Read the complete analysis of alleged Maori terrorism in the Urewera

which was full of holes

Operation 8 brought together a broad range of activists into the series of wananga facilitated by Taame Iti in the Urewera between 2005 and 2007. It must have seemed like Christmas to the police, especially to police intelligence, who had been watching all or most of them anyway and would never have expected them all to converge on the one place joined together in common purpose; which they later thought was terrorism.

The police spooks must have wet themselves in excitement. They should have paused to ask themselves if it really was possible for a totally disparate bunch of activists to find common illegal purpose, and to keep that illegal purpose secret or expect it to be kept secret, given that  all or most of them knew that they were always or almost always under some sort of surveillance. The excitement prevailed and no-one in police intelligence or in the chain of command stopped to question that assumption. When you’re following your nose into an intelligence operation you really should pause occasionally to draw breath, to look about you for other information that may contradict your nose, and to critically engage the brain.

In the next post I will outline the huge amount of information or evidence the police collected and examine how and why the “analysis” of that information led them into the conclusions they made.

These are some of the threads, general and specific, that were woven together to become Operation 8:

• 9/11 to 15/10
• The compact between Labour and Maori destroyed
• Taame Iti & Tuhoe Lambert;
• Rangi Kemara & Teanau Tuiono;
• Jamie Lockett & Phil Le Compte;
• The anarchists, peace activists, environmentalists and animal rightists;
• Aotearoa Café;
• The military connection; and
• The threads that weren’t.

9/11 to 15/10

The Al Qaeda attacks on the USA on Tuesday 11th September 2001 by mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists, the Bush/Cheney initiated “war on terrorism” that followed, and the security paranoia that began in the the USA and swept across the Western world was a thread that led directly to the armed paramilitary operations at Ruatoki, Taneatua and Manurewa on Monday 15th October 2007.

New Zealand followed the USA lead with the Suppression of Terrorism Act 2002 which did not specify any crimes not already covered by the Crimes Act, or which could not have been introduced into the Crimes Act by amendment. Its real purpose was not to specify new crime but to appropriate to the State and its security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies vastly increased powers of surveillance, search, detention, arrest, secrecy and suppression. In doing so it eroded democratic rights and freedoms that had been built into the democratic ideal and practice over many hundreds of years in the pursuit of which countless lives had been sacrificed. All without any appreciable increase in the direct threat to New Zealand or a threat that could not have been dealt with under existing legislation and within existing powers.

The new security regime also imported “security theatre” from the USA through which the paranoia and  empire building foreign policy aspirations of the Bush/Cheney administration were converted into mass public hysteria through lies, propaganda and a range of highly visible “security” measures. In introducing legislation and policies to combat terrorism the Bush/Cheney regime introduced new previously unthinkable mechanisms designed to control the population of the USA. The NZ Government blindly and subserviently followed with its own population control measures.

The increased budgets for the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies spawned a raft of new special units and staffs dedicated to the task of finding and prosecuting terrorists. The NZ Police widened the meaning and scope of terrorism to include domestic political activists, and cynically used their new specialist terrorism intelligence units as political intelligence units. In doing so the police raised the stakes, their own level of paranoia, and the level of antagonism between themselves and political activists to new highs.

During the 1981 Springbok Tour and the sometimes violent confrontations between protesters and police the police weapon was the long baton. By 2007 pepper spray was routinely carried and used, and tasers were on trial. The police also had a paramilitary force armed with pistols, carbines and rifles. Not only had the police raised the level of antagonism between themsleves and political activists, they had also increased their weaponry. And they had demonstrated through their increasingly confrontational tactics when dealing with political activism that they had no respect at all for the democratic right to dissent, demonstrate and protest.

In that climate of internationalised Bush/Cheney paranoia, and increasing NZ Police paranoia, antagonism, aggression and confrontation, it should not have been surprising that the level of paranoia in the activist groups increased in direct proportion. No doubt a few might have fantasised about arming themselves against the threat from within the supposedly democratic State.

The fourth Labour Government led initially by David Lange (1984-1990) had been a friend of the peace movement and other activist causes. In that government Helen Clark herself was a key link to the peace movement. Caught up in the paranoia of the Bush/Cheney “war on terrorism” the fifth Labour Government led by Helen Clark (1999-2008) bought into the security, intelligence and law enforcement agenda that quite quickly marginalised and criminalised political dissent. The fourth Labour government under the guidance of Sir Geoffrey Palmer had introduced important new consitutional legislation including the Bill of Rights. The fifth Labour government put in place legislation that started the sliding erosion of those rights that continues unabated to this day.

The compact between Labour and Maori destroyed

Not initially related to the terrorism paranoia but developing alongside it was a hardened attitude to Maori activism. The Lange government started a process that paved the way for new forms of relationship between Maori and government. In 1998 while still Leader of the Opposition Helen Clark was humilated and reduced to tears at Waitangi. That no doubt hardened her personal attitude to Maori political activism.

In January 2004 the Waitangi Tribunal reported favourably on a claim to ownership of the seabed and foreshore. In January 2004 also Don Brash triggered a racist response in New Zealand with a speech at Orewa. The Clark government, in a signal decision in November 2004 motivated by political considerations, legislated to extinguish any Maori claim to the foreshore and seabed despite widespread protest. In doing so it destroyed a decades long electoral compact between Maori and Labour. The Maori Party was the result.

The Clark government had created new enemies for Labour out of old friends both Maori and Pakeha, and by granting undemocratic powers to the police and others had institutionalised some of those new antagonistic relationships.

Within that general atmosphere of betrayal and distrust Ngai Tuhoe was steadily working towards recognition, validation and settlement of its claims. The first of many claims was laid in 1987 and the Waitangi Tribunal heard them between 2003 and 2005. There was no guarantee that the Clark government would negotiate towards the outcomes Ngai Tuhoe wanted and to many it seemed that it would not. The gievances against the Crown run deep and there has been a simmering collective anger passed down through the generations. No doubt many in Ngai Tuhoe were impatient with the process. And there were a few hotheads, but they were held in check.

Taame Iti & Tuhoe Lambert

Taame has been an activist for decades, since the days when they were called “radical Maori activists” and rated as equally subversive as communists in the minds of the watchers and some politicians like Robert Muldoon. Taame’s activism became more focused on the Ngai Tuhoe cause as the years rolled by. He even rates his own entry in Wikipedia:

“As the Maori nationalist movement grew in New Zealand in the late 1960s and 1970s, Iti became involved. He protested against the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa, and he became involved with Nga Tamatoa, a major Māori protest group of the 1970s, from its early days. He joined the Communist Party of New Zealand, and went to China in 1973 during the cultural revolution. He has taken part in a number of land occupations and held a hikoi to the Parliament of New Zealand”.

There can be no doubt that he has been under surveillance for all or most of that time, whether by NZSIS or NZ Police. Taame and my old mate Willie Wilson were comrades in the union movement and the Communist Party together. Robert Muldoon certainly kept an eye on them through NZSIS and once named Willie in Parliament as the most dangerous man in New Zealand. There can also be no doubt that Taame knew that he was under surveillance from way back then and that whatever projects, protests and schemes he was involved in would be observed. In many interviews with the media he has said as much. He seemed to carry on regardless and do whatever he decided to do anyway. Of all the activists in New Zealand who are or have been under surveillance, or who think they have been under surveillance,  Taame stands out as one who has learned to live with it as part of his life. Unlike many he has never seemed overly-concerned and has rarely if ever protested about it in righteous indignation, or wishful thinking.

In the Operation 8 police evidence a police intelligence note from 2002 noted that he was seen at Mangere in the company of Rangi Kemara. They weren’t up to anything but his presence was noted anyway, and filed in a police database in case it became useful. In that case it did become useful for it seems that it might have been the first time police intelligence had added Rangi Kemara to his social network. Rangi didn’t have a police record. Social network analysis of persons of interest is going on all the time to build a picture of who might be involved in the activities of the people the police are watching. That’s partly what mass surveillance of the Internet by GCSB is about. They’ve probably got me tagged as part of his network as well as half of all Maori. They must have put the late Tuhoe Lambert into that network from about June 2006; maybe earlier.

On 16^th January 2005 Taame shot a flag on the marae as part of an elaborate theatrical presentation before the Waitangi Tribunal sat to hear the Ngai Tuhoe claim. Local police understood what it was about, were not perturbed and did nothing about it. But after the matter was raised in Parliament by some righteous MP he was charged by the police and in June 2006 was convicted and fined.  At the time of the trial he was already under surveillance as part of Operation 8. On 4^th April 2007 his conviction was overturned on appeal. That was just six months before the armed paramilitary operation in which he was arrested as an alleged “terrorist”.

It would be interesting to find out who in Wellington made the decision in 2005 to charge him with firearms offences. Commissioner Broad and Deputy Commissioner Pope had not been appointed at that time. Was Helen Clark involved.

On 27 February 2007 Taame was tipped off that someone was talking to the media who were interested in his wananga activities. On 28 February 2007 Melanie Jones of the Sunday Star Times contacted Taame and told him SST had received an anonymous letter that suggested he was “doing guerilla training for activists in the Ureweras”. The police intercepted that communication. Taame knew from a tip off on 3rd June 2007 that his wananga activities in the Urewera were under police surveillance and had been discussed at Police Headquarters. The police obtained those text messages.  He received another tip off about police surveillance in September 2007. In June 2007 an intercepted conversation clearly indicated that Taame knew they were under surveillance. He did nothing to stop or hide what he was doing.

The late Tuhoe Lambert was an Auckland based Vietnam veteran who was also dedicated to the Ngai Tuhoe cause and who was involved in the wananga in the Urewera with Taame Iti. He came under surveillance from early in 2007 as a result of a check of the Births, Deaths and Marriages database at Internal Affairs, looking for the relatives of his brother who had  become part of the network analysis. Tuhoe Lambert then came under surveillance himself, was linked to Taame Iti and his activity in the Urewera and eventually became a prime suspect with Taame Iti and Rangi Kemara. Tuhoe had previously been interviewed at length by Melanie Reid of TV3 about his Vietnam service and through that had created a public profile. Melanie interviewed him again after 15th October 2007.

In September 2007 Taame travelled to Fiji to meet Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama. He was accompanied by John Murphy of Remuera. The spooks would certainly have been monitoring that visit and had certainly added Murphy to the Taame Iti network quite some time before that. We will meet Murphy later.

Rangi Kemara and Teanau Tuiono

Rangi and Teanau are good friends. I met them both through the NZ Maori Internet Society which I co-founded in the 1990s and which they joined early on. Rangi eventually came to work for me as my IT manager, part time at first then full time from early in 2004. Rangi was arrested at Manurewa at Tuhoe Lambert’s place on 15^th October 2007. He had been staying there in a caravan. The next day Teanau’s place at Palmerston North was raided but he was not arrested.

Teanau was a moderator of the “Tino Rangatiratanga” email group that started in the 1990s.  Rangi was also involved in that. I was an early subscriber and contributor to the group. Teanau has fairly close links with the Wellington activist community and with the international activist community as well. He’s an activist, with a law degree, and acknowledges that he has probably been under surveillance for a while, especially because of his international links.

Rangi discovered through a source in the IT industry that his email account was under police surveillance some time in 2002 or 2003. There was no possible reason for that other than the fact that he was Maori, was becoming an IT specialist, was friendly with a number of activists including Taame Iti, and had been a contributor to online activist discussions. That could almost describe me as well.

Both Rangi’s and Teanau’s connection to Operation 8 probably began in 2004. That year started with Don Brash’s racist speech at Orewa. Then there was the Labour Government’s decision to extinguish any Maori rights to the seabed and foreshore, followed by the hikoi to Parliament to protest that decision, Tariana Turia’s resignation from the Labour Party, and the formation of the Maori Party. Throughout all of that the police were spying their hearts out.

Rangi and Teanau were in Wellington in March 2004 when the National Party website was defaced, probably in protest at all of that anti-Maori stuff that year, sparked off by Don Brash at Orewa. The website hack was aimed at Don Brash. The upshot of that is that the police electronic crime laboratory suspected Rangi the IT whiz of doing it, and perhaps had his mate Teanau in the frame as well.

Now, defacing a political website on the information super highway is no more serious than defacing a political billboard on any other highway. The recent revelations about wholesale spying by NSA, GCHQ, CSE, ASD and GCSB have finally proved that the Internet is open slather anyway. Our government is the biggest illegal hacker of them all. We already knew that at the time, and in my company we took our security seriously and built industrial strength protection around the websites on our servers, including our own websites. Most people actually believed the companies that built their websites, and believed that they were secure. We knew that most of them weren’t and we also knew that a lot of corporate websites were being hacked but that no-one was admitting it. It would embarrass them to admit that their supposedly secure websites were not. That’s why I say that defacing a political website billboard was and is a petty offence happening all the time, if it is an offence. If you want to protect your billboard on the information super highway or any other highway you should put a high fence around it topped by broken glass and razor wire with a strong lock on the gate. And don’t just believe the guy who takes your money and tells you there is a fence around it when there isn’t, like the Emperor’s new fence. If you don’t properly secure it and your electronic billboard gets the graffiti treatment then it’s your own stupid fault. Don’t go bleating to the police.

