Kit Bennett

I developed a cover where I was selling New Zealand products that were desirable in a very cold country.

And so I developed a relationship with a manufacturer and I started selling sheepskin coats.

And so that was my lead in to a number of places in hot countries where I would go in carrying suitcases of sheepskin coats and New Zealand products like that.

And I was selling them directly to Soviets on station and other places.

And that, of course, gave me the chance I needed, just a little finger hole so that I could make friends with people there.

The Soviet says, well, other people in our missions would be interested in that.

So I then look at places that have got a big Soviet missions that my chief of station is then able to advise.

Why don't you suggest that you've got some business in this country or that country?

And then I'd say, well, actually, I'm going to country X. I've got a business trip.

I'm doing some work up there in office furniture or whatever.

And off I'd go.

Oh, well, you know, you should give them a call.

So I would then give them a call and use that introduction, and that way I would get to provide them with something.

Are you interested in having a sheepskin coat or, you know, whatever?

And that's how it developed.

So I developed the relationships that way.

As far as I understand it, the service doesn't really deploy.

No, it's not in our remit, but essentially having gone from working on a joint operation, it was definitely a joint operation, but primarily I then became their guy and I was working overseas.

What I was working for was Americans, not New Zealand.

And it was New Zealand's interest in a broad sense, in the Five Eyes sense.