was the very same Warren Tucker). As SIS Director,
Tucker wrote to the subject of one Personal File that the GCSB refused to
authorise the SIS to release some GCSB documents about the subject that the SIS
had in that Personal File. And Police Intelligence (which is the source for so
much of the material in the SIS files that I’ve read, particularly the CAFCA
one) is not offering to throw open the archives either (it mistakenly did so
once, back in the mid 80s, when it auctioned a Christchurch filing cabinet
containing historic pre-computer index cards on 800 “criminals”, of which I was
one). So it’s not quite the Age of Aquarius just yet. To test the water, I have
written to both the GCSB and Police asking for all file material that they hold
on me. The GCSB replied, saying that it does not have a file on me (but the
letter did say that the GCSB files Peace Researcher, so hello boys).
Enemies List
That’s not to say that there is nothing in the files about Christchurch peace
organisations and activists. There is but very little. And some of that is a
truly petty kind. The SIS kept a literal enemies list of those who campaigned
against it and makes no bones about it. This was made extremely explicit in
Tucker’s letter to me (4/2/09): “You ask if you are still ‘a person of
interest’ to the NZSIS. The answer is that you are only of interest to us as
long as you are interested in us. You have campaigned publicly for the
abolition of this Service but you have never encouraged unlawful activity such
as sabotage, subversion or terrorism…”. It’s a relief that campaigning publicly
for the abolition of the SIS is not equated with sabotage, subversion or
terrorism.
This enemies list was maintained
right down to the level of finding out who were the writers of critical letters
to the editor. For example, Anti-Bases Campaign founder, Warren
Thomson, (whose later multiple arrests led to his nickname of
Waihopai Warren) had one such letter published in the Press in 1990. This
was duly clipped and filed, along with Warren’s
address, phone number and occupation (as gleaned from the electoral roll and
phone book). The accompanying report described him as “probably being the
author of a derogatory letter about the NZSIS”. For the record, Warren’s letter cited an
Australian Prime Minister who had called his spies a “bunch of stumblebums” and
said that the description applied to the SIS.
Oversight? What’s That?
The SIS has been a controversial
and repeatedly incompetent agency throughout its more than 50 years of
existence. That is a whole other article (book, more likely) in itself. Suffice
to list three of their most spectacular cockups: the 1970s’ persecution of Dr
WB Sutch (which led to him being acquitted of espionage charges under the
former Official Secrets Act, the only such case in NZ’s history; the more
recent persecution, this decade, of Ahmed Zaoui, which was most recently
detailed in Peace Researcher 35,
December 2007, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr35-153.html;
and the 1996 bungled break in at the Christchurch home of activist Aziz Choudry (see Peace Researcher 19/20, November/December 1999, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/choudry.htm for the most
succinct summary of this case). None of those three regarded the SIS as a joke.
I haven’t even mentioned the legendary stuffups like the SIS agent who left his
briefcase on a Wellington
footpath, containing his ID card, a pie and a Penthouse (that one definitely was a joke). Is there any
accountability? The far from reassuring answer is, bugger all. I’ve already
mentioned the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security. Laurie Greig, the
first one, had to resign because he made a fool of himself during the
protracted Zaoui case (while Zaoui, of course, spent nearly two years in
prison, half of that in maximum security, with no charge and no trial). His
successor, Paul Neazor, could only be better but even if he was intent on
exercising real oversight, he can’t. He has no staff, no resources, and is
dependent on the spies to supply him with the information he needs to “investigate”
them.
Every Minor Detail Is Kept
Secret
Then there is the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is not a
Parliamentary Select Committee but a committee of Government, controlled by the
Prime Minister. There are only five members – the PM, Leader of the Opposition
and their respective appointees. Since the 2008 election, the three new
appointees are: Act Leader Rodney Hide, Maori Party Leader Tariana Turia and Green Co-Leader Russel Norman. There has been some media comment
that these three (two from the governing coalition and one from the Opposition)
may spice things up a bit and start to turn the Committee into a proper
oversight body, instead of a Government rubberstamp. But any would-be reformers
face an uphill struggle – members are committed to secrecy about any
proceedings of the Committee, which only meets a couple of times per year (and
for less than an hour per meeting). And it gets worse. ABC wrote to the Office
of the Prime Minister, under the Official Information Act, asking to be notified,
retrospectively, of each meeting; how long each meeting lasted; and a list of
who attended each meeting. We received a reply saying that, as the Committee is
not a department or organisation as defined in the Official Information Act, it
is not subject to it, and our request was declined.
