SIS Spied On CAFCA For Quarter Of A Century

This is a story that was a very long time in the making. Let’s go back to the beginning, which was detailed in Watchdog 49, May 1985, “We’ve Got A File On You (Present)” – to distinguish it from an accompanying historical article entitled “We’ve Got A File On You (Past)”. In those bygone days Watchdog was much smaller – that issue is only 20 something pages – and so were individual articles. This one was only one page, so I’ll quote it in full (I think I’m quoting myself; writers of articles weren’t identified then).

“One of the more reprehensible actions of the Marginal Electorates Re-election Strategy (also known as the 1981 Springbok tour) was Piggy’s use of the Security Intelligence Service as his personal private detective agency (not for the first time, mind you). At the height of it all, he got his pet sewerage sifters to release a report naming a First XV of ‘radicals and subversives’, involved in the anti-tour movement. As usual in matters involving the SIS, the term Intelligence was sadly misapplied. In more than one case, their information turned out to be wrong and had to be retracted, at the taxpayers’ expense. One person so libelled was Don Carson. Not content to take it lying down, he went through the proper channels and appealed to the Commissioner of Security Appeals. He won. He then decided to sue the Crown for damages. In 1985 it was settled out of court.

“What was particularly fascinating about the case was what the SIS had to produce under a writ of discovery, and what it refused to produce. Carson is a leading local spokesman for the Palestinian cause – the SIS refused to produce correspondence between it and the Israeli Embassy about him. This raises very disturbing questions about the surveillance of New Zealanders by the SIS on behalf of foreign governments. The SIS also refused to produce material covering several other aspects of Carson’s life, under its surveillance. What the SIS did deign to produce (even its solicitor cannot be named) was intriguing. Its newspaper clipping file on Carson started when he was elected to the Executive of Victoria University’s Students’ Association (as Sports Officer!). Clippings also covered his involvement with the Committee on Vietnam, HART, Campaign Against Nuclear Warships, Friends of Palestine. And CAFCINZ.

“Thus armed with the knowledge that persons involved with CAFCINZ can become the subject of SIS files, we decided to write and ask for the SIS file on CAFCINZ. This is the reply we received from SIS Director John Smith (24/4/85). ‘I regret that I cannot meet the request, I neither confirm nor deny the existence of any information concerning the above organisation (CAFCINZ). This answer is given pursuant to Section 10 of the Official Information Act 1982. I am convinced that meeting any such request is likely to damage security by making the Service vulnerable to a systematic collection plan. Even the supply of apparently innocuous or negative information could place the integrity and efficacy of the Service at risk by revealing the extent and quality of its activities’. Judging from the Carson case, the SIS has good grounds to want the quality of its activities. He was accused of procuring chloropicrin for use by the protest movement; the Commissioner of Security Appeals accepted his explanation that he had got it to fumigate glasshouses, his father being a market gardener. And so on. We intend to take this matter further. Stay tuned”.

24 Years Later We’ve Finally Got Something To Report

For those of you who did faithfully stay tuned, we apologise that it’s taken 24 years but we finally do have something to report. We have actually received the SIS file on CAFCINZ/CAFCA, which includes a report on our above 1985 request for it. Even with whole documents withheld and cuts in virtually every one they released to us, it still comes to 400+ documents. And, yes, just as John Smith feared (what a wonderful name for a spy boss) we have every intention of encouraging as many individuals and organisations as possible to make “the Service vulnerable to a systematic collection plan” (nor did tangling with the SIS and the Crown do Don Carson any harm in the intervening decades. He’s had a long and distinguished radio career, specialising in farmers’ programmes and has most recently been seen in the media as the Communications Manager for the Hutt City Council).

The roots of how we came to get our SIS file actually goes back a decade earlier than our 1985 request for it, to the greatest defeat (and there have been plenty to choose from) of the SIS’s shadowy institutional existence, namely the acquittal of the late Bill Sutch on espionage charges laid against him under the former Official Secrets Act, the only such case in New Zealand’s history. Bill Sutch, a top public servant, prolific writer, leading intellectual and nationalist, died just months after his acquittal. But his death wasn’t enough for the SIS, they have done their level best to smear him ever since, to posthumously retry him in the court of public opinion and “prove” that he really was a Soviet spy (for details on this see my article “Speaking Ill Of The Dead : The Vicious Smear Campaign Against Bill Sutch & Jack Lewin”, in Watchdog 113, December 2006, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/13/12.htm). In turn this led to George Rosenberg, a former Wellington lawyer who had been involved with the Sutch defence (and Bill Rosenberg’s older brother), applying for and receiving his Personal File from the SIS - that included the fact that the SIS had a file on Bill. So Bill got his (which detailed SIS spying on him from 1968-98) and alerted all the other people named in it, many of whom, in turn, got their files.

CAFCA decided to get the file held on us as an organisation. Initially, fearing that we could be hit with a bill for thousands of dollars in copying and handling (we still have vivid memories of our first several years of Official Information Act dealings with the former Overseas Investment Commission), we simply asked the SIS for a list of the contents of our file. Somewhat to our surprise, we received a reply from Warren Tucker, the SIS Director (22/9/08) saying :” I think we can do better than that…I suggest that rather than provide you with a list of documents that we hold about CAFCA/CAFCINZ we instead copy for you the actual documents”. And that’s exactly what we received. To the best of my knowledge CAFCA is the only organisation to have received its file (as opposed to individuals – such as Bill - who have received their SIS Personal Files). One possible reason is that, for the past 20 years, CAFCA has been an incorporated society and thus a “legal person”. Most other committees, including the likes of the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC), for whom I also work, have no such legal status. One of my closest colleagues wrote to the SIS asking for the organisational file of one such Christchurch-based group (we are both on that committee) but was rebuffed by Tucker, who asked for proof of authority for that person to make such a request. A lot of groups who would like to get their SIS files will find themselves in the same situation. But, in CAFCA’s case, when we are asked : “Why did you apply for your file?” we can truthfully answer : “Because the SIS Director asked us to”!

