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- [00:01]
ZipRecruiter Narrator
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- [00:38]
John Daniel
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- [01:03]
Guyon Espiner
He Ko Nae Purangi te nae ng te reo irangi oau te aroa. Just a heads up, listeners. This episode contains some adult language
- [01:14]
John Daniel
previously on the Agency.
- [01:16]
Kit Bennett
One of the things that you often think about in this is, you know, they always say everybody has their price. And you know, I often used to think about what is my price? What is it that would make me turn. But I was always conscious of the fact that they were the other side, that they were the baddies and that we were the goodies.
- [01:33]
Susan Miller
I'm not going to be in that room when the five eyes minus America, you know, probably sit down and say, what do we do? Do we share Russia with him? Do we even claim that we're allies anymore when he's doing this, what do we do?
- [01:57]
Guyon Espiner
How difficult is it to reintegrate to real life after living in the shadows?
- [02:04]
Kit Bennett
I think it was much more difficult than I realised. I don't think I realised how. I don't think I. Because for me it was my normal.
- [02:13]
John Daniel
This is Kip Bennett. He spent six years working in cover as a NOC for America's Central Intelligence Agency on exchange from the New Zealand SIS in the 1980s. He says at the end of his time, as the nuclear ships route escalated between New Zealand and the U.S. going back to the SIS was hard because nobody quite understood the toll clandestine work took on the people doing it.
- [02:37]
Guyon Espiner
And that reintegration didn't go well.
- [02:41]
Kit Bennett
I don't think it was my fault and I don't think it was their fault. I just think it was that no one understood, there were no psychologists, no one spoke to me. So, you know, I didn't know why I was, why I didn't want to do it. I don't know why I was bitter about coming back to the service, but it was just so hard. And while I disliked the director, I don't think he understood either. So none of us understood.
- [03:03]
John Daniel
And so over the course of a few months, the job went south for
- [03:07]
Kit Bennett
Kit Bennett's and I became difficult and intractable and my marriage was collapsing and, you know, it was a disaster.
- [03:18]
Guyon Espiner
Kit Bennett says that in hindsight, the work he did for CIA, including that operation against Vladimir in the Philippines, left a mark on him psychologically.
- [03:27]
Kit Bennett
I think that affected me a bit when I suddenly realised I was playing with the grown ups. And there were one, possibly two other incidents that I really don't much want to talk to. I don't think it'll add anything, but they certainly were a bit traumatic. But I was gung ho, I was fine, but I probably wasn't.
- [03:44]
John Daniel
Ultimately, Kip Bennett's got into a personal clash with his boss, the director of the sis.
- [03:51]
Kit Bennett
I raised a middle finger and I ended up being paid to go away and that was just fine. But I was kind of bitter and they were bitter. They had suddenly a highly trained and skilled officer and he'd gone. But the fact is that they now put letters and names to these things. So I probably was suffering from something, PTSD or whatever.
- [04:12]
Guyon Espiner
But it would be another couple of decades before he would start to understand that. And it came after he'd taken on a new job in law enforcement at the age of 51, Kit Bennett's enrolled as a frontline police officer in Australia,
- [04:28]
Kit Bennett
having been one of the youngest officers in a Western intelligence service. I became one of the oldest officers to pass through the Queensland Police Academy and I worked in the Queensland Police and I really did enjoy it and I spent five years on the street kicking and gouging in the mud and the blood in the beer.
- [04:43]
John Daniel
In Brisbane, he was involved in what he describes as a couple of significant incidents. During one of them, he was badly beaten, attempting an arrest. He was 56 years old, hand was
- [04:55]
Kit Bennett
smashed up and broken ribs, and subsequently discovered I had a broken leg. And when those sorts of things happened, then the HSOs would come and talk to you, you'd be getting emails, people would come and see you.
- [05:08]
Guyon Espiner
HSOs are health and safety officers and so Kit Bennett's was put in touch with a psychiatrist.
- [05:15]
Kit Bennett
This guy said to me, he was talking to me, he said, tell me about your childhood. And I thought, oh, here we go, you know, when did you first start hating your horse?
- [05:23]
John Daniel
Kit Bennett says the psychiatrist could see something in him that he hadn't been able to see himself.
- [05:28]
Kit Bennett
He said, no, what else have you done? Tell me what else you've done. And I said, oh, well, I was in the intelligence world in the wilderness of the mirrors for nearly 20 years. He said, ah, what did you do in there? And I said, no, you know, I'll have to kill you, I tell you. And he said, he said, did you do operational work? And I said, yeah. He said, were there interesting operations that you're involved in there? He said, yeah. He said, you've got some stuff sitting back there, that stuff that's probably still evident and it's come out because of this incident.
- [06:02]
Guyon Espiner
From bird of paradise and rnz. This is the agency. I'm guyne espinner.
- [06:07]
John Daniel
And I'm john daniel. This is episode six, the price of freedom.
- [06:23]
Kit Bennett
I mean, it's the reality of the world. You have to have intelligence services like, you have to have a transport system.
- [06:28]
John Daniel
Now, whatever you might think about that statement from a former spy, the people who actually run the country agree intelligence agencies are part of the critical infrastructure of government.
- [06:40]
Guyon Espiner
Yeah, this has been true of governments of all political stripes, hasn't it? It was interesting to see Jim Anderton, the head of the alliance, and he was a big sceptic of the intelligence agencies over the years, certainly historically very critical of the SIS when he came to power with Helen Clark's labor government in 1999. After that, he had to grapple with the responsibility for the safety of the nation. He ended up agreeing that the intelligence agencies were essential. So in this final episode, we're going to dig into what this really means for New Zealand in terms of where these agencies sit in relation both to our government and New Zealand's place in the world today.
