The Woman With The Red Umbrella - A Short Story.

“The thing you’ve got to understand about misinformation and disinformation, Mr … Smith, is that they’re like machine-guns and artillery – much too dangerous to have just anybody firing them off. They are weapons that only the state can be permitted to wield.”

I SPOTTED HER at one hundred metres. Average height, average build, entirely nondescript: the sort of person you would pass in the street without a second glance. Had she not been carrying a red umbrella on a day that smelled of rain, my eyes would have registered her presence, and continued searching. But the red umbrella fixed my gaze. It was the pre-arranged sign. This was the woman.

As she came up the steps towards the bench I rose, as arranged, to greet her like an old friend. She stretched out her hand and I shook it gently. As she seated herself beside me, she took care to position the red umbrella between us. A demarcator: on one side, her world; on the other, mine.

“I’m told you are in search of information, Mr … Smith?”

“Not my real name.”

No? You surprise me. My name is Ms … Jones.”

“What can you tell me about the Government’s war against ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’? Are my sources exaggerating? Or, is this something to be taken seriously?”

“Direct and to the point. I like that Mr Smith. At my age, time is precious. So, let me be equally direct. Your sources are not exaggerating. The management of information is something this government takes extremely seriously. Its predecessors had it much easier, of course. Fifty years ago there were so few disseminators of information. Keeping the official story – or stories – straight involved managing maybe two or three hundred individuals – certainly no more than that. Today, you’re talking thousands – tens of thousands – all on digital platforms which can be updated in an instant. Thousands of people espousing views pulled straight out of their arses. Or, even worse, out of Russian, American and Chinese arses!”

“But, surely, propaganda of one sort or another has been around forever? Misinformation and disinformation – they’re hardly new.”

“No, that’s true. But the difference between the present and the past is the degree to which propaganda – yours and your opponents’ – can be controlled. Think about it. There have always been crazies out there. People who wrote to the editor of the local paper using green ink and capital letters. But they weren’t a problem. Their letters were simply crumpled up and deposited in the nearest wastepaper bin. And there was nothing, short of buying their own printing press, they could do about it. But today … Today they go on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik-Tok and their craziness infects thousands, or, if you’re Donald Trump, millions.”

“Good luck with controlling Meta and Google, Ms Jones!”

“Yes, well, now you’re getting to the heart of the problem. Let’s start with the timing of this latest big push. Our Prime Minister, horrified by the Christchurch mosque massacre, reaches out to Zuckerburg and his ilk. But, she also takes to heart the criticism of the Muslim community about the ‘hate speech’ that fuelled the horror. All the lies and half-truths circulating about Islam. All that misinformation and disinformation. It took hold of Brenton Tarrant. It turned him into a mass murderer.”

“Okay. But Tarrant was refighting the crusades. How do you prevent that? Close all the libraries?”

“A fair question. But let me move the narrative on. Ten months after Christchurch, Covid-19 arrives on the scene. It’s new, and no one is at all sure how deadly this novel coronavirus is going to be. One thing the experts do know, however, is that the effects of a potentially deadly virus can be made a whole lot worse by people spreading misinformation and disinformation on the Internet. So the DPMC hires people to monitor what’s happening online vis-à-vis the pandemic. The results are frightening. It’s a nutfest out there.”

“And the Prime Minister, her government, and their advisers, are all convinced that these nutters have to be monitored and, if possible, reined-in, before they undermine the ‘Team of Five Million’s’ battle against the virus – especially the vaccine roll-out.”

“Well done, Mr Smith, well-spotted. But it gets worse. In the minds of the Government and its advisers, the anti-vaxxers and Wuhan Flu conspiracy theorists begin to merge with the white supremacists, Nazis, Islamophobes, transphobes and TERFs. As far as Labour and the Greens are concerned they are all dangerous nutters: people who can do real harm to others. And the people who defend these dangerous nutters’ right to free speech are little better than Typhoid Marys – allowing the viruses of hate and intolerance to spread throughout society.”

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“Is it? You’re not the Prime Minister. You’re not being accosted by these nutters every time you venture forth to promote vaccination. You’re not receiving e-mailed death threats – and worse – every day of the week. You’re not looking down on Parliament Grounds at a seething mass of what looks like every green ink correspondent that ever lived waving hangman’s nooses and threatening to execute the entire House of Representatives. You’d like to laugh it off, but then you remember Washington DC on 6 January 2021, and suddenly you no longer feel like laughing.”

“And then they start thinking about Three Waters, and He Puapua and co-governance.”

“Clever boy. Their great fear is that what the anti-vaxxers started, the racists will finish. They’re thinking of all the misinformation and disinformation that’s already being spread about the transformation of New Zealand into Aotearoa, and they’re telling themselves that these digital reactionaries cannot be allowed to win. That the Pakeha majority must not be allowed to crush the legitimate aspirations of the Māori minority. That the racists’ misinformation and disinformation must be stopped.”

“And so we get the Public Interest Broadcasting Fund, and journalists trying to convince us that there are right-wing monsters out there moving in the darkness.”

