The Price of Freedom

Heko naipurangi te ney, na te reo irirangi o aotearoa. Heko naipurangi te ney, Heko naipurangi te ney, na te reo irirangi o aotearoa, na te reo iriri o aotearoa, na te reo iriri o aotearoa. Heko naipurangi te ney, Heko naipurangi te ney, Heko naipurangi te ney, Te Okiwa, Te Okiwa, te Okiwa, te Okiwa, te Okiwa. their craft pots and their phones, and they are in charge of the American national security. And that is a very dangerous thing, by the way. Tim Winises, there are real world consequences that result from all this, and they could be disastrous. The danger of Trump placing them in charge of the American national security is that it increases the risk of another catastrophic intelligence bill. And the people I talk to at CIA think that failure is coming. And they think it likely that it would not be a catastrophic, you know, a cataclysmic mass-tagualty attack, like 9/11, but a series of successful political warfare operations by the Russians, the Chinese, and other enemies of democracy could further weaken the American body policy. It took further a week in 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 at the World War II in large part to protect the world from large materialists, but to through these acts of political warfare, its habit-cogged supervision, espionage, to actually destroy our democratic system. Tim Winises, their chaos would present an opportunity. I fear that, even indeed, the United States were struck again, at home or abroad by a lethal terrorist attack, the British United States could well declare martial law and cancel the next election. And that is the great fear that I'm new here from the people I talk to in the American intelligence community. 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. 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. And there are multiple flashpoints that could turn very nasty. Internally, things like, as Tim Warner says, "Hewes, selections," or maybe immigration enforcement that could blow up even further. War with the run might spiral out of control if it isn't really, or the Americans might go back and push harder on Greenland. Perhaps most likely, something that isn't even on anyone's radar right now. 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 intelligent services, we want them to be good in every sense of the word. Keep being, it says, "Having good people is a crucial star." And I am sufficiently idealistic to think that this is done by honest players in New Zealand and 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 intelligent 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 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. But 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 bennets from members, public mistrust of the SIE's, and it's height after Dr Bill's such was found not guilty of breaching the official secret sect. After the such case, there was a demonstration outside 175 Tarenegu Street. It was the old SIE's headquarters in central Wellington where my mother used to work. Kit bennets says he found himself with a small handful of people, including the deputy director at the time, Ron Beggs, looking down on a large crowd. So we were up in the directors office looking down at 10,000 people. I saw a lot of people protesting, but 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 country don't have that, so we have that. And the song says, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." 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 US ambassador at the time described New Zealand as split into two camps when it came to our view of the US. First worlders, effectively, approved US faction who he said were made up of defense, intelligence, foreign affairs, business leaders, and a few politicians. Yeah, basically, the foreign policy establishment. For 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 skeptical of American power and who see New Zealand as non-line. 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 skeptical of American power for decades now, we do remain very much part of the American sphere of influence. And there's a spectrum of responses here from thinking this is groupthink gone mad to seeing it as expert to have a strong responsible hand on the tiller because they're the people who have to actually run national security. Yeah, those are the extremes. The lines here are a bit more blurred or perhaps nuanced than you might imagine. Here's a bit of a game. This time talking about one of the prime ministers under whom he served in the 1980s when he was supposedly breaking up with the Americans over anti-nuclear policy. With the nuclear thing, the politicians operated at two levels. Men as smart as David Longy, 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 David Longy was quite close with the directors of the service. As for all ministers, there is a kind of a pragmatic side to them, but they're not going to ever reveal that. Many years after he'd stepped down as prime minister, David Longy told a journalist that New Zealand had helped win the Cold War, but he wasn't allowed to tell anyone about it. And that might well have been a reference to the story of the Czech embassy raid that we covered in the service. So we'll get a comeback to this a little bit later on, but in the first episode we heard from another Labour politician, Andrew Little, who was the minister in charge of the intelligence agencies for six years from 2017 to 2023. And when we spoke 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. It's been through American political tumult before. I mean, this may be, we all think what Assembly Day is different to what happened 40, 50, 60 years ago. And what Assembly 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. But Andrew Little does sound a note of caution in terms of how we deal with the Trump regime. I think given their obligations under the New Zealand legislation, 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. And Andrew Little had another caveat that five eyes should stay in its lane. The start and out is an intelligence sharing relationship that should remain, it's very good at that. We have good legislation, I think, that provides good constraints on it and oversight of it. He's echoing criticism around mission creed that was made by the former Prime Minister Helen Clark and others. That sense that the five eyes has been then quietly expanding its remit into foreign affairs and defences. 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? 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. 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 FALLIG. 