Anyway the Electronic Crime Laboratory (ECL) went after Rangi in a big way for allegedly doing a bit of graffiti on the National Party electronic billboard that was out on the highway without a proper fence around it. They seized all of his computers. But they didn’t find the computer they thought was used for the hacking of Brash’s billboard, or any evidence on the computers they did seize, and they didn’t charge Rangi with the hacking. All they had was that the hacking was done from a hotel connection in the hotel Rangi had stayed at in Wellington so it might have been him and it might not, and it might have been a Pakeha.

The person at ECL who was after Rangi was Juergan Arndt who later turned up at our office on 15^th October 2007. He failed in 2004, and he failed again in 2007. The alleged 2004 hacking incident was mentioned in police evidence as one of the threads that led into Operation 8. It would seem that both Rangi and Teanau were in the crosshairs long before Operation 8 started and that they stayed in the crosshairs. And that was one of the threads by which both of them were woven into the Operation 8 narrative.

I had told Rangi in 2004 that because of his brush with ECL the police would have him under surveillance forever. He knew that. At a later time I also told him that he would be under surveillance because of his association with our friend Taame Iti and the wananga activities in the Urewera. He knew that too.

Computers were seized from a lot of locations around the country on 15^th October 2007 and in the days afterwards but the ECL and Juergan Arndt were focused primarily on Rangi’s home workstation and on my fairly sophisticated IT network at Parnell. I will tell you why in another of the threads but I reckon that Fritz was also motivated by a bit of unfinished business from 2004.

Teanau’s house was searched but he was not arrested. Like me he contacted a lawyer who made sure the police did not exceed their lawful powers of detention and arrest. As in my case the search warrant itself was probably obtained improperly.

Jamie Lockett and Phil Le Compte

We met Detective Sergeant Phil Le Compte when he turned up at our Parnell office after we got an interim injunction to stop the search and seizure operation that was aimed at all of our computers. Le Compte worked at AMCOS, co-located with SIG, the special intelligence unit that ran Operation 8. On the surface he was not involved in Operation 8. But the cat certainly was curious.

Now to Lockett. The earliest record of Jamie Lockett in the Operation 8 database was on 24th September 2005 when he was observed in the Mount Wellington Domain in Auckland wearing a balaclava and carrying “something like a rifle”. The next record is on 5th February 2006 when he was reported to be at Waitangi with John Murphy.

Patrick Gower wrote this about Jamie Lockett in the NZ Herald on 27^th October 2007.

“Whether it is proved right or wrong, Jamie Beattie Lockett will wear the title “terror suspect” with pride. It sits nicely alongside his boasts of being “the most trespassed man in New Zealand” or “84 arrests but 79 walk-aways”. Lockett has been at war with the police for years. He goads officers, they arrest him on disorder-related charges. It goes to court, he defends himself – and as his record shows, quite often beats them. Lockett will then take a private prosecution against the officers he claims have wronged him. It is a routine that has made him a regular fixture in the courts”.

“The 46-year-old stands apart from his 15 co-accused because he does not have an underpinning philosophy. Those who know Lockett say he is no anarchist or Maori activist: he is driven instead by a seemingly pathological dislike for police, said to have begun when an officer spat in his shoe while he was being held in custody. It began a belligerent feud that has become so all-consuming it has left him penniless, seen him fall out with friends, and means few who know him can recall what he was like before it began”.

“Terror suspect Jamie Lockett has been under tight police surveillance for at least 18 months. He was confronted by undercover police officers dressed as tourists at Waitangi Day 2006 and clearly told – while standing toe-to-toe with one detective – “we will be right on your tail”.

“The confrontation at Waitangi Day forms part of a short film titled Jamie made by friend and film-maker Miles Watson. It shows Lockett talking to uniformed police before two undercover officers dressed in board shorts and T-shirts take over. Lockett and one of the officers stand toe-to-toe as the “on your tail” warning is issued”.

The “undercover” police officer who stood toe-to-toe with Lockett was Detective Sergeant Phil Le Compte and the confrontation was not a coincidence. One of the main police protagonists in the long running feud involving “84 arrests and 79 walk-aways” was Phil Le Compte. It was personal. They hated each other. Lockett has told the story of how they had come to blows some time before the incident at Waitangi and how he had beaten Le Compte in the ensuing fight.

Lockett was at Waitangi with John Murphy. Murphy was a seemingly wealthy used car dealer who lived at Remuera, quite near to the late Sir Paul Holmes. On 5^th March 2006 David Fisher of the NZ Herald wrote:

“There’s a Maori flag flying in one of Auckland’s poshest streets – and it’s raising the ire of some of its more influential neighbours”.

“Used car salesman John Murphy of Victoria Ave, has traded the New Zealand flag’s red, white and blue for the red, black and white of the tino rangatiratanga flag. Mr Murphy took the Kiwi flag down and ran the Maori flag up the pole just before last year’s election [17^th September 2005]”.

“I went to see [Maori Party co-leader] Pita Sharples before the election to see how I could help because I believe in him,” Mr Murphy said at his $1.2 million home yesterday as a waiata played over stereo speakers. “So I put the flag up. And I’ve got a lot closer to Maori since I put it up.”

At the time of all of this Jamie Lockett was living with Murphy in Remuera. The two of them had embarked on their new cause to support Maori. They had tried to meet with Prime Minister Helen Clark and were supposedly at Waitangi to offer Minister of Maori Affairs Pita Sharples $10 million to support the cause. It all sounds rather improbable. Their attempts to engage with the politicians had brought them renewed police attention.

Shortly after John Murphy had started to fly the Tino Rangatiratanga flag in Remuera it was noticed by Rangi Kemara. Rangi was on his way home from his work at my office, noticed the flag and stopped to introduce himself to Murphy to find why he was flying it. He told me about it the next morning. One thing led to another and John Murphy and Jamie Lockett were introduced to Taame Iti. Network analysis had now connected them.

Detective Sergeant Phil Le Compte must have been beside himself to have Jamie Lockett joined to a “counter-terrorism” operation in the Urewera. The prospect of having him lined up on a terrorism charge would have been beguiling. Alas it was not to be, he was charged with arms offences, and he eventually got off that one too. 85 arrests and 80 walk-aways.

Did Phil Le Compte have any role in kicking off Operation 8? Was part of the motivation behind Operation 8 to put Jamie Lockett away for a long time on a terrorism conviction? We don’t know. Le Compte was one curious cat at my office in Parnell on 15^th October 2007.

Since the Supreme Court appeal and the subsequent dropping of charges against most of the Operation 8 accused Lockett seems to have gone quiet. Phil Le Compte, son of Alan, was put back into uniform and sent up to Kaitaia. One can only speculate why but the feud seems to have subsided. Geographical distance has worked its magic. Lockett is still around but I hear that he has since done a three month stretch inside. 86 arrests and 80 walk-aways?

The interesting thing about the surveillance of Lockett and Murphy is that they are the main targets in the Operation 8 database of evidence up until July 2006 when the main focus shifted to Taame Iti. This is the timeline:

• 4 May 2006 – “Surveillance log starts. Auckland Court. J. Lockett, J. Murphy, M. Watson”.
• 10 May 2006 – “New investigation Op 8”. Request to Telecom about cellphone data for J. Murphy. Was this the actual start of Operation 8?
• 17 May 2006 – “1st search warrant. T. Iti, J. Lockett, K. Alp, J. Murphy, K. Chapman” [probably cellphone records]..
• Throughout May and June 2006 the database records are mostly concerned with links from Jamie Lockett and John Murphy to right wing white supremicists and members of the Direct Democracy Party; Kyle Chapman, Kevin Alp and Jason Orme.
• 19 July 2006 – “1st search warrant. J. Lockett, T. Iti, M.Hohaia”

Perhaps Jamie Lockett led the police to Taame Iti and not the other way around. In which case Phil Le Compte would certainly have played a leading role at the start of Operation 8. Here’s the question – was Operation 8 already under way as an operation aimed at Jamie Lockett before it switched its focus to the Urewera? The police have always said it was an operation that started in the Urewera but the evidence of their Operation 8 database says otherwise. They’ve indulged in a bit of parallel construction of evidence.

The other interesting thing about Jamie Lockett and Operation 8 is that he too knew that he was under almost constant surveillance by the police and did nothing to hide his activity. In fact he had a record of provoking police into arresting him.

The anarchists, peace activists, environmentalists and animal rightists

So how did all of those activists from Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and elsewhere come to be involved in the Urewera. Taame Iti is a networker and a collector. He collects people. A millionaire associate at one time was arts patron Jenny Gibbs although she disassociated herself from him after the Operation 8 arrests. He drew millionaire John Murphy into the network. There have been many influential people drawn in. He spreads the word about the Ngai Tuhoe cause as far and as wide as he can. He does it through his theatrical protests and the media, through his acting, through his painting, through his networking and through his wananga in the Urewera. He is the unofficial Ngai Tuhoe spin doctor.

But if they wanted a terrorist warlord they wouldn’t leave it to a spin doctor. They’d look for someone else, someone like me with high level military training, not Taame Iti and not even the late Tuhoe Lambert. By the way the only people ever to have approached me about that were two young Black Power members who asked me to run a wananga for them on guerrilla warfare. It was a long time ago and I didn’t of course. But Taame did arrange to have me briefed about the Ngai Tuhoe claim, as “a person of influence”, by chief negotiator Tamati Kruger. Flattery will get you nowhere Taame.

Ngai Tuhoe have been quite brilliant in their image making and have portrayed themselves as the last holdout against colonialism and the last repository of traditional ways of life and values. They have their history of invasion, suppression and confiscation which has been told and retold from generation to generation. It finds expression in “Te Mana Motuhake o Tuhoe” the ongoing never ending cause for some form of political autonomy. It is a compelling narrative that has created an aura around Ngai Tuhoe of the Urewera, the children of the mist. It is a narrative that is true, as far as it goes, and the substance of their claim is valid.

Another narrative is that Ngai Tuhoe is not an entirely united “iwi”. There are at least two hapu opposed to the direction of negotiations with the Crown. Ngai Tuhoe is also fast heading into becoming a corporate iwi like all the rest of the corporate iwi. I’m sure they’ll deny it but that’s their future. They’re becoming through the claim negotiation process a modern or neo-tribal “iwi”. And most of them don’t live in the Urewera, with perhaps the largest number of them living in Auckland. Those out in the diaspora are living ordinary mainstream lives as beneficiaries, workers, public servants, academics, teachers, nurses, firemen, policemen, soldiers, broadcasters, journalists, businessmen and businesswomen, criminals, and whatever else you can think of. They are concerned with raising their families and getting ahead if they can just like everyone else. Most of them are never going “home” to live in the Urewera although many of them are frequent visitors.

It’s the first narrative that draws in the romantics and the idealists to support the Ngai Tuhoe cause. It’s the narrative that has been brilliantly portrayed in academic publications, on film and in the media. It’s the narrative that would have drawn all of those activists to the wananga once invited. Were they drawn in to help Ngai Tuhoe wage war, or were they drawn in by the romanticism and idealism of the Ngai Tuhoe narrative which is the longest running ever in-your-face challenge to the sovereignty and closely guarded power of the NZ Parliament? The stuff of activists’ dreams.

Te Kotahi A Tuhoe ki Poneke, a group of activists to support the Ngai Tuhoe cause, was formed in Wellington in November 2006.

So were they there to wage war or to dream? Some of the activists actually refused on principle to participate in the war games in the bush, and went off somewhere else when that was on. The police didn’t tell you that but it’s true. Those ones at least weren’t there to wage armed warfare on anyone. Nor were the rest.

But some of them did act out a bit of fantasy in the bush. None of them would have made the grade into my platoon.

We know that after 9/11 police intelligence units had focused their attention on activists in Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland. We know that they paid informants to infiltrate the activist groups and to act as agents provocateur. It should have been no surprise to any of them that police intelligence followed their noses to the wananga in the Urewera. The police interpretation of what they saw there was the real surprise.

Am I soft on activists? Over the last 35 years since I retired from the Army I have met and become friends with a lot of activists of all varieties and causes, Maori and Pakeha. I have worked with quite a few on various projects, socialised with many who were also artists, writers and theatre goers. Some of them had SIS files going right back to the 1940s and 1950s. And do you know what? They are ordinary people just like the rest of us; mostly nice people and some who are not of course. Instead of looking through keyholes or relying on lunatic infiltrators the spooks should get to know their targets personally. They’d be a lot less paranoid if they did.

Aotearoa Café (AoCafe)

In the early days of the World Wide Web we had the “Tino Rangatiratanga” email discussion group at Yahoo.com. I was an early subscriber and sometime contributor. I’m still one of 1,394 subscribers but these days I never contribute. I got tired of it although some of the discussion was interesting.

There were the leading activists of the day, the people who set the activist agendas and did the stuff. Ideas were debated and things were organised. News was passed on. Like every online discussion group or Facebook group most of the people were watchers who read some of the stuff but never contributed. There were a few people who led most of the discussion. Then there were the armchair activists who had a lot to say and bugger all to contribute. Some of those were radical and legendary activists in their own minds, full of revolutionary rhetoric but who never got off the sofa. Much the same as the online crowd today.