“And that is when people like me enter the story. People who can gently steer journalists in the right direction. People who can identify potential journalistic assets and supply them with the information they would have very little chance of unearthing without a great deal of unattributed assistance – information that makes their careers. People who can suggest which anti-government voices are most deserving of being silenced. You look shocked Mr Smith. You shouldn’t be. We spooks have been doing this sort of thing for years – just like the Australians, the Americans and the Brits. The thing you’ve got to understand about misinformation and disinformation, Mr … Smith, is that they’re like machine-guns and artillery – much too dangerous to have just anybody firing them off. They are weapons that only the state can be permitted to wield.”

She rose carefully from her seat, as if her joints were giving her discomfort. Glanced up at the grey clouds gathering before a sharp south wind, and pulled her coat more tightly about her.

“It’s coming on to rain, Mr … Smith. My car’s on the other side of the park – not far. So, since we know you came on foot, I’ll leave you the umbrella.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 2 September 2022.

Beware the Backlash: The State Will Not Be Surprised A Second Time.

Right Back At Ya: In the minds of more and more New Zealanders it is now the defence of society itself that must take precedence over free speech. Increasingly, the defenders of free speech will come to be seen as the defenders of those who not only use their freedom of expression to cry “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, but then do all they can to persuade the audience to burn the theatre down.

THE FAR RIGHT ORGANISERS of the now suppressed occupation of Parliament Grounds will in no way consider themselves defeated. On the contrary, they will be celebrating their spectacular migration from the unnoticed ideological fringes to the glare of prime-time politics. In exactly the same way that a largely unknown provincial agitator was catapulted into the national German spotlight by his failed “Beer Hall Putsch” of 1923, the rioters of 2/3/22 have succeeded in seizing Middle New Zealand by the ear.

The Daily Blog’s editor, Martyn Bradbury, estimates that the dramatic events of 2/3/22 have recruited 100,000 followers for the Far-Right string-pullers behind the occupation and its cataclysmic finale. If he’s correct, then that is roughly enough voting power to crest the 5 percent MMP threshold and secure 6 seats in the House of Representatives – assuming, of course, that the Far-Right can arrive at an ideological consensus strong enough to permit the creation of a coherent political party.

There is, however, no evidence to suggest that such a coming together of the volatile elements on display in Parliament Grounds is imminent. Paradoxically, the same social media that brought the doings of the “Freedom Village” to around 30,000 people per day during the occupation all-too-easily emboldens those on the losing side of major debates to strike out on their own. Not only that, but it provides a public stage where the personal animosities of the major players can be played out for the edification of friends and foes alike.

In the absence of an Adolf Hitler-type figure with the requisite intellectual, ideological, rhetorical and political skills to transform the brawling and fissiparous Far-Right into an effective electoral force, the conclusions of the SIS’s Combined Threat Assessment Group (CTAG) are almost certainly correct. The locus for effective action on the Far-Right will shrink down to the level of the “Lone Wolf”. Those dangerously alienated individuals who see themselves as either the “saviours” of their race, or the “avengers” of those whose rights and freedoms have been stripped away by tyrannical blood-drinking paedophiles.

Under discussion here is terrorism – pure and simple. Across the national security community there will be many who, even as they witnessed the fire and smoke of the twenty-third day, were thinking of what a more organised and tactically aggressive leadership might have achieved on the first or second day of the protest, when the defences and defenders of Parliament were at their weakest.

Had 500 or 1,000 brawlers of the sort who hurled paving stones at the Police on 2/3/22 rushed up the steps of Parliament Buildings on 9/2/22 and forced their way through the doors – who could have stopped them? Would New Zealanders, like Americans, have been presented with live images of a crazed anti-vaxxer seated in the Speaker’s Chair? Would a noose-swinging lynch mob have made their way up the Beehive stairwells crying “Ja-cin-daaa!” And, having seen a dozen of their comrades shot down by the Prime Minister’s bodyguards, would they have set fire, not to pup-tents, but the Beehive itself?

There are senior “public servants” across Wellington brooding worriedly today upon what could so easily have happened because, exactly as the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch Mosque Shootings warned, far too little attention has been paid, by those whose duty it is to protect the national security of New Zealand to, the Far-Right and its kindred subversives and terrorists.

Not the least worried of these public servants will be Police Commissioner Andrew Coster. He will be asking all manner of questions about why his own intelligence division failed to anticipate the scale of the crisis the foreign-inspired Far-Right promoters of Convoy 2022 were determined to provoke on the grounds of Parliament. One can only imagine the cold fury with which the Prime Minister directed the same questions at New Zealand’s chief law-enforcement officer.

With the events of 15 March 2019 – and now 2 March 2022 – etched upon her mind, Jacinda Ardern will be more determined than ever to curb the expression of hate speech. On her side of the House (and among a fair proportion of those seated on the opposite side) there will now be even less patience for those who attempt to keep the banner of free speech flying.

