Under Wraps: “Let me begin by thanking all of you for the sterling effort you have all contributed towards keeping this potentially difficult situation contained. The New Zealand Defence Force is forever in your debt.”
“SHALL WE MAKE A START?”, said the man from the Department
of Prime Minister and Cabinet, ostentatiously rearranging the pile of documents
stacked in front of him and glancing up sharply at the five other participants
seated around the polished Rimu table. The meeting-room windows overlooked the
parliamentary complex below. A howling Wellington southerly sent raindrops clattering,
bullet-like, against the glass.
“Colonel, perhaps you would like to begin? ”
The taut, middle-aged military man straightened his back and
cleared his throat.
“Let me begin by thanking all of you for the sterling effort
you have all contributed towards keeping this potentially difficult situation
contained. The New Zealand Defence Force is forever in your debt.”
“Yes, I should say it bloody-well is!”, interrupted the
young woman from Crown Law. “And you’re just damned lucky that the Operation
Burnham Iinquiry heads, Sir Terence Arnold and Sir Geoffrey Palmer are both
reasonable men. Because if they were inclined to be unreasonable, then this
whole god-awful mess could easily have become a great deal messier!”
“Gwen! My dear young woman”, the Chairman intervened
unctuously. “These proceedings will go a lot more smoothly – and quickly – if
we all refrain from interjections. Colonel, you were saying.”
The soldier, who had been glowering at the lawyer, turned
his eyes back to the prim little man at the head of the table.
“Thank you, Mr Chairman. As I was saying, the potential
difficulties associated with the Operation Burnham Inquiry – most particularly
the risks associated with the proceedings being conducted in public – have
largely been resolved to the NZDF’s satisfaction. Practically the entire inquiry
will now be conducted in secret with access to the most sensitive evidence
restricted to those with only the highest security clearances. A very small and
select group, Mr Chairman, which does not include Messrs Hager and Stephenson!
A ripple of laughter went around the table.
“Madame Director, is there anything you wish to add”, said
the Chairman, nodding in the direction of the bespectacled Director of the
Security Intelligence Service.
“There’s not a great deal to add to what the Colonel has already
told us, Mr Chairman. Obviously those of us in the Service and our friends at
the [Government Communications Security] Bureau were deeply disturbed at the
prospect of an open and transparent public inquiry into Burnham. The reaction
of the Americans would have been one of extreme dissatisfaction and, of course,
our Australian cousins would have exerted every muscle to outdo them in the
dissatisfaction stakes.”
Laughter once again rippled around the table.
“We can laugh now,” interjected the Director of the GCSB,
“but there was serious talk about our being chucked out of the Five Eyes. Do
you know that the Deputy-Director of the NSA even went so far as to suggest
that it might be time to conduct a re-run of Operation Shut-Down.”
“Which is what, exactly?” Chipped-in Gwen from Crown Law.
“Which is the sequence of events that ensues should New
Zealand either withdraw or get chucked out of the Five Eyes Agreement. Not to
put to fine a point upon it, the Americans get to occupy the Bureau for as long
as it takes them to secure and remove every single file we possess. When
Operation Shut-Down is over, New Zealand’s intelligence capabilities will be
roughly the same as Samoa’s.”
“And that is not something we at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and Trade could contemplate with anything remotely resembling
equanimity.” All eyes turned to the tall and tousled young man dressed in a
superbly tailored blue suit, white cotton shirt and shimmering gold tie. “It
has taken MFAT the best part of thirty years to restore our relationship with
Washington. We are not about to sit back and see that effort reduced to ashes
on account of half-a-dozen extinct Afghans.”
“Who were blown to pieces by our trigger-happy friends from
the USA”, hissed Gwen, “in an revenge raid over which the NZDF exercised
complete operational control. An operation which should never have been
authorised and which, apart from killing six civilians – including a student
teacher and a little girl – and injuring 15 others, did not manage to kill or
capture even one of the Taliban insurgents believed to have been involved in
the attack that killed Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell. An operation whose multiple
fuck-ups the NZDF did everything in its power to cover-up.”
The Colonel was on his feet. “I will not hear the NZDF
slandered in this fashion, Mr Chairman. I would ask you to exclude this person
from the meeting!”
But Gwen would not be silenced. “Oh yes, I’m sure it would
suit the NZDF for there to be no one in this room with even a semblance of
understanding of the level of illegality associated with Operation Burnham. And
not just Operation Burnham. The NZDF has been recklessly breaking the law for
years in an attempt to keep its crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq under wraps. Handing
captives over to the CIA’s spooks to be tortured and killed? Nobbling
witnesses? Perjury? What would you say, Colonel? How many of these is the NZDF
willing to put its hand up to? One? Two. All three? None?”
The Chairman was on his feet.
“It’s alright, Mr Chairman, I’m leaving. I’ve been lawyering
long enough to know that the people in this room are guilty of participating in
activity which, were this a trial and not an inquiry, would come perilously
close to conspiring to pervert the course of justice. When I joined Crown Law,
I thought I’d be holding the powerful to account. Instead, I find myself
devising ways for keeping the misdeeds of the powerful shrouded in darkness –
safe from the disinfectant of sunlight. This – you – are not what I swore an
oath to uphold!”
Gwen snapped her ring-binder shut, stuffed it into her
briefcase, and with a derisory snort, left the room.
“You’re surely not going to tell me that that young woman
was given a security clearance?”, said the tousled young man from MFAT.
“The very highest”, replied the Chairman, ruefully shaking
his head.
“Not for much longer”, sniffed the SIS Director, tapping the
screen of her smart-phone. “Not for much longer.”
This short story was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Thursday, 27 September 2018.