If the post-9/11 era police spooks had been spying on some of that promised but never delivered revolution they would have been positively orgasmic. But the revolution was all trash talk and no-one seriously believed it except for the dreamers. The real activists got on with their activism.

We discovered one fact about online Maori discussion groups, especially activist groups, and that was that there were a lot of journalists watching and reading, waiting to pick up a story. And there were the cops hoping to uncover our conspiracies, or perhaps just looking for early warning of protests and other events.

Fast forward a few years to our company in Parnell. From early 2004 onwards we got serious about our communications security. Having been in the intelligence and military game myself I was always aware of the insecurity of the telephone, fax and email, and acutely aware of the vulnerability of websites and IT networks. We ran our own email server, file servers and web servers with our own and some of our clients’ websites hosted there, and we had to make sure that they were secure from hacking. Nearly all web servers are the subject of almost constant hacking attempts, usually by curious hackers from all over the globe just looking to see what damage they can do. Our Maori websites have long been the target of racist nerds in New Zealand and elsewhere trying to take them down. And from 2004 onwards we were aware that police intelligence were interested in Maori websites, data and communications.

We believed then and still do that it is our own responsibility to protect our data and communications and that if we get hacked it will be our own fault. The total takeover of the Internet by NSA, GCHQ, CSE, ASD and GCSB (known as 5-Eyes) has caused us to rethink that but we still do our level best to be as secure as we can, even from them.

In 2006 we moved all of our internal company communication away from email onto a more secure encrypted platform. To this day we hardly ever use email for business communication. Communications security was part of our business and we took it very seriously. We were early adopters of encrypted applications, including end to end encryption where we held the encryption keys, rather than server side encryption where you trust the providers to hold the keys and to do the encryption for you.

In April 2004 my IT manager Rangi Kemara set up a website of discussion forums with an encrypted chat room. It was to all intents and purposes an updated version of the old “Tino Rangatiratanga” discussion group with much the same subscriber base as the original, but with a new generation of subscribers as well. There were a range of forum topics that covered just about anything a group of Maori might want to discuss. The site was called Aotearoa Café – “AoCafe” for short. It consisted of three separate means of communication’

• AoCafe Forums – public discussion forums
• AoCafe Chat – encrypted chat rooms located initially on a separate server
• Aotearoa Email – located on a free email server in the USA

The end-to-end encrypted chat room within AoCafe was state of the art. There was a lot of the usual armchair revolutionary crap chat going on as well as some serious real time discussion. I subscribed (using an alias) and Rangi would sometimes get me to log in to take on or take down the odd “educated” person who baffled everyone with their ignorance dressed up as knowledge. I monitored it from time to time to see what was going on. The revolutionary crap chat was as unrealistic and as boring as it always has been.

The encrypted chat room software at AoCafe was the same as one of the applications we adopted from the overseas hacker community to trial for our own internal company chat room. It was very very secure especially when the private chat room facility was used by two or more subscribers.

AoCafe Forums and AoCafe Chat resided on my company webserver in Parnell for a while until taken offsite to separate standalone webservers. For security reasons it was better not to have a Maori activism website on a normal webserver with other websites in case it came in for some extra attention from racist hackers and others.

The police were aware of the AoCafe from 23rd June 2004. Based on intecepted text messages from late 2006 mentioning AoCafe, indicating that the recipient should login to AoCafe, Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe first did a search of its open membership list on 5th March 2007. From then on the Operation 8 applications for warrants included AoCafe Forums, AoCafe Chat and Aotearoa.com email as intercept targets. The interception was to be done remotely with the assistance of Orcon, the provider that hosted the AoCafe server after it was moved from my premises. However the server for the encrypted chat room was not co-located at Orcon with the main AoCafe website. It was at another offsite location.

By June 2007 the police had still not been able to place their remote interception devices at the AoCafe sites. However they had obtained the database of unencrypted forum communications at the www.aocafe.com address from Orcon but had not been able to read the contents. As at 1st August 2007 they had still not been able to place interception devices on any of the three websites associated with AoCafe. By 30th August 2007 they had located www.aocafe.com and chat.aocafe.com at their new location and had begun partial interception but had not been able to decrypt the chat room conversations. On 26th September 2007, just over two weeks before the paramilitary operation, they still had not managed to break into the encryption.

Sometime between 2004 and 2006 my company IT network and communications came under the scrutiny and surveillance of police intelligence, or the electronic crime lab, or both. We had written a small program that resided on our firewall server and that logged all attempts to hack into our network, and then traced the origin (or IP address) of the hacking computer and identified who it belonged to if it could. That’s all very simple stuff if you know how. One morning we discovered that an unsuccessful attempt had been made from a NZ Police owned range of IP addresses, indicating that it was probably a NZ Police computer. We thought that was pretty dumb to use an identifiable police computer to do some spying.

We found out on and after 15^th October 2007 that one of the primary targets of the computer seizure operation was AoCafe. It was recorded in police evidence as “Al Qaeda like encrypted communications” and they thought it was the central communications hub for a terrorist network. They couldn’t hack into it so they assumed the worst. We know they tried and perhaps they enlisted the aid of GCSB as well. On 15^th October 2007 they came looking for AoCafe files on my web server at Parnell, but they were no longer there. They did seize the offsite server it was on but there were no chat logs on that server either. We don’t as a matter of course allow applications or programs to store logs on our servers. And so there were no deleted logs for them to forensically restore. We had long been in the habit anyway of forensically “scrubbing” our hard drives and servers of all deleted files so that they could not be restored and read. It was just another aspect of the security measures we researched and implemented as a matter of course. But Maori folk aren’t supposed to be that sophisticated are we.

That was another thread in the narrative of Operation 8. After 2004 the ECL had Rangi Kemara under surveillance at home and at our office, they knew of and were suspicious about AoCafe and couldn’t hack the encrypted core of it. When Rangi and others were linked with Taame Iti and the wananga in the Urewera they had in their feverish imaginations uncovered an Al Qaeda like encrypted communications hub for a terrorist network, on my servers.

Did some of the 18 accused use AoCafe to communicate. Of course they did. And one or two of them had AoCafe chat logs on their computers that were retrieved by the police. But mostly they used insecure mobile phones. They were not in the main sophisticated electronic communicators. If they had seriously been plotting terrorist stuff they would have seriously secured their communications as well. They’re all smart people and one or two them are savvy about communications security.

Rangi Kemara was heard by the police to say this about the communications of the activists, indicating that he knew that wananga communications by mobile phone were probably being intercepted.

“… but at the same time they use their cell phones to communicate which means they might as well ring the Police and provide their story to media”

The military connection

There were two identified military people picked up and charged in the operation. The late Tuhoe Lambert was a Vietnam veteran having served in Victor Company RNZIR as a rifleman in 1970. After Vietnam Tuhoe had left the Army and had apparently done a short stint overseas as a contract soldier. The other was Rau Hunt who had been a petty officer in the Navy and who had later become a civilian military contractor in Iraq. Both were identified by the police as military trainers at the wananga and were charged.

On the periphery there was myself, a 20 year Army officer and war veteran with active service in Borneo (1966) and Vietnam (1967), and I was Rangi Kemara’s employer and occasionally in contact with Taame Iti and others involved in the wananga. There were other Vietnam veterans in the Urewera, not directly involved in the wananga but in contact with Taame Iti and some of the wananga participants. I had served with a couple of them. We all knew that there was firearms training at the wananga but were not concerned.

However in the period from October to December 2006, before the focus of Operation 8 shifted from Auckland to the Urewera, I was a prime suspect and the subject of numerous probes by the police. The police also ran a check with Defence on 58 suspects including myself to see if there were any with military backgrounds. They got five positive responses including me. None of us remained in their crosshairs after the focus shifted to the Urewera.

Tuhoe Lambert was not tied into the network until early in 2007 and Rau Hunt became part of the network analysis from about April 2007.

Tuhoe Lambert was identified as the trainer who was conducting “patrolling” type activity over a period of a few months. I watched all of the video evidence several times. I quickly came to the conclusion, as someone who had spent thousands of hours commanding real patrols on real patrol missions and as someone who had trained real infantrymen over a period of many years that they were just playing war games rather than doing any serious military training. A real infantryman can tell the level of training and expertise at a glance. Some of my former colleagues with Vietnam service and long periods of service after that have since agreed with me.

From the video evidence it was obvious to me that Rau Hunt was not training anyone but was demonstrating the tactics and techniques of personal protection, and vehicle and convoy protection used by civilian military contractors or operators in places like Iraq and Afghanistan., What the police inexpertly saw as training for kidnapping and hostage taking I saw as a demonstration of the personal protection of a client in an ambush situation where the client is hustled out of a vehicle under attack to a safe position or to another vehicle not under attack. Given Rau’s background and experience that was the most logical conclusion anyway.

Long after the era when Vietnam veterans were looked upon with derision, by the 2000’s many younger men looked up to us and respected us and still do. We don’t talk much about what we did but the younger ones are eager to listen to those who are willing to share their experiences. Rangi Kemara spent a lot of time around me, and also created a relationship with Tuhoe Lambert and eventually lived in a caravan at Tuhoe’s place. He was one who respected us and was interested in what we did in Vietnam. He didn’t get anything specific from me about my Vietnam experience but I understand that Tuhoe shared a few experiences. Rangi also never asked me about anything to do with tactics or strategy. We did talk about survival stuff occasionally. Rangi had also met two Ngai Tuhoe people who had served with me in Vietnam who had some experiences and observations to share. He told me about it at the time.

So there were military connections linked to the wananga participants, some of whom were very interested in our exploits 30 to 40 years previously. Why did that extend to some play acting in the bush? I’ll explore that in a later post.

The threads that weren’t

On 15^th October 2007 and in the days following about 60 houses around the country were raided. The omnibus search warrant used to conduct those searches was broad in its scope, specifying weapons, equipment and clothing that they were looking for as well as computers. At our office in Parnell they were looking specifically for the AoCafe forums and chat room. But Fritz and his masters had also decided on an act of complete bastardry and they were intent on taking every computer, server and hard drive in the place and on putting us out of business. At most other places they were just fishing for computers where they hoped to find evidence to flesh out their terrorism narrative.

They found nothing of consequence. Those were the threads that weren’t. The police obviously thought they’d find some but they didn’t.

The woven terrorism narrative

Those are the threads that were the basis for the terrorist narrative the police would weave around the happenings at the wananga in the Urewera. In the next post I will examine the evidence they collected to weave into those threads. The finished narrative was full of holes.

Links: The Operation 8 Series

Read the complete analysis of alleged Maori terrorism in the Urewera

and that was the police, not the alleged “terrorists”

In my previous posts I’ve been going on about ignorance, racism, paranoia, incompetence, and the lack of intellectual rigour that shaped the intelligence process in Operation 8. The litany wouldn’t be complete without a discussion about honesty, or the lack of it. Police behaviour on Operation 8 has been called unreasonable, improper and unlawful. Illegal is apparently reserved for others. What character trait is it that makes some police officers think that that behaviour, whatever you call it, is acceptable behaviour. Dishonesty?

Bear with me as I make an important point about lawful, honourable and ethical behaviour before I get back to Operation 8.

Lawful, Honourable and Ethical Behaviour

The oath sworn by all police officers is shown below. The oath is administered by the Police Commissioner or by an officer authorised by him (or her).

“I, [name], swear that I will faithfully and diligently serve Her (or His) Majesty [specify the name of the reigning Sovereign], Queen (or King) of New Zealand, her (or his) heirs and successors, without favour or affection, malice or ill-will. While a constable I will, to the best of my power, keep the peace and prevent offences against the peace, and will, to the best of my skill and knowledge, perform all the duties of the office of constable according to law. So help me God.”

The key phrase in that oath that applies here is “according to law”. Each and every constable (i.e. each and every police officer) swears to enforce the law according to or within the law. So help them God of course.

Additionally, “commissioned officers” (Inspectors and above) on promotion to commissioned rank receive their commissions from the Governor General on behalf of the Queen of New Zealand and are held to a much higher standard of responsibility and ethical conduct through their commissioning document. My parchment commission (document) granted to me nearly fifty years ago when I became a commissioned Army officer was the basis of a code of honour and ethical behaviour I and my fellow officers, with few exceptions, upheld. Dishonest or unethical conduct could result in “cashiering”, or the removal of the commission and discharge from the Army (a dishonourable discharge). The parchment commission of an Army officer is a valued possession. It ought to be so for “commissioned” police officers as well and it ought to be the basis for a code of honour and ethical conduct of the highest order.

I don’t have a copy of a police commissioning document but I’m sure that it requires each and every “commissioned officer” to ensure that all policemen under their command properly enforce the law according to or within the law.

A key legal requirement that applies in addition to the oath and the commissioning document is that whereas an individual New Zealand citizen may do anything at all unless it is prohibited by law, a police officer (or any government official for that matter) in the performance of their duties may only do that which is permitted by law. A police officer therefore, regardless of rank or position, does not have any discretionary power to do anything that is not specifically permitted or sanctioned by law.