- [07:21]
John Daniel
New Zealand has been part of the Five Eyes alliance alongside Canada, Australia, the US and the UK for nearly a century now. And that alliance has given us a seat at the top table of the Western security networks, making us an important player relative to our size. But the world is changing and there's no guarantee the future will be the same as our past. We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it.
- [07:52]
ZipRecruiter Narrator
Nostalgia is not a strategy.
- [07:54]
Guyon Espiner
That's Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney addressing the world Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026. Now, he didn't actually mention it, but the elephant in the room is very clearly the current US Administration and the
- [08:08]
John Daniel
elephant trainer in chief, President Donald J. Trump.
- [08:13]
Guyon Espiner
That's right. Now, that speech was widely reported, but like a lot of things we've heard since the start of the second Trump presidency, it's hard to know just how much genuine structural change is happening behind the headline grabbing rhetoric.
- [08:28]
John Daniel
Well, in the last episode, we heard Susan Miller, a former head of CIA counterintelligence, saying Trump shouldn't be trusted on Russia. But she isn't the only former CIA officer to be concerned about the impact of President Trump on the Five Eyes.
- [08:44]
Kit Bennett
I think it's dangerous. The standard story is we're beyond that. You know, he will come and he will go, and there's definitely truth in that.
- [08:53]
John Daniel
Kip Bennett says what he finds concerning is that underpinning the Trump presidency, there seems to be a widespread appetite for the kind of America first politics that can shred alliances.
- [09:05]
Kit Bennett
We have over the years felt deeply supportive of the United States. We've felt uncomfortable with some of the things we've done, but we've never, ever felt sorry for them. But we do now. And what troubles me is that just under 50% was never a landslide, but just under 50% of Americans voted to have it again. They'd seen it once, they'd seen the chaos it caused, and they voted to have it again.
- [09:29]
Guyon Espiner
Kit Bennett says there's no telling quite where this four year term will take the five Eyes.
- [09:35]
Kit Bennett
And this time in the United States, there are no adults in the room, as there were when Bolton was there and when many of those other guys were there who could rein him in, they're gone. Now he is surrounded by unstable isotopes. He is a man that doesn't have any principle, any guiding light, any moral compass. You know, without going into all the emotion, he's the guy with the codes. And that's deeply concerning.
- [10:02]
John Daniel
Tim Weiner, the New York Times security and intelligence specialist, agrees that the people at the top of the Trump administration lack the seriousness of their predecessors.
- [10:16]
Tim Weiner
And the present person who is overseeing American intelligence services and the five Eyes liaisons is a crackpot, a conspiracy theorist named Tulsi Gabbard. And she, you know, recently decided that intelligence on the Russians would not be shared with them. This is madness. The people whom Trump has appointed, Mike Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, like a fellow named John Radcliffe, who's running CIA Cash Patel, who was running the FBI as Pete EXIT FORMER FOX NEWS HOST AS Secretary of DEFENSE these people are amateurs and they are crackpots and they are fools and they are in charge of American national security. And that is a very dangerous thing.
- [11:09]
Guyon Espiner
My friend Tim Weiner says there are real world consequences that result from all this, and they could be disastrous.
- [11:17]
Tim Weiner
The danger of Trump placing them in charge of American national security is that it increases the risk of another catastrophic intelligence failure. And you know, the people I talk to at CIA think that failure is coming, and they think it likely that it would not be a catastrophic, cataclysmic, mass casualty attack like 9 11, but a series of successful political warfare operations by the Russians and the Chinese and other enemies of democracy to further weaken the American body politic, to further weaken our democratic tradition, and to push the president of the United States farther and farther toward the destruction of not only the architectures of national security that the United States and its allies set up after World War II, in large part to protect the world from Russian imperialism, but through these acts of political warfare, sabotage, subversion, espionage, to actually destroy our democratic system.
- [12:30]
John Daniel
Timoanna says that chaos would present an opportunity.
- [12:35]
Tim Weiner
I fear that if indeed the United States were struck again at home or abroad by a lethal terrorist attack, the President of the United States could well declare martial law and cancel the next election. And that is the great fear that I'm hearing from the people I talk to in the American intelligence community.
- [12:58]
Guyon Espiner
The actions undertaken by this new regime have already led to some erosion in terms of trust in the partnership. We know, for example, that British intelligence, they suspended sharing information in the Caribbean in the Latter Part of 2025 as the US ramped up a campaign supposedly against drug smuggling boats by blowing them up. And that appeared to be a flagrant contravention of international law.
- [13:23]
John Daniel
And so while there is a school of thought that this is all kind of business as usual for American interests, minus the usual hypocrisy, more and more people and governments, close allies of America are concerned that Donald Trump's America is abusing its power to extract short term gains for itself. And those will weaken the Western democratic alliance in the long run.
- [13:48]
Guyon Espiner
And there are multiple flashpoints that could turn very nasty internally. Things like, as Tim Werner says, US Elections or maybe immigration enforcement that could blow up even further.
- [14:01]
John Daniel
War with Iran might spiral out of control if it isn't ready. Or the Americans might go back and push harder on Greenland, perhaps most likely
- [14:11]
Guyon Espiner
something that isn't even on anyone's radar right now.
- [14:14]
John Daniel
Yeah, and look realistically here in New Zealand, we're not going to have much influence over any of those things. So let's try to understand where we can have an impact. First of all, if we're going to have these intelligence services, we want them to be good in every sense of the word. Kit Bennett says having good people is a crucial start.
- [14:37]
Kit Bennett
And I am sufficiently idealistic to think that this is done by honest players. In New Zealand, it's done by honest players. I believe that the people in there are essentially good people. And that's a function of what you find in Western intelligence services, because that's a reflection of our society. And intelligence services have to be a reflection of our society, just like police services have to be a reflection of our society, like the military. And, you know, the esteem with which New Zealanders hold the military in is not the esteem that a lot of countries hold their military in because their military is turned on them from time to time.
