Kit Bennett

There was an issue with me out interviewing people because I had no credibility. They looked like they were being interviewed by a schoolboy because I had a fickle face and I was just a kid.

And that was just a two-car surveillance. And they get lucky. We got this clandestine meeting at the Koori bowling club. So anyway, we housed him, which is the standard thing. After the meeting, you don't worry about where the Russian goes. You've got to find out who that guy is. We followed him to his home in Brooklyn, up some of the windiest streets at the back of Arrow Street there that you've ever been up. Housed him at this house. Still didn't know who he was. And then we'd house him to this location. So when we got to work first thing in the morning, who lives at that house?

and apparently handing over state secrets to the Soviets. But I remember the brigadier came back and said, and he'd said this to me personally, that the Prime Minister was, he didn't use the term gutted, not a term he would have used, but he said he was horrified and desperately disappointed. He was really upset. So the SIS won surveillance for months. So we ultimately saw four clandestine meetings and I was lucky enough to see all of them.

But bungle it when they go to snatch him because the heavy surveillance team lose him at the crucial moment just as they want to pounce. And the last one up on Aro Street that everybody knows about in the pouring rain and I stuffed that one up because he got in a taxi and took about a two minute ride when we were at him walking up the street.

We never wanted a trial. It's the last thing you want. What we wanted was such to cooperate, tell us about his time doing it, which later transpired was from the early 1950s, from about two years before I was born he was there. And we just wanted to know.

what he'd been doing, who he'd been talking to, there wouldn't have been any prosecution. And there's precedent for this in the United States and in the UK. You know, they allowed people to get on with their lives so long as they told all, put their hands up to it, and it was never in the interests of any intelligence service to prosecute them.

But as the case goes to trial, public opinion is split and largely along party lines. The country was, oh, he's as guilty as hell. And I was saying, no, it's been, you know, the thought police have stitched him up. So it was this, you know, you know, splitting the ways. And Labour were, I think that was tricky for them.

Now, this is conjecture from Kit Bennett's. We have no evidence of this. He's extrapolating. They would be asking him to, you know, perhaps you can move things this way. What is the current view of the Prime Minister? What do they think about that? All of those sorts of things were what he was doing. And of course, he had those pen portraits where he was basically replacing himself, you know, who was going to take over from him. But this part of the story, the pen portraits, is not conjecture. And they were pretty nasty sort of

But New Zealand being what it is, that cover wasn't going to last for long. I was Mr S, but having come from the little town of Masterton, as I walked into the magistrate's court, and I look along the press benches, and sitting there is Les Lang, and Les Lang was a journo here at the time's age. Close friend of my father's, went down at the soldiers' club, known me since I was a boy, you know. This is a tiny place. Anyway, about a month afterwards,

I was up here with my parents and Dan and I went down for a beer at Soldiers Club and Les was there. And I said, hey Les, and he said, oh you had an interesting time kid. I said, yes I have. I said...

You didn't bottle on me, did you? And he said, no, I didn't need to. He said, you hadn't even started giving evidence and your name, your full name came across, came all the way along the press bench. His name is eventually broadcast on the radio and then widely disseminated. And what I was really worried about was that I was never going to be able to work again, let alone ever go and work in clandestine operations for the Americans.

We had this little program going and I'd just say at the beginning, you know, people saying, well, why would...

the NZSISB working with CA, well, we're a member of Five Eyes and, you know, when you see these international pacts and agreements, what we see on television always is the conference where all the people sit around a big round table and they get funny jackets and they have all the flags there and people imagine that this is what these alliances and things are and that's not what they are at all, of course. Things happen below that and that's where I was, well down the list, but

ko-oporation between countries. And so the reason why the agency could use us was because of the way I spoke. I didn't have an American accent. And why would anyone be concerned about a New Zealander?

We're, in that regard, politically very beige. Yes, definitely members of Five Eyes, definitely a part of the Western Alliance, no doubt about that. But, you know, bottom of the world, couple of islands, pretty harmless really. So if you're surprised to hear that a New Zealander was working for CIA, chances are the Soviets would be too. So in other words, they wouldn't necessarily, the KGB wouldn't necessarily see us coming.

Whereas someone who's had a university education at one of the Ivy League universities and speaks with a Boston accent, you know, this guy's from the agency. So that's where Australians and New Zealanders were particularly useful to them. By 1979, Kit Bennett had been working for the SIS for nearly a decade and throughout that time had been in counter-espionage.

working against the Soviets and the East Europeans. And I was asked if I would be interested in being on the project, on this project. And I had to think about that for about two and a half seconds and said, yes, I would. So then there was an interview program with the American Cheetah Station and we went to lunch at the Wellesley Club and

They would have been attached to the embassy? Yes. Yeah. In all American embassies, everywhere, there is a CIA presence. And that would be true today, wouldn't it? Absolutely. Oh, I can't imagine. Yeah, it would definitely be true today. I would certainly hope so. And so the chief of station, the KGB call it the KGB resident, but they are normally clandestine and there'll be people in the embassy that are working for the KGB or the GAU and undeclared. But...

In a country like New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, the agency people there would be identified and known to the local intelligence service, mainly doing liaison work. That's what they were doing.

So he has this lunch meeting with the CIA chief of station here at the Wellesley Club in central Wellington, just a stone's throw from the beehive. It's the start of an interview process that is obviously successful. Then when I got the job, that was good, and I worked for that chief of station for, so it was a two-year programme, and mine went for six and a half years. So I went off to the United States and trained, which was really fantastic.