Rudd won't go soft on terror

[Peter Presland]

I recently finished reading 'Secret Power' by Nicky Hager. It is a brief history of the incorporation of NZ into the Anglo-American post WWII Secret Intelligence world. In particular its integration into the Echellon Worldwide communications intercept system. It's avilable as a pdf here.

One of the most startling things about the book is a foreword by David Lange who was NZ Prime Minister for some of the period covered; as in:

We even went the length of building a satellite station at Waihopai. But it was not until I read this book that I had any idea that we had been committed to an international integrated electronic network. It was with some apprehension that I learned that Nicky Hager was researching the activity of our intelligence community. He has long been a pain in the establishment"s neck. Unfortunately for the establishment, he is engaging, thorough, unthreatening, with a dangerously ingenuous appearance, and an astonishing number of people have told him things that I, as Prime Minister in charge of the intelligence services, was never told.

The book was first published in 1996 but is nonetheless mightily revealing of the methods employed by the US/UK SIS's to keep junior members of the system on board.

The book also covers the 'Rainbow Warrior' sinking in Aukland harbour and the parliamentary decision to declare NZ nuclear free. Counter-intuitively, both issues became useful tools in further misleading both NZ politicians and the public about intelligence matters generally. In a nutshell, their beliefs and behaviour was (and remains) analagous to innocent, credulous but trusting children being cynically moulded by deceptive and grossly manipulative parents. Seems to me that people like Rudd and Key just make the job that much easier, that's all.