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, it comes from this long standing alliance. And as you see, the tentacles are spread rather wide. It's worth noting, I guess, so that this particular one, the law enforcement one, means that New Zealand police find themselves, part of an interagency network that includes not just CFBI, but also ICE, the very controversial American immigration and custody. They've got them enforcement agency. Again, these systems have existed under governments from both left and right. 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. Yeah, and we've seen recently with news of the death of a New Zealand S.A.S. soldier training alongside US Special Forces in Papakura, that we have very tight on defence. Yeah, and there was a Nikki Hargis 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 ICE partners in preparation for conflict with China. Now, these are co-incidences. Well, it's true that we run training exercises with a number of countries. It's almost if we run them with China, 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 bird of wiggle room around foreign affairs. Kit Bennett says the ties that bind us to our partners are vital and they're pulled together by the people on the ground. There's that kind of tissue between the intelligence agencies. Yeah. And the exchanges part of that. You know, other people who work with ACO, we help people from the service of the company, my sense as well. Yeah. So, that kind of tissue has been strong in the past. Yeah. What sort of healthiness, you know, how important is it about that as health? It's critically important. And much the same as this country's 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-ice 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 grownups in the room. And I'm sure that's what's happening. I'm sure that those ties are strong, if not stronger, than when we, when I was there. I'm well, I hope I'm right. The problem is from an external, from an outside viewpoint, is that, as you say, the political bit is what's visible. It's, yes. And so, now we're talking about, you know, what can't be much of a first-year is the deep state. Yes. Holding itself together and holding these other parts, you know. So, you're talking about something. It's invisible in America, dealing with something that's more or less invisible in New Zealand. Yes. There is a deep state. It is absolutely correct as a deep state, but it's not a malevolent thing. 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. The 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 isn't true. 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. Former Soviet ambassador to Defence and Security Academic, Professor Rubin 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 US. I wouldn't overreact to Mr. Trump's impact and influence for a couple of reasons. One is the US is still a democracy. Professor Azizian sees 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. Secondly, I know that, you know, 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. 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. Five Eyes, I think it has his purpose. I mean, intelligence is about a 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 thinking. 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 there are, if it is also about trying to understand using a very mild term and react to China, then there are other countries in the 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. And we'll come back to China. There are, in fact, already extensions to Five Eyes. Nine Eyes, they cooperate on signals intelligence, that's to Five Eyes plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway. 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 Eyes that adds in a number of European countries as well. And Ruben is as he insists all of these additional frameworks are broad positives for New Zealand, giving us something we'd never have on our own. When a small country is in an intelligence pool with some more influential resourceful countries who want to share some intelligence 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 over 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 multilateral arrangements, because in a multilateral, you have an opportunity to have your voice heard. Professor Azizzi and Seis New Zealand needs to push forward some of its own natural advantages. You can bring all these countries, leaders of intelligence communities to either Queenstown or somewhere, and also this is a reputational thing. You can hear him smiling about Queenstown, but I don't think he's joking. And it is interesting. Ruben is in his attended and hosted a lot of international conferences over the years. He knows how good will is earned. And he understands the subtleties of pushing back together against someone throwing their voice around. 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. Ruben Azizzi and Seis, that while there's an agreement in place between the five eyes, not to spy on each other, everyone else is fair game. In a world that is increasingly hard-nosed around security, there's no point in being too precious about the basic necessity of spying. 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 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 the right Chinese spies being caught in Russia. No, that's not publicized, but that's the reality. I'm sure Russia continues to do spying in China and elsewhere. So if we agree with the cynicism of intelligence, to 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. But at the same time, Ruben as he 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. You have to make that foreign policy discussion more open, more transparent. It's not just about respectful professionals in Amphat or an experienced minister. It is a time, I think, where we are at the crossroads, which way we go. And we need a major discussion and debate. He says issues like Pillar II of Orkis, 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. We don't have a foreign policy strategy as such. The documents that are produced by Amphat are produced by Amphat with some experts. But we need a public conversation because we know that there will be time when the Orkis Tier II thing will be resolved one and the other. Ruben's is in the current climate. There is 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 are a democracy, but we do need to feel like it has been openly discussed. 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 and understanding about what New Zealand should be. Do we just follow Trump or we do something different? We put this to Andrew Little who was the minister for the Intelligence Aidencies and Minister of Defence as recently as 2023. You're on the record of saying it's really important that New Zealand has healthy conversations around this sort of stuff around the threats. And so and you've named Russia, China and North Korea as being in particular places, you know, those kinds of places 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 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 MIS6 and New Zealand's SIS, also known as The Service. 