Among the public there will likely be a surge of support for the Government’s stance. In the minds of more and more New Zealanders it is now the defence of society itself that must take precedence. Increasingly, the defenders of free speech will come to be seen as the defenders of those who not only use their freedom of expression to cry “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, but then do all they can to persuade the audience to burn the theatre down.

That so many members of the Free Speech movement genuflect to the Right, rather than the Left, will only harden the resolve of those determined to silence the pedlars of arson and murder who – to borrow the Prime Minister’s expression – “desecrated” the holy precincts of New Zealand’s democracy.

Coming down hard on hate speech will only be the beginning. It is highly likely that the Law Commission will be tasked with reviewing the effectiveness of the legal weaponry currently available to a Government under siege. Geoffrey Palmer’s giddy 1980s bonfire of the repressive instruments of state power has taken on a less admirable lustre. Bonfires are no longer in vogue.

Finally, there is the formidable apparatus of New Zealand’s national security community, most particularly of the SIS and the GCSB. It should be presumed from here on out that those who blithely spout prejudice and hatred online will be simultaneously announcing themselves as “persons of interest” to all those who wield the swords of state protection.

To the stone-throwers and tent-burners out there, girding their loins for another crack at the lizard people and their lackeys, the most useful advice is simple and direct:

From now on, assume that you are not alone.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday 4 March 2022.

A Conversation That Never Happened.

Attribution Error: “Well, Sir, the Ministry of State Security has absolutely nothing to gain by going after Microsoft Exchange. It’s not its style – way too public. The MSS would never draw attention to its activities in so dramatic a fashion. I mean, there is absolutely nothing in it for them to have the world believing Beijing is reading its e-mails. The motto of the MSS has always been: ‘Nobody knows that we went in, and nobody knows what we took out’. I just don’t believe it was them.”

WELLINGTON HARBOUR was always worth looking at. Sipping thoughtfully at his cup of Earl Grey, Adam Freeman took in the comforting vista. He was in need of comfort, he told himself, after what he could only describe as a very odd meeting. Bamboozling the public was one thing, the preservation of national security more or less required a certain amount of economy with the truth. But bamboozling ourselves, he thought, not to mention our Minister, that’s dangerous. Seeing things clearly, he had always assumed, was the Alpha and the Omega of keeping the nation secure.

A gentle knock on his office door, interrupted these uneasy musings. He looked up to see the youthful countenance of Matthew Stubbs. Youthful but full of care, Adam thought to himself. The young IT wizard looked as worried as he felt.

“Come in, Matthew,” he said placing his teacup carefully on its saucer. “What can I do for you?”

“Forgive the interruption, Sir,” the young man replied, “but I was wondering if I could share some thoughts with you in confidence.”

“Depends on the thoughts, Matthew. Depends on the thoughts.”

The young man smiled wanly. “I suppose it does, Sir, yes.”

“Sit down, boy, and let’s find out.”

Matthew seated himself in the nearest of the comfortable leather chairs positioned to one side of his superior’s desk. Adam swung round to face him.

“Well then, let’s have it. What are these thoughts that require my confidence and discretion?”

“All that stuff about the Microsoft Exchange hack being sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of State Security that we fed to the Minister.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I just don’t think it’s true, Sir. I mean, I don’t see how it could possibly be true.”

“Go on.” Inwardly, Adam breathed a huge sigh of relief. He wasn’t the only one who thought this intel was dodgy.

“Well, Sir, the MSS has absolutely nothing to gain by going after Microsoft Exchange. It’s not its style – way too public. The MSS would never draw attention to its activities in so dramatic a fashion. I mean, there is absolutely nothing in it for them to have the world believing Beijing is reading its e-mails. The motto of the MSS has always been: ‘Nobody knows that we went in, and nobody knows what we took out’. I just don’t believe it was them.”

“You’re not buying the ‘Advanced Persistent Threat 40’ linkage, Matthew?”

“APT 40? No, Sir. They’re just a bunch of varsity students, MSS interns probably, looking to earn brownie points with their future bosses. They’d never dream of hacking Microsoft without the express backing of the highest military and party authorities. And, as I said, the highest authorities would never expose the PRC to the sort of global outrage that the disclosure of such an operation would inevitably entail.”

Adam leaned forward, fixing the young man with his best basilisk glare. “So, if it wasn’t the MSS, and it wasn’t APT 40, then who was it?”

“Best guess, Sir? It wasn’t the Chinese at all. My money, as always, would be on the Russians. Oh, I know, I know, it’s possible that the hack could have been the work of a Chinese criminal operation. Thing is, Sir, crime gangs like that don’t really exist in the PRC. Security and surveillance is just too all-enveloping. Which isn’t to say that corruption isn’t rampant throughout Chinese society. But acquiring and selling real estate by illegal means is one thing; endangering the security of the state by going after a software giant like Microsoft, well, that’s something else altogether. Get caught doing something like that, and it’s bullet-in-the-back-of-the-head time – no mucking ‘round.”

Adam, nodded grimly.