- [15:11]
Guyon Espiner
Quite how you guarantee that is an open question. Oversight, that's vital. But a lot of it is going to come from the internal culture going back 50 years. Kit Bennetts remembers public mistrust of the SIS at its height after Dr. Bill Sutch was found not guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act.
- [15:32]
Kit Bennett
After the such case, there was a demonstration outside 175 Taranaki street that was
- [15:38]
John Daniel
the old SIS headquarters in Central Wellington where my mother used to work. Kip Bennett says he found himself with a small handful of people, including the deputy Director at the time, Ron Biggs, looking down on a large crowd.
- [15:52]
Kit Bennett
So we were up in the director's office looking down at 10,000 people. That's a lot of people protesting. And Ron said, this is why we do this job, Kit, because all those people are going to go home tonight and go off to parties and go home tonight, and nothing is going to happen to them. They think we're in here photographing them. We're not. But that's why we do this job. And I always thought that's right. Maybe a bit idealistic, but that's exactly right. And lots of countries don't have that, so we have that. And, you know, the song says, you don't know what you got till it's gone.
- [16:22]
John Daniel
Ultimately, politicians are responsible not simply for running our intelligence agencies, but the extent to which they are intertwined with our allies. In 2010, WikiLeaks published cables intercepted between the US embassy in Wellington and the State Department in Washington. The U.S. ambassador at the time described New Zealand as split into two camps. When it came to our view of the US First Worlders, effectively a pro US faction who he said were made up of defence intelligence, foreign affairs, business leaders and a few politicians.
- [16:58]
Guyon Espiner
Yeah, basically the foreign policy establishment, while the opposition, they were made up of what's called other worlders, media, academics, most politicians and a large part of the public who are sceptical of American power and who see New Zealand as non aligned. Now, obviously this analysis was never supposed to be made public and there was a fair bit of moaning about it as a meaninglessly shallow characterisation, but in some ways it is a useful shorthand. And that division goes to the fact that while many in New Zealand have been sceptical of American power for decades now, we do remain very much part of the American sphere of influence.
- [17:40]
John Daniel
And there's a spectrum of responses here, from thinking this is groupthink gone mad, to seeing it as experts who have a strong, responsible hand on the tiller because they're the people who have to actually run national security.
- [17:55]
Guyon Espiner
Yeah, those are the extremes. The lines here are a bit more blurred or perhaps nuanced than you might imagine. Here's Kit Bennett again, this time talking about one of the prime ministers under whom he served. In the 1980s, when we were supposedly breaking up with the Americans over anti
- [18:12]
Kit Bennett
nucle policy with the nuclear thing, the politicians operated at two levels. Men as smart as David Lange, for example, operated at two levels. So they knew that the intelligence services were doing what they were doing and expected you to do what they were doing. They were expected that our liaison would remain strong, but they had a political card to play as well. So, you know, David Lange was quite close with directors of the service, I mean, as were all ministers. There is a kind of a pragmatic side to them, but they're not going to ever reveal that.
- [18:40]
John Daniel
Many years after he'd stepped down as Prime Minister, David Lange told a journalist that New Zealand had helped win the Cold War, but he wasn't allowed to tell anyone about it.
- [18:50]
Guyon Espiner
And that might well have been a reference to the story of the Czech Embassy raid that we covered in the service.
- [18:56]
John Daniel
Yeah, we're gonna come back to this a little bit later on, but in the first episode we heard from another labor politician, Andrew Little, who was the minister in charge of the intelligence agencies for six years from 2017 to 2023. And when we with him in September of 2025, he said he was confident Five Eyes would be strong enough to continue in spite of the current turmoil.
- [19:24]
Andrew Little
It's been through American political tumult before. I mean, this look, maybe we all think what has happened today is different to what happened, you know, 40, 50, 60 years ago. I mean, what is happening now is, I think, a cause for worry just about the general sentiment and move which is undermining democracy. But I'm equally confident that the Five Eyes relationship will endure through that. And without agencies like ours and indeed the other partners compromising their principles, their requirement to respect democracy and freedom of expression and all those sorts of things, I think the Five Eyes arrangement will survive.
- [20:09]
Guyon Espiner
But Andrew Little does sound a note of caution in terms of how we deal with the Trump regime.
- [20:15]
Andrew Little
I think given their obligations under the New Zealand legislation, geez, they've got to act independently and they have to think carefully about their own legal and human rights obligations before sharing intelligence. I'd be surprised if they weren't actively considering how they share intelligence in the current conditions.
- [20:35]
John Daniel
And Andrew Little had another caveat that Five Eyes should stay in its lane.
- [20:41]
Andrew Little
It started out as an intelligence sharing relationship. That's what it should remain. It's very good at that. We have good legislation, I think, that provides good constraints on it and oversight of it.
- [20:53]
Guyon Espiner
He's echoing criticism around mission creep that was made by the former Prime Minister Helen Clark and others that sense that the Five Eyes has been quietly expanding its remit into foreign affairs and defence. But you have to ask, how realistic is that? Is it possible to have an intelligence gathering network that stops at the door of foreign affairs and the military?
- [21:17]
John Daniel
Yeah, even in an area like immigration, which at first glance seems a long way from those concerns. New Zealand is part of an international alliance that shares information around national security related to immigration. This One is called M5 migration 5. But the members are the same as Five Eyes.
