Hiding In Plain Sight.

Massey's Cossacks: New Zealand's employer class didn't need the services of a Pinkerton Detective Agency – strike-breakers par excellence in the service of US industrial titans like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Not when the strapping sons of Waikato and Wairarapa cockies could be quietly trained and organised by army officers to serve as New Zealand capitalism’s reserve militia against the Reds. 

THE RELUCTANCE of many left-wingers to accept that the Christchurch Shooter could not have been stopped is instructive. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the motivation driving “Lone Wolf” terrorists. The perpetrators of the sort of mass killings for which Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant were convicted conceive of their actions as grotesquely “inspirational” consciousness-raising “statements”.

Precisely because these individuals operate alone; and because they accept the near certainty of being either killed or captured by the authorities; they are extremely difficult to stop. Their missions are “one-offs”. In this regard, their outrages are very different from those planned and executed by organised groups coolly intent upon securing specific political objectives through intimidation and/or terror.

In a mature democracy, like Norway or New Zealand, it is difficult to conceive of any other kind of terrorism except Lone Wolf terrorism. In the absence of deliberate violent oppression, of the sort currently on display in Myanmar, the chances of any ideological current forging a military unit of sufficient fanaticism and operational coherence to carry out a deadly terrorist attack are vanishingly small.

The nearest New Zealand has come to such a unit was the group of left-wing activists observed “training” in the Urewera Ranges more than a decade ago. It is, however, extremely unlikely that the individuals involved in these exercises could have been prevailed upon to initiate the use deadly force. It is possible that fatalities might have been inflicted inadvertently: the result of some jittery young activist transporting firearms being stopped by the Police and panicking. This is, after all, how the Baader-Meinhof/Red Army Faction’s terrorist killing began, back in the 1970s. Even so, in the context of a government presided over by Helen Clark, the Urewera “guerrillas” struck most New Zealanders as tending more towards the farcical than the tragic.

It is the sheer implausibility of organised left-wing violence that has steered New Zealand socialists toward party political alternatives. Even in the midst of the Great Strike of 1913, when armed “Red Fed” strikers exchanged shots with the “Special Constables” summoned from farming districts by the Reform Party Prime Minister, William Massey, trade union leaders understood that the vast majority of New Zealanders were on the side of law and order. This awareness of the futility of raising the red flag of revolution in a nation as red-white-and-blue conservative as New Zealand has always undermined the efforts of novelists and film-makers to persuade us that an armed left-wing guerrilla force would last longer than five minutes against the NZDF.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way around. The very same conservatism that made revolution so unlikely, has, throughout this country’s history, been more-than-willing to assist the dominant groups in New Zealand society maintain their hegemony against all-comers: Maori, Red Feds, Watersiders, Anti-Apartheid protesters. In practically every instance, however, the form of that assistance has been officially sanctioned and organised.

New Zealand had no need of a secretive racist terror-group like the Ku Klux Klan – not when an armed constabulary of land-grabbing Pakeha could be readied for action against defiant tangata whenua under the watchful eye of Settler Government ministers.

Nor did its employer class need the services of a Pinkerton Detective Agency – strike-breakers par excellence in the service of US industrial titans like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Not when the strapping sons of Waikato and Wairarapa cockies could be quietly trained and organised by army officers to serve as New Zealand capitalism’s reserve militia against the Reds – i.e. the Special Constables known forever after as “Massey’s Cossacks”. Those farmers on horseback were called out again following the Depression hunger riots of 1932.

The use of Special Constables (recruited this time from the nation’s Rugby clubs!) was also contemplated during the 151-Day Waterfront Lockout of 1951. But, thanks to the National Party Prime Minister’s, Sid Holland’s, fascistic “Emergency Regulations” (which made it illegal to feed a striker’s family) and the sterling work of the NZ Police in enforcing them, the swearing-in en masse of New Zealand’s Rugby players was not required.

Only once has the existence of a shadowy group of “unofficial” right-wing extremists, ready and willing to do whatever was necessary to preserve the capitalist status quo, come to the attention of New Zealand journalists and historians. Between 1972 and 1975, when the government of, first, Norman Kirk, and then Bill Rowling, were engaged in what was indeed a “transformation” of New Zealand society, a group of junior army officers, working secretly with elements of the SIS and the right-wing news media, began using the “C” word.

The mid-1970s was a time of threatened and actual coups against left-wing governments. In 1973, the democratically-elected socialist government of Chile was overthrown by the Chilean armed forces, and the country’s Marxist president, Salvador Allende, gunned down in his presidential palace. In 1974, Norman Kirk, obviously unwell, died alone and unattended in a second-rate Wellington hospital. His successor, Bill Rowling, was intercepted at Wellington airport by a person claiming to have documents indicating secret machinations against the Labour Government. The following year, the Australian Labor prime minister, Gough Whitlam, was deposed by his own Governor-General in a bloodless coup d’état.

