New Zealand’s chief trade negotiator Mark Sinclair privately told a visiting US State Department official that New Zealand had little to gain from a free-trade agreement. This view – recorded in a confidential US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks – differs from the one the public has been given.

I HAVE had many careful meetings with sources during the last 20 years, but never anything as cautious and mysterious as this. I was heading overseas to meet the WikiLeaks team in the midst of heavy threats from the United States government and more imminent threats of police action.

These are the first US embassy cables released in New Zealand, in full except for one name being redacted.

NEW ZEALAND’S collaboration with United States intelligence agencies was “fully restored” in August 2009 but both governments decided to keep the decision secret.

THE WIKILEAKS cables reveal American ambassador Charles Swindell worked ahead of the 2005 election to pressure New Zealand into changing its nuclear-free policy.

Israel’s Urim base in the Negev desert is among the most important and powerful intelligence gathering sites in the world. Yet, until now, its eavesdropping has gone entirely unmentioned

An Auckland private investigation firm has been caught out after it attached a sophisticated tracking device to a political campaigner’s car – but left the device visible from outside the vehicle. It is the third time in three years the Sunday Star-Times has caught Thompson & Clark Investigations doing covert surveillance on political groups for corporate clients.

The US Internet company Google threatened to close its Chinese operations last week after discovering Chinese hackers had broken into its Gmail email system, apparently gaining access via specialised interception equipment installed by Google to assist US law enforcement agencies.

INQUISITIVE MARLBOROUGH locals have outsmarted government attempts to keep the targets of the Waihopai spy station secret – and have discovered that it is eavesdropping on Asian satellites carrying the communications of New Zealand’s friends and trading partners in that region.

GO TO the heart of one of Telecom or Vodafone’s mobile phone exchanges and you’ll find the whole system – covering a quarter of the country – is run by a single computer, no bigger than a small freezer.
Cables lead off to all the company’s cellphone towers and other parts of the network. A main cable, connecting all those phone users to the world, comes out the top of the computer and passes directly into a unit in the rack above. One cable goes into the unit but two come out: one continuing out to the world, the other coiling off to secret equipment marked “LI” on the system diagrams. “LI” stands for “lawful interception”.

New cyber-monitoring measures have been quietly introduced giving police and Security Intelligence Service officers the power to monitor all aspects of someone’s online life. The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand.

TREASURY HAS lost a computer disk containing millions of New Zealanders’ confidential tax records, after ignoring procedures and sending the CD through the mail.

John Key and his colleagues are going to send the Special Air Service to Afghanistan. The current talk about whether National should do so is, unfortunately, academic. The decision is already made.

Leaked Cabinet plans list the government’s infrastructure projects and show that even facing the worst economic crisis in half a century, the government intends to restrain its spending….

PROTESTER SIMON OOSTERMAN might bring charges against police informer Rob Gilchrist for harming his case at a trial over the police use of pepper spray. A follow up article on anti-terrorist police.

Police teams set up to identify terrorism threats and risks to national security are spying on protest and community groups, including Greenpeace, animal rights and climate change campaigners, and Iraq war protesters.

The police have used an informer to spy on New Zealand protest groups for nearly 10 years – providing them with intimate details about planned protests and even the private lives of group members….

National’s campaign is hiding a front bench full of 1990s-style free marketers behind John Key’s well-scripted one-liners….

Investigative journalist Nicky Hager says National’s health policies have gone publicly unnoticed, but involve a shift back to 1990s free-market reforms….

Nicky Hager was invited by the Pundit website to reply to a column by Matthew Hooton.

Is it all right when the judge in a court case and the lawyer for one of the parties are also long-term business partners? Nicky Hager reports….

JOHN KEY plans to appoint former party leader Don Brash as high commissioner to London if National is elected later this year, sources have told the Sunday Star-Times….

THE WORLD leader of the Exclusive Brethren made an unpublicised visit to New Zealand last week, arriving on Wednesday, amid strict security, to a large meeting of faithful in Wellington.

National Party leader John Key appears to be using taxpayers’ money to pay for his controversial Australian strategy advisers, Crosby/Textor. Inside information strongly points to the firm being paid through Key’s parliamentary office rather than by the National Party, even though the Australians are primarily assisting the party’s election campaign strategy….

National leader John Key’s campaign is being overseen by the same highly controversial manipulators who directed Don Brash’s ill-fated tilt at power….