To do so is to be in breach of the oath and commission, which are the foundations of a police officer’s authority to enforce the law. And to be in breach of the law as well.

There have been many publicly documented instances where both non-commissioned and “commissioned” police officers have acted in breach of those foundations of their authority and responsibility. Yet those breaches often seem to be treated as misdemeanours by the police hierarchy instead of the serious violations of oath and commission that they are. The present police cultural response is denial, cover up and spin which is itself a gross violation of the trust placed in the police force through the oath and commission. Honourable and honest men own up to their mistakes and transgressions.

Men and women of honour would surely live by their oath, or is that an old fashioned concept. Does the oath not mean anything once it has been administered. Is it just a formulaic administrative requirement, sworn and forgotten.

In some ways the culture of denial, cover up and spin bears more resemblance to the Mafia code of omerta than the code of honour one would expect of a police force. There is one intriguing aspect to this and that is the influence of the Police Association in shaping that culture of silence. Would there be a different culture if the Police Executive stood up to the Police Association and broke its power and influence in matters beyond its legitimate concerns of employment, remuneration and conditions of service.

Whereas my approach to conduct and ethics is based on honour, and the need for a code of honour whether written or unwritten, Dame Margaret Bazley’s Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct of March 2007 focused in part on the need for a code of conduct. I think that a code of honour is about an ingrained ethical attitude and a code of conduct is a formal more regulatory approach. The code of honour is a compass point towards which all who subscribe to it navigate in all wind, water and weather conditions. The code of conduct is more limited and is about the set of the sail in any particular condition or set of conditions. It is more limited because it is impossible to prescribe a sail setting for every possible circumstance.

In my time in the Army there were two punishable offences that were broad in scope and potentially serious in their consequences.

For commissioned officers the offence was “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman”, which was admittedly quaint and old fashioned but could be used to cashier an officer for any transgression whether against formal regulations or the informal and unwritten code of honour. Simple dishonesty was enough. For non-commissioned officers and private soldiers the offence was “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline”, which was equally broad and undefined but used to the achievement of much the same purpose which was to ensure ethical conduct. The “conduct unbecoming” offence for commissioned officers was by far the more serious of the two for commissioned officers ought to be held to a much higher standard of conduct.

Those offences have been updated in the Armed Forces Discipline Act 1971:

“Conduct prejudicial to service discipline. Every person subject to this Act commits an offence, and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years, who

• does or omits any act that is likely to prejudice service discipline; or
• does or omits any act that is likely to bring discredit on the service of the Armed Forces to which he belongs or, if he is attached to any such service, either to that service or to the service to which he belongs; or
• negligently fails to perform a duty imposed on him or her by service order, training, or custom; or
• negligently performs a duty imposed on him or her by service order, training, or custom”.

Still onerous.

Dame Margaret’s report stated in part:

“I was disturbed to learn that the police do not have any code of conduct or guidelines that provide sworn police officers with clear guidance on what constitutes appropriate behaviour, in particular appropriate sexual behaviour. It is very clear to me that in order to maintain public trust and credibility police officers need to adhere to high standards of ethical behaviour, both on and off duty, and police management needs to be vigilant in maintaining a culture that supports these standards”.

“There is, at the time of writing this report, no single code of conduct governing all members of New Zealand Police. Instead, a distinction must be made between sworn members and non-sworn members.

“It came as a surprise to me that, notwithstanding the terms of reference, there is currently no code of conduct in place for sworn police officers. A draft code of conduct was prepared in 2002”

“I was very concerned to learn of the reliance on the police union for its assistance with arranging the departure of unsuitable members from the police. In my view this should be the role of the employer”.

The Office of the Auditor General has the job of monitoring the police implemention of the recommendations of the Bazley Report and reporting annually to Government. The October 2012 report shows that there has been improvement but that there is still much room for further improvement.

The Bazley report contains a long discussion on the need for a code of conduct for sworn police officers, and on the negotiations and development of a draft code beginning in 2001. As at March 2007 (and indeed as at 15th October 2007) there was still no code of conduct in place. The report recommended:

“A code of conduct for sworn police staff should be implemented as a matter of urgency”.

Section 20 of The Policing Act 2008 now states:

“(1) The Commissioner must prescribe a code of conduct for Police employees, stating the standards of behaviour expected from Police employees.
“(2) It is the duty of every Police employee to conduct himself or herself in accordance with the code of conduct”.

A police employee becomes a constable by taking a constable’s oath after the required training.

It is my opinion that the code of conduct approach does not deal with the essential difference between “commissioned” and non-commissioned officers, and the far higher expectations that ought to apply to “commissioned” officers. That higher expectation is surely the reason they are commissioned officers, in addition to their implied higher levels of experience, knowledge, ability, competence and professionalism. Most people, and possibly most police officers, think that the promotion from non-commissioned to commissioned rank is just another step up the hierarchy but it is not. It invokes much higher expectations of professional and personal conduct. If that is not so in the NZ Police then they should relinquish the process of commissioning which was adopted from the military in the first place as a symbol of status.

There seems to be nothing in either the Police Act 1958 or the Policing Act 2008 that actually authorises the NZ Police and the Governor General to confer commissioned status upon officers of the rank of Inspector and above. The Police Act 1958 states “Commissioned officer means any person appointed under this Act as a commissioned officer of Police” but nowhere in the act is there any legislative authority to confer that commissioned status upon any police officer. Perhaps it has just become an outdated symbol of status rather than the solemn invocation of higher expectations.

The Defence Act 1990 does however legislate for the appointment of commissioned officers in the Armed Forces:

“The Governor-General may from time to time:

• appoint officers to a service of the Armed Forces:
• in the name and on behalf of the Sovereign, issue commissions under the Seal of New Zealand to officers of the Armed Forces”

The Bazley report also investigated many other aspects of police culture and made several recommendations in relation to cultural change. The police were very slow to implement those recommendations and that was one of the stated reasons for the non-renewal of the contracts of Police Commissioner Broad and Deputy Commissioner Pope beyond their first five-year terms.

All of that is a long and convoluted way of getting to the point about honesty and Operation 8. In the remainder of this post I will discuss the effect of that police culture in four aspects of Operation 8:

• the use of the media to shape public opinion about prosecutions or potential prosecutions;
• the deliberate, improper, unlawful or illegal use of warrants and surveillance;
• the possible illegal use of GCSB; and
• the unlawfulness of behaviour during the armed paramilitary operation on 15th October 2007.

In Operation 8 the lead analyst Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe was and is a non-commissioned officer. He has since been promoted to Detective Senior Sergeant and his next promotion will be to the “commissioned” rank of Detective Inspector or Inspector. His immediate supervisor Detective Inspector Bruce Good was and is a “commissioned” officer. The rest of those involved up the chain of command to the Police Commissioner himself were all “commissioned” officers.

The shortcomings, failures, poor conduct and breaches of the law in Operation 8 were mostly those of “commissioned officers“. That supposes of course that “commissioned officers” in the NZ Police are lawful holders of the Queen’s Commission. Which may or may not be the case.

Use of the media to convict defendants in the public mind before they go to trial

Most defendants are already at a significant disadvantage as they confront the judicial system. The police and the state have enormous financial and legal resources at their disposal compared to most defendants and that gives them a huge advantage before court proceedings begin. Legal aid goes nowhere near correcting that imbalance of power. Justice does not come cheap.

The NZ Police have also built a formidable media, public relations and spin machine which they have used to imprint their version of events on the public mind long before defendants have their say in court. That was the case in Operation 8.

In my opinion it is entirely appropriate that the police use the media to solicit further witnesses and evidence to help them solve crime. It is despicable when they use it to prosecute defendants in the court of public opinion and possibly subvert the judicial process. The “public interest” is no defence whatsoever.

Not only did they mount an aggressive paramilitary operation against Ruatoki, and against two family homes in Taneatua and Manurewa, they simultaneously mounted an aggressive media campaign. The media were on the spot almost immediately, well primed by the police media machine. And although they have denied it, it is almost certain that the police leaked a suppressed affidavit to the media in order to further state their own case in public in an attempt to justify their operation against a whole Maori rural community.

The use of a professional media machine to subvert the process of justice is surely another example of the state’s gradual but relentless erosion of hard won democratic freedoms and rights. At the level of the police officers who individually or collectively plan and authorise such media campaigns it is, at its core, dishonest. It may also be illegal for there is nothing in law that expressly permits them to do it.

In September 2011 a few months before the eventual trial of the “Urewera 4” the police sought and obtained the permission of the High Court to release previously suppressed evidence to the media before the trial. Their stated purpose was that it was “in the public interest”. Their blatantly obvious purpose was to continue what they started on 15^th October 2007 which was to imprint their narrative into the public mind before it was tested in a court of law. In particular they wanted to release the video surveillance evidence that was devoid of context, was sensational, and was the key prosecution evidence that they had fought hard to retain as admissible. The pretence that they were motivated by “the public interest” was certainly disingenuous and in my opinion dishonest.

Illegal Warrants and Illegal Surveillance

The Operation 8 intelligence process involved large scale misuse of warrants and surveillance. When you or I break the law it’s called illegal. When the police break the law it’s called improper or unlawful. Unlawful conduct by the police can sometimes be passed off as a mistake, or a misunderstanding of the law. But in this case the police through their own evidence in the High Court knew what they were doing was “unlawful” and they did it anyway.

There’s a number of words for deliberate unlawful police behaviour. I’ll be kind to them and call it dishonesty. That describes the character of the police officers who did the unlawful stuff rather than what they did.

Most of the information for this section comes from court documents including affidavits, applications, judgements, briefs of evidence, indictments and memos. Most of it was suppressed at the time. The full import of the dishonesty of the police intelligence operation was not reported in the media because most of this information was suppressed for long periods of time. There were also a large number of court hearings including bail hearings, applications for stays of prosecution, applications for dismissal of charges, hearings about the admissibility of evidence and hearings about judge alone or jury trials. They involved the District Court, High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. All that before the eventual trial of the remaining four accused.

Keeping abreast of the intricacies of that legal battle over a period of over four years was time consuming and at times confusing. The New Zealand public had no hope of understanding what was going on.

Putting aside the criminal trial of the “Urewera 4” in February and March 2012 the central issue in that legal battle was the admissibility of evidence. The two lawyers general in the battle were Ross Burns for the prosecution and Rodney Harrison QC for the defence. Ross Burns was strategically canny and saved the police from total embarrassment. Rodney Harrison is intellectually astute as one would expect of a QC and had been involved in a review of the Evidence Act. It became obvious that he knew more about evidence than a High Court judge and the judges at the Court of Appeal. It seems he always knew his evidential battle was going to the Supreme Court and the documents he tabled at the various hearings reflected that foresight.

The battle began in the High Court in Auckland in August 2008 and ended, via the Court of Appeal, in the Supreme Court in Wellington in September 2011.

Stating it rather simply there was nothing in law that permitted police to enter onto private property to install cameras including video cameras, to record video on that property, or even to retrieve those cameras. To do so would be to commit trespass. They could also not enter onto private property to conduct a general search for unspecified items rather than for a specific “thing”. The definition of a “thing” in the eyes of the law became a point of much legal debate.

Under Section 30 of The Evidence Act 2006 a judge may through a process of “balancing”, if evidence has been improperly obtained, allow that evidence to be produced in a prosecution if on balance the seriousness of the charge warrants it. There was much legal debate over that “balance”.

The retention of the evidence in question was key to the prosecution case and the police fought tooth and nail to retain it.

In the early stage of this legal battle the police tried to argue that multiply owned Maori land is not private land and that therefore they were permitted to enter onto it without permission from its owners. That specious justification has also been used to attempt to prosecute acts on marae. They were totally defeated in that attempt. It was a weak rear-guard action.

In the first group of hearings in the High Court some of that video evidence was ruled inadmissible because either the warrants to obtain it were improperly obtained or because the surveillance itself was unlawful, or both. Some of it was ruled admissible and allowed. The defence made further applications to the High court to revisit the decision but were unsuccessful.

It then went to the Court of Appeal where the High Court decision was endorsed and the appeal denied. From there it went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decision was the balance of the opinions of five judges who differed in their individual opinions.

There were two classes of defendant by the time it reached the Supreme Court. Four people were charged with various arms offences and with “participating in a criminal group”. The remaining 13 were only charged with arms offences which were lesser offences than the criminal group offence. The Supreme Court found that the evidence in question was unlawfully obtained and could not be entered into the prosecution case against the 13, but that it could, by the balancing process previously described, be used to prosecute the remaining four. It was a partial victory for both defence and prosecution.

Chief Justice Sean Elias stated in her decision:

“I regard it as a significantly exacerbating factor that the film surveillance was undertaken deliberately without legal authority, in the knowledge that there was no lawful investigatory technique available to be used”.

“In circumstances where the police officer in charge of the inquiry knew that there was no authority to be obtained for such filmed surveillance, the deliberate unlawfulness of the police conduct in the covert filming, maintained over many entries and over a period of some 10 months, is destructive of an effective and credible system of justice”.