- [21:38]
Guyon Espiner
Yeah, then there's the critical 5. That's Five Eyes members collaborating on critical infrastructure. And during the early days of COVID the Five Eyes were working together on health outcomes. There's another one I came across too, and I hadn't heard of this until I started looking into this podcast. It's called felig. I've never heard it said out loud, but I presume that that's how you say it. It stands for Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group. Now again, mutual national security interests based on trust that comes from this long standing alliance. And as you see, the tentacles are spread rather wide. It's worth noting, I guess though, that this particular one, the law enforcement one, means that New Zealand police find themselves part of an interagency network that includes not just the FBI, but also ice, the very controversial American Immigration and Custom Enforcement Agency. Again, these systems have existed under governments from both left and right.
- [22:36]
John Daniel
And we've seen that the Central Intelligence Agency doesn't operate in a vacuum. They're going to work with their military and domestic and foreign affairs in a coordinated way to push forward political aims laid down by the government.
- [22:51]
Kit Bennett
Yeah.
- [22:51]
Guyon Espiner
And we've seen recently, with news of the death of a New Zealand SAS soldier training alongside US Special Forces in Papakura, that we are very tight on defence.
- [23:02]
John Daniel
Yeah. And there was a Nicky Haga story on Newsroom about the discovery of papers at a Salvation army thrift store that detailed a meeting in London about the interlinking of our military with other Five Eyes partners in preparation for conflict with China. Now, these aren't coincidences. While it's true that we run training exercises with a number of countries, it's not as if we run them with China or Russia or North Korea or Iran. We're part of the Western bloc, so broadly speaking, we're allied with our intelligence partners, although we probably retain a bit of wiggle room around foreign affairs.
- [23:39]
Guyon Espiner
Kit Bennett says the ties that bind us to our partners are vital and they're pulled together by the people on the ground.
- [23:48]
John Daniel
There's that connective tissue between the intelligence agencies. Your exchange is part of that.
- [23:53]
Kit Bennett
Yep.
- [23:54]
John Daniel
We know of other people who work with aco.
- [23:57]
Professor Ruben Azizian
Yeah.
- [23:57]
John Daniel
We have people from the service who've gone to EMI 6 as well. So that connective tissue has been strong in the past.
- [24:05]
Kit Bennett
Yeah.
- [24:07]
John Daniel
What sort of healthiness, you know, how important is it that is healthy?
- [24:11]
Kit Bennett
It's critically important and in much the same as countries cooperate, all we ever see in here is the politicians. But below that, you know, all the links between defence, for example, and other Five Eyes partners, other allies and things, these run deep. And that's what I think. Everyone's hunkering down and waiting for the madness to end so we can go back to being, you know, having grown ups in the room. And I'm sure that's what's happening. I'm sure that those, those ties are strong, if not stronger than when we, when I was there, I'm, I'm. Well, I hope I'm right.
- [24:47]
John Daniel
The problem is, from a, in the external, from an outsider's viewpoint, is that, as you say, the political bit is what's visible.
- [24:56]
Kit Bennett
Yes.
- [24:57]
John Daniel
And so now we're talking about what Trump almost refers to as the deep state.
- [25:02]
Kit Bennett
Yes.
- [25:03]
John Daniel
Holding itself together and holding these other parts, you know, so you're talking about something that's invisible in America, dealing with something that's more or Less invisible in New Zealand.
- [25:12]
Kit Bennett
Yes. And there is a deep state. He is absolutely correct. It's a deep state, but it's not a malevolent thing. It's, it's the thing that keeps the country going. It makes sure that, you know, that we have hospitals at work and the roads are repaired and all of those things. That's all done by the deep state. Politicians aren't involved in that. What he's done is made it sound like it's malevolent and made Washington sound like a swamp. And, you know, it just, it just isn't true. And it isn't true in New Zealand either. But it is like an iceberg. The very tip of it is what we see and underneath is what makes the system work. You know,
- [25:54]
Guyon Espiner
Former Soviet ambassador turned defence and security academic Professor Ruben Azizian has seen some turmoil in his time and when we spoke with him In November of 2025, he was relatively sanguine about the situation with the U.S. i wouldn't
- [26:10]
Professor Ruben Azizian
overreact to Mr. Trump's impact and influence for a couple of reasons. One is the US Is still a democracy.
- [26:17]
John Daniel
Professor Zizian says governments come and go, but these kinds of long standing organizations tend to survive because once they're built, it's hard to dismantle them.
- [26:29]
Professor Ruben Azizian
Secondly, I know that from a bureaucratic point of view, dissolving an organization is a very hard thing to do. You can always find a reason for doing something else that will be based on common interests.
- [26:43]
Guyon Espiner
And he says in that sense, it's more likely that five Eyes will evolve in another direction because they've got a common concern with the rising superpower.
- [26:53]
Professor Ruben Azizian
Five Eyes. I think it has its purpose. I mean, intelligence is about collaboration between countries that trust each other historically, culturally, in terms of their military partnerships. So to me, there is no sign yet that any of the five countries is moving away from that framework or political or military. So there will be tensions and issues. Whether it continues to be five eyes or will be more eyes, I don't know. For example, I expect more eyes rather than fewer eyes. Because if it is also about trying to understand, using a very mild term and react to China, then there are other countries in immediate neighborhood of China who wouldn't mind. I'm thinking maybe Japan, for example, or France potentially, who could be interested in some kind of engagement with five eyes.
- [27:47]
Guyon Espiner
And we'll come back to China, there are in fact already extensions to five eyes. There's nine eyes. They cooperate on signals intelligence. That's the five eyes, plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands, And Norway.
- [28:01]
John Daniel
Japan is also considered a close ally of the Five Eyes partnership. In 2020, the Japanese Defence Minister described Japan as being close enough to the other partners to be able to refer to the organisation as six eyes. There's even a 14 is that adds in a number of European countries as well. And Reuben Azizian says all of these additional frameworks are broad positives for New Zealand, giving us something we'd never have on our own.