“But, Russia’s different.” Matthew continued – warming to his subject. “In Russia, corruption isn’t a bug – it’s a feature. Where the Chinese still believe in the possibility of a perfected world, the Russians have embraced chaos as their friend. Russian nationalists know that with the break-up of the Soviet Union, the geopolitical heft required to claim – let alone maintain – great power status just isn’t there anymore. The people who matter in the Russian Federation know their country is getting weaker, and that there’s not a lot they can do to stop it. So, they have, quite correctly, concluded that the only viable geopolitical strategy available to them is to make their principal rivals even weaker. To tip them into an even tighter spiral of decline.”

“Am I to take from that, Matthew, that you buy into the ‘Trump As Russian Trojan Horse’ argument?”

“To a certain extent, Sir. But, honestly, I don’t think Putin and the FSB are all that interested in complex plans. Their strategy is much more one of manufacturing as many dragon’s teeth as they can, and sowing them wherever they can. That’s why it’s so difficult to separate the Russian state from the Russian criminal fraternity. The Kremlin likes – and needs – a revolving-door of plausibly deniable cut-outs. If a plan works, they’ll claim it as their own. If it fails, then those involved will either be made examples of in a courtroom cage, or buried in a lonely forest clearing.

“So, if you’re ‘Chaos Theory’ is correct, Matthew, then the Russians wouldn’t hesitate to penetrate and disable Microsoft Exchange. The more mayhem the merrier?”

“Exactly, Sir.”

“And the same strategy isn’t available to the Chinese?”

“Not really, Sir. Above all else, the Chinese prize order. Chaos terrifies them. Chaos is what follows when the Mandate of Heaven is withdrawn. Chaos is proof that you’ve failed. And, from what I’ve observed over the past few years, the Communist Party of China doesn’t really ‘do’ failure. Which is why I was so surprised to hear the Director-General attribute the Microsoft hack to the Chinese Government with such certainty – to the Minister, of all people! I mean we don’t really ‘do’ certainty – do we Sir?”

Adam leaned back in his chair and chuckled. He’d picked Matthew Stubbs as a high-flyer from the day he joined the Bureau, and he was congratulating himself heartily for his perspicacity. Had he not been feeling quite so pleased with himself, then perhaps he would not have responded to Matthew’s question so fulsomely.

“No, Matthew, you’re quite right, we don’t ‘do’ certainty – not in matters of national security – not unless we’re told.”

Matthew’s brow furrowed theatrically. “I’m sorry, Sir?”

“Oh come on, Matthew, join the dots?” Truth to tell, Adam was only just joining the dots himself. Even so, he was quite sure he’s solved the puzzle that had been confusing him and his young protégé.”

“ Think, Matthew, think! The news about the ‘Pegasus’ intercepts hits the front pages all over North America and Europe. The whole world is treated to a cautionary tale involving the Israelis, one of their plausibly deniable cut-outs – the mysterious NSO Group – and a piece of spyware that allows all manner of dubious regimes to take over the cellphones of political and/or journalistic irritants and transform them into more-or-less continuous transmitters of high-grade, and potentially fatal, intelligence.”

“Fatal, Sir?”

“Fatal, Matthew. How do you think the Saudi Crown Prince knew exactly where to send his team of assassins to chop up poor old Jamal Khashoggi? Pegasus, Matthew, Pegasus. Not the sort of story that reflects too well upon our Five Eyes friends and their friends – is it? Especially when all of us are using Pegasus – or something as close to it as makes little difference – to keep tabs on our own ‘irritants’. Besides, start people thinking about Western-sponsored hacking, and pretty soon they’ll be remembering Stuxnet and all the fun the Israelis and Americans had wrecking the Iranians’ centrifuges.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, Mathew, ‘Ah.’ Ah, with bells on! So, what is the standard operating procedure when the misdeeds of the West’s intelligence gathering agencies start making headlines?”

“Distraction by way of Projection, Sir. We immediately accuse our enemies of doing exactly what we’ve been doing. Nothing resonates so forcefully with the mainstream news media like an accusation packed with the raw emotional power of psychological projection. Lay a trail using that as bait and the newshounds are off like foxhounds.”

“Matthew, I am supremely confident that you have a very bright future with the Bureau – providing you remember one thing.”

“What’s that, Sir?”

“Conversations like this one never happen.”

“What conversation, Sir?”

This short story was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 23 July 2021.

If The SIS Director Wants To Tell Us The Truth, She Should Commission Fiction.

Memorable Presentation: Rebecca Kitteridge, the first woman Director of the SIS, laments the fact that the necessarily secret work of her agents cannot become the subject of a reality TV series - as it has for Police and Custom Officers. For shame, Ms Kitteridge! If you would tell the truth - write fiction! Just think Spooks.

REBECCA KITTERIDGE is like no Director of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) New Zealand has ever seen. There was a time when the identities of such national security bureaucrats were, if not secret, then, at the very least, invisible to the general public. In recent decades, an SIS Director’s name might have been slid into the public record, but he (and before Ms Kitteridge they were all “he”) was seldom heard and almost never seen.