Shortly after that determination all charges against the 13 were dropped and only the remaining four went forward to a High Court trial.

Crucial to my examination of the honesty of the Operation 8 intelligence process is the evidence of Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe in the initial stages of this four year legal debate. Under questioning he clearly admitted that the warrants in question were improperly obtained and that the surveillance was unlawful. Furthermore he admitted that he knew at the time that that was so. His notes confirmed it. He also stated that he had consulted with his supervisors about the matter at the time. That statement was not backed up by documentary evidence in his notes.

His immediate “commissioned” supervisor was Detective Inspector Bruce Good. Detective Inspector Good has a reputation for, how shall we say it, taking shortcuts. If he did sanction or even initiate the improper obtaining of warrants and the unlawful surveillance he would have taken a giant shortcut indeed and would have displayed dishonest behaviour to say the least, unless of course he himself was ignorant of the law. However we only have Aaron Pascoe’s word that he consulted his supervisors. Detective Sergeant Pascoe was not ignorant of the law. He was just involved in dishonest behaviour no matter how you dress it up as “ends justifying means”. One quasi-legal excuse they tried to run to dress it up was that they somehow had “implied powers”. That failed miserably.

A question that needs to be asked is how far up the command chain that improper, unlawful and dishonest behaviour was known and sanctioned. Did Commissioner Broad and Deputy Commissioner Pope know about it and did they sanction it? Were they among the supervisors consulted by Aaron Pascoe? That is the question.

And if the lead analyst and his immediate supervisor were both involved in that improper, unlawful and dishonest behaviour what else did they get up to? Did anyone present evidence out of context? Did anyone exclude evidence that was detrimental to the police case? Did anyone manufacture evidence? What was the involvement of the Crime Monitoring Centre on Thorndon Quay in Wellington (set up in 2005 by then Detective Inspector Mike Clement) in that improper and unlawful policing? And did all of those “commissioned officers” up the chain of command beyond poor old non-commissioned Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe live up to the code of honour or even the code of conduct one would expect of “commissioned officers”.

We will never know for the politicians have prevented any public inquiry into Operation 8, other than an IPCA investigation into the actual armed paramilitary operation on 15th October 2007.

GCSB and SIS Involvement

It has been established that NZ SIS was involved in some way and briefed Prime Minister Helen Clark and opposition leader John Key. It is not known whether or not it was involved in the illegal surveillance or in the incompetent intelligence analysis. Probably not, although its database of information on individuals would have been available to the police and one, maybe two, of those individuals were foreign nationals.

It has been established that the GCSB illegally spied on over 80 New Zealand citizens or permanent residents over the period that covers Operation 8. The investigations into that matter have not (yet) revealed whether some or all of the Operation 8 targets were among those illegally spied on. It does seem probable for it has been established that at least some of their illegal surveillance activity was at the behest of the police. And as we know the police have a record of playing fast, loose and dishonestly with the law in relation to search and surveillance.

The excuse for GCSB’s illegally spying on Kim Dotcom was that they and the police “mistakenly” failed to properly establish his residential status as a permanent NZ resident. One or two of the Operation 8 targets were also foreign nationals and it is possible that the police and GCSB also made use of that to conduct surveillance against them, and whoever was in their networks. So if they spied on the foreign nationals they would have been spying on all of the co-accused as well.

What does need to be investigated, if ever an inquiry into all aspects of Operation 8 is mounted, is:

• Whether or not GCSB was involved in Operation 8;
• If it was involved, the nature of that involvement;
• If it did provide intelligence to the police have the police created a “parallel construction” of evidence to disguise the trail of evidence from GCSB to Operation 8;
• If the police did call upon GCSB for illegal assistance was the Crime Monitoring Centre involved in that? Was the Electronic Crime Laboratory involved?
• Is there any formal or informal relationship between GCSB and the Crime Monitoring Centre and/or the Electronic Crime Laboratory?
• Whether or not anyone is lying about GCSB involvement; and
• If they are whether Government is itself involved in a cover up of illegal GCSB involvement in Operation 8.

The Armed Paramilitary Operation

With regard to the operation at Ruatoki, Taneatua and Manurewa on 15^th October 2007 Te Putatara would need access to the written operation order, if there was one, to determine whether or not the unlawful actions on that day were a deliberate and dishonest disregard for the law or simply an ignorant and immature “Hi Ho Silver” cowboys’ day out at the expense of innocent bystanders including many women and children. The IPCA has of course determined that it was unlawful (i.e. illegal) in many respects.

“ … the planning and preparation for the establishment of the road blocks in Ruatoki and Taneatua was deficient. The Authority has found there was no lawful basis for those road blocks being established or maintained. There was no lawful power or justification for Police to detain, stop and search the vehicles, take details from or photograph the drivers or passengers.

“A number of occupants were informed by Police that they were being detained while a search of the property occurred, despite there being no lawful basis for such detention. Police had no legal basis for conducting personal searches of these occupants.

“The Authority has concluded that a number of aspects of the Police termination of Operation Eight were contrary to law and unreasonable”.

So who was responsible for all that unreasonable, improper, unlawful, illegal and dishonest stuff?

Despite all the media coverage, the multiple court hearings and the IPCA report the only name that has been put to that stuff is poor old non-commissioned Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe (now Detective Senior Sergeant). So:

• Who did sanction the improper warrants and unlawful surveillance;
• Who authorises the media campaigns that undermine judicial process;
• Who planned and led the despicable armed paramilitary operation;
• Who sanctioned the unlawful behaviour during that operation; and
• Who really knows whether Operation 8 targets were illegally monitored by GCSB.

They are certainly “commissioned police officers” who it seems will never be held to account. Being held to account is perhaps not part of the new code of conduct. That’s covered by another code; the code of denial, cover up and spin.

Links: The Operation 8 Series

Read the complete analysis of alleged Maori terrorism in the Urewera

And there wasn’t much of it in Operation 8.

A wise old man was sitting outside his village. A traveller asked him, “What kind of people live in this village. I want to move from my village?” The wise one asked, “What kind of people live in your village?” The man said, “They are mean, cruel and rude.” The wise man replied, “The same kind of people live in this village too.” After some time another traveller came by and asked the same question and the wise man asked him, “What kind of people live where you come from?” And the traveller replied, “The people are very kind, courteous, polite and good.” The wise man said, “You will find the same kind of people here too.”

It is also said in the Talmud, the central text of Rabbinic Judaism:

“We see things not as they are but as we are”

The ancients, without the benefit of the modern science of cognitive psychology, understood the human mind and its propensity to see the world as a reflection of itself and to build the narratives it wants to believe. Unfortunately there were no wise men, Jewish scholars or tohunga Maori on the Operation 8 team. Or any sort of scholar for that matter.

Throughout this series I have maintained that Operation 8 was a police cock-up. The reasons for that are partly the ignorance, racism and paranoia endemic still in the NZ Police, and partly just plain old incompetence. The incompetence in the intelligence function of the police prior to the appointment of intelligence professional Mark Evans was the result of a lack of a professional intelligence framework and training, and consequently a lack of intellectual ability. In other words Operation 8 was a dumb operation. The available audit trail clearly shows that to be the case.

“The steps in converting information to intelligence are largely intellectual. To aid the mind, various checks, procedures and processing tools exist, and these in turn help ensure the systematic exploitation and detailed scrutiny of information and provide an audit trail of the intellectual journey”.

– Lance Collins & Warren Reid, “Plunging Point, Intelligence Failures, Cover-ups and Consequences”, Fourth Estate, Australia, 2005.

Intelligence analysis is an intellectual activity. It requires the application of an educated mind to see things as they are, not as we think they are. It is not an activity suited to the mind of the policeman trained only in the investigative techniques of detection of crime after the event. That is the work of detectives.

”  …  intelligence analysis today continues to be a human practice dependant on the intellectual capacity of individual analysts, notwithstanding the increasing role of technology in the intelligence domain“.

“Intelligence analysis is arguably a critical part of national security as well as law enforcement function, but is dependent upon the intellectual capacity of individual analysts”.

– Corkill, Jeff, “Not Art, Not Science, but Artistry: Why professional artistry should matter to the intelligence community“, in The Journal of the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers, Volume 19, Number 1, 2011.

The work of the intelligence analyst:

• Is the work of prediction based on an assessment of the probability of future events;
• Is to gather and analyse information about events in the future;
• Is to draw tentative conclusions and build possible narratives or scenarios based on that analysis, and to test and evaluate all of those narratives and scenarios in order to propose the most likely scenario or scenarios. If there is insufficient information or evidence to confirm or to eliminate a scenario more evidence should be sought;
• Should always be tested and evaluated by senior analysts not involved in the analytical groundwork leading to the conclusions upon which the narratives and scenarios are based.

That did not happen in Operation 8. The lead analysts were detectives rather than intelligence professionals. As they progressed from December 2005 to the culmination of their work on 15^th October 2007 they built a single narrative and a single scenario. They did not consider other possible narratives. They further reinforced that single scenario by only seeking out information to confirm their mindset. Once that mindset developed they would have been oblivious to other information and other narratives and scenarios. They built the narrative they wanted to find.

Even so they obviously knew they did not have sufficient information to support their single scenario analysis. The Operation 8 “termination” phase, including the armed paramilitary operation at Ruatoki and elsewhere and the nationwide computer seizure operation, was designed not just to arrest suspects and to seize weapons and equipment. It was designed to find the information they did not already have to complete their terrorist narrative and to prove the validity of their terrorist scenario. It failed miserably. The Solicitor General gave them a soft landing by blaming the legislation itself when he declined to prosecute the Urewera 17 under the Suppression of Terrorism Act.

They had built a single narrative and scenario for which they knew they did not have sufficient intelligence. Then they acted upon it. That was dumb intelligence analysis and management, and dumb policing at the highest level.

How did they get there?

In a previous post we explored the deliberate exclusion of Maori police officers who would have taken a broader and more knowledgeable view. Who should have been involved in the planning and direction, the collection and processing of information, the analysis and production of intelligence.  Who should have been involved in challenging, testing and evaluating the analysis and conclusions, and in planning any resulting action. In all probability the armed paramilitary operation on 15^th October 2007 would not have happened if they had been involved.

But they were not involved and so we need to look at what intellectual shortcomings led the “analysts” and their managers to the 15^th October 2007 operation.

“Another important aspect of analysis as a cognitive process is where subconscious biases or mindsets by an individual or group prevent a full reflection of all available probabilities and conclusions, which can lead to faulty analysis and assessments. Cognitive biases are mental errors which are a normal part of human reasoning “.

– Patrick F. Walsh, 2011, “Intelligence and Intelligence Analysis“, Routledge, New York.

Apart from the fact that they were not trained as intelligence analysts their work was not challenged, tested and evaluated by experienced professional analysts to avoid the pitfalls of cognitive bias.

In a previous incarnation as an analyst I would challenge, test and evaluate the product of the analysts working for me. I would similarly have my own assessments and conclusions challenged, tested and evaluated. It was all part of the process of exposing cognitive bias and eliminating error as much as possible.

Based on their amateurish unchallenged, untested and unevaluated analysis the NZ Police rushed onwards towards a debacle of their own making. Commissioner Broad himself displayed an unbelievable lack of professionalism and incompetence by accepting the shoddy untested work of his intelligence analysts and operational advisors and presenting it to the Officials’ Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination (ODESC) and to the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

There was thus a total lack of intellectual rigour in their work from the desks of the analysts to the police commissioner himself.

The competent analyst is a person who is not only educated to reason and think logically but who is also able to put aside personal or cultural bias in the interpretation of information. The mind of the analyst is able to comprehend subtleties and nuances, the multiple shades of grey between the absolute certainties of black and white. The mind of the analyst is comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty while it seeks out information to reduce if not to eliminate that ambiguity and uncertainty.

The competent analyst relies solely on evidence rather than conjecture and must be trained not to jump to conclusions, but to consider all possible interpretations of the information available before offering an interpretation based on that information. If more than one valid interpretation is possible the analyst must present all possible interpretations. If one is chosen above the others the analyst must present evidence supporting that conclusion.

The analyst who is not educated to avoid them will unconsciously employ the shortcuts that the human mind habitually uses to make sense of the world. Our brains sideline or suppress the ambiguity and uncertainty of the real world and create coherent interpretations where they don’t exist.

As award winning cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman puts it, a few thousand years after the authors of the Talmud came to much the same conclusion, “We see the world as much more coherent than it is”.

“Many decisions are based on beliefs concerning the likelihood of uncertain events such as the outcome of an election, the guilt of a defendant, or the future value of the dollar. … Occasionally, beliefs concerning uncertain events are expressed in numerical form as odds or subjective probabilities. What determines such beliefs? How do people assess the probability of an uncertain event or the value of an uncertain quantity? … people rely on a limited number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgmental operations. In general, these heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors”.

–       Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, 1974, “Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases”, Science Vol 185, reprinted in Kahneman, 2011, “Thinking Fast and Slow”, Allen Lane.

The mind is inclined to jump to conclusions. What you see is what there is, or all there is. The mind/brain doesn’t allow for what you don’t know or see. It creates reality and certainty only from what it sees and hears. The mind uses unreliable information to reach those conclusions. One can construct very good stories, narratives or scenarios out of very little evidence. All unconsciously. And professional analysts have to be educated and trained to avoid those pitfalls.

“The human mind is an illusion generator … Patterns are everything to us. We hunger for them. We revel in them. They are the basis for art, literature, music, and much more in our lives. But a perceptual system that is so geared to wrestling patterns out of complex arrays of stimuli is bound to produce some false positives”.

“Broadly speaking, there are two ways you can make a perceptual mistake. You can fail to see something that is there, or you can see something that is not there“.

– Hank Davis, 2009, “Caveman Logic – the persistence of primitive thinking in a modern world”, Prometheus Books, New York.

Stereotypes are part of that process and provide mental shortcuts in our attempts to make sense of complicated situations. We ascribe stereotypes to groups of people and those stereotypes shape our perceptions and expectations of what people in those groups might think and how they might act. The analyst needs to acknowledge that and to guard against applying stereotypical thinking to his or her work. The police are especially vulnerable to stereotypical thinking for they live their working lives immersed in the world of criminality. They tend therefore to see and interpret their working world through the prism of criminality. There is no problem with that in the work of the criminal detective for the detective is after all tasked with solving crime that has already been committed. The intelligence analyst however has to maintain a much wider and more nuanced view of the world.

Non-Maori have formed and held stereotypes of Maori since the time of first contact. The American David Ausubel observed them and wrote about them in 1960 (“The Fern and the Tiki”, Angus and Robertson). Those same stereotypes persist into these modern times and shape opinions and interpretations about Maori. Non-Maori police are no exception and the stereotype of the Maori as criminal is alive and well. The police have also formed a collective stereotype of the activist, and in their intelligence gathering activities have equated activism with criminality. Whereas a few activists may be involved in some criminal activity most are not, yet the stereotype of the activist as criminal prevails. Based on this stereotype the police seem unable to differentiate political intelligence from criminal intelligence. Maori activists are doubly disadvantaged by this stereotypical thinking.

There is a specific stereotype of Taame Iti as a dangerous and sometimes violent radical Maori and Ngai Tuhoe activist, a former member of the Communist Party and of the “radical” protest movement Nga Tamatoa. The police officers who know Taame do not subscribe to this stereotype but higher up the chain they obviously do. In 2005 when Taame staged a massive theatrical presentation to the Waitangi Tribunal including shooting a flag on the marae the local police were not perturbed. Higher up the chain they invoked the stereotype and in their abject ignorance (and cognitive bias) had him charged and convicted. Later of course his conviction was overturned on appeal. Like the local police I know him as a likeable rogue, a family man with a strong sense of social justice, a strong commitment to the health and wellbeing of his people, total dedication to the Ngai Tuhoe cause, with an exceptional talent for theatrical and often humorous protest. I have watched as he dealt lovingly, gently and patiently with a difficult child, a far cry from the image of “terrorist”. The local fuzz could have arrested him over the phone and he would have arrived at the cop shop under his own steam after breakfast, with his mobile phone, rifle and can of petrol if that’s what they wanted. And the best way to find out what Taame is up to is to ask him. He can be disarmingly open, frank and honest.

Stereotypical thinking leads to confirmation bias, the tendency to search for, interpret and remember information that confirms one’s preconceptions. That leads to expectation bias, the tendency for analysts to believe and produce intelligence that agrees with their expectations for the outcome of their analysis, and to disbelieve, discard or downgrade information or data that conflict with those expectations. Or to the observer-expectancy effect when an analyst expects a given outcome and therefore unconsciously manipulates or misinterprets information in order to find it.

Another dangerous mental shortcut in intelligence analysis and management is consensual validity. It was one of the critical intellectual failures that led President George W. Bush to declare war on Iraq in 2003 based on insufficient hard intelligence, some false intelligence, and on the wrong conclusions believed by all of those around him.

“Consensual validity is a very powerful force. In many cases if those around you believe it, it must be true. It is also a prime example of what are called heuristics, or shortcuts that save each member of the group (or species) from having to re-evaluate the same evidence“.

– Hank Davis (2009)

Given that the critical analysis in Operation 8 leading to the belief that a terrorist plot was being hatched does not appear to have been challenged, tested and evaluated with any intellectual rigour, consensual validity seems to be the primitive thought process that led the analysts and their superiors, all the way up the chain to the police commissioner and thence to the Prime Minister and Cabinet, to their conclusions and decisions.

Groupthink is another name for it, or the bandwagon effect.

Heuristics or mental shortcuts are essential in our everyday lives and they work very well in most conditions as we navigate our lives mostly on auto-pilot. We don’t dwell on every problem and every decision we need to make; thousands of them every day of our lives. Heuristics are so ingrained in our unconscious minds that we are rarely aware that we are using them. But if we rely on them, knowingly or unknowingly, in situations when we should bring the intellect or the conscious mind to bear, then we will most likely draw incorrect conclusions. Reliance on heuristics in situations where they should be over-ridden indicates a lack of intellectual ability, or worse, intellectual laziness.

Thus constricted thinking too often leads to plausible yet incorrect conclusions as it did in Operation 8.

“Scholars and the study participants tend to be in agreement that good analysts possess certain qualities regardless of the domain in which they operate. These qualities include demonstrated intellectual capacity, curiosity, a degree of scepticism, and attention to detail. Additional qualities noted by the study participants include, creativity, tenacity, foresight and contextual understanding”.

– Corkill (2011).

I would add that the analyst and managers of analysts should have an advanced understanding of heuristics and a knowledge of how to avoid reliance on those mental shortcuts.

There are now many other identified heuristics or cognitive biases. Perhaps to end this discussion on bias I should mention the Dunning-Kruger effect in which incompetent people fail to realise they are incompetent because they lack the skill to distinguish between competence and incompetence. Much as I would like to I cannot attribute this insight to Tamati Kruger of Ngai Tuhoe but it would seem to be an appropriate observation for Ngai Tuhoe to make about the cognitive psychology underlying Operation 8.

I have defined another psychological effect. I am calling it the “Hi Ho Silver Effect” in which hyped up testosterone fuelled heavily armed cowboys in facemasks and fancy dress disregard the law, human rights and common dignity and decency, as they get their erotic kicks by terrorising unarmed women and children in the misguided belief that the objects of their collective pornographic fantasy really are dangerous outlaws. It involves a total suspension of reality and a high degree of theatricality of the tragicomedy variety. If ever confronted by the Hi Ho Silver Effect the counter to it is to imagine that the cowboys are wearing lipstick, bras, panties and panty hose under their macho getup, and imagine that you shove flowers down the barrels of their guns while silently chanting “Show us your knickers girls, come on, show us your frilly knickers”. For an encore you could ask them to dance the Can Can.

I know, I can’t resist it sometimes. But they really are cowboys and based on their vile and stupid behaviour at Ruatoki, Taneatua and Manurewa I wouldn’t have had any of them in the real combat infantry I commanded in my day.

And that unlawful and unforgiveable behaviour was the direct outcome of dumb analysis and dumb policing.

At a conference in July 2011 a representative of the Victorian Police in Australia spoke of the need for intellectual ability as a challenge facing the Victorian Police intelligence framework implementation. She noted that the Victorian Police were looking to recruit and train university graduates to be intelligence analysts rather than using less well educated policemen.

In response Mr Mark Evans who heads the NZ Police Intelligence system implementation explained that he was working, in consultation with other intelligence agencies, to establish intelligence education in conjunction with Massey University to upgrade the NZ Police (and other agencies) intelligence capability.

Subsequently on 21^st December 2011 the NZ Police released a media statement announcing the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Massey University providing for collaboration in research, teaching and professional development. Massey would offer a new qualification at its Centre for Defence and Security Studies, a Master of International Security, which contains tailored papers including security strategy, crime intelligence, international law, and leadership and management. Several police officers have joined the degree course. There would be no better case study than Operation 8 to demonstrate how not to manage and conduct an intelligence operation. Except that the NZ Police culture does not allow the admission of failure unless forced to.

Mr Evans said the MOUs timing was appropriate as police launched the new Prevention First operating strategy aimed at making New Zealand an even safer place to live, visit and do business (Source: NZ Police website).

The NZ Police now require their analysts to have specific intelligence qualifications and their recruitment advertisements for analysts to work in the Special Investigation Group now reflect that requirement. It was not previously a requirement and was obviously not a requirement for the analysts involved in Operation 8. This extract from an advertisement in 2012 demonstrates the minimum qualification now required of an analyst:

“The successful applicant will hold the National Diploma in Intelligence Analysis (NDIA) or equivalent or be able to obtain the same within 12 months of employment. If a trainee is the successful applicant they will be put through training to achieve the NDIA”.

The diploma was developed by Mrs Janine Foster while she was at Customs and it is now the industry standard NZQA accredited qualification.  Mrs Foster joined the NZ Police in 2002 when they were rapidly building their intelligence structure in the wake of 9/11. She is now on secondment to Massey University where she teaches the security and crime component of the degree course.

This development in the education of intelligence officers is a clear indication that at the executive level at least NZ Police has recognised the inadequacy of their previous capability (and staff) and the need to increase intellectual capacity in intelligence management and analysis.

That intellectual capacity, essential to professional and competent intelligence analysis, was completely missing from Operation 8. From top to bottom. It was a major factor in the debacle that ensued. It was a dumb operation.

Taku rākau ka hē ki te marahea
My weapon erred in the worst way.

Links: The Operation 8 Series

Read the complete analysis of alleged Maori terrorism in the Urewera

Was it the old old story of ignorance, racism and paranoia as well as incompetence?

Maori police were deliberately excluded from knowing anything about Operation 8 until after the termination phase; that is the armed paramilitary operation on 15^th October 2007. Superintendent Wallace Haumaha who until 2007 was the National Strategic Maori Advisor, and is now the General Manager Maori, Ethnic and Pacific Services, was deliberately excluded. His network of Police iwi liaison officers was also deliberately excluded.

Te Putatara understands from sources close to the NZ Police that Commissioner Broad himself approved the decision to exclude Superintendent Haumaha and his teams. The sources also report that Haumaha later strongly objected to his exclusion and demanded and received an apology from Broad.

It was reported that at a hui at Wainuiomata Marae in March 2008:

“New Zealand’s top cop also admitted to ongoing differences of opinion with advisory staff over the decision to go ahead with the raids“.

The exclusion of NZ Police’s experts on Maori:

• Highlights the ignorance, racism, paranoia and incompetence of the intelligence operation leading to the armed paramilitary operation.
• Led to a deeply flawed analysis upon which the police built their terrorism narrative and convinced themselves that their terrorism scenario was the only possible scenario.
• Culminated in a hugely over-the-top and over-hyped paramilitary operation that traumatised a whole community and families in other locations, and that is having a lasting adverse effect on children caught up and terrorised in that operation.
• Led directly to the investigative and legal debacle that unfolded after the paramilitary operation; and
• It was dumb.

A central principle of intelligence gathering and analysis is a thorough knowledge of the targeted persons, organisations or countries. “Know thy adversary” is a key principle. This principle is certainly understood by intelligence professional Mark Evans who since October 2007 has headed the NZ Police intelligence framework implementation and is now Director of Intelligence. Mark Evans was appointed to implement a professional Intelligence capability, a capability that did not exist before his appointment.

“The better you understand your subject the more likely you can produce material with insight”.

– Evans, R Mark (2011), Influencing decision-makers with intelligence and analytical products” p192, in Ratcliffe, JH (Ed), Strategic thinking in criminal intelligence, 2nd Edition, The Federation Press, NSW.

The principle of “know thy adversary” was certainly not understood by Commissioner Howard Broad, Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope, Assistant Commissioner (Intelligence) Jon White, Detective Inspector Bruce Good and Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe in the intelligence planning (if there was any) and in the intelligence gathering and analysis phases of Operation 8.

In my experience one of the most frequent traps in Intelligence analysis is to interpret information from within one’s own cultural framework and from within one’s own range of experiences.

Competent analysts are those who immerse themselves within the worldview of the target person or persons, or countries and cultures, and are thus able to reach valid conclusions based on their knowledge of the targets’ own worldview; their thinking and motivations. If the analyst does not have that background knowledge he or she must seek it out rather than reach conclusions based on just a limited understanding of the target or targets.

In my own case I spent twelve months totally immersed in the language of a target country learning everything I could about the cultures, religions, mythologies, histories, geography, politics, agriculture, industry, economy, military, police, diplomacy, and peoples of that country. Having become fluent in the language and reasonably knowledgable about most aspects of the country I became an analyst on a country desk. I still needed to keep studying and learning.

Most Pakeha have forever judged and interpreted Maori through their own linguistic and cultural lens, ignorant of the differences between us, although that has been slowly changing. There are now of course, after generations of living, learning and loving together many similarities. But significant differences remain. Many Pakeha still refuse to acknowledge the difference, or if they do, refuse to accept that there should be difference. It’s the ridiculous “one people” mantra. That is perhaps one of the main reasons for the ignorance, racism and paranoia that has plagued Maori-Pakeha relations for so long, and that has long characterised the NZ Police  approach to Maori.

New policies have been introduced by the NZ Police to try to eradicate that racism, or more probably to be seen to be trying. They include cross-cultural education at the NZ Police College and the introduction of Maori responsiveness staff and policies. However the evidence on the frontline is that it is all skin deep and that ignorance, racism and paranoia is as strong as it ever was.

On specialist knowledge Mark Evans wrote:

“Products will be better informed by involving others. A community or neighbourhood profile for example will always benefit from input of those working closest to the problems on the ground. Consultation and taking advice is essential – a computer system and its captured data only contains some of the information necessary for effective analysis”.

– R Mark Evans (2011).

In my opinion the most glaring deficiency in the NZ Police Intelligence information gathering and analysis process leading up to Operation 8 was the deliberate exclusion of the Maori responsiveness team led by Superintendent Wallace Haumaha, and the exclusion of his network of Police iwi liaison officers, from the operation. These are the NZ Police’s experts on matters Maori. The planning and direction, collection, processing, analysis and production processes of the intelligence cycle were thus deprived of the most valuable police resource available to them, and suffered greatly because of it.

It meant that the Operation 8 intelligence team and their superiors ignorantly and deliberately deprived themselves of the opportunity and necessity to “know their adversary”. Their ignorance, racism and paranoia got in the way of their professionalism.

The exclusion of the police liaison network was written about in 2008 by Mr Luke Crawford, a former police officer who served for nearly 26 years. At the time of the Operation 8 raids Sergeant Crawford was a serving police officer. He writes:

“The situation that occurred at Ruatoki would have been handled in a totally different manner had iwi liaison officers been included in the planning and execution of this operation.”

Crawford, L, “Ruatoki, the Police and Maori Responsiveness”, Chapter 4 p110 in Keenan, D, (2008), Terror in our midst? Searching for terror in Aotearoa New Zealand, Huia Publishers, Wellington.

Mr Crawford also wrote:

 “There is still a way to go before there will be full participation by iwi liaison officers and their networks in decision-making at key areas of policing, particularly at the frontline decision-making tables around the country. I know that some police leaders, particularly at the operational level, still struggle to believe that iwi liaison staff and Maori networks can be trusted to participate at these tables. This may be why decision-making around police actions at Ruatoki excluded the Maori responsiveness groups and district iwi liaison staff”.

On p106 he wrote that:

“At the strategic and governance level of policing, the Maori responsiveness team is led by Superintendent Wallace Haumaha of Te Arawa.”

Mr Crawford does not state that the operation would not have been mounted but he does confirm that the NZ Police Maori responsiveness team and iwi liaison staff members were not part of the operation.

The information that Superintendent Haumaha and his Maori officers were deliberately excluded was obtained from reliable sources close to the NZ Police. The sources also confirmed that former Commissioner Howard Broad was party to the decision to exclude Maori officers.

Mr Crawford went on to write:

“I cannot help but turn to incidents such as Ruatoki and wonder how differently things might have turned out had the staff making the decisions understood more about Tuhoe and Rua Kenana. I have always maintained that no one cares more about Tuhoe more than Tuhoe themselves. The failure to involve the wisdom of appropriate Tuhoe leaders towards what occurred at Ruatoki has proved harmful for police, as the condemnation from Tuhoe and other significant Maori leaders continues”.  p112.

Mr Crawford goes further than I, in writing that wise counsel should have been sought from within Ngai Tuhoe as well as from the iwi liaison staff.

The only conclusions that can be reached are:

• That the deliberate exclusion of Superintendent Haumaha showed a lack of trust in Maori police, including Superintendent Haumaha, by the Police executive, and indicates an element of racism in the whole process; and therefore;
• That the intelligence operation leading to the paramilitary operation was tainted by that mistrust, and by ignorance and racist attitudes from the very beginning.

The alternative conclusions are:

• That the NZ Police believed that Superintendent Haumaha and his network of Maori police officers were not sufficiently professional or competent to be involved in Operation 8; or
• That the analysts involved in Operation 8 (i.e., Detective Inspector Bruce Good and Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe) were already highly knowledgeable about matters Maori and about Ngai Tuhoe, and did not need or would not benefit from Superintendent Haumaha’s expertise. And that is a ridiculous and laughable proposition.

I reach these conclusions based upon a simple axiom in Intelligence work; that you always seek out and use the most expert and reliable resources available.

Mr Crawford writes:

“So I am not critical of the execution of the operation but rather I am critical of its planning, particularly in so far as a valuable resource within policing, in the form of the iwi liaison network, was not utilised. I know from the phone calls I received following the operation that many of the iwi liaison network were of a similar feeling, with many wondering why we have built up such a external network amongst Maori if they are not used on occasions such as Ruatoki”.

I go further than Luke Crawford. I am of the opinion that as Operation 8 was an intelligence led operation the Maori responsiveness team and the iwi liaison network should have been involved at a every stage stage. It should have been involved in the planning and direction (if there was any), during the collection, processing, analysis and production stages of gthe intelligence cycle, and certainly in the testing and critical evaluation of the intelligence produced.

The anlaysts involved did not even consult their own Maori colleagues to translate and interpret the small amount of Te Reo Maori they encountered. They used an outside translator/interpreter instead. If I were Superintendent Haumaha I would consider that to be a display of racist contempt.

Those Maori officers would also have been able to use their own reliable networks to gain information from a wider variety of sources than was possible without them.

I have read my way through volumes of Operation 8 interception warrants and applications for warrants. In almost every instance the police stated in their affidavits that surveillance by interception was the only viable means of obtaining the information they were seeking. Yet the most valuable intelligence resource they had available to them, Superintendent Haumaha and his team of Maori officers, was not only not used, but was deliberately excluded.

Without the inclusion of that critical resource the intelligence collection and analysis process leading to the Operation 8 raids was bound to be deeply flawed from the very beginning. One can only conclude that the ignorance, racism and paranoia that has characterised police intelligence over many decades also characterised Operation 8.

On 23rd May 2013 Radio Waatea reported:

“The commissioner of police, Peter Marshall, is defending the decision to exclude police iwi liaison officers from the planning of the 2007 Tuhoe raids.

The Independent Police Complaints Authority has slammed the way police set up blockades and detained people in the Ruatoki valley, but considered there was a case for leaving some of its most experienced Māori staff out of the loop.

“Mr Marshall says the team investigating alleged military style training camps in Te Urewera, thought it would be counter-productive to involve the liaison officers.

“Using the old adage, whether they are the poacher or the gamekeeper – they are either on one side of it or the other. They would have been compromised in terms of ‘why didn’t you give us a warning this was happening or why didn’t you tell us what was happening? So in hindsight, six years after the event, the decision was made with the best interest of those iwi liaison officers at heart,” he says.

“Mr Marshall says while he appreciates people caught up in the road blocks were traumatised, such trauma is an unavoidable part of major investigations”.

That is patronising and highly insulting to Maori police officers and shows that the present Police Commissioner is no more suited to holding the office than his predecessor.

We have it on good authority that Superintendent Haumaha did not agree with his exclusion, nor did his network of police iwi liaison officers. And we have it on good authority that Superintendent Haumaha was quite upset by his exclusion. As shown above their exclusion was a major factor leading to an unprofessional and incompetent intelligence operation.

Marshall’s excuse is just more of the spin surrounding the denials and cover-up following Operation 8. It is unfortunately just another example of the total inability of the NZ Police Executive to admit any wrong unless and until they are forced to, and to descend into denial, cover-up and spin when they have stuffed up.

And Operation 8 was a stuff up of monumental proportion. In a truly transparent and accountable democratic society the senior officers responsible would have been dismissed. And perhaps they were, eventually, by not having their contracts renewed, and perhaps that was part of the cover-up.

Links: The Operation 8 Series

Read the complete analysis of alleged Maori terrorism in the Urewera

And the lack of a professional intelligence process during Operation 8

Following the armed paramilitary operation at Ruatoki and elsewhere commentators were quick to attribute a variety of motivations to the operation. They included a show of force to Tuhoe who were negotiating a settlement, a police demonstration of the need for the amendment to the Terrorism Suppression Act that was in Parliament at the time, and many others. In this series of posts I take the view that it was cock-up and incompetence rather than conspiracy.

With that in mind I am examining the intelligence operation leading to the armed operation on 15th October 2007 to highlight the cock-ups and incompetence.

Intelligence analysis is a complex process previously an esoteric calling within the shadowy world of the military and security establishment depicted in the novels of Ian Fleming, John Le Carre and others. Nowadays it is a discipline researched and studied in the universities, and employed by dedicated intelligence units in a wide range of public and private organisations.

The traditional intelligence cycle involves the following steps and ensures that there is a system of checks and balances.

• Planning and direction
• Collection
• Processing
• Analysis and production
• Dissemination

– Source CIA Website

It is not obvious that there was any formal cycle or process involving checks and balances in the intelligence leading to the Operation 8 armed paramilitary operation. There seems to have been much emphasis on collection and processing, but little emphasis on planning and direction by experienced intelligence managers, or on quality analysis.

In this post I will briefly outline the principles underpinning the intelligence process. I will also comment on the Operation 8 intelligence operation in relation to those principles.

Operation 8 was a deeply flawed intelligence led operation conducted by the Special Investigation Group (SIG) at Auckland, operating out of Harlech House in Otahuhu. The two detectives who conducted the intelligence operation and analysis were Detective Inspector Bruce Good and Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe. At Police Headquarters in Wellington Assistant Commissioner (Intelligence) Jon White was the senior officer in charge of Intelligence, answering to Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope and Commissioner Howard Broad.

It was deeply flawed in that it ignored either through ignorance or wilful intent the principles of intelligence analysis. After an study of the Police evidence associated with Operation 8 I reached the conclusion that it was unprofessional and incompetent.

The first factor leading to that conclusion will be described in detail in an essay on specialist knowledge, concerning the exclusion of Maori advice at all stages of Operation 8 including planning and direction, collection, processing and analysis.

Secondly, there is no indication that the Police observed any of the basic processes of intelligence analysis, specifically the reliability rating of information and sources, and the corroboration of information by alternative sources leading to quality control in the process. There is nothing at all to indicate that a professionally competent analysis process was in place. There is evidence however that a huge amount of information was vacuumed from a variety of sources including Google Search in order to support a pre-conceived conclusion; conclusion building upon conclusion lacking in quality control at each step in the process. The affidavits and warrants now available indicate that what was presented as evidence to justify Operation 8 was a mass of unprocessed or hastily processed and untested and unevaluated information.

Thirdly, there is nothing to indicate that the NZ Police made any effort to place all of their information in context (by involving their own Maori experts and others), and nothing to indicate that they made any effort to ensure the completeness of their information. Instead the impression is that they were rushing towards the dénouement of an operation with a mass of hastily and inexpertly analysed information. That was despite Commissioner Howard Broad’s later public admissions that there was no evidence at all of any immanent terrorist or criminal activity.

Fourthly, it seems obvious that the NZ Police considered only one possible interpretation of the events they observed and then focused all their efforts on proving that interpretation or conclusion. In my opinion that in itself demonstrates a lack of intellectual ability, and an absence of a proper analytical process.

The lead investigators/analysts for Operation 8 were Detective Inspector Bruce Good and Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe who appear to have sworn most or all of the affidavits to obtain the surveillance, intercept, search and arrest warrants for the operation, all of which record the progress of their “intelligence” operation.

They were at the time members of the Auckland team of the NZ Police Special Investigation Group which is an intelligence unit. It is reasonable to assume in that case that Operation 8 was an intelligence led operation coordinated by Detective Inspector Good and largely conducted by Detective Sergeant Pascoe.

The intelligence process is based on tested principles and practice developed over a long period of time. In the modern world of intelligence management and analysis new strategies, models, tools and techniques are being developed and implemented as intelligence has become an academic discipline and as the innovative use of technology increases exponentially. New techniques revealed recently in the media include widespread population level electronic surveillance as well as targeted electronic surveillance, computerised data mining and correlation, and social network analysis.

The principles however are timeless. Some of them are described below.

A central principle: a thorough knowledge of the targeted persons, organisations or countries (or “know thy adversary”).

“The better you understand your subject the more likely you can produce material with insight”.

Evans, R Mark (2009), Influencing decision-makers with intelligence and analytical products” p192, in Ratcliffe, JH (Ed), Strategic thinking in criminal intelligence, 2^nd Edition, The Federation Press, NSW.

Mark Evans is the intelligence professional appointed by the NZ Police to design and implement a professional intelligence capability.He has an impressive resume having worked in intelligence with British Defence, Australian Defence, the Northern Ireland Office  and Northern Ireland Police. He was appointed to the NZ Police after this Operation 8 intelligence process was complete, not long before the paramilitary operation at Ruatoki and elsewhere. He is now Director of Intelligence

Competent analysts are those who immerse themselves within the worldview of the target person or persons, or countries and cultures, and are thus able to reach valid conclusions based on their knowledge of the targets’ own worldview; their thinking and motivations. If the analyst does not have that background knowledge he or she must seek it out rather than reach conclusions based on just a limited understanding of the target or targets, or on their own worldview and experience, or lack thereof.

There is ample evidence that the NZ Police acted on incomplete knowledge of the targets of their surveillance and that they deliberately excluded those with that expertise; their Maori police officers.

Reliability of information

All collected information must be rated for reliability as intelligence, and only reliable evidence from reliable sources should be admitted to the process of collation and analysis. Information and intelligence are not necessarily the same thing, a distinction lost on the Operation 8 analysts.

Even seemingly reliable information such as video surveillance and intercepts of conversations or correspondence needs to be subjected to this process.

Do the intercepts contain the complete conversation or correspondence within the total context of the conversation or correspondence? Email and SMS conversations often consist of multiple exchanges over time and the complete context can be easily misinterpreted from analysis of only part or parts of those conversations. The selection of excerpts of those exchanges can be easily misinterpreted without the context of the full exchange.

Intercepted voice conversations can be also be incomplete as the targets move into and out of range of the recording device. Voice conversations are often linked by ongoing conversation over a period of time, and a single intercept of a single conversation, or a single excerpt of a single conversation can be misconstrued or even misrepresented out of context.

Do the targets know that they are subject to surveillance and intercept, or are they likely to know? If they are likely to know, then might they be inclined to conduct disinformation campaigns against the watchers and listeners; to feed them false and potentially damaging or embarrassing information, or even to deliberately provoke a reaction. The most effective disinformation campaigns are those that aim to feed information that the watchers and listeners expect to intercept.

This reinforces the need for information to be rated for reliability and completeness, and to be corroborated before it is accepted into the analysis process. The available evidence shows that the Operation 8 intelligence process did not include any rating of information for reliability or relevance.

This Admiralty Grading Intelligence System has been in use since about WWI. It relates specifically to HUMINT, that Intelligence obtained from human sources. There is some evidence that the information upon which Operation 8 was initially based should have been graded F6.

The Admiralty Grading Intelligence System

Corroboration

All collected information rated as reliable should be corroborated from at least one other reliable source before being admitted to the process. This requirement ensures quality of information. Quality of information is infinitely more important than quantity. The Operation 8 intelligence operation focused on quantity over quality.

Completeness of information

” …. focusing solely on what is known is unwise because this would lead to the intelligence picture becomoing a self-fulfilling prophecy. Therefore …. finding out more about gaps in knowledge that are recognised … is generally accepted as a core purpose of intelligence collection.”

– Oliver Higgins, “The theory and practice of intelligence collection“, in Ratcliffe, Jerry H. (Ed), 2009, “Strategic Thinking in Criminal Intelligence“, Federation Press.

In constructing scenarios and narratives from the available reliable and corroborated information analysts should be aware not only of the available information, but also of possible or probable gaps in the available information. A common failing in intelligence analysis is to assume that what is known is all there needs to be known. It is as important to know what you don’t know, as it is to know what you do know.

This aspect of the analysis will be addressed in detail in another post.

Testing and Evaluation

Information gathered from covert sources or covert collection activities (usually classified as secret) can and should be tested against open source information, which is now available in abundance. Just because information is covertly obtained does not mean it is reliable or correct.

Personal knowledge of the target persons or groups should also be built over a long period of time and brought to the testing of assumptions and conclusions during the analysis process. In the absence of personal knowledge the intelligence should be tesgted and evaluated by those who do have the in-depth knowledge of the target.

There is no evidence that any of the Operation 8 analysis was tested and evaluated.

Qualification

There are rarely absolute certainties in Intelligence analysis.

The scenario or narrative that is disseminated as intelligence must always be accompanied by an explanation of the reliability of sources used, whether or not the information has been corroborated by other reliable sources, whether or not the information is complete. It should also declare the probability of error.

A very good recent example was the intelligence analysis that found Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. That process has been partially declassified and released. The intelligence officials in that case gave President Obama a qualified probability rating on their conclusion that bin Laden was where they thought he was in Pakistan, and the President was then required to make a decision based on that probability of error.

Did Commissioner Broad apply such a probability rating to his advice to the Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination (ODESC) and to Cabinet? My information says that he did not.

If the evidence supports more than one scenario or narrative, that should also be stated. Did Broad do that at ODESC and at Cabinet? My information says that he did not.

Timeliness

“Timeliness is always a factor. There will always be intelligence gaps (unknowns) and it is usually the case that conclusions and recommendations need to be made on incomplete data. But this needs to be set against the fact that timeliness in the dissemination of law enforcement intelligence product is almost always critical – and this will often mean exercising judgement about when to publish or report”.

– R Mark Evans (2009)

Very often action must indeed be taken based on incomplete evidence. That is always a matter of the assessment of probablity based on that incomplete evidence and an assessment of the risk of not taking action. Conversely if there is no such time constraint then time should be taken to carefully progess the gathering and analysis of intelligence and to build as complete a picture as possible.

After the paramilitary operation Commissioner Broad publicly admitted that he had no evidence that there was an immanent threat of violent terrorist activity. Yet he rushed ahead with a full scale anti-terrorist paramilitary operation. There is however some evidence that he might have known that the available evidence would not support a terrorism prosecution and that he authorised a vast fishing expedition across the country aimed at seizing computers from at least 50 locations, in the expectation that the net would uncover and catch a terrorist network with evidence to secure terrorism convictions.

After the armed operation and after the Solicitor General declined to allow a terrorism prosecution to proceed Broad changed his tune and said that while the police had no evidence of immanent terrorist activity he deemed it necessary to “nip it in the bud”. That was his explanation at a confidential meeting with one of the NZ Police’s district Maori advisory boards after the event.

He “nipped it in the bud” with a full-on testosterone-fuelled armed paramilitary offensive against a rural Maori community and against family homes in other places, knowing full well that there was no immanent threat.

An intellectual activity

“Poorly written [intelligence] products will often confuse facts and opinion. At best this can lead to critcism – at worst it can lead to flawed decision-making and action. The separation of facts, evidence, opinions, judgements, hypotheses, conclusions and recommendations is a critical element of the analytical tradecraft and fundamental to the generation of effective product”.

– R. Mark Evans (2009)

There is no doubt that all of the available Operation 8 paperwork was poorly written, confusing fact with assumption or opinion.

The competent analyst is a person educated to think logically and able to put aside any personal or cultural bias in the interpretation of information. There was a total lack of intellectual rigour and intellectual capability in the Operation 8 analysis. It was dumb.

As was the decision to mount the “termination” phase on 15th October 2007. There were no cool heads involved in that decision whether in the police executive, or in Cabinet.

These aspects of the Operation 8 intelligence process are explored in posts to follow. They will explore the ways in which the analysts involved in Operation 8 totally ignored all of the accepted principles and processes of intelligence analysis, presuming that they knew of them in the first place..

Links: The Operation 8 Series

Read the complete analysis of alleged Maori terrorism in the Urewera

The Intelligence capacity of the NZ Police on and before October 15^th 2007

In previous articles I have questioned the competence and professionalism of Police Intelligence in Operation 8. I will continue to do so.

Since Operation 8 the NZ Police Force has completely overhauled its Intelligence capability under the direction of R Mark Evans, an intelligence professional hired just before the Ruatoki raids were launched. He was hired to design and implement a professional intelligence framework that did not previously exist. Now that Evans has introduced his new intelligence framework police intelligence analysts are required to be formally qualified with the National Diploma in Intelligence Analysis. That is one clear indicator of the previous shortcomings of police intelligence. The diploma and other intelligence qualifications were developed in cooperation with Massey University as part of the program to create a professional intelligence capability (see a future essay “Intelligence in an Intellectual Activity“).

I draw the information for this article from:

• Patrick F. Walsh (2011), “Intelligence and Intelligence Analysis”, Routledge UK.
• Patrick F. Walsh (2011), “The Future of Intelligence: fusion or fragmentation”, in The Journal of the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers, Vol 19, Number 1.

Mr Walsh is a senior lecturer (criminal intelligence) at the Australian Graduate School of Policing, Charles Sturt University, Australia. He is a Board member of the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers (AIPIO) and is managing editor of the AIPIO Journal.

In both publications Mr Walsh draws upon interviews with Mr Mark Evans who was recruited from Northern Ireland in September 2007, one month before Operation 8, to establish and to lead a professional Intelligence framework and capability within the NZ Police. Walsh uses the development of the NZ Police Intelligence framework as a case study in his scholarly works on Intelligence.

In an interview on 10 August 2010 Mr Evans is quoted as saying on pages 117 & 118 of the first reference:

“Management had little (or isolated) knowledge of what intelligence could do for crime and crash reduction. Whilst examples of excellent intelligence products did exist, there were no minimum standards and many lacked focus and credibility with police decision-makers. There was a lack of what intelligence meant or was intended for”.

Walsh reports on page 118 that a business case for a national intelligence development project was approved by the NZ Police Executive and:

“ … in September 2007 Mark Evans was appointed (initially on secondment, later permanently) from the Police Service of Northern Ireland to lead the project. A National Intelligence Office (NIO) was quickly established and set out ‘15 project deliverables’, which formed the basis of an initial 12-month action plan. In October 2008, following extensive review and consultation, the Police Executive endorsed one ‘NZ Police Intelligence Framework’ and approved the creation of a Police National Intelligence Centre at Police National Headquarters (PNHQ) to lead its strategic development”.

Walsh reports that from October 2008 widespread changes were introduced in tasking and coordination, intelligence collection, and analysis and production. He writes in relation to analysis and production that:

“ … the new framework has resulted in some major changes to the way the NZP assesses and produces intelligence. In 2009, the NZP invested heavily in the recruitment of 14 District Managers: Intelligence (DMIs) (in addition to the 12 Districts, DMIs were also appointed for Auckland Metro and AMCOS) at Inspector level (or police employee equivalent). This has provided, for the first time, a clearly identifiable ‘professional head of intelligence’ across every district. The DMIs have mostly been selected for their change management and people skills, rather than purely technical intelligence skills. The DMIs are responsible for leading the local development of improved standards in Intelligence (including the analysis component). They will also have an important role in ‘bedding down’ much of the new intelligence doctrine arising out of the new framework. They are supported by a new Manager: Analytical Services position at the NIC that is the de facto Head of Analysis for the organisation.

“In November 2009, the Police Executive endorsed additional improvements to enhance the analytical capabilities of the NZP under the new framework, including the NZP Professional Development in Intelligence Programme (PDIP). Evans notes that: ‘The PDIP is designed to redefine the intelligence workforce (so that is more visible, flexible, competent, frontline focused and effective)”.

Walsh also reports that resources are being invested in technology to support analytical work. He concludes with a resume of the successes achieved and challenges faced in the implementation of the NZ Police Intelligence Framework.

In a discussion on the effectiveness of the New Zealand implementation of intelligence led policing Walsh writes (Ref1, p136):

“The final area where there has been some early success has been the establishment of a professional development in intelligence programme to support the development of intelligence analysis within the new framework. There may be some resistance among intelligence staff, who are used to working in familiar ways to different standards, and this will require careful management. But already the articulation and development of improved analytical training, and creating career paths for analysts, demonstrate some early successes for this framework”.

The information sourced from Mr Evans and others clearly indicates that prior to his appointment in September 2007, one month prior to Operation 8, the NZ Police did not have a professional and competent Intelligence capability. Indeed the new Intelligence Framework was not approved until October 2008, and implementation did not begin until after that date.

It also indicates that there was much room for improvement and for the setting of professional standards in the area of intelligence analysis.

Resourcing the Operation 8 intelligence process

It is obvious that considerable resources in manpower, time and technology were committed to the collection of information during Operation 8. This is evident in the number of policemen and detectives who were assigned to collection, and who provided evidence. It is also evident from the large number of technological surveillance warrants obtained and in the prosecution evidence.

What is not obvious are what resources, both in staff numbers and capability, were committed to the much more important task of analysis. However it would seem from the quality of the product of that analysis that the Auckland Special Investigation Group led by Detective Inspector Bruce Good and Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe was under resourced in manpower, intellect, expertise and competence.

I have reached that conclusion after reading through thousands of pages of police evidence including affidavits, applications for warrants, warrants and briefs of evidence. In my time as an iintelligence analyst, admittedly over 35 years ago, the standard of work in all of that documentation would have been totally unacceptable. Some of that work will be scrutinised in later posts.

I am sure that little of it would reach the standards required today by Mark Evans’ new police intelligence framework and by the National Diploma in Intelligence Analysis, although the much lower standard does seem to be acceptable in the everyday work of the criminal detective. The work of the detective is to investigate crime after the fact whereas the work of the intelligence analyst is to predict crime. The latter requires a much higher level of intellect and training.

It would seem also from the comments by Walsh and Evans that the intelligence capability at Police National Headquarters, under Assistant Commissioner (Intelligence) Jon White, was less than optimal.

Since October 2008 considerable training and resources have been committed to building a professional intelligence analysis capability and one can only presume that it did not exist prior to October 2008. It was certainly not evident during Operation 8 from December 2005 to 15th October 2007.

Links: The Operation 8 Series