SIS Director Salutes CAFCA’s Longevity

The accompanying letters that we (and others) have received from Warren Tucker are fascinating enough by themself and could easily justify an article of their own. To quote from one of them (30/10/08) : “… the ‘CAFCINZ/CAFCA’ file is not completely dedicated to CAFCINZ and CAFCA. The actual title of the file is : PROTESTS MISCELLANEOUS : INFLUENCE ON BY SUBVERSIVE ORGANISATIONS : CAMPAIGN AGAINST FOREIGN CONTROL IN NZ (CAFCINZ). The file was opened in 1965 and consists of 10 parts. Parts 1-4 are mainly concerned with protest against foreign military bases in New Zealand and is therefore about the the activities of the Campaign Against Foreign Military Activities in New Zealand (CAFMANZ). Most of the remaining six parts are about CAFCINZ, thus the addition of CAFCINZ to the file’s title. The early interest taken in CAFCINZ after its formation in 1974 was primarily by the Police rather than the NZSIS, starting with the South Island Resistance Ride of 1975 (although the NZSIS was initially involved in identifying the members of CAFCINZ).

“The demonstrations against PBEC in May 1977 and the allegations of sabotage* (oil tankers being shot at) didn’t do CAFCINZ’s PR image with the Police and NZSIS much good in the early days but it is probably fair to say that there might have been less subsequent NZSIS interest in CAFCINZ if it had not continued with protests against US bases and visiting naval vessels and taken up an active ‘abolish the SIS’ stance” *I’ll deal with the Christchurch protest against the Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC) when detailing the file’s contents. And rest assured that we, individually or organisationally, have never been involved in “sabotage (oil tankers being shot at)” The mind boggles. MH.

“The passage of time has shown however that CAFCINZ’s wider appeal (over CAFMANZ), to popular suspicions about the intentions of overseas business interests in New Zealand rather than just to the left-wing causes of the day, has ensured your organisation’s longevity. In any case, it is a new experience for me to be writing, as the Director of one still flourishing organisation, to the Secretary of another – which is also noteworthy from our perspective as the only one that called for the liquidation of the NZSIS that has not joined the others dedicated to that cause on (to use the late VI Lenin’s term), ‘the rubbish-heap of history’!”. See what I mean. Following our receipt of this letter, Bill Rosenberg was rather surprised to be contacted at work by somebody else from the SIS (it is an offence to identify any SIS member other than the Director) saying that Tucker had quoted the wrong dead Communist icon and that he had meant Leon Trotsky rather than Lenin, and was most anxious to get these things right. These guys must have too much time on their hands and too much taxpayers’ money at their disposal.

Summary Of File

So what is in CAFCA’s SIS file? It includes :

• Extremely detailed reports from meetings held in private homes. Mostly these were meetings of third party groups at which CAFCA itself or its members (such as me and/or Bill Rosenberg) were discussed. Obviously the SIS had a spy or spies in those other groups.

• Reports from year after year of CAFCA Annual General Meetings and various public meetings we organised, including making “covert” calls to one of our speakers to check out who he was and to get him to inadvertently report on the meeting for the SIS. I should stress that these were meetings on subjects like West Coast coal exports and other innocuous topics, such as opposition to the Bluff aluminium smelter.

• Copious analyses of articles on all manner of topics in Watchdog. This went on for many years.

• Intercepted private letters.

• In the case of myself, evidence of dealings between my former employer (the Railways) and the SIS. One report included me on a “troublemakers in the union” list and included evidence of my employer asking the SIS for any evidence that I was connected to the then Socialist Unity Party (I never was, nor any other party). Also reports of my international travels in those years.

• SIS conclusions that CAFCA was involved in historic “terrorist” acts (we weren’t) and endless speculation as to whether we (collectively and/or individually) were “Communists” (we weren’t).

• CAFCA was the subject of reports of various SIS Directors to various Prime Ministers.

• CAFCA, and me, was the subject of SIS correspondence with foreign intelligence agencies.

• All details identifying SIS agents or informers have been removed.

Let’s look at some of the details. The file shows no evidence of there ever having been an SIS spy on the CAFCINZ or CAFCA committee during the quarter of a century covered by the file (from our birth in the mid 1970s to the late 90s. Tucker told us that the SIS stopped spying on CAFCA in 2001, but 1998 is the latest year included in the file). Nor is there any evidence of our committee meetings or individual members having been spied upon by means of bugs or phone taps. That’s not to say that other agencies of the State weren’t trying to penetrate our committee, particularly in our early years – in the late 1970s the CAFCINZ committee included an individual who perfectly fitted the classic profile of a spy. He came from nowhere, nobody knew anything about him, he had no apparent context and he had no politics. But he assiduously attended all our meetings, activities and protests and, being the classic helpful spy, offered to look after things like our mailing list (which in those days was a manual one, on index cards). He duly vanished and was next spotted by Bill, in a provincial newspaper photo, taking part in a Police fundraising run! He went on to a long career as a cop, retiring just a few years ago as a senior Christchurch detective (for the record, when we confronted him, by phone, he denied having been a spy when he was on the committee, saying that he only became a cop after leaving us. You be the judge). We wrote about it in the April 1980 Watchdog (without ever naming him) and that article was duly entered into our SIS file, with a note reading : "On page 3 under the heading of ‘Spying’ there is a valuable lesson here for Intelligence Officers in trying to arrange penetration of a target"! I’m glad that we were able to help the SIS with its spycraft training!

Much more recently, we were able to apply the lesson we learned from that 1970s’ episode with a Police spy to Rob Gilchrist, who was publicly outed in December 2008 as having been a Police informer and agent provocateur for the previous decade, operating in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland. I’m pleased to report that all of the Christchurch groups with whom I’m involved picked him for a spy from Day One – if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck – and he was never able to cause the damage to us that, unfortunately, he inflicted on various groups and individuals in the North Island. Of course the technology had moved along in the ensuing 20-30 years – instead of offering to look after an index card membership list, Rob set up and moderated an activist e-mail list to which all manner of groups (including CAFCA and ABC) posted notices of upcoming (and completely public) activities. As he was in sole control of that list, it has had to be shut down.