- [28:30]
Professor Ruben Azizian
When a small country is in an intelligence pool with some more influential, resourceful countries who want to share some intelligent information, generally speaking, it's an advantage for the smaller country because the smaller country otherwise wouldn't necessarily have access. Again, we know that not all of our information is spread equally. There are issues there, there are kind of firewalls and all of that. But still, secondly, small countries are generally interested in being part of some kind of a multilateral arrangements, because in a multilateral you have an opportunity to have your voice heard.
- [29:12]
Guyon Espiner
Professor Azizian says New Zealand needs to push forward some of its own natural advantages.
- [29:18]
Professor Ruben Azizian
You can bring all these countries, leaders of intelligence communities to Queenstown or somewhere. And also this is a reputational thing.
- [29:28]
John Daniel
Yeah, you can hear him smiling about Queenstown, but I don't think he's joking. And it is interesting. Reuben Izizian has attended and hosted a lot of international conferences over the years. He knows how goodwill is earned and he understands the subtleties of pushing back together against someone throwing their weight around.
- [29:48]
Professor Ruben Azizian
You can also use multilaterals to align and cooperate with some in the five eyes on issues where you don't necessarily agree with others in the five eyes, particularly the dominant power.
- [30:02]
Guyon Espiner
Ruben Azizian says that while there's an agreement in place between the five eyes not to spy on each other, everyone else is fair game.
- [30:12]
John Daniel
In a world that is increasingly hard nosed around security, there's no point in being too precious about the basic necessity of spying.
- [30:22]
Professor Ruben Azizian
I think everyone has to agree, whether we like it or not, that in the intelligence world there are basically no untouchable friends. If I say we know that countries have spied on each other, you know, you read Merkel's book and how she was spied on by the United States, I can say same back to Russia situation. Russia and China are very tightly connected today, but there are Chinese spies being caught in Russia. That's not publicized, but that's the reality. And I'm sure Russia continues to do spying in China and elsewhere. So if we agree with the cynicism of intelligence work as an important part of foreign policy, making then I think five Eyes should be kept and New Zealand has a place in it.
- [31:10]
Guyon Espiner
But at the same time, Ruben Azizian says that as a democracy, we need a more open and transparent discussion around foreign policy, rather than keeping it inside the corridors of power. And that's been the case for too long.
- [31:24]
Professor Ruben Azizian
You have to make that foreign policy discussion more open, more transparent. It's not just about respectful professionals in MFET or an experienced minister. It is a time, I think we are at the crossroads which way we go and we need major discussion and debate.
- [31:43]
Guyon Espiner
He says issues like Pillar two of orcas, the defence alliance between three of our five Eyes partners, including our closest ally, Australia, these really need to be discussed in public and not just hammered out behind closed doors.
- [31:57]
Professor Ruben Azizian
We don't have a foreign policy strategy as such. The documents that are produced by MFED are produced by MFED with some experts. But we need a public conversation because we know that there will be time when The Aukus tier 2 thing will be resolved one and the other.
- [32:14]
John Daniel
Ruben Azizian says in the current climate, there's a real danger to running a foreign policy that doesn't bring the public along with it. He says whatever is decided won't satisfy everyone because we're a democracy, but we do need to feel like it has been openly discussed.
- [32:31]
Professor Ruben Azizian
We don't want a foreign policy issue to become too explosive for this country. And to avoid that, we need some level. I mean, we can't have a full consensus, some level of consensus understanding about what New Zealand should be. And do we just follow Trump or we do something different?
- [32:53]
Guyon Espiner
We put this to Andrew Little, who was the minister for the intelligence agencies and Minister of Defence as recently as 2023.
- [33:02]
John Daniel
You're on the record as saying it's really important that New Zealand has healthy conversations around this sort of stuff, around the threats. Yep. And so. And you've named Russia, China and North Korea as being in particular places, you know, the kinds of places that we need to look out for. The issue for me is that in order to have that conversation, we need to be able to have the information in the first place. Right. And we don't seem to be able to get levels of information around this stuff. I mean, when we were doing the
- [33:28]
Guyon Espiner
Service, for example, for clarity, John's talking here about our previous podcast series, the Service, that was about a Cold War raid on the Czech Embassy carried out by Britain's MI6 and New Zealand's SIS, also known as. As the Service.
- [33:44]
John Daniel
We went to the service and asked for confirmation. Ultimately, it appears that they lied to us. Now, they're allowed to do that according to the bill. Right. Am I right about that?
- [33:56]
Guyon Espiner
Yeah. In the SIS act, there is a clause which says that they're allowed to lie. I picked through it one day. There's several hundred pages, but they are allowed to lie.
- [34:11]
Andrew Little
They were allowed to. Their specific provisions about concealing their activity.
- [34:14]
John Daniel
Yeah. Basically, it seems they got hold of Gerald Hensley, who had oversight of the operation, and turned him.
- [34:20]
Guyon Espiner
That's right. It looks like they turned our main source and then ran him back at us.
- [34:27]
John Daniel
We asked him about this story three times and each time the answer was different.
- [34:33]
Guyon Espiner
So when you say that you have a dim recollection that there was an operation involving the Czechoslovakian embassy, do you recall it being a successful operation?
- [34:47]
Kit Bennett
No. You're pressing me on this one guy, and harder than I can go. I've really said all I can on this one, John. I have to go to you.
- [34:56]
John Daniel
Sure we should. We'll turn off the recording devices.
- [35:00]
Tim Weiner
Yeah.
- [35:00]
John Daniel
And then we can.
- [35:02]
Kit Bennett
Really, What I want to ask you was I haven't about talked.
- [35:05]
Tim Weiner
Talked to the Service about this for years and years.
- [35:08]
John Daniel
So we turned off the tape and had a quick chat off the record and then turned the tape back on.