 

How things have changed. Like her British equivalent, Dame Stella Rimington, Ms Kitteridge has, as the Service’s first female Director, allowed a Force 10 gale to blow through the stuffy corridors of her publicity-shy corner of the secret state. What Dame Stella did for MI5, Ms Kitteridge hopes to do for the SIS.

 

Her latest foray into the public sphere occurred earlier this week at the 2015 Privacy and Identity Conference in Wellington. Having heard Ms Kitteridge’s frank address, New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner, John Edwards, vouchsafed to his audience that he “could not remember such a presentation from an intelligence director”.

 

Perhaps the most intriguing offering from Ms Kitteridge concerned the Service’s limited options for improving its public image. The sort of PR opportunities that were open to other state agencies – most notably the Police and Customs Officers – were simply not available to the SIS. It would be difficult, she suggested to make a reality show out of a state agency that was required to “do everything behind locked doors.”

 

For shame, Ms Kitteridge! Reality shows are not the only vehicles for showcasing the day-to-day activities of state operatives. Indeed, there’s an old saying among those who have made it their business to report the activities of the secret state: “If you want to tell the truth – write fiction.”

 

If Ms Kitteridge wants to improve the public’s image and understanding of the SIS, she has only to persuade NZ on Air to fund a television drama series about its activities.

 

Was it no more than coincidence that in the years immediately following Dame Stella’s stint at MI5 the BBC began airing the hit series Spooks? The show’s creator, Jane Featherstone, told The Daily Mail that: “At first the intelligence services were resistant, and they let that be known through former members who acted as technical advisers on Spooks.” But, eventually, says Featherstone, the real spooks came around. “They even used the first series to help with their [recruitment] campaign.”

 

Prime Recruiter? The British television series Spooks boosted the numbers of people seeking to join MI5.

 

And it’s not as if there isn’t plenty of experienced writing talent close at hand. The British-born television writer, Neil Cross, who wrote multiple episodes of Spooks, as well as the memorable detective thriller, Luther, has lived in Wellington for many years.

 

The story-lines for such a series (working title “The Service”) would no doubt include many of the issues raised in Ms Kitteridge’s speech. Imagine the possibilities of a story-line based upon Islamic State’s use of social media. Or about tracking-down the member of the public who tipped the SIS off about a plot to contaminate New Zealand’s dairy exports. More controversially, there could be an episode about a terrorist cell undergoing military training in the bush.

 

If Ms Kitteridge is really serious about letting the public know just how difficult her job can be, she could advise the series writers on how an SIS Director might respond to an attempt to use the SIS for political purposes. What does the Director do when someone from the Prime Minister’s Office approaches her with a request to blacken the name of a political opponent? Or when one of her agents discovers that the Israeli Embassy has recruited a prominent blogger to blacken the reputations of pro-Palestinian activists?

 

And, just imagine the dramatic possibilities of a “Black Hat” hacker, recruited to turn the tables on Chinese cyber-criminals who have succeeded in penetrating the defences of one of New Zealand’s most innovative companies. Should the Director use her hacker’s talents independently, or share him with the Government Communications Security Bureau’s own team of “Computer Network Operations Specialists”? And how should she fend off the furious intervention of a Foreign Minister desperate to keep New Zealand’s relationship with the Chinese Government on an even keel?

 

If Ms Kitteridge cannot give us the facts about the SIS, she could at least try to tell us the truth – by commissioning fiction.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 22 May 2015.

Risk and Resilience: Introducing John Key’s “Free Thinkers”.

A Good idea - Or What? John Key's appointment of ten "free thinkers" to let him know what he doesn't know about national security is yet further proof of this Government's unwavering commitment to excellence in public relations.

 

FREE THINKERS! Wow! How very different this National Government is from its predecessors. Can anybody imagine Rob Muldoon appointing a group of “free thinkers” to help him identify the potential security risks confronting New Zealand in the 1980s? Crikey! Imagine what a group of “free thinkers” might have been able to do in relation to the Springbok Tour of 1981. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: this is a National Government like no other!

 

So, who are these free thinking New Zealanders? And what mix of talent and experience has Prime Minister Key assembled among the ten members of his new Strategic Risk and Resilience Panel (SRRP). If the Panel’s main function is to “imagine the unimaginable” and to inform the Government of all the things that it doesn’t know it doesn’t know, then let’s take a look at what they bring to the table?

 

Let’s start at the top with Ian Fletcher, currently the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). I must confess that the man responsible for maintaining the security of government communications would not have been my first choice in the free thinking stakes. Indeed, the less free such a person is with his thoughts about such matters the better – I would have thought. But, maybe the PM knows something about Mr Fletcher’s job that the rest of have yet to be told?

 

Then there’s Sir Peter Gluckman, the Prime Minister’s Science Advisor. This looks like a better choice – although Sir Peter’s association with what some are calling an exercise in muzzling the Government’s scientist critics – people like Mike Joy – does rather militate against freedom of thought. Doesn’t it?