There Was At Least One Spy In Our Ranks

But if there weren’t any spies on our actual committee, there was certainly at least one in our membership. The evidence is that the file contains regular and detailed reports from our Annual General Meetings, which are, by definition, only open to members. Of course, we don’t vet people who join CAFCA, we are not a secret society and we have nothing to hide. So it’s not a “breach of security” that somebody was regularly reporting to the SIS about our AGMs – after all, we do publish the minutes in Watchdog! To give you the flavour, here is an extract about me, from a detailed four page SIS report on CAFCINZ’s 1978 AGM : “Murray Donald HORTON. Horton stated that he was leaving Chch during the first week of May 1978. When asked where he was going, he replied ‘It doesn’t matter’. HORTON was one of the main speakers during the meeting and appeared to ‘like the sound of his own voice’. His mode of speech was coarse throughout, and he continually used obscene language whilst speaking, despite the presence of (our then female Chairperson). HORTON interjected continually whilst other speakers had the floor, and at one point spoke out strongly against both capitalism and imperialism, stating that ‘if you support one you end up with the other’. So there you have it – I’m a blabbermouth blowhard who’s up himself, talks over other people and swears in the presence of ladies. I’m mortally offended! Actually that could have been written by any of my colleagues or by either of the two women with whom I have lived during the past 40 years.

One of the last documents in the file is a first hand report from CAFCA’s 1998 AGM :”Source described the balance of those attending as being elderly (i.e.over 45) and apparently non-active members. Notwithstanding this, the group seemed well run and boasted a membership of over 500”. I love the SIS definition of elderly. “Murray HORTON chaired the meeting and spoke of CAFCA's plans for the next year. He stated that the APEC summit was one of the organisation's key campaigns for 1999… HORTON took the opportunity to warn about 'police spies' within protest organisations. He said that as far as he was aware none were in CAFCA but he was aware of undercover agents at work in associated organisations over the years and gave an alleged example dating back to the 1970's…” (there’s another example of the SIS monitoring what we knew about spies in our ranks).

The 1999 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Auckland was the trigger for greatly increased State surveillance of activist groups. It was the reason why Rob Gilchrist suddenly appeared on the Christchurch scene in 1998, at the start of his decade long lucrative career as a Police spy (also in 1998 a female Police spy appeared, out of nowhere, on the Christchurch scene. As the APEC Summit grew closer and it was obvious that nothing exciting was going to happen in Christchurch, she vanished, doubtless redeployed to Auckland). And there was overt Police surveillance too – I was interviewed by the local detective charged with “liaising’ with likely APEC protest groups. That was my last such Police interview and I think about it every time I see that same cop on the TV sports news, in his current role as the All Blacks’ scrum doctor.

So we had at least one spy in our membership from the 1970s to the late 90s, inclusive. Indeed, the very earliest batch of reports in the file, relating to the period leading up to and including our foundation activity, the 1975 South Island Resistance Ride, indicates that there may have been more than one, as those earliest reports include features such as complete reproduction of minutes of our meetings (held at the former Resistance Bookshop and Action Centre) and the full two page list of names, addresses and phone numbers of all Resistance Ride participants (including Australians). At the bottom it reads : “Please note : This list has been compiled from the original addresses given to CAFCINZ for the Resistance Ride….” The Resistance Ride was the subject of extensive State surveillance. The most recent material we have received from the SIS is a collection of Police surveillance photos taken during it and supplied to the SIS for identification purposes. It’s a bit hard to tell who’s who in them, as they are inky black photocopies of 34 year old photos, and the accompanying list of captions is not much help in picking anyone out. All I can say is that we all seemed to have a lot more hair in those days.

Spying On Communist Party

The great bulk of material in the SIS’s CAFCA file comes not from spying on us at all, but from spying on another organisation at whose meetings we (organisationally or individually) were the subject of discussion. That organisation, not surprisingly, was the Christchurch branch of the former Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ), now the Socialist Workers’ Organisation. There was at least one spy within the Christchurch CP and he was very busy filing detailed reports about every single one of their meetings for many years. These reports (and there are dozens and dozens of them in our file) list everybody present at those meetings and everything said by everybody at them. They make for absolutely fascinating reading but I’m going to quote from very few of them. Why? Because they are, quite literally, not our business. They record the personalities and activities of a completely separate organisation and CAFCA only appears in them by dint of being an agenda item or because individual members of CAFCA (such as myself and/or Bill) attended their various social functions and thus appeared on the list of attendees.

Communism and Communists were the obsessions of the SIS during the decades of the Cold War, so they went to inordinate lengths to identify “fellow travellers” and allies of the CPNZ. The Personal Files that the SIS kept on who knows how many people had a Personal Particulars Form as its title page. Section 13 was headed “Whether Publicly Known As CP Member”. At the time of writing that Personal Particulars Form is one of only three documents that the SIS has released to me from my Personal File (which spans 1969-2002). I am listed as not being publicly known as a CP member (nor, indeed, was I privately known as one, because I never was one). Section 14, Political History And Significance, includes this : “Subject is not believed to be a member of the CPNZ at Christchurch but is a very active member of the PYM (Progressive Youth Movement). 1969 : Attended PYM/CPNZ Meeting…1970 : Referred to by JG Locke* as possible CPNZ recruit 1970 : Attended CPNZ Marxist Study Evening 1971 : Attended CPNZ Meeting at home of RC Blacklock*”. *Jack Locke and Ralph Blacklock, both now long dead, were the veteran leading figures in the Christchurch branch of the CPNZ for many decades. My obituaries for Jack and Ralph are in Watchdogs 84 (May 1997) and 93 (April 2000) respectively, the latter being online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/93/10memor.htm.