- [35:14]
Guyon Espiner
And just a reminder, the aim of the raid was for a small team of SIS and MI6 operators to get these code books used by the Warsaw Pact countries, copy them and return them undetected to the safe of the Czech Embassy in Wadestown. And did they get the books that I.
- [35:34]
Kit Bennett
No recollection of.
- [35:38]
Guyon Espiner
No recollection of at all?
- [35:40]
Kit Bennett
No, none at all.
- [35:41]
John Daniel
Six months later, having had plenty of time to communicate with the Service, he told that story quite differently.
- [35:50]
Kit Bennett
Yes, it's a long time ago, but I do have fairly clear recollection that
- [35:56]
Guyon Espiner
it failed, that we didn't get our
- [35:58]
Kit Bennett
hands on the books.
- [36:00]
John Daniel
I mean, come on. Don't get me wrong. I like Gerald Hensley, who sadly passed away in 2024. I enjoyed his company. He was smart and funny and he had an extraordinary career as a civil servant and diplomat. But he also loved the spy game. And I believe he was, as more than one former SIS officer has said to me, also a dreadful, unconvincing liar, at least in this case. And when I rang him to say that we were entertaining the possibility he might be lying, Gerald Hensley laughed and laughed and laughed, and he said he thought that was very wise.
- [36:41]
Guyon Espiner
Which is ironic, right, because we hear a lot from the intelligence agencies about the dangers of misinformation and disinformation but if you're right about this, they do it when it suits them.
- [36:54]
Andrew Little
I guess the purpose of intelligence agencies is they do act covertly.
- [36:58]
Guyon Espiner
And in the end, I suppose you could ask, isn't that just the way it has to be? Certainly Andrew Little thinks so, and he's the one who's sat in that hot seat.
- [37:07]
Andrew Little
I mean, they're required to do an annual threat assessment, published annual threat assessment, which they do and it's. And that is public. But there's always going to be, because of the nature of their work, there's always going to be limitations on what they disclose at a particular time. And maybe 50 years or 100 years hence, that stuff is maybe open to disclosure, but it's always about protecting methods today, sources today, intelligence today, so that they can more effectively, where they see a threat, respond to it.
- [37:40]
John Daniel
So we're back here again trying to square the circle. We need intelligence agencies to defend our democracy, but they say they need to do that in secret and that can feel anti democratic. Kip Bennett is alert to the risks of keeping the public in the dark.
- [37:58]
Kit Bennett
I'm a long way away from intelligence work nowadays, but, you know, I do understand first principles. But one of the things that I think you have to do is you have to be able to justify your position. And I think in many respects, from what I read about what's happening in New Zealand, that I think the service does a pretty good job. But you've got to stay on that all the time because if you lose the faith of the people in a modern society, you know, it's very dangerous. And intelligence services, you've got to have them.
- [38:25]
Guyon Espiner
He says as times have changed, there's been something of a shift in public expectation in the past.
- [38:32]
Kit Bennett
In my time, people would say, you know, what is the SIS doing for its money? Well, we can't tell you that. It's a secret, I'm afraid. And in those days people would say, well, that's fair enough. I suppose that's what they do nowadays. The new generation says, yeah, that's all very well, but what are you doing? Well, we can't tell you that. Well, okay, well, we could probably spend the money on health and education, you know what I mean?
- [38:59]
Guyon Espiner
We can accept that there's always going to be tension around what the intelligence services can and can can't tell us, but it is frustrating. We do know that those ties between SIS and CIA remain tight.
- [39:14]
John Daniel
We know that New Zealand SIS has certainly historically had a close relationship with CIA.
- [39:20]
Guyon Espiner
We're talking Here with Susan Miller, the former high ranking CIA officer.
- [39:24]
John Daniel
Did you have any experience of working with the New Zealand sis?
- [39:27]
Susan Miller
Oh, absolutely. I came down there. I even met your. It was a female prime minister I met.
- [39:34]
Guyon Espiner
It might have been Jacinda Dern.
- [39:35]
Tim Weiner
Was it?
- [39:35]
Guyon Espiner
Or was it Jacinda?
- [39:37]
Susan Miller
Yeah, that's who it was.
- [39:37]
Guyon Espiner
Yeah, that's who it was. Oh, so recently.
- [39:40]
Susan Miller
Yeah, it was when I was down. It was. I was talking about China. It wasn't when I was head of counterintelligence. I do remember talking to Kiwis and other five eyes more at headquarters about counterintelligence when I was there before, you know, during this period with Trump. But, you know, it was later. Yeah, when I was head of China Mission Center. I got to talk to her. Her. She's lovely.
- [40:06]
John Daniel
In late 2021, so under the administration of former US President Joe Biden, CIA announced it was establishing a mission center to specifically target the People's Republic of China. The then CIA director, William Burns said its purpose was to, quote, further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government.
- [40:35]
Guyon Espiner
Now, you have to say it's quite interesting that Susan Miller, the person who heads up that new CIA mission centre targeting our largest trading partner, gets FaceTime with the new Zealand Prime Minister. And of course, that connection is one that comes through our intelligence alliance where New Zealand does seem to be adding value.
- [40:55]
Susan Miller
And your team there, it's a very small group that works in your intelligence service. They are righteous. I mean, these guys are super smart. Feel like I was talking to somebody who'd been trained, you know, together, and yet we aren't. You know, we do a lot of stuff together, but whoever invented the five eyes is right and we need to keep it going.
- [41:18]
John Daniel
Yeah. Although again, it is slightly frustrating how little we really know about this. And it's worth mentioning that when we put together Red Lye in our podcast series trying to grapple with Chinese influence here in New Zealand, we approached the service on background and then went out to try to interview other people, but they turned around and told the entire New Zealand intelligence community not to talk to us.