That something similar did not happen here was due largely to the extraordinarily successful populist campaign waged against the Rowling Government by National’s Rob Muldoon. With a 23-seat majority, it was not considered possible for the government to be defeated. Had the political scientists been proved correct, and had Labour won a second term, who knows what those junior officers might have set in motion.

It is worth recalling that 1974 also marked the high-water mark of trade union power in New Zealand. The fear instilled in the employer class by the 10,000-strong march of workers up Queen Street to secure the release of the Moscow-aligned communist union leader, Bill Andersen – jailed for contempt of court – was palpable.

Nor should we forget that only 4 years earlier, following Allende’s 1970 victory, the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had told his shadowy secret operations group, the “Forty Committee”, that: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”

There was a hard core of far-Right activists living in mid-1970s New Zealand: some in the army; some in the SIS; some in the news media; who endorsed Kissinger’s sentiments 100 percent. Thanks to Rob Muldoon, they weren’t needed.

Those on the left of contemporary New Zealand politics, horrified by the Christchurch Mosques Attack, continue to agitate for the country’s national security apparatus to upgrade its surveillance of far-right, white supremacist, extremists. They are convinced that there is a serious threat of coordinated right-wing terrorist activity once again being unleashed against innocent New Zealanders. More preventative effort from the SIS and the GCSB is being demanded.

Unfortunately, the ability of our security agencies to thwart the attack of another Christchurch Shooter is limited. With a modicum of caution, Lone Wolf attackers can avoid detection and interception – until it is far too late.

As for an organised far-right terrorist movement unleashing horror and death in New Zealand – all of our history points to it being unlikely. Only a government with both the numbers and the will to openly challenge the capitalist system could summon forth such a movement. And when it struck, it would, almost certainly, be acting on intelligence supplied by the SIS, and wearing the uniforms of the New Zealand Defence Forces and the Police.

Our far-right terrorists have always hidden in plain sight.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 30 March 2021.

The Operation That Failed

Vales of Secrecy: What the Urewera "campers" were doing up there in the bush, and to what end, seems destined to remain hidden behind the mountains' swirling mist.

IT IS WITH genuine reluctance that I once again broach the subject of the Urewera 17. Not only is the legal process still in play, but such is the intensity of emotion surrounding this case that it has become practically impossible for those holding opposing views to engage in calm and rational debate.

But, the Crown’s decision to abandon its prosecution of 13 of the 17 persons accused of firearm’s offences, and the spin applied to that decision on the part of the accused’s legal counsel and supporters, has made some sort of response to the Defence’s version of events inevitable.

Hampering a clear elucidation of the issues by both sides is the continuing suppression of the Supreme Court’s judgement as to the inadmissibility or otherwise of much of the Crown’s evidence. A simple exercise in deduction, however, would suggest that the justices’ decision pertains to the considerable body of evidential material gathered under the Terrorism Suppression Act and whether the crown is entitled to make use of that evidence when prosecuting persons under another statute, in this case the Arms Act.

From what the Prosecution has already placed on the public record, it is relatively straightforward to deduce that the Supreme Court has denied the Crown the use of this evidence, thereby making a successful prosecution of those individuals charged with arms offences alone highly unlikely.

The Supreme Court’s decision highlights (and not for the first time in this case) the many and serious inadequacies of the Terrorism Suppression Act. From the very beginning of “Operation Eight” the TSA’s shortcomings have led the forces of the State from one misjudgement to another. These misjudgements have, in turn, provided those organising the defence of those arrested with a public relations bonanza, which they have exploited ruthlessly – and with considerable success.

From the moment in 2006 when two hunters stumbled on to what they told the Police looked like some sort of military training camp, the ill-fated “Operation Eight” became inevitable. With knowledge of the Urewera activity “out there” in the possession of civilians, there was the ever-present risk of it finding its way into the news media (which is what did, eventually, happen).

Astonished hunters aside, it is probable that the Police were already aware that something was up in Tuhoe country. Information about the “military training camp/s” could have come to them from at least two other sources.

The first, and most likely, institutional source would have been the Police Strategic Intelligence Unit (PSIU) which had (following its establishment in 2002, and taking a leaf out of the US and UK intelligence playbook) been running a number of spies and informants in the radical anti-war, anti-mining and Maori nationalist movements. It is probable that at least one of these informants attended the very first gathering of the radical clans in Tuhoe country and reported its proceedings back to their controller/s in the PSIU.

The other probable source is the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) which, like the PSIU, maintains a watching brief on radical individuals and organisations – especially those whose activities impinge even slightly on matters relating to the so-called “Global War on Terror”.

Both agencies would have immediately reported the Urewera activities to their bosses: the PSIU to the Commissioner of Police, Howard Broad; and SIS agents to the Service’s then Director, Richard Woods. These two gentlemen shared membership of a number of committees and groups pertaining to national security. Both belonged to “ODESC” – the Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Co-ordination – which reports directly to the Cabinet Committee on Domestic & External Security, chaired by the Prime Minister. Broad and Woods were also members of “CTAG” – the Combined Threat Assessment Group – alongside representatives from the New Zealand Defence Force.