I have never been a member of any political party, whether parliamentary or extra-parliamentary. If I had been a CP member I would have happily publicised it. Both I and CAFCA have had a long and productive working relationship with the former CP and individuals within it, some of whom were CAFCA founders and remain members today (not just members, but also personal friends of long standing). But we have had also had political differences with them, which come under the heading of agreeing to disagree (in the past I have been labelled a “bourgeois individualist” and CAFCA a “bourgeois nationalist” organisation by some in the CP – we wear those as badges of honour). In fact the SIS reports on these numerous CP meetings serve the very useful function of spelling out the differences between us and the former CP. For example, here is an extract from a Christchurch branch meeting of April 15 th, 1987 : “A lengthy discussion then ensued on CAFCA. As reported previously, the CPNZ is angry that CAFCA has, in its view, misinterpreted the meaning of internal monopoly and is choosing not to highlight any such instances (don’t ask me what this dispute was about, it’s long forgotten. MH.). A decision has been made to write to CAFCA expressing its dismay. Howver, after more discussion it was felt that the personal approach might prove more successful. BLACKLOCK and (another leading CP figure) are to attend the next CAFCA meeting, whenever that may be, and present a letter from the CPNZ outlining its views. (The leading CP figure) felt that the party had to be careful not to build a wall between it and CAFCA, but he felt CAFCA at the moment was leaning towards the position of pre-war Italy with a strong nationalistic outlook. LOCKE mentioned that it was possible to re-direct CAFCA as they had done so in the past. BLACKLOCK went on for a long time about how Murray Donald HORTON would not listen to reason, and how it was very hard to argue with him…”. So there, it’s official, you’ve got it from the spies – we pissed off the Commos. I have no idea what the reference to “pre-war Italy” was all about, nor do I recall CAFCA being ”redirected” by the CP on any occasion.

Full Of Indiscreet Personal Tittle Tattle

There is another major reason why I’m not going to quote from many of the reports of CPNZ meetings and that is because they have been released containing unexpurgated and extremely indiscreet tittle tattle about named and still living people’s personal and private business. There is stuff in them about drinking habits, drink driving convictions, marriage bustups, domestic arguments, etc, etc. That is nobody else’s business and that includes CAFCA (we didn’t ask the SIS for that sort of stuff. I have three theories about why they have included it, not only in the CAFCA file, but in all the Personal Files released thus far – they are naïve, not used to dealing with The World; they are malicious, hoping that we would spread it far and wide and stir up trouble; and/or, they couldn’t care less. Personally, I’d go for the last two).

I’ll give just one (expurgated) quote, from another 1987 CPNZ meeting, so that you can get the flavour. “(Party member) gave a report on (his place of employment) and said that were to be redundancies. (Party member) himself admitted that he had applied for voluntary severance from (his place of employment) but did not say what he was going to do afterwards. Source comment : You could have heard a pin drop when (Party member) said this and comrades were obviously very shocked. (Party member) complained that he was about to become a grandfather, as his son had made a local girl pregnant…”. You get the picture. I have the impression that some of this salacious gossip was classic spycraft, to seek out human frailties (one report goes into some detail as to who could and couldn’t “hold their drink” at a social function) for possible use for blackmail and/or recruitment as spies. Although it’s not as salacious as the contemporary secret files found on Rob Gilchrist’s computer when he was outed as a Police spy, in December 2008. Encrypted files included the sexual orientation of named activists and a whole lot of other similar stuff to do with personal and sexual relationships within the targeted group. Not to mention covertly taken nude photos of young women on whom he was spying, which were sent, complete with derogatory headings, to his Police Intelligence handlers for their titillation.

Who Was The Spy Inside ChCh CP?

Do we know who was the spy (or spies) within the CP? We have at least one strong suspect, who was also quite likely the SIS informer at the CAFCA AGMs (he was simultaneously a member of both organisations). We have no definitive proof, no confession, but in the case of the CP meetings, it was a process of deduction – his name never appeared on the list of attendees in the SIS reports, yet he was at those meetings. Are we going to name him? No. He died quite recently, we know who he is and he can do no further harm. Most interestingly, he left behind unpublished memoirs which detail a period in the 1950s when he was an SIS informer in Christchurch for several years, spying on Communists and trade unionists. Several pages of his memoirs are devoted to his SIS work, including how much he was paid per week. He quit and instead plunged into the Christchurch progressive movement, becoming a well known figure (I worked with him for several years in the 90s on various campaigns and committees). He did not fit the profile of the likes of Rob Gilchrist and CAFCINZ’s 1970s’ Police spy, but all indications are that he returned to his previous role as a spy. His memoirs offer possible motivations, including regular mentions of an alcohol problem, poverty, loneliness, lowpaid and transient jobs, a personal sense of resentment coupled with anti-Communism and an oversimplified version of patriotism. In normal circumstances I would use those memoirs (which are a fascinating read) as the basis of his Watchdog obituary. But I won’t be writing one. We won’t name him as a suspected spy, but equally we won’t publicly acknowledge his undoubted years of work as a Christchurch activist. That’s the trade-off, meaning that many people who worked with him won’t know that he is dead, let alone that we suspect him of having been a spy (we’ve told a handful of people and some reacted with shock, meaning that our man had done his job well and was never suspected by them).

The former Communist Party was a major target of SIS spying, to a degree that was obsessive and quite absurd, considering the small size of the organisation. This is borne out by the Personal File of one former CP member who has kindly given a copy to CAFCA (we are archiving as many of these as people are prepared to give us). In his case, he was also a founder member of CAFCA (but is no longer a member). It is amusing to see that on his Personal Particulars Form, the Section headed “Whether Publicly Known AS CP Member” has been amended by crossing out “CP” and typing in “CAFMANZ and CAFCINZ”. This was dated 1974, when he was a CAFCINZ founder and years before he joined the CP. I wonder if it means that the SIS regarded us as more of a bogeyman than the Commos in those days. The most fascinating report from his CP days is the one detailing intensive SIS surveillance, including following cars bearing Christchurch CP members, and spying on a Party National Conference in Auckland. And his Personal File is full of extremely personal material about his former marriage and his finances, not to mention all sorts of indiscreet and extraneous personal material about third parties. His file spans 19 years, from 1974-93.