Government agencies are paying thousands of dollars for inside information from private investigators Thompson and Clark. But as Nicky Hager writes, they could get some of it on Google. …

National Party leader John Key is talking about changing New Zealand’s electoral system. Nicky Hager writes about Key’s plans and the lobby groups that are pushing for the change.

When three Christian protesters deflated a radome at the Waihopai intelligence base 12 days ago, citing the base’s support for the US War on Terror, a chorus of voices ridiculed the suggestion….

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry quietly severed its contract with controversial private investigators Thompson and Clark Investigations last year, after the Sunday Star-Times revealed that TCIL’s “corporate intelligence” included infiltrating and spying on community groups….

PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS working for the state-owned coal company Solid Energy have defied a direct government instruction and again tried to infiltrate an environment group that opposes Solid Energy’s coal mining plans….

Twelve months ago the government told state coal company Solid Energy that using paid informants to infiltrate environment groups was ‘not acceptable’ and that it had to stop. Solid Energy is adamant it has complied. The private investigators however appear to have defied the order….

What information led the police to smash the Urewera ‘terrorist’ training camps? Nicky Hager investigates the intelligence trail which led from cafe conversations to the armed police response. TWO YEARS ago a man quite similar to central characters in the Urewera “terrorism” case purchased a pistol holster on TradeMe for $66. Officers at the Otahuhu [...]

The Police “terrorism” case against Maori, peace and environmental activists has its origins long before Operation Eight began last year….

The Solicitor-General will shortly make a decision whether to approve terrorism charges against the Maori, peace and environmental activists arrested last month. Nicky Hager describes how the decision will be made and the factors the Solicitor-General needs to take into account….

The great weakness of much journalism is a process-worker approach to assembling quotation-based stories….

MPs have stepped back from proposals that would have lifted secrecy
surrounding party donations….

Student confesses he infiltrated group opposed to Solid Energy mining.
AN AUCKLAND private investigation firm is paying agents to infiltrate
and spy on environmental, peace and anti-vivisection groups….

I would like to propose a New Year’s resolution for news organisations: sorting out the difference between genuine media commentators and giving regular media space to political party spin doctors….

Michael Bassett and Richard Long used their recent columns to criticise me and my book The Hollow Men but they barely mentioned, much less debated, the contents of the book. Nor did they acknowledge that they both feature prominently…..

So, you do most of your banking online? Maybe you shouldn’t. As a computer hacker tells Nicky Hager, it is alarmingly easy for scamsters to break into your accounts….

MICHAEL KING’S excellent Penguin History of New Zealand tells us intelligence sharing between the United States and New Zealand ended in 1985 as part of retaliation for this country’s nuclear-free policy. Thanks to the discovery last week of a secret intelligence report detailing events at that time, we can at last, hopefully, lay this tired old myth to rest.

A NEW ZEALAND computer hacker has accessed the private bank accounts of dozens of unsuspecting Kiwis, showing how easy it is to break into our internet banking system….

AUSTRALIAN intelligence officials knew the man at the centre of the Kiwi Israeli spy scandal was a long-time Mossad agent well before he began the New Zealand passport operation…

Don’t expect the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to be named in an apology about the Israeli spy scandal, but it was indeed Mossad at the centre of the affair. (This story solved the mystery of two Isreali men caught attempting to obtain false New Zealand passports. Nicky Hager traced them to the Isreali intelligence service, Mossad.)

NICKY HAGER speaks to a former NZSAS member working in a `Close Protection Team’: DOZENS OF New Zealanders are working for private companies in Iraq as violent opposition to the occupation forces spreads and the risks to foreigners grow….


A LEAKED report reveals the 61 New Zealand Army engineers caught up in the Iraq conflict have spent only a fraction of their time helping rebuild services for Iraqi civilians….

NO ONE said it openly, but an unpublicised cabinet decision in late January signalled the end of Labour’s policy of reorienting the defence forces….

Policing of normal political protest has changed dramatically in recent years. What’s going on?

In November last year PM Helen Clark released a new policy on access to our Security Intelligence Service’s old files. The press release said it was to encourage “greater openness”, but in fact she had just instituted possibly the most restrictive intelligence archives policy in the western world… .

The role New Zealand soldiers are playing in Iraq is not the one the government has sold to the country… (This feature was the first expose of New Zealand military activities in Iraq.)