- [41:43]
Guyon Espiner
You're not bitter about that, are you, John?
- [41:45]
John Daniel
Well, listen, the guy from the New York Times seems to know more about our intelligence agencies than we do. Here's Tim Weiner.
- [41:52]
Tim Weiner
Again, the Kiwi intelligence service punches far above its weight. It is particularly adept against the Chinese target at assessing the intentions and capabilities of the Chinese military and the Chinese services. And it is a vital part of the Five Eyes system, which is essentially an intelligence sharing system in which signals intelligence, that is electronic eavesdropping and espionage, primarily is shared among the five nations in the compact. And the CIA depends on its liaison with foreign intelligence services to understand what is going on in the world.
- [42:33]
John Daniel
This is another important point to understand. While the Trump administration doesn't seem massively invested in its European partnerships, where countering Russia is top of mind, the US is focusing on on its rivalry with China.
- [42:46]
Guyon Espiner
And New Zealand has something to offer.
- [42:49]
Tim Weiner
The CIA is only about 22,000 people strong. Fewer than half of those people are actually spying overseas. You know, we're American, we don't have the languages or the country knowledge to spy on the entire world. So these liaisons, the five Eyes system, almost chief among them, are essential to the CIA and indeed to the national security of the United States.
- [43:21]
Guyon Espiner
That doesn't mean the road ahead will be straightforward.
- [43:24]
Susan Miller
So I don't know where this is going to go. With regard to Five Eyes, this is Susan Miller again.
- [43:29]
Guyon Espiner
She says even if we can't trust President Trump on Russia, and even though she too is evidently sceptical of those political appointees at the top of the intelligence and defence agencies who are very much Donald Trump's people, our people should keep in touch, keep up the dialogue and keep working together.
- [43:48]
Susan Miller
I would recommend that they do talk because we've got to keep that door open. Keep the door open to anybody, you know, his chief of CIA, his Secretary of state, his head of the Pentagon, you know, whatever, keep all those doors open.
- [44:03]
John Daniel
But Susan Miller says intelligence sharing is now something of a political calculation. The New Zealand intelligence community is going to have to make ongoing risk assessments around what kind of information to pass on to their American colleagues.
- [44:18]
Susan Miller
Also remember who the ultimate person is going to see the report from that meeting. If it's at that high level, if it's a lower level person, it's not necessarily going to go to him. But the thing is that when your leaders are talking, talking, I'm sure it's already on their mind. I'm not telling you anything that I don't think they're already thinking. And so unfortunately, and as an American, that makes me sad,
- [44:51]
John Daniel
We should remember that even at the height of the row between the US and New Zealand over nuclear ships in the mid-1980s, intelligence was shared and cooperation continued. By early 1986, Kip Bennett had finished his time with CIAC but was still with the SIS. He was based in Wellington.
- [45:12]
Kit Bennett
I was then the head of the research and analysis part of the Soviet. By then I was completely disillusioned. I wanted to get out and I hated everybody. But one of the things. I was on a joint defense committee and we would look at where Soviet maritime stuff was, you know, where ships and submarines and all that sort of stuff were, whether they were in our vicinity and that sort of thing. We're working on intel from the Brits and the Americans and Australians and the stuff that our Orions have been doing.
- [45:37]
Guyon Espiner
Because Soviet subs did come.
- [45:38]
Kit Bennett
They did come. Oh, yeah, they did, yeah. They did scooch around, did they? Yeah.
- [45:43]
Guyon Espiner
Never mind the submarines. A little after 5:30pm on February 16, 1986, the Soviet cruise liner Mikhail Lermontov hit a rock in the Marlborough Sounds. Apparently the pilot had taken it too close to the shore because he wanted to give the passengers on board a better View. By 10:30 that night, the ship had sunk. A Soviet crew member died. Kit Bennett and the SIS still had tight links with the CIA.
- [46:13]
Kit Bennett
We had this emergency meeting the next morning and we'd got. The Americans had got onto us and I was sent to this meeting and I had this. I was allowed to demand things. So I went to the meeting and said, well, this is what we want. All Soviet vessels have what we used to call the war plans. But the ship's commissar would have in his safe the envelope that you open in case the balloon goes up and what the ship has to do, because it's a Russian flagship. And obviously the Americans were keen to get a hold of that if they
- [46:42]
John Daniel
could, while the Lumontov as a passenger ship, wouldn't have been involved in any fighting. That information carried in the ship's safe would help Five Eyes intelligence agencies understand more about potential Soviet war plans.
- [46:57]
Kit Bennett
We needed to get the Navy diving team down. So they flew the Navy diving team down from Auckland. So there's a couple of Herc captains that owe me a beer big time. Because they had to fly them low level because they were going to go down. They couldn't fly them high.
- [47:10]
John Daniel
Given that the Navy divers were going to have to dive to an unknown depth. They couldn't be submitted to the pressure of flying at high altitude, so they
- [47:20]
Kit Bennett
came down at between 3 and 500ft, all the way down to Marlborough. And I bet they didn't go out to sea. I bet they spent their time over the land, you know, flying the naval team down there.
- [47:29]
Guyon Espiner
But as the divers arrive in Wellington, so do the survivors from the Lermontov.
- [47:34]
Kit Bennett
Then we found out from Television, because they provided the best intel. When they had the photographs taken by the press of the guys coming off the ship, there was the KGB resident with the ship's commissar.
- [47:46]
John Daniel
The ship's commissar was a political appointee who oversaw crew discipline and security on all Soviet vessels. If he'd had to abandon ship before he could get to the safe, the papers might still be down there. But that wasn't what happened.
- [48:02]
Kit Bennett
And the ship's commissar had his briefcase, and we knew that that's what he had got. The Americans said he won't leave the ship without it, but you never know. We should be ready to dive on there just in case he didn't.
- [48:19]
John Daniel
I guess the point here is that just because we can't see something doesn't mean it isn't important.
- [48:25]
Guyon Espiner
Ah, I see what you did there. Very clever. Like we all need to pay attention to what's happening beneath the surface.
- [48:32]
John Daniel
That's right. The world of espionage, the wilderness of mirrors. It does invite a metaphor.
- [48:38]
Guyon Espiner
It does. And look, this has been a hell of a story. These spy games that play out in the shadows, we've been able to see how they're played by real people for high stakes and with a real world impact that spreads out across the political landscape.
- [48:52]
John Daniel
And we are now in a period of geopolitical turmoil, potentially even upheaval. And as a nation, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions about who our friends really are and about how we work with them.
- [49:06]
Guyon Espiner
Is this the bit where you lecture me about the difference between spycraft and statecraft?
- [49:10]
John Daniel
You love it when I do.
- [49:11]
Guyon Espiner
I do.
- [49:12]
John Daniel
I have heard Russian statecraft under Vladimir Putin described as an extension of KGB tradecraft. But listen, it's also this situation with Trump. I mean, we can't just ignore what's going on, given what we know.
- [49:26]
Guyon Espiner
No, although it's interesting, right? I mean, pretty much everyone we spoke with, and they do come at this from multiple different angles, they were all clear that they felt we need to stay in five eyes.
- [49:39]
John Daniel
At the same time, I'm always skeptical when I hear there is no alternative. It feels like there's an internal logic that's built up over decades inside our security institutions, where being aligned with America is just a no brainer because of those massive U.S. resources. And look, that might be understandable.
- [50:00]
Guyon Espiner
Yeah, I mean, the calculation has been pretty simple, Right? It's always felt safer under the wing of America than pretty much anywhere else.
- [50:08]
John Daniel
Yeah, but the people in power haven't really taken the time to explain that to the public, because it's politically awkward, given that the us, they just get it wrong sometimes. Now, those smart people in the corridors of power, they must be wondering, how much worse would it have to get with President Trump before something breaks.
- [50:28]
Guyon Espiner
Yeah, these are hard questions and we do need to be able to discuss them and think about them as a society. Right. Hopefully this has been the kind of story that helps us bring some of those elements into the light where we can all see them. Because while the story of Kit Bennett's and his time with the CIA, a Kiwi at the heart of American intelligence operations, it took place four decades ago or so, now there's every chance something similar is still going on today. Remember what Andrew Little told us in the first episode?
- [51:02]
Andrew Little
There are exchanges, I suppose, probably for want of a better word, we approach
- [51:05]
John Daniel
the SIS about this. They use different language, but essentially they confirm that, yes, a quote, small number of staff are posted offshore in liaison roles, end quote. They say that relationships with overseas intelligence and security partners, particularly Five Eyes, are vital to New Zealand's national security. And when we asked about any changes in that Five Eyes dynamic since the election of the second Trump administration, they did note that the global environment continues to be dynamic. They said the intelligence sharing partnership continues to function largely as it always has. So not quite business as usual, but close. And that underlines just how useful it's been to hear this story about the specifics of that relationship. Anyway, just to wrap up, Kip Bennett did end up finding his way out of the wilderness of mirrors. He never became an actual fighter pilot.
- [52:12]
Guyon Espiner
No. But he still has the photos that made him very much look like one. To the gru, at least he also
- [52:20]
John Daniel
managed to get the girl. For more than 30 years now, he's been happily married to Jackie, who he first knew when he was a schoolboy in the Wairarapa. They've had adventures all over the place. Lived in Papua New guinea for more than a decade. Where he worked with an airline.
- [52:36]
Guyon Espiner
Yep. Then, after he was a cop in Brisbane, getting beaten up on the front line in his 50s, he decided to put a PhD to good use. So Dr. Kit Bennett's now lectures at universities in Australia and China in aviation and business. He'll be, what, 75 this year?
- [52:55]
John Daniel
In spite of the sense that it didn't end the way he would have liked, and he regrets the damage to the relationships around him. Kit Bennett says he wouldn't change his time with CIA.
- [53:08]
Guyon Espiner
I mean, I can see it in your eyes. You loved that time.
- [53:12]
Kit Bennett
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was wonderful. You know, I really got that. That's the sharp end. You know, everyone thinks that it's James Bond and fast cars and that sort of thing, but really doing what I was doing, doing recruitments in place, you know, attempting recruitments in place. That's the glamour end of human. It definitely is. And there I was, kid from Masterdon doing this. And as I say, the vocational guidance officers never mentioned that opportunity to me. So, yeah, and I loved it. I regret not a moment of.
- [53:56]
Guyon Espiner
The Agency was produced, written and hosted by John Daniel and me Guy in Espiner. Our executive producer for RNZ was John Hartevelt and our executive producer for Bird of Paradise productions was Noel McCarthy.
- [54:10]
John Daniel
Original music by Anthony Tonon. Graphic design by Oliver Wall for RNZ Sound production and and final mix was by Mark Chesterman. Production coordinator was Brianna Juritich Grieg. Thanks to Steve Burridge, Ally Marsden, Jeremy Ensel and William Saunders. Thanks to Megan Whelan. And thanks also to Susan Baldacci.
- [54:29]
Guyon Espiner
The visual director at RNZ was Cole Eastham Farrelly and our camera operator was Jess Charlton. Thanks also to Sarah Gaetanos for the article about Bill Such that appears on RNZ Code.
- [54:44]
John Daniel
Thanks also to cnn, tvnz, BBC, the abc, Universal and Paramount. To read more about the documents and articles we've mentioned, you can go to rnz, co NZ theagency and you can see the links in the show notes.
- [55:05]
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