Spying On SUP Still Hush Hush

The CP was one of two rival Communist parties, from the 1960s until the 90s, the other one being the former Socialist Unity Party (SUP) which was aligned with the former Soviet Union – the CP was aligned with, firstly China, secondly Albania, then finally it ceased to align itself with any foreign country. Warren Tucker’s letter to us (30/10/08) said : “CAFCINZ was occasionally mentioned at meetings of the SUP. The SUP was a secretive organisation and the methods NZSIS employed to find out what it was up to were also secret. The NZSIS files on the SUP are still sensitive for both security and privacy records and for the time being we are not releasing documents from these records” (he sent us a brief summary of SIS reports on the SUP where CAFCINZ was mentioned). You can take this as meaning that the SIS spied on the SUP (which was prominently represented in the trade union movement, including at the highest level) by means of phone taps and hidden microphones, and doesn’t wish to divulge those details.

The SIS is inconsistent in its approach to this subject, as it is to so many others. It is not prepared to send CAFCA anything about us gleaned from its spying on the SUP. But it was prepared to do so when it released his Personal File to Paul Corliss, who was happy to give a copy to us, and happy for it to be reported in the media when this story broke. Paul is a veteran Christchurch unionist and activist, as well as being a current Roger Award judge and writer ( Jeremy Agar’s review of his book on Samuel Parnell, the 19 th Century father of NZ’s eight hour day, appears elsewhere in this issue). His file contained a couple of reports where his name was mentioned at Christchurch SUP meetings – plus, most intriguingly, the agenda for a 1980s’ SUP Central Executive meeting in Wellington with no mention whatsoever of Paul or any apparent relevance to him. Paul received his Personal File in December 2008, which raises the question of whether the SIS had changed its policy on the “sensitivity” of its files on the SUP in the month since Tucker wrote to us saying that everything involving the SUP must remain secret. We notified the Ombudsman of this inconsistency and appealed the SIS’ withholding of SUP-related material from us. As a result Warren Tucker sent us the mentions of CAFCINZ from four previously withheld reports of its spying on the SUP but continued to withhold the CAFCINZ material from a further four reports on the SUP, on the grounds that they would lead to sources being able to be identified (the standard reason for virtually all deletions from all SIS reports released). The Ombudsman upheld the SIS’ decision.

Of course, not all of the SIS file on CAFCA is made up of material on us gleaned from its spying on other organisations. It also spied on us directly and in some considerable degree of detail for more than a quarter of a century. I’ve already said that our file betrays no indication that there was a spy within our committee. Not in the 80s and 90s anyway, but some of the stuff on the file from the very, very beginnings in the early to mid 1970s indicate that there certainly could have been someone within the ranks at the former Resistance Bookshop and Action Centre where we held all our meetings and from where the 1975 South Island Resistance Ride was organised. This would not have the person I have already mentioned as a suspected spy, as he wasn’t around then. I’ve already mentioned things like the complete list of Resistance Ride participants’ names, addresses and phone numbers turning up in our SIS file – we most certainly did not publish that, so the SIS can only have obtained it by either stealing and copying it, or by having a spy within our ranks supply them with a copy.

Also among the very earliest material in our file are copies of private letters (handwritten and typed) that CAFCA members, such as Bill Rosenberg, sent to people in other parts of the country. Now, there are only two ways that they could have come into the possession of the SIS : either the recipient gave it to them (possible but very improbable) or, much more likely, the SIS was intercepting, opening and copying our mail, authorised by an interception warrant. The SIS has offered no clue as to how it came into possession of our private mail but you can draw your own conclusions. One report details surveillance of Bill Rosenberg’s then home by an actual SIS agent (as opposed to an informer), sitting outside and recording all the people and their cars who visited his place (with no explanation as to why).

Spies In The Workplace

And one other (1980) report offers a tantalising clue as to the use of SIS informers in the workplace. It records that (name withheld) from the Railways had rung the Christchurch office of the SIS “to enquire about certain individuals who are all employed in the Traffic Branch of the Christchurch railways and who belong to the National Union of Railwaymen. These individuals were described as causing trouble to the Christchurch railways management”. Four people are listed, including me and Paul Corliss (I don’t recognise one name and the fourth is Clive Mundy, who is dead; you can Paul Corliss’ obituary of him in Watchdog 101, December 2002, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/01/09.htm). The fascinating thing about this otherwise unremarkable SIS report, unique among the 400+ released to CAFCA, is that there is a name in it which has no apparent context. The name doesn’t mean anything to me or Paul (it was nearly 30 years ago in what was then a very large work force). The SIS report goes on to say “I (SIS Officer, name deleted) told (name withheld by MH) that some of these people were known to us in the context of CAFCINZ but that none of them were members of or associated directly with the SUPNZ” (the report is entitled “SUPNZ- ACTIVITY IN INDUSTRY”). I think that the SIS may have inadvertently released to CAFCA the name of one of its informers. My hunch grew even stronger when Paul Corliss received his SIS Personal File, weeks after CAFCA got ours. Six documents have been withheld from Paul and, according to the summary provided by Tucker, this is one of them. Why would they give us a file, which includes Paul Corliss, but withhold it from him? I’ve written to Tucker to clarify who is the mysterious individual named in that report? As the SIS has a policy of never identifying its agents and informers, alive or dead, I shall be interested in his explanation.

That report concluded : “(name withheld by SIS, presumably the Railways caller)‘s conclusion had been that the above named had SUPNZ connections”. No, I didn’t and I have written to Tucker to have that corrected (his accompanying letter to every recipient of an SIS file invites corrections, “factual, not political”). My only connection to the SUP was to know a couple of people in it, and I was no great fan of that party or its policies. My only contact with the former Soviet Union was to cross it on the Trans Siberian Express in 1978 as a tourist and I was none too impressed with what I experienced.