 

What about Therese Walsh? Well, as the Chief Executive of the 2015 Cricket World Cup, she clearly knows a great deal about the organisation of sports fixtures. Exactly how that knowledge might usefully contribute to “imagining the unimaginable” isn’t immediately obvious. Perhaps she’s learned the knack of envisaging what the rest of us simply can’t imagine: a consistently good New Zealand cricket team! That really would be a boost to our national security!

 

Karen Poutasi, head of the NZ Qualifications Authority, was obviously chosen to improve the quality of the nation’s spies. Who could question her ability to imagine a new and improved iteration of the New Zealand SIS agent? One whose culinary sights are set slightly higher than the ordinary meat pie, and for whom the contents of Penthouse magazine holds not the slightest interest.

 

And who better than Keith Turner, the chairman of Fisher & Paykel, to anticipate the dastardly plans of Islamic State engineers to adapt the electronics of his firm’s washing machines to some devastating new purpose? The potential threat to the nation’s delicates and coloureds is huge. We could be facing terror in every laundry; mayhem on every clothesline! Isis meets Elba is just too awful to contemplate.

 

Now, as everybody who watches Boardwalk Empire knows, when Al Capone was eventually brought down it was not by a Thompson sub-machine gun, but by the ineluctable laws of double-entry book-keeping. In this respect, panel member, Richard Forgan, from the global accounting firm PWC, clearly has much to contribute. Perhaps he’ll be able to have the Islamic State arrested for tax evasion?

 

Hugh Cowan sits on the Earthquake Commission. When it comes to imagining everything that can possibly go wrong, he’s a good man to have around. Hugh knows, from bitter experience, that what the government (and the rest of us) don’t know can be, quite literally, earth-shattering.

 

Lieutenant-General Rhys Jones, the former head of the NZ Defence Force, is already very good at imagining the unimaginable. He was, after all, able to imagine that New Zealand’s award-winning war correspondent, Jon Stephenson, might be foolish enough to jeopardise his international reputation by claiming he had been somewhere he hadn’t, and met someone he didn’t. That Lt-General Jones wasn’t able to go on imagining such nonsense indefinitely might be considered a weakness. But at least he has proved that imagining things that never happened is a crucial element of the NZDF’s skill-set – one that Lt-General Jones is now very well placed to pass on to his colleagues on the SRRP.

 

Helen Anderson is a director of Niwa, Branz and DNZ. In a world as festooned with abbreviations and acronyms as the “intelligence community” she should fit right in. Keeping one’s thinking free of unnecessary words and phrases can only improve the SRRP’s (which Ms Anderson must surely be referring to already as “Syrup's”?) overall effectiveness and efficiency.

 

Speaking of which, one can only applaud John Key’s appointment of Productivity Commission chairman, Murray Sherwin to Syrup’s distinguished membership. Ensuring that New Zealand gets more national security ‘bangs’ for its Treasury ‘bucks’ can only be a good thing. Can’t it?

 

So, there you have it. The Prime Minister’s free-thinking panel. Those of you who are disappointed that the SRRP does not include people like ‘New Zealander of the Year’, Dame Anne Salmond; investigative journalist, Nicky Hager; former Court of Appeal Justice, Sir Edmund Thomas; TPPA opponent, Professor Kane Kelsey; or that other tireless campaigner for our national sovereignty, CAFCA's Murray Horton; must understand that when John Key talks about “free thinkers”, he is not talking about those thinkers determined to keep us free.

 

This essay was posted simultaneously on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road blogsites on Thursday, 6 November 2014.

We Know HOW Ian Fletcher Was Appointed, Now We Need To Know WHY

Corporate Protector: GCSB Director, Ian Fletcher. Our spies’ principal mission used to be the defence of the realm. Today’s GCSB is about the protection of corporate property.

ANDREA VANCE, political correspondent for The Sunday Star-Times, is probably right about “Fletchergate”. In her latest Sunday Politics column she predicts: “By the time Key returns from China, the Beltway will have moved on (as most of the rest of the public did days ago) until the auditor-general decides whether to investigate.”

 

If by “moved on” Ms Vance means “being diverted by something new”, few would disagree. We live in an age of twenty-four hour news cycles. Hour by fleeting hour, newsmakers and journalists alike are confronted with the ravening media beast’s unassuageable need to feed. Old news tends to get spat out in disgust.

 

But if by “moved on” she means “forgotten” or “lost interest” I think Ms Vance is mistaken. The peculiar story of the present Director of the Government Communications and Security Bureau’s (GCSB) Ian Fletcher’s, manner of appointment has left a deep impression not only on those whose job it is to follow politics (whom Ms Vance dismisses, rather contemptuously, as “the Beltway”) but also “the rest of the public”.

 

Indeed, the best summary of the whole affair I’ve heard was voiced last Friday by my hairdresser’s young assistant: “Got his friend the job and then pretended he hadn’t.” Sometimes I think our eyes and ears in the Parliamentary Press Gallery underestimate their own effectiveness as journalists!

