Category: Military
Hit and Run, The New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan and the meaning of honour
NZ Herald: US warship visit to New Zealand
Visit would show America, not NZ, has changed stance, writes Nicky Hager
Book review: Friendly Fire, nuclear politics & the collapse of ANZUS, 1984-1987, Gerald Hensley
Gerald Hensley is an intelligent man, a good researcher and a pleasing and witty writer. Friendly Fire is his third book, about New Zealand’s mid-1980s nuclear politics. But unlike his earlier books, he has written about a subject where he is more bitter than witty.
US spy agencies eavesdrop on Kiwi, Sunday Star-Times
The New Zealand military received help from US spy agencies to monitor the phone calls of Kiwi journalist Jon Stephenson and his associates while he was in Afghanistan reporting on the war.
Bruce Jesson Lecture, Maidment Theatre, Auckland
The second part of the lecture will be about investigative journalism. But before that, I want to use the opportunity of this lecture to talk much more widely, sharing some thoughts about the state of politics in New Zealand today.
“Principled small nation or stalwart ally? New Zealand’s independent foreign policy”, 2019 chapter by Nicky Hager
Other People’s Wars
The ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan and beyond has been the longest foreign war in New Zealand history, yet most New Zealanders know almost nothing about their country’s part in it. For ten years, nearly everything controversial or potentially unpopular was kept secret, and obscured by a steady flow of military public relations stories.
Based on thousands of leaked New Zealand military and intelligence documents, extensive interviews with military and intelligence officers and eye-witness accounts from the soldiers on the ground, Nicky Hager tells the story of these years. New Zealand was far more involved than the public realised in this crucial period of world history, He tells how the military and bureaucracy used the war on terror to pursue private agendas, even when this meant misleading and ignoring the decisions of the elected government.
“Nicky Hager has more knowledge and understanding of the American intelligence world in Afghanistan — both its good and its very bad points — than any reporter I know.” – Seymour Hersh, 2013
Wikileaks: Leaked US cables spill the beans on NZ ties
NEW ZEALAND’S collaboration with United States intelligence agencies was “fully restored” in August 2009 but both governments decided to keep the decision secret.
Wikileaks: the first cables released in New Zealand
These are the first US embassy cables released in New Zealand, in full except for one name being redacted.