From the outset, therefore, it is highly probable that the activity taking place in the Ureweras was viewed almost exclusively through the prism of national security and subjected to the same kind of threat assessment which, in other jurisdictions, is regularly applied to suspected terrorist activity. In such circumstances it is simply inconceivable that the then Prime Minister, Helen Clark, and her Cabinet Committee on Domestic & External Security were not kept fully briefed on developments.

It is also highly likely that Police Commissioner Broad, aware that the eyes of the nation’s national security apparatus were on him, had no alternative except to hand over responsibility for keeping the Urewera campers under close surveillance to his responsible subordinate officer, Assistant Police Commissioner for National Security, Jon White.

According to the investigative journalist, Nicky Hager, White had a reputation among the activist community for heavy-handedness, and was seen as one of the drivers of what many radicals regarded as a rising level of authoritarian and anti-democratic policing in New Zealand. White had also attended a number of anti-terrorist seminars in the United States and the United Kingdom. He was, in short, a “hard-ass”.

When “Operation Eight” was finally launched on 15 October 2007 the images it supplied – of armed police officers, clad all in black, masked, helmeted and wearing Kevlar body-armour – provided the accused’s defence team with all the images of state repression they could use. White’s deployment of his men in and around the tiny Tuhoe settlement of Ruatoki carried an equally potent reminder of the tragic history of the Crown’s interaction with the Tuhoe people. That White either did not know – or simply didn’t care – that he was re-enacting scenes from the Iwi’s troubled past, was, from a strategic point of view, fatal. The propaganda war was lost by the Police on Day One.

Losing the legal war would take a little longer.

Given the national security environment in which he found himself enmeshed, Broad had little option but to rely on the Terrorism Suppression Act (2002) as the legal foundation of the Police operation. In this he was aided by Crown Law, which continually reassured him and White that the appallingly drafted piece of legislation, hurriedly cobbled together in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, was fit for purpose.

It was not.

When the Solicitor-General, David Collins, announced that, contrary to the advice given to Police by lawyers in the Crown Law Office, it would not be possible to charge those arrested in “Operation Eight” with offences under the TSA, the Police were left in an untenable position.

After twelve months of surveillance, during which the campers’ “training” had allegedly familiarised them with weapons and techniques of increasing sophistication and lethality, and the anxiety of the watchers had steadily mounted, Broad and his colleagues had been left with no choice but to act. Now, having acted, they’d been informed by no less a person than the Solicitor-General that the entire operation had been erected on the legal equivalent of quicksand.

For the Defence it was now open season. Not content with winning the propaganda war, they proceeded to launch a full-scale legal assault upon the evidentiary basis of the Crown’s alternative charges. What followed was a legal war of attrition, ascending through the High Court, the Court of Appeal, all the way to New Zealand’s highest seat of judgement – the Supreme Court.

Following the judgement of the Supreme Court, only four defendants remain in the Crown’s prosecutorial sights. Tame Iti, Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara, Emily Bailey and Urs Signer are charged with participation in an organized criminal group under s98A Crimes Act and unlawful possession of firearms and restricted weapons under s45 Arms Act.

According to the Crown Solicitor, S J Eisdell Moore:

“As a consequence of the Supreme Court decision, it would have been necessary for those charged solely under the Arms Act to have been tried separately to those charged under both Acts. It would not be practical for any such trials to proceed prior to the main trial in February, and were any such trials to proceed after the main trial, then the main trial would need to be the subject of wide ranging suppression orders.

The effect of the delay would be that those accused facing Arms Act charges alone would not be tried for a period of at least four and a half years from the date of their arrest. Further, they were remanded in custody for a period of time following their arrest, and they have been on restrictive bail conditions through much of the time since their release. Taking these matters into account together with findings made by the Supreme Court about the seriousness of their offending, it is the Crown decision that the continuation of proceedings against them would not be in the public interest.”

A “hard-ass” Assistant Police Commissioner’s gross insensitivity to his own country’s history, coupled with his utter failure to understand the key strategic importance of political imagery, lost the propaganda war ignited by “Operation Eight”.

For a Police Commissioner desperately concerned to do the right thing, and the Crown prosecution his decisions set in motion, the problem was an appallingly drafted act of parliament and shoddy legal advice.

For us, the public, these two failures raise the very real possibility that we may never know what those two hunters stumbled into; the PSIU’s spy heard discussed; the SIS interception warrants revealed; and the Police’s listening devices and videos recorded.

New Zealand is one of the world’s oldest democracies: a nation committed to the rule of law. The Urewera 17 (or, at least 13 of them) have escaped prosecution and possible conviction because of that commitment. They have taken full advantage of the presumption of innocence, and have strenuously exercised their right to silence.

What they were doing up there in the bush, and to what end, remains hidden in the swirling Urewera mist.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.