 

The other observation I would make concerning Ms Vance’s world-weary prophesying about Fletchergate is that it runs the serious risk of being self-fulfilling. If the Press Gallery allows itself to be moved on – “nothing to see here, move along” – then the public will be left knowing quite a lot about the deficiencies of how Mr Fletcher ended up being appointed, but very little about why.

 

And given the nature of Mr Fletcher’s job, understanding why he was considered the only man for the job is of considerably more importance than whether the Prime Minister or the State Services Commissioner should have made the call that led to his appointment.

 

As John Key so colourfully summed up his view of Mr Fletcher’s suitability: “This isn’t some bunny we’ve pulled out of a hat!”

 

The Prime Minister’s quite correct. Mr Fletcher is very far from being a bunny. Indeed, the GCSB Director’s curriculum vitae makes for very interesting reading.

 

He is one of those Kiwis who, upon leaving our shores, sprouted wings and flew very high. Given the Prime Minister’s similar record of success, it is hardly surprising that, since taking office in 2008, he has done all he can to bring such high-flyers home.

 

But, to move the story forward to the “why” of Mr Fletcher’s appointment, what we need to know is which skills and experiences in particular – out of the many and varied talents Mr Fletcher clearly possesses – prompted Mr Key to pick up the phone?

 

To answer that question, we would need to know why the four individuals short-listed for interviews by the State Services Commission’s recruitment firm were deemed unsuitable. Obviously, that firm had been given a very clear idea of the GCSB Director’s job description and made its choices accordingly. But, equally obviously, there was another, undisclosed, description of the Director’s role for which none of the four candidates were suited.

 

It is, I believe, possible to infer from the public criticisms of the former GCSB Director, Sir Bruce Fergusson, that individuals suited for the GCSB that was (primarily a receiver and deliverer of military signals intelligence for the US National Security Agency) were not required by State Services Commissioner, Ian Rennie. The person appointed needed to be someone capable of forging a new GCSB – informed by a more contemporary intelligence-gathering culture.

 

The new world of espionage is no longer about intercepting Al Qaida’s latest plots. According to Stuart McMillian, writing in the National Business Review of 28/3/13: “it is the theft of intellectual property and commercial information that is causing concern”.

 

Intellectual property and commercial information feature prominently in Mr Fletcher’s career as a senior UK civil servant. They were also the primary drivers behind the Kim Dotcom extradition case.

 

Our spies’ principal mission used to be the defence of the realm. Today’s GCSB is about the protection of corporate property. As Mr McMillan noted a fortnight ago: “The government has established a group to protect major NZ infrastructure … This group is based within the Government Communications Security Bureau.”

 

Was Mr Fletcher ready for such a role?

 

Between 2002 and 2004 he was private-secretary to Sir Andrew Turnbull, the UK Cabinet Secretary. Historically, the Cabinet Secretary was the civil servant responsible for watching over the Security Forces – a responsibility Sir Andrew relinquished by delegation in the months preceding Tony Blair’s decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq.

 

I’d say Mr Fletcher was ready for today’s GCSB.

 

Definitely worth a prime-ministerial telephone call.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 9 April 2013.

In A Weakened State

Insufficient Evidence: The failure of New Zealand's national security apparatus to acquire the human intelligence (and thus the eye-witness evidence) to convince a jury of the defendants' guilt in the Urewera Terror Trial has exposed serious weakenesses in the protective institutions of the New Zealand State.

Salus populi suprema lex
The safety of the people shall be the highest law
Cicero

THE DECISION NOT TO RE-TRY the “Urewera Four” sets the capstone on a comprehensive failure of New Zealand’s national security apparatus. At almost every level, the public has witnessed examples of ignorance, indecision and incompetence that agencies similarly placed in poorer and more marginalised countries would look at askance. After the Urewera debacle, it is debateable whether New Zealand even has a national security apparatus. That twenty or so highly politicised individuals could be observed undertaking military training with lethal weapons, on tribal lands with a long and strong tradition of resistance to the New Zealand state, for close to a year, and still manage to escape serious convictions, certainly argues against the proposition.

At the heart of this failure lies a paucity of intelligence. (And I’m using the word here in its double sense of intellectual sophistication and useable knowledge.) New Zealanders have been seriously let down by the tradition of anti-intellectualism that pervades our security services. It has fostered an institutional environment in which anyone possessing a sophisticated understanding of this country’s history and culture is treated with hostility and suspicion. Doubly so, if that knowledge extends to anything more than a superficial grasp of left-wing and/or right-wing theory and practice. It’s an environment in which the received “wisdom” of our (often even more ignorant) American and Australian allies counts for much more than specialised local knowledge.

Assistant Police Commissioner, Jon White’s, operationally brutal and strategically idiotic raid on the sleepy Tuhoe village of Ruatoki destroyed any chance the Crown might have had of mounting a successful prosecution of the fledgling Urewera guerrilla force. The NZ Police utterly underestimated the vigour and sophistication of the Left’s propaganda capabilities and, from the very beginning, were forced to play “catch-up” in the struggle for hearts and minds.

