the first terrorist operation in New Zealand<\/a>\u201d and the NZSIS involvement as the Service\u2019s \u201cfirst counter-terrorist operation\u201d.<\/p>\nPolice took the lead on the investigation and appeared to keep the NZSIS largely at arm\u2019s length. The briefing document describes senior public servant Gerald Hensley, perennial insider and career diplomat, organising the first government meeting after the bombing, at which Smith offered NZSIS support.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was told no assistance was required,\u201d he recorded. It was only hours before that changed and police commissioner Ken Thompson [who died last month] was on the phone asking for help.<\/p>\n
First, police needed a \u201ctrace check\u201d using the Service\u2019s foreign partner connections to pull together a profile on a couple going by the name Turenge – actually Marfart and Prieur – and secondly, the Service\u2019s \u201ctechnical attack team\u201d were needed urgently in Auckland.<\/p>\n
Smith recalled how the bugging team had to race to Auckland, racing through the winter night by military aircraft from \u014chakea to Whenuapai, arriving at the motel where Marfart and Prieur would be staying with only 15 minutes to spare to plant bugs.<\/p>\n
Also on the hoof was legal cover – Smith described there being no time to issue a warrant to authorise the bugging and how he proceeded on the basis of a verbal instruction from Lange the year earlier to go ahead on his own authority in the event of a terror attack.<\/p>\n
![\"]()
A police photo of the Rainbow Warrior at Marsden Wharf. Photo \/ Maurice Whitham<\/p>\n
It meant, he wrote, that there might have been no legal carve-out for the NZSIS officers working the case. It also meant that period was never examined too closely to find if the law had been broken, he said.<\/p>\n
The intercepts of the conversations in the motel room were translated by a Service officer fluent in French. She provided more than a translation, Smith said, with insights into the French agents\u2019 \u201cdemeanour, morale and attitudes\u201d.<\/p>\n
As the investigation progressed, the NZSIS accumulated names for further trace checks.<\/p>\n
It also had what Smith described as an \u201cextraordinary occurrence\u201d – a phone call to the NZSIS office in Auckland from someone with a French accent urging it to check flights from New Caledonia and Tahiti – both French territories – for passengers who had been Navy divers.<\/p>\n
The call came the morning after the bombing with Smith noting: \u201cThe caller was never identified.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith said within days the NZSIS knew it was dealing with agents of the French foreign secret service, the DGSE (Direction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de la S\u00e9curit\u00e9 ext\u00e9rieure). He linked this confidence to the NZSIS bugging and how, when Prieur appeared to go into a \u201cstate of shock\u201d, Mafart walked with her outside and used counter-surveillance techniques as they spoke.<\/p>\n
Smith wrote of how the Service pushed to widen its involvement in a counter-terrorist operation to scoop up any remaining French spies. By the time Mafart and Prieur were arrested on July 23, two members (DGSE divers Jean-Luc Kister and Jean Camas) of the \u201cattack team\u201d that planted the mines were still in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Rather than push further, Smith said there was a \u201cpattern of diverging attitudes and emphasis\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Lange] personally was of the view that it would serve New Zealand\u2019s ends well if the two left the country. He was disappointed when they pleaded guilty, more so when they did not appeal the sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith recounted police attempts to pin down suspects as they dispersed across the world, including those who had been aboard the DGSE\u2019s marine support base, the yacht Ouvea.<\/p>\n
![\"David]()
David Lange as the new Labour Party leader in 1983 with his deputy Geoffrey Palmer. Photo \/ Paul Estcourt<\/p>\n
In the case of one DGSE agent, Smith said Dr Xavier Maniguet – spy, doctor, soldier – had escaped while on a stopover in Singapore after a journalist from the Listener magazine managed to connect a call to the spy\u2019s hotel.<\/p>\n
He said the journalist told the spy \u201che understood the New Zealand police were planning his arrest\u201d, and two hours later he was gone from Singapore. \u201cSo much for operational security!\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
Smith was convinced there were those who had been involved and hadn\u2019t been identified. The Service had urged police to focus closely on the Rainbow Warrior ahead of the bomb going off.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our view a DGSE agent was responsible for removing the majority of those in the ship elsewhere before the attack,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Smith drew from the events what he called \u201cobservations\u201d. He said the Government needed to be more tightly focused on the possibility of a terror attack.<\/p>\n
The second observation of Smith\u2019s was on the DGSE operation – its faults and flaws which had exposed the foreign agents. He pointed to the French spies\u2019 habit of collecting receipts, or refunds, that encouraged suspicion, and the excellent passport forgeries let down by simple giveaways such as sequential numbers.<\/p>\n
Finally, he wrote that the word \u201cunique\u201d was one to be used sparingly. He added: \u201cA terrorist attack by a liaison service \u2026 mounted in Auckland in circumstances where there was no New Zealand national interest directly involved must be close to unique.\u201d<\/p>\n
As deputy Prime Minister and Attorney General, Palmer was deeply involved in handling the aftermath of the bombing and working to untangle the attack from economic relations with France.<\/p>\n
Palmer led efforts to internationalise the dispute, taking it to the United Nations and addressing the UN General Assembly in September 1985. After early negotiations with France stalled, Palmer pushed for an international law solution, which saw the dispute referred to the UN Secretary-General, Javier P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar.<\/p>\n
That led to the 1986 settlement in which France formally apologised and paid compensation to New Zealand. The settlement also allowed the two convicted agents to be transferred to the French military base at Hao.<\/p>\n
![\"Sir]()
Sir Geoffrey Palmer, former prime minister and legal specialist, pictured last year at the Victoria University Law School, Wellington. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
Palmer agreed with the Herald\u2019s suggestion that Smith\u2019s memo was a \u201ccuriosity\u201d, saying that public opinion – and the outrageous nature of France\u2019s actions – meant there was no other pathway than prosecution.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was done appropriately and properly and in accordance with Cabinet and government systems. <\/p>\n
At one stage, he said the \u201centire police file\u201d was flown by police to Paris, where it was given to the French \u201cso they could see we knew everything about them coming in\u201d and carrying out the attack.<\/p>\n
That the attack was conceived and approved at the highest levels of France\u2019s government baffled Palmer. \u201cHow do you authorise that?\u201d he questioned.<\/p>\n
Time moved on quickly, he said. \u201cOur relations with France are now perfect and have been completely restored.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.<\/p>\n
Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira died in the bombing. Smith\u2019s briefing is one of three \u201cSecret\u201d documents released after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17901,140605,111383,9525,10712,6284,140602,34893,2837,58117,11775,71,106,8454,31745,140604,101,6722,111,43,139,9332,69,140603,17398,415,140606,96462,2887,9095,2249,37786,5828,34807,3608,49493,80],"class_list":["post-238493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-agents","tag-bombing","tag-briefing","tag-caught","tag-claiming","tag-david","tag-declassified","tag-documents","tag-during","tag-ejected","tag-french","tag-from","tag-head","tag-including","tag-lange","tag-langes","tag-left","tag-minister","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-note","tag-nz","tag-nzsis","tag-possible","tag-prime","tag-privately","tag-rainbow","tag-release","tag-secret","tag-soon","tag-spies","tag-wanted","tag-warrior","tag-were","tag-wish","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}