CIA & ASIO Were Kept Informed About Us

So what does the SIS file on CAFCA contain? Nothing very exciting, nothing clandestine or criminal. Indeed I have it in writing from Tucker, in a letter to me personally (4/2/09) that “…you have never encouraged unlawful activity such as sabotage, subversion or terrorism. We do not believe you would ever consciously act against the security of New Zealand and New Zealanders. You are therefore not a person of ‘security interest’ to the NZSIS”. Be that as it may, the SIS devoted an awful lot of time, effort and taxpayers’ money into spying on us. So much so that it felt the need to inform foreign Intelligence agencies about us. Warren Tucker wrote to us (6/1/09), releasing ten SIS memos to “the US Government (meaning the Central Intelligence Agency officer at the US Embassy. MH) about CAFCINZ. These date between March 1975 and April 1980, covering the Resistance Ride - anti-nuclear ship visit period of CAFCINZ’s history. The ten documents represent the entire correspondence between the NZSIS and the US Government about CAFCINZ/CAFCA (there are no documents of US government authorship on file either requesting information about CAFCINZ or responding to the NZSIS memoranda)”. The poor old SIS was so eager to please its CIA Big Brother that it was unsolicitedly sending it memos on the dangerous local Communist troublemakers and it didn’t even get a reply or acknowledgement.

So far I have only received three documents from my Personal File and two of those are 1977 letters between the Directors, no less, of the SIS and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) about me, relating to the fact that I had been recently living in Sydney and had been politically active with Australian progressive groups during a particularly turbulent time in Australian political history, following the bloodless “constitutional coup” which overthrew the Whitlam Labor government (once again the spies were obsessed with the Communist connections of those groups).

Allegations Of “Sabotage”

Tucker’s confirmation that I have never encouraged “sabotage” is interesting because, once again, it contradicts something that he previously wrote to us, namely “…the allegations of sabotage (oil tankers being shot at) didn’t do CAFCINZ’s PR image with the Police and NZSIS much good in the early days…” (letter to CAFCA, 30/10/08). Tucker’s use of the words ”oil tankers” conjures up images of some sort of al Qaeda suicide bomber attack on a gigantic ship bearing vital fuel supplies to little old NZ. The reality was rather more mundane. There is material in the CAFCA file relating to the mysterious 1970s’ incident of a couple of bullet holes being found in a Christchurch petrol tanker (i.e. a truck) owned by an American oil transnational and the suggestion that this was some sort of protest against NZ port visits by US nuclear warships during the Muldoon era. Neither I nor CAFCA had anything to do with any such incident nor do we know anything about it to this day (nobody was ever charged in connection with it). Likewise, during that same decade, US military communications aerials situated at the disused Royal New Zealand Air Force’s Weedons base, near Christchurch, were dropped as explicit acts of protest against those warship visits and NZ’s close military alliance with the US, including hosting the US Navy and Air Force at Christchurch Airport (the Weedons aerials were part of that base). Once again, neither I nor CAFCA had anything to do with it and have no idea, to this day, who did (nobody ever publicly claimed credit for it and nobody was ever charged with it). In my case I had a cast iron alibi, of which the Aussie spies were well aware, namely that I was living in Sydney for more than a year when it happened (my Dear Old Dad told me later that the cops came looking for me in connection with it, which was just one more thing that pissed him off about being related to his notorious son).

The SIS and the Police were determined to pin it on CAFCINZ if they could – I’ve read the SIS Personal File of someone who had a peripheral connection with us in the 70s and it contained reports implying that he and another named individual were likely suspects, as they didn’t have alibis at the time that the aerials were dropped. Tucker wrote to us (10/11/08) : “Regarding the Weedons aerial, you may be interested to read the NZSIS report of 21 July 1980 about a meeting (undated) of the CPNZ Christchurch branch. A comarade claims that CAFCINZ, directed by the CPNZ, was responsible for the previous successful attack on the aerial. But he also says that the SIS had William Ball Sutch ‘terminated with extreme prejudice’, so perhaps he was not so well informed after all”. I can only reiterate that CAFCINZ didn’t take directions from the CPNZ about anything, let alone sabotaging US military aerials, so the suggestion is preposterous. I am happy to publicly own up (and have done so in the media) to the odd act of historic sabotage that I have committed in my 40 year long career as a political activist, such as the 1970 sawing down of goal posts at the former Lancaster Park, as a protest against that year’s All Blacks tour to apartheid South Africa. But I know nothing about shooting up petrol tankers or dropping US military aerials (the only time that I’ve ever fired a rifle, in high school cadets, my aim was so bad that I doubt that I could have hit a petrol tanker, even from close range). CAFCINZ/CAFCA has never been involved in sabotage in any way, shape or form.

Of course, I also work for the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) and it has campaigned against the Waihopai spybase for 22 years now, including a sustained campaign in the first decade of non-violent direct action and property damage at the base (ABC was not involved in the 2008 deflation of one of the base’s two radomes, carried out by three Ploughshares activists – who are awaiting trial – but was happy to declare support for them after the event). ABC grew directly out of CAFCA in the 1980s. It is very interesting that there is virtually no mention of either ABC or Waihopai in the SIS file on CAFCA, indicating to me that those files are kept by another agency (most definitely Police Intelligence, and also the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau, which operates Waihopai, and whose immediate past Director was none other than Warren Tucker). Obviously there is a whole other story to be told there.