The other fatal flaw in Operation Eight was its (no doubt US inspired) fascination and reliance on technologically acquired intelligence. Neither the Police Security Intelligence Unit (PSIU) nor the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), appear to have anything remotely resembling an effective spy network. Indeed, in this regard, New Zealand’s private sector intelligence gatherers seem to be well ahead of the State’s. This lack of human intelligence drove the Police to what were subsequently deemed to be reckless and illegal attempts to acquire persuasive evidence of criminal intent.

Also lacking were the reliable media “assets” so highly prized by the British security services. Individuals to whom key elements of the Crown’s case might have been judiciously leaked as a way of counter-acting the Defence’s extremely skilful use of sympathetic journalists strategically located throughout the news media. Our own security services appear utterly unaware of the role social media and the Internet play in shaping public opinion. Where, for example, was the Crown’s equivalent of Wikileaks? Clearly no one was prepared to play the role of Private Bradley Manning by dumping all the evidence denied to the Prosecution on a suitably insulated and legally untouchable website.

From the very beginning of Operation Eight it should have been clear that the Crown was engaged in a full-scale political battle with the individuals behind the Urewera Training Camps and their supporters in the wider left-wing community. Every one of the agencies tasked with protecting our national security: the PSIU, the SIS, the Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Co-ordination  (ODESC) and the Combined Threat Assessment Group (CTAG) individually and collectively failed to meet this political test.

Bluntly, the accused’s’ defence team and their tireless army of propagandists ran rings around the Crown. They not only won a significant political victory in terms of the “Urewera Four” case, but their undeniable success in making the Crown look both weak and stupid will very likely deter its servants from attempting anything similar for many years to come. It will require a very brave Police Commissioner indeed to repeat Howard Broad’s gutsy call of 2007.

Nor will Tuhoe, and the Maori nationalist movement generally, be content to rest upon their laurels. Already we’re hearing demands for a Crown apology to, and massive compensation for, the traumatised residents of Ruatoki. Pressing forward from one victory towards another has always been an intelligent strategy – both politically and militarily. The Crown, already in full retreat, will be harried unceasingly by a Tuhoe nation intent on reclaiming as much lost land and mana as possible.

The New Zealand State has been seriously weakened by its failure to convince a jury that what was happening in the Ureweras constituted a clear and present danger to our national security. The Crown’s prosecutors appeared almost entirely ignorant of the philosophical, ideological and historical arguments which have, in other parts of the world, persuaded hitherto peaceful individuals to embrace the theory and practice of political violence. Where were the Crown’s expert witnesses? Why were no academics from the USA or the UK called to tell the Jury how and why people become terrorists? The defence team’s carefully fostered notions that Tame Iti and his comrades posed no sort of threat to the Queen’s Peace, and that the charges levelled against him were farcical, were never adequately challenged by the prosecution – and they stuck.

Partly, this is explained by the failure of the Police to supply the Crown with the right sort of evidence. But the prosecution’s ham-fisted use of the evidence it did possess reflected the susceptibility of even the Crown’s lawyers to the “two worlds” argument advanced by the defence. The latter insisted, with all the silky conviction a skilful barrister can muster, that events which looked like military exercises when viewed through Pakeha eyes, appeared no more dangerous than a job creation scheme when viewed through Maori eyes.

To insist that people running around with guns and balaclavas were terrorists, warned the defence, was to revisit upon these noble Maori “reformers” all the sins of our colonial fathers. According to their lawyers, the accused weren’t training to be terrorists. No, they were training to be security guards in Somalia and Iraq! This preposterous argument convinced not only at least one of the jurors, but also, seemingly, the Crown itself. Guilty verdicts on the most serious charges, it was cleverly insinuated, would be proof positive that Pakeha racism had triumphed. Not surprisingly, on the most serious charge - belonging to an illegal organisation - the Jury was hung.

Russel Fairbrother, Tame Iti’s lawyer, has hailed the Crown’s decision not to re-try his client as a victory for the New Zealand justice system. But there is another, much less sanguine, way of looking at the Crown’s capitulation. If, under the rubric of “national security” one includes the preservation of New Zealand as a unitary, constitutionally-coherent state in which the safety of every citizen is guaranteed by the rule of law, and where the state, and only the state, is permitted to maintain and train armed forces, then the Crown’s decision, and the lamentable way it has conducted itself throughout the entire Urewera affair, gives cause for grave concern.

A group of armed individuals, who gave every appearance of levying war against the Crown, have somehow escaped serious convictions. This entirely unsatisfactory outcome sets an extremely dangerous precedent. We should not feel in the least bit reassured that, ultimately, the guerrillas in the Urewera mist failed to inflict any harm on their fellow citizens. Next time (and given the extraordinary failings of our national security apparatus a ‘next time’ cannot be discounted) we may not be so lucky.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.