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? Is that and what I'm about that? Yeah. And in the USIS 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. They're allowed to, there's a bit of provisions about concealing their activity. Basically, it seems they got hold of Gerald Hensley who had oversight of the operation in Tuntum. That's right. It looks like they turned our main source and then ran him back at us. We asked him about this story three times and each time the answer was different. So when you say that you have a dim recollection that there was an operation involving the Czechoslovak and the embassy, do you recall it being a successful operation? No, you're pressing me on this one, going harder than I can go. I really see all I can on this one. John, I have to go to you. We should turn off the recording devices. Yeah, and then we can. Yeah, okay. I'm really worried I want to ask you, of course, I haven't talked to the service about this for years and years. So we turned off the tape and had a quick check off the record and then turned the tape back on. 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 Wainstown. And did they get the books? That I know recollection of. No recollection of at all? No. And at all. Six months later, having had plenty of time to communicate with the service, he told that story quite differently. Yes, it's a long time ago, but I do have fairly clear recollection that it failed that we didn't get a hand on the books. I mean, come on, don't keep 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. 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. Which is ironic, right? Because we hear a lot from the intelligence agencies about the dangers of misinformation and disinformation. But if you write about this, they do it when it suits them. I guess the purpose of intelligence agencies is they do act covertly. 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. I mean, they're required to do an annual three-tossesment, published annual three-tossesment, which they do and that is public. But there's always going to be, because 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 20 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. So we're back here again, trying to square the circle. We need intelligence agencies to defend our democracy. 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. I'm a long way away from intelligence work nowadays, but I do understand first principles. 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 face of the people in a modern society, it's very dangerous, and intelligent services, you've got to have them. He says, as times have changed, there's been something of a shift in public expectation. In the past, in my time, people were saying, "What is the ESI 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? We can accept that there's always going to be tension around what the intelligence services can and can't tell us. But it is frustration. We do know that those ties between SIS and CIA remain tight. We know that NZIS has certainly historically had a close relationship with CIA. We're talking here with Susan Miller, the former high-ranking CIA officer. Did you have any experience of working with the NZIS? Oh, absolutely. I came down there. I even met your. It was a female prime minister. I met. Oh, it might have been Jacinda Redun. Was it Jacinda Redun? Yeah, that's who it was. Okay, well, also recently. When I was. I was talking about China. I 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. She's lovely. 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 strength in our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government." Now, you have to say, it's quite interesting that Susan Miller, the person who heads up that new CIA Mission Center, targeting our largest trading partner, gets face time with the New Zealand Prime Minister. And of course, that connection is one that comes through intelligence alliance. When New Zealand does seem to be adding value. And your team there, it's a very small group that works in your intelligence service. They are right. I mean, these guys are super smart. I feel like I was talking to somebody who had 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. Yeah, well, again, it is slightly frustrating how little we really know about this. And it's worth mentioning that when we put together Readline, our podcast series trying to grapple with Chinese influence here in New Zealand, we approach the service on background. And then we're now to try to interview other people, but they turned around and told their entire New Zealand intelligence community not to talk to us. You're not better about that, are you John? Well, listen, the guy from the New York Times seems to know more about our intelligence agencies than we do. Here's Tim Winer again. The key way intelligence service punches far above its way. It is particularly adept again to Chinese target as accessing these ten system capability, the Chinese military, Chinese service. 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, eat, dropping, 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. 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 its rivalry with China. And New Zealand has something to offer. The CIA is only about 22,000 people strong. If you wouldn't have those people, our head will be spying over the cities. You know, we're Americans, we don't have the languages or the country knowledge to spy on the entire world. So these liaison, the Five Eyes system, all of a chief among them, are essential to the CIA, indeed to the national security of the United States. That doesn't mean the road ahead will be straightforward. So I don't know where this is going to go with regard to Five Eyes. This is Susan Miller again. She says, "Even if we can't trust President Trump on Russia, and even though she too is evidently skeptical of those political appointees at the top of the intelligence and defense agencies who are very much Donald Trump's people, our people should keep in touch, keep up the dialogue and keep working together." 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. 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." 