Tucker’s letter to CAFCA (30/10/08) claimed that our having organised the May 1977 protest against the Christchurch meeting of the Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC, a sort of smaller version of what is now APEC) also put us in the bad books of both the Police and SIS. We make no apology for having organised what the Christchurch media of the time described as the most militant local protest since those against the Vietnam War. There were a number of arrests, including of CAFCINZ activists (one of whom was my then partner, a fellow founder of the organisation, and who went on to be come Chairperson, before permanently moving to Australia in the late 1980s. She was also the subject of an SIS Personal File. And, for the record, she was acquitted of the charge). In our first decade it was common for CAFCINZ to organise protests and pickets, hardly surprising for a protest group which grew directly out of the turbulence of the late 60s and early 70s, and these were all obsessively reported upon by SIS informers and agents. For instance, in alliance with the then Seamen’s Union, we used to regularly picket the ships taking West Coast coal to Asia. And on one memorable occasion in Lyttelton we picketed a Soviet fishing boat, which was operating in NZ waters on a joint venture. This definitely threw the SIS. What were we up to? Weren’t we Communists and, ipso facto, supporters of the Soviet Union? Several reports were devoted to analysing what our possible motives might have been. One suggestion was that we were out to win the support of “middle New Zealand” and, bugger me days, the SIS concluded that we were succeeding. Groups such as commercial fishermen’s associations came out in support of our action.But the SIS concluded that there was a bright side to our unexpected deviation from the Communist Conspiracy, namely that we would piss off the pro-Soviet SUP and “split the Left”. Sure enough, the file gleefully includes aggrieved letters to the Press from SUP loyalists attacking our action and defending the presence of Soviet fishing boats in NZ waters. So, there you have it – the SIS has officially recorded that CAFCA pissed off both rival NZ Communist parties.

Enemies List

There was one particular campaign that the SIS monitored with particular attention to detail, namely that of any group or coalition of groups to abolish the SIS. CAFCINZ was in the thick of that throughout the years and it is still our view that the SIS serves no useful purpose, that it should be scrapped and that any of its functions deemed necessary could easily be done by the Police who are, theoretically at least, accountable to the rules of evidence and accountable for their behaviour in a court of law. Tucker’s letter to CAFCA (30/10/08) says “…it is probably fair to say that there might have been less subsequent NZSIS interest in CAFCINZ if it had not continued with protests against US bases and visiting naval vessels and taken up an active ‘abolish the SIS’ stance”. So it makes no bones about the fact that it maintains a literal enemies list. 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…”. So that’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, 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.

Most of the SIS file on CAFCA consists on reports of our various meetings, whether public ones or Annual General Meetings for our members only. For quarter of a century the spies were keenly interested in everything we said, wrote, did and organised. In the case of some of the meetings detailed in the file, we had long since forgotten about them or had no awareness that they had ever happened. This was certainly the case in relation to a whole series of 1970s’ Auckland meetings at which a proposal to establish an Auckland branch of CAFCINZ was discussed (the proposal was defeated). Because those meetings involved leading Auckland members of the CP (who, for the record, were opposed to the proposal) they were reported on by way of a spy in their ranks. Those SIS reports make fascinating reading, precisely because we had no knowledge of them (and neither Bill nor I can remember any such proposal to establish an Auckland CAFCINZ) and it was news to us. The SIS was always alert to the potential for splits within the CPNZ and/or between the CPNZ and friendly groups. For example, one 1976 report on an Auckland discussion about whether to set up a branch of CAFCINZ there concludes : “Handling Officer’s Comment : Despite a relatively unsophisticated grasp of Leftwing ideologies, the positions described above were clear to (name withheld). If this potential dispute develops it could divide the CPNZ-PYM (Progressive Youth Movement) elements from other activist groups with whom they presently cooperate…” There was a Wellington CAFCINZ for a few years in the mid to late 70s and their meetings and activities were all carefully spied upon, including having their mail intercepted and copied.

Worried About Our Influence On Public Opinion

But the great bulk of the file is about CAFCINZ/CAFCA in Christchurch. The SIS was very interested in what impact we had on public opinion. To quote from a 1976 report from the Christchurch District Officer to HQ, titled : “CAFCINZ-CHRISTCHURCH. As general information concerning CAFCINZ you may be interested in the attached cutting of an item which was prominently featured in the Christchurch Press on 8/11/76. The item concerns CAFCINZ’s criticism of a Press article and an Editorial concerning COMALCO. The prominence given this criticism and to the Press replies is indicative of the fact that CAFCINZ, at least in Christchurch and the South Island, is regarded in some quarters as being a knowledgeable body on the subject of COMALCO and competent in expressing its views. It is also somewhat significant that when matters relating to COMALCO and Mt Davy coal and other such disputes are in issue attention is focused by the news media on statements from CAFCINZ, and their spokesmen are not infrequently interviewed on radio and television. Many of the principals in the organisation are young men of intelligence and education with high academic degrees in the sciences”. An accompanying report, dated the next day, lists the degrees of some of those “principal activists” to demonstrate their “academic calibre” (I’m afraid I’m not on the list, having only a measly BA and an incomplete MA, definitely not in the sciences. MH.).

And the SIS was very interested in any respectable academics and scientists who spoke at our public meetings. For instance, one 1980 report includes a Press public notice advertising that Dr John Peete (sic) would be speaking on “Growth and Multinationals”, following a screening of a film on multinationals. The SIS report says : “This meeing was organised by CAFCINZ. The Dr John PEETE shown as speaking is Dr N. John PEET (not in records), a senior lecturer in Chemical Engineering at the University of Canterbury, and the University calendar shows him as BSc (Hons) (Edin.), PhD, MIChemE, FNZIC. A pretext call to the University revealed it was this Dr Peet who sounds as though he is an Englishman who spoke to the CAFCINZ meeting. He said there were not many at the meeting and he was told that this was the smallest turnout for any CAFCINZ meeting to date”. It goes to list his address and phone number. Note the reference to a “pretext” call.

Most Assiduous Readers Of Watchdog

The SIS was quite possibly the most assiduous analyst of every issue of Watchdog. Our file is full of reports drawing the attention of people such as the Director, the Prime Minister and the CIA’s man at the US Embassy to details contained in individual articles in each issue. Particularly when I look back at the tatty old gestetnered Watchdogs of the early years, it is both amusing and flattering that the spies were taking it so seriously and reading it with such close attention. For example, in 1980, the SIS sent the latest Watchdog to the CIA with a memo saying : “Page 4 of the magazine refers to the recently published allegations of a CIA presence in Wellington”. Watchdog articles on the issues of the day, be it the Comalco smelter, coal exports, etc, etc were all carefully logged and analysed for details of what we were doing, and what we were saying about the issue of foreign control. These are all economic issues, matters of economic and political sovereignty. It is fascinating that the SIS was so anxious to play its part in defending the likes of Comalco. When the SIS Act was amended in 1996 to widen its scope to those who “threaten New Zealand’s economic well being” there was public disquiet about the implications. But CAFCA’s file clearly establishes that the SIS was spying on critics of the established economic and political orthodoxy at least 20 years earlier than that law change gave them the mandate to do so.Watchdog, of course, is available by subscription, with very few public outlets (apart from libraries). The SIS was so keen to read it that it got its spies to join up so that they could receive it. We used to joke at mailouts in the 70s and 80s that the mysterious Mr Smith at Box XYZ, Christchurch, must be our resident SIS agent. Turns out we were right – the file is full of references to issues of Watchdog being received at “covert PO box”.