Effective oversight is possible – for example, the US Congress held
public hearings into CIA abuses as far back as the 1970s. In that same decade the then
Australian Attorney General, the late Lionel Murphy, feared that the Australian Security
Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was not giving him accurate information about
the likelihood of Croatian fascist terrorists, resident in Australia, trying to
assassinate the Yugoslav PM during a forthcoming State visit. So Murphy did
something unheard of - he led a March 1973 police raid of ASIO’s HQ to inspect
their files for himself. We look forward with eager anticipation to this
happening in Wellington. Of course, nothing like those two examples has
ever happened in NZ, where politicians of both major parties have always been
willing accomplices of the code of silence that accompanies matters of
“national security” in this country. Lazy, gutless cowards, is the phrase that
comes to mind (with a few honourable exceptions, of course). Pardon the pun but
there has definitely been an oversight about oversight, in that there isn’t any
worthy of the name.
A major question is why the SIS has suddenly started dishing out these
files willy nilly. I don’t intend to get into the speculation about that, ask
the SIS. A lot of the credit is being given to Warren Tucker wielding a new
broom as Director, with one commentator depicting him as some sort of Mikhail
Gorbachev bringing glasnost to a hitherto secret society. Considering that
Gorbachev played a major role in the demise of the Soviet
Union, the State that he headed, here’s hoping that Tucker can do
the same for the SIS. We can but dream. The SIS is still wedded to the obsolete
culture of secrecy and an obsessive hunt for “enemies”. It used to be
Communists and “Russian spies” (Sutch was their only attempt at nabbing one and
they came a most spectacular gutser). Then it became “Muslim terrorists” (Zaoui
paid the price for that). Latterly the covert State (with the Police taking the
lead and a salivating tabloid media in tow) has focused on “Maori terrorists”,
allied with a mishmash of pakeha anarchists and other odds and sods. That has
yet to come to trial (see my article “A Bad Case Of ‘Terrorism’ Hysteria” in Peace Researcher 35, December 2007, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr35-156.html. The
current global crisis of capitalism will see Communists back in fashion as
targets for the spies.
We Say Scrap The SIS
But the SIS still can’t justify its existence and it never could (the
files released certainly don’t provide any evidence of its indispensability).
Both ABC and CAFCA have consistently called for its abolition (and that of its
bigger and much more secret brother, the GCSB). To quote some 1990s’ CAFCA
submissions to a couple of the several Acts giving increased powers to the
spies: “The agencies at the centre of this Bill - the SIS and the GCSB - should
not exist, full stop. In the evocative words of the lovely old song ‘Why Was He
Born So Beautiful?’ – ‘He's no bloody good at anything; he's no bloody good at
all’. That sums up exactly our feelings about the SIS and the GCSB. They are
useless, dangerous, a waste of public money, and an anachronism in this day and
age. The words ‘intelligence’ and ‘security’ are misapplied in the Bill's title
- the New Zealand
public has seen precious little evidence of either… Every
other organ of the State has been restructured, corporatised, flogged off or
closed down. So why not add the SIS to the list? What’s so special about it?
This is one cut in Government spending which would be both fully justified and
popular”. To which ABC says, hear, hear! Pension them off and give them each a
pair of binoculars so that they can spy on their neighbours (WINZ probably has
plenty of vacancies for informants). If the State must have political spies,
then let the cops do it and have to be (theoretically) accountable to the legal
system.
Why Does SIS Spy On Legitimate Dissidents?
A couple of major questions arise from the release of the censored
versions of these historic files, such as why a perfectly legitimate and
transparent organisation such as CAFCA was spied on, along with numerous of its
members, many of whom are peace and anti-bases activists, for a quarter of a
century (from the mid 1970s to the late 90s)? And is there any democratic
control of the spies, any accountability? The first one can be dismissed as
being of historic interest only, but if we don’t learn from the past then the
mistakes and practices will continue to be repeated into the future. The second
question is the vital one and needs to be properly addressed to prevent this
happening again. New Zealand
used to sneer at the secret police apparatus of our old Communist bloc enemies
but what is revealed in the SIS files is a difference only in degree from what
was practised in countries like the former East Germany. The SIS has never had
police powers but they certainly put a lot of effort into spying on dissidents.
If this had been exposed as having happened in one of those old enemy
countries, our politicians and media would have made a meal of it, hailing the
dissidents as heroes. Political spying on one’s own people is reprehensible no
matter in what country, or under what system, it happens.
There will be plenty more developments in this story as more and more
files see the light of day. Indeed it was 24 years since CAFCINZ’s first
unsuccessful attempt to get its file, in 1985, using the newfangled Official Information
Act (that request, in itself, created such alarm in the SIS that it devoted a
full report to CAFCINZ, assessing it as being of “minimal security interest”.
That didn’t stop it from spying on CAFCINZ/CAFCA for a further decade and a
half). So patience is obviously a virtue when it comes to dealing with these
obsolete dinosaurs, which are stuck in the tar pit of ancient political
history.