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, you know, not necessarily going to go to him. But, you know, the thing is, is that when your leaders are 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, as an American, that makes me sad. We should remember that even at the height of the rail between the US and New Zealand over new k-ships in the mid-1980s, intelligence was shed and cooperation continued. By early 1986, Kip Bennett's had finished his time with CIA, but was still with VSOE's. He was based in Wellington. I was then the head of the research and analysis part of the Soviet Union. By then, I was completely disillusioned. I wanted to get out and hate everybody. But one of the things I was on, a joint defence committee, and we would look at what Soviet maritime stuff was, you know, where ships and submarines and all that sort of stuff were, whether they were in our vicinity, we were working on intel from the Brits and the Americans in Australia and the stuff that our rinds would be doing. Because Soviet subs did come to us. They did come to us. They did come to us. They did come to us. Yeah, they did come to us. Never mind the submarines. A little after 5.30pm on February 16, 1986, the Soviet cruise liner, Mikhail Lurmentov, hit a rock in the Malbra sounds. Apparently, the pilot had taken it too close to the shore because he wanted to give the passengers on board a bit of view. By 10.30pm that night, the ship had sunk. The Soviet crew member died. It's been it, and the SIEs still had tight links with the CIA. We had this emergency meeting the next morning. And we've got, the Americans have got onto us and I've sent to this meeting and I had this, I was allowed to demand things. 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 flag ship. And obviously the Americans were keen to get a hold of that if they could." Well, the Lurmentov 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. 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 her captains that only have been a big time because they had to fly them low level because they were going to go down, they couldn't fly them high. 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 came down between three and five hundred feet all the way down to Malbra and I bet they didn't go out to see how they spent their time over the land flying the naval team down there. But as the divers arrived in Wellington, so did the survivors from the Lurmentov. Then we found out from television because they provided the best intel when they had the photograph taken by the press of the guys coming off the ship. There was the KGB resident with the ship's commissar. The ship's commissar was a political appointing who oversaw crew discipline and security on all Soviet vessels. If he had to abandon ship before you get to the safe, the papers might still be down there, but that wasn't what happened. The ship's commissar had his briefcase and we knew that that's what he had got. The American said he won't lead the ship without it, but you never know, we should be ready to dive on there just in case he didn't. I guess the point here is that just because we can't see something doesn't mean it is an important. I see what you did there, very clever. Like we all need to pay attention to what's happening beneath the surface. That's right, the world of espionage, the world in us of mirrors, it does invite a meter four. 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. And we are now in a period of geopolitical turmoil, potentially even upheaval. As a nation, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions about who our friends really are and about how we work with them. Is this the bit where you lecture me about the difference between spycraft and steak craft? You never would I do that. I have heard Russian state craft under Vladimir Putin described as an extension of KGB trade craft. But I said, it's also this situation with Trump. I mean, we can't just ignore what's going on, it's given what we know. 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. 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, we're being aligned with America is just a no-brainer because of those massive US resources. And look, that might be understandable. 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. 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 may must be wondering, how much worse would it have to get with President Trump? Before something breaks? 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 in his time with the CIA, Kiwi at the heart of American intelligence operations, it took place four decades ago or so now. This, every chance something similar is still going on today. Remember what Andrew Little told us in the first episode. there are exchanges I suppose for one to a better word. We approach the Israelis about this. They use different language, but essentially they confirm that yes, a "small number of staff" are posted offshore in liaison roles. 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 undermines just how useful it's been to hear this story about the specifics of that relationship. Anyway, just to wrap up, Kip Bennett's did end up finding his way out of the wilderness of Mirrors. He never became an actual fighter pilot. No, but he still has to photos that made him very much look like one to the GRU at least. He also 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 wider Rapa. They've had adventures all over the place, lived in Papua New Guinea for more than a decade where he worked with an airline. Yeah, 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. Kip Bennett's now lectures at universities in Australia and China in aviation and business. He'll be what? 75th this year. And it's spite of the sense that it didn't end the way he would have liked. And he regrets the damage to the relationship around him. Kip Bennett says he wouldn't change his time with CIA. I mean, I can see it in your eyes and you loved that talk. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was wonderful. You know, I really got to that. That's the sharp end. Yeah, everyone thinks that it's James Bond and Fast Cars and that sort of thing. But really doing what I was doing, doing recruitment in place, you know, or attempting recruitment in place, that's the glamour end of human definitely years. And there I was, kid from Amsterdam doing this. And as I say, the vocational guidance officer has never mentioned that opportunity to me. So, yeah, and I loved it. I regret not a moment of it. The agency was produced, written and hosted by John Daniel and me Guy and Esponum. Our executive producer for R&Z was John Hardveld and our executive producer for Bird of Paradise Productions is no Al MacArthur. Original music by Anthony Tonan, graphic design by Oliver Wall. For R&Z, sound production and final mix was by Mark Chesterman. Production coordinator was Brianna Eurotich Greak. Thanks to Steve Burridge, Ellie Marston, Jeremy Ensel and William Saunders. Thanks to Megan Willen and thanks also to Susan Belvacci. The visual director at R&Z was Cole Easton Farreley and our camera operator was Jess Chilton. Thanks also to Sarah Guy Tarnos for the article about Bill Sutch that appears on R&Z.co.nz. Thanks also to CNN, TVNZ, BBC, ABC, Universal and Paramount. To read more about the documents and articles we've mentioned, you can go to R&Z.co.nz/theagency. And you can see the links in the show notes.