Quiet Americans

(speaking in foreign language)

“Just a heads up listeners, this episode contains”

some adult language. - Previously on the agency. - We had this little program going, and I'd just say at the beginning, you know, people saying, "Why would the NDSA just be working with CIA?"

Well, we'll remember a five eyes, 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 it

in New Zealander? We're in that regard politically very beige.

- There's always gonna be those in the community

who are, if not skipped, cool, at least, suspicious about state power, and whether expressed through the police or intelligence agencies. And some of that is right to have skipped a couple of horses

in the community about that. - Now, I did go to Langley quite often, and it was just a matter of jumping out of my apartment and driving down onto the door-twashington Parkway, and heading up to the sign that it's CIA next exit.

“- What was the culture of the CIA like at their time?”

I mean, you know, if you look back through history, they've been pretty aggressive, pretty belligerent, you know? - Oh, yes, it's all from coup, you know. It's just, and yet knocking off variously as around the world, and quite sort of militaristic,

at least from the popular culture leaves, no, how much of that was real, and what, well, how would you discard the culture of CIA?

- First of all, it's a huge organization,

and, you know, this little foot soldier's knowledge if it is pretty limited. But I would, in the director of Operation. - This is kept in it who worked for New Zealand's SIES before he was seconded to the central intelligence agency

as an exchange officer at the end of the 1970s. And I worked in the E.A. Division, the East Asia Division, and the sharp end was the SC Division Soviet East European Division. So I was working in the East Asia Division based on my location,

but what I was doing was working against the Soviet target. But that was true.

“People in the African Division were working against the Soviet target.”

So I dealt with those people, and they were really great. They were highly intelligent, well-educated, men and women in the 1970s. You know, some of the women were, you know, very senior and very able intelligence officers really, really good.

I was always treated with respect,

and, and I really liked, all the people, pretty much all the people I dealt with, I really liked. - Kit Bennett's began training with CIA, while he was in Washington. He was based off-site, but he occasionally had to go to HQ.

And so I'd drive down onto the George Washington Parkway and head out to the agency. There's a big sign on the things like CIA. This way, you know, so I'd head there, and of course, like all, like big factories and everything in the United States

is building, and then there's about, you know, by the heck there's a car parks, you know, and all the car, and they have a little band that went around picking people up and the morning to take them into especially in the winter.

But there was a car park right in front of the headquarters that had, you know, with the director and the, the DDR and all the senior people park, and that's where I park. Because of the guard on there that everybody called the sardge,

had been a Marine, and he was a retired guy, and he looked after the car park, and guess where he'd been in World War II? - Pike Ock. - At the height of the Second World War,

so you're talking, 9.42 to 9.44. Soldiers from the US Marine Corps were stationed at Pike Ockereki on the company coast, just north of Wellington. At one stage, there were more than 20,000 American Marines

in the region. Initially, they were there to train for war in the Pacific, but then some of them came back to recuperate. - And so he had the soft spot for New Zealand, and I was the Kiwi, hey Kiwi, park where you're like,

you know, so I used to park where I like, and he was a lovely guy, and he talked to me about being here in the war and things like that. - Up until the Second World War, Britain had been New Zealand's foremost ally,

but British power in the Pacific dropped away after the fall of Singapore in 1942, while American military might came into the region to push back the Japanese imperial army. - And New Zealand would tie itself increasingly closely

to the US in the years after the war. And I remember, yeah, some of the guys say, how come you get to park there? And I said, now you're got to know people. - And those ties with the people we know

continue to shape the way New Zealand keeps itself safe. From bird-of-powered ice productions and RNZ, this is the agency on Gainyspanner. - And I'm John Daniel. This is episode two, quiet Americans.

(dramatic music)

It does, with the rarest exceptions,

“what the president tells us to do, which he's outfit.”

- This is Tim Wynam. He's a former national security reporter for the New York Times. And he's one of the best known historians of the CIA. In fact, he covered it for more than four decades.

He's written multiple books about CIA and he's one of Pulitzer Prize. - The CIA has been used for political warfare, COVID operations, paramilitary operations.

It's kind of a third option between diplomacy

and sending in the Marines. And it has been that way. Just shortly after its creation. - So the CIA sits somewhere between the state department, the American version of our M-Fatil Ministry of Foreign Affairs

and tried, and a flat out war deployment. I mean, it's a pretty large field of action, covering everything from aggressively befriending influential foreigners to assassinate them and all the other options in between, I guess,

propaganda, covert operations, overthrow of states. - The CIA is born out of World War II where its predecessor, the OECS or Office of Strategic Services, was set up and run largely along the models

“of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service”

and SOE, the Special Operations Executive, the wartime unit for espionage, reconnaissance, and sabotage. - Now, when the CIA was created back in 1990, in 1947, emission was espionage, wasn't the fight the Cold War. That came later, but not much later, the following year,

when the people who were at the state department, boldly CIA, fight fire with fire against the Soviet Union. The Soviets were marching west using half of Europe

and war was not an option, 'cause a third war war

would not come to anybody wanted. - So you can see the attraction, I mean, the world has just suffered through what, six years of industrial level slaughter, culminating, of course, in the use of the atomic bomb,

millions of people have died. Now, I want to go back to that, but at the same time, the liberal democracies don't want to just lie down and get ease not by the Soviet Union.

“- In America, whose isolationist tendencies”

mean they were arguably two years late arriving to World War II, but who were ultimately the driving force behind the Allied victory, both economically and militