Lange Intelligence Revelations Resurface in US report
A report by US online investigative journalist specializing in intelligence and international affairs, Wayne Madsen, reprises 2006 reports of the extent of New Zealand’s ongoing involvement in Western alliance intelligence gathering.
In January 2006, New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times reported that Archives New Zealand had released to it a box of David Lange’s previously classified documents, which inadvertently contained a 31-page “Top Secret Umbra Handle Via Comint Channels Only” New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) report on New Zealand’s communications intercepts on behalf of the National Security Agency (NSA).
The story was also carried by The New York Times which additionally reported that “The United States threatened to spy on New Zealand at the height of their dispute over nuclear issues and the breakdown of their military alliance in the mid-1980s.”
The Madsen report of 11 January 2014 “The Prime Minister Who Revealed Top Secret NSA Documents after He Was Dead” is framed around the activities of NSA leaker Edward Snowden and the suggestion that intelligence agencies engage in “surveillance for the sake of surveillance.”
Madsen, a former US Naval Officer who managed one of the first computer security programs for the US Navy and who also served in the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration, says that the intercepts were of targets in the South Pacific and Antarctica.
GCSB maintains two major communications intercept stations at Waihopai and Tangimoana. Waihopai intercepts trans-Pacific foreign satellite communications.
“The report stated that Tangimoana targets in 1985 and 1986 were “French South Pacific civil, naval and military; French Antarctic civil; Vietnamese diplomatic; North Korean diplomatic; Egyptian diplomatic; Soviet merchant and scientific research shipping; Soviet Antarctic civil. Soviet fisheries; Argentine naval; Non-Soviet Antarctic civil (including Indian and Polish communications); East German diplomatic; Japanese diplomatic; Philippines diplomatic; South African Armed Forces; Laotian diplomatic [and] UN diplomatic”. In addition, the New Zealand Tangimoana outstation intercepted 165,174 messages from its assigned targets.
“GCSB was also responsible for eavesdropping on the communications of New Caledonia and French Polynesia (both French territories), Vanuatu, Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu. Because of the NSA role as the operational leader of the FIVE EYES network, New Zealand, and to a similar extent, Australia, Britain, and Canada, do not have access to the intelligence NSA or receives from Waihopai / IRONSAND. The intelligence includes communications intercepts from Niue and the Cook Islands (New Zealand territories), Norfolk Island (Australian territory), and Samoa (Western Samoa).”
Madsen has been labelled by many politicians and media commentators as a “conspiracy theorist”.
The GCSB’s annual report lists four impacts arising from their activities:
- New Zealand’s vulnerabilities are identified and reduced
- Increased security for New Zealand deployments
- New Zealand policy-makers are well-informed on foreign political and economic issues
- New Zealand is safe-guarded against threats of espionage and violent extremism.