Helen Clark has tried again to present herself as the victim in the contaminated corn crop issue. But, this time, she is partly correct….

Nicky Hager reveals a controversial American company behind the South Island’s proposed Project Aqua scheme….

It is not surprising if you haven’t heard of Project Aqua. It is the largest power scheme planned in New Zealand since the Clyde Dam 20 years ago and already it is controversial in the local area around Oamaru. But a lot of state resources are going into trying to silence the opponents and avoid the inconvenience of genuine public debate….

The latest ‘debate’ about defence consists of the usual moans about the military being dangerously underfunded and ill-equipped…. but this says more about the feeble standard of debate than any reality concerning our military forces….

A recent story in Britain’s Observer newspaper revealed that US intelligence agencies have been spying intensely on UN Security Council members as the US worked to secure backing for the war in Iraq. You might imagine that New Zealand would disapprove of these high level dirty tricks…

THE war in Afghanistan was fought by intelligence analysts sitting at computers and special force commandos roving in mountains and lowlands…. (This feature was the first expose of New Zealand military activities in Afghanistan and surrounding countries in 2001-2003, activities which until then had mostly remained secret.)

CONSIDER the achievements of the Afghanistan war in terms of “fighting terrorism”… Overall, future terrorist attacks on the US and its allies appear to be more, not less, likely as a result of this war. It is not hard to see why.

New Zealanders are being softened up to accept this country taking part in perhaps the most outrageous United States-led war since Vietnam….

Now that three years of Labour Government have passed, it is becoming clear what we can expect during the next three or six years of this government….

Frantic Government damage control followed the release last week of my book Seeds of Distrust. We were told the book was completely untrue and that I was a conspiracy theorist taking part in a Green Party dirty trick.

A $2.3 billion defence spending plan is stalled before cabinet after ministers rejected a bid by defence officials for a high tech military upgrade of surveillance aircraft….


The conflict between Helen Clark and officials over the future shape of the defence forces has heated up again….

As soon as the Labour-Alliance Government offered soldiers for the orwellian-sounding “War on Terrorism”, declaring “total support for the approach taken by the United States”, it began drawing New Zealand into the hidden agendas not only of the Afghanistan War, but also of what are, in effect, the early days of a renewed cold war.

As the pressure comes on New Zealand to support war in Asia, let’s not fool ourselves that we would be fighting on the side of right….

There is nothing surprising about the US intelligence agencies failing to detect and stop the September 11 hijacking attacks. The main role of US intelligence agencies is not defence against threats like terrorism, but advancing US interests elsewhere in the world . . .

PR is a huge feature of modern politics. Every journalist spends a lot of his or her time coping with and trying to see through PR communications and tactics. However the issue for journalists should not just be surviving PR tactics and spin, but turning the spotlight on it….

The police, Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau are pushing for major new surveillance powers including the ability to spy on emails. Nicky Hager investigates. THE secretary of the anti-free trade group turns on her computer and types in the security password. Her computer holds all the group’s membership lists and meeting [...]

My 1996 book Secret Power on New Zealand’s role in the Echelon network was written secretly, as I feared the intelligence agencies would try to block publication of a book based on extensive interviews with their staff….

The cost of military equipment is always hard to comprehend. How can a small frigate cost more than half a billion dollars, Army radios cost tens of thousands each and a few Skyhawk jets cost more than $200 million a year?

This is a very positive time to be serving in the New Zealand Defence Force. The peacekeeping mission to East Timor is arguably Defence’s most important and popular role in the last 50 years….

Most SAS keep to themselves. They socialise together, are hard drinkers, and `watch each other’s backs’. They don’t talk freely about their work, with is why most of what they do remains secret…. (This article publicised many previously unknown details of New Zealand’s Special Air Service)

Written with Anthony Hubbard AN UGLY industrial building in inner-city Wellington is the Security Intelligence Service’s bugging and surveillance centre, the Sunday Star-Times can reveal. The white two-storey building in Kaiwharawhara Rd _ in an industrial area which includes panelbeaters and pet food wholesalers _ houses sophisticated electronic bugging equipment. Cars and utility vans used [...]

This article publicised Nicky Hager’s book Secret Power and particularly its revelations about the Echelon surveillance system to an international audience. The article was picked by a European Parliament researcher and prompted a year-long European Parliament investigation into the Echelon system (2000-2001). It received a US journalism award.