And this obsessive analysis of Watchdog articles (albeit historic ones) continues until the present. Quite the most bizarre quote from Warren Tucker’s several letters to us (this one is from his of 30/10/08) is a reference to Watchdog 19, April 1979, which says, a propos of nothing “… (the same Watchdog, on page 5, also moots that it was the guerrilla warfare of the Chinese Communists, not the Americans at the Battle of the Coral Sea, that saved New Zealand from Japanese invasion in WW2 …a somewhat revisionist view of modern history!)”. Has this man got too much time on his hands? But if we’d known that the SIS was our most attentive reader and getting so much use out of Watchdog, we would have charged them a higher sub.

Clippings & “Unprofessional Notations”

A lot of the file is made up of clippings which mention CAFCA. Some of them are from the likes of the former People’s Voice, which was the newspaper of the former Communist Party. But the great bulk of them are from the mainstream media, namely the Press (plus the odd letter to the editor that I’ve written to the Listener). In other words, freely available material discussing legitimate public issues of the day (some of which, such as the Bluff smelter, are equally valid today). So, in that respect, the spies were like all the other public servants of the day, methodically clipping the paper for stories of interest about their various “clients” (my late father was a veteran public servant and he told me that when he started as a junior his first job every day was to read the paper and to send off any stories of relevance up the food chain all the way to his Minister so that the latter could be prepared for any Questions arising in Parliament. Of course, the SIS wasn’t clipping the paper for any public purpose, let alone of political accountability). I had one moment of creepy realisation when I recognised my handwriting on one clipping (just listing its date and year), which meant either that the SIS had gained covert access to my own files or, more likely, somebody had asked to borrow one of my fileboxes (the article was a 1980s’ one about intelligence), copied it and supplied it to the SIS.

And the SIS boys couldn’t help themselves. Rather like the nuisances who write notes or their opinions (usually in capital letters, with exclamation marks) in library books, they couldn’t resist the temptation to write comments on the clippings. For example, in 1974, we publicised a personal donation and letter from support from Jack Lewin, the Secretary of Trade and Industry. It received considerable media coverage. On one page of photocopied clippings (headed MD Horton and JP Lewin, Personal Files) there is a handwritten note from someone in the Christchurch SIS office : “Horton is really getting the most propaganda he can out of this $5 donation from Lewin” (in those days $5 was more than half of what I was paying in weekly rent. For details of the SIS and Jack Lewin, see my article “Speaking Ill Of The Dead : The Vicious Smear Campaign Against Bill Sutch & Jack Lewin”, in Watchdog 113, December 2006, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/13/12.htm).

This opinionated note making is not merely historical either. One of the last entries in the Personal File of Keith Locke MP is the handwritten word “Eeeexcellent!” accompanying a selection of letters critical of Keith published in various papers in very recent years. Paul Neazor, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, wrote, in his March 2009 report on Keith’s complaint about the SIS spying on him as an MP : “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.

There is another lovely quote about us in a 1980 memo from the Christchurch SIS office to HQ : “You will know from studying CAFCINZ material the group, which is mainly motivated and activated by Murray Donald Horton (Personal File), has a potential for destructive activity against American and/or multinational interests. However, they are more talkers than doers” (sounds fascinating, but as there is no context provided in the released report I have no idea what it is referring to). So, although the SIS kept a file on us from the mid 1970s until the late 90s, it had assessed us by the mid 80s and earlier as being of “minimal security interest” and “talkers rather than doers”. But that minor detail didn’t stop them spying on us for all those years.

The SIS file on CAFCA is an invaluable historical record of a completely paranoid “intelligence” agency, one that was only a matter of degree removed from its secret police counterparts in the former Communist countries that “our side” in the Cold War expended so much propaganda effort in denouncing. But we are not going to make it public, either in hard copy or electronic form. Not because we have anything to hide, organisationally or individually, but because it includes all manner of highly indiscreet and irrelevant personal material about third parties who were not the subject of the various SIS reports. We see no reason why we should play any role in recycling and widely broadcasting spies’ tittle tattle which still has the capacity to hurt and embarrass people.

Of course, the SIS file on CAFCA was only one small part in a much bigger picture. We became aware of its existence because Bill got his Personal File. And the spinoff from that was that we became aware of Personal Files on a large number of other people. We have informed as many of those as we could contact, including some former members who are now definitely on the other side of the argument, and plenty of them have applied for or actually received their files. I have been contacted by phone and e-mail by any number of people, some known and some strangers, wanting to know how to apply for their files. I have given such advice at a chance meeting in an airport café and I have shouted it out in response to a shouted query from amidst central city traffic. Warren Tucker wrote to me, in connection with my Personal File (4/2/09) : “Thanks partly to the publicity you and Bill Rosenberg have provided, information from the NZSIS is in great demand and the now frequent requests must be dealt with in the order they arrive” (translation : you can bloody well wait).

Spying On Unionists…

As I’ve already said, to the best of our knowledge, CAFCA is the only organisation to have received its file. But the release of even a small number of Personal Files soon revealed evidence of SIS spying on all sorts of other organisations. I’ve already mentioned the two rival Communist parties. Most of Keith Locke’s Personal File (which spanned 1955-2006) involved detailed spying on the former Socialist Action League, of which he had been a leading figure for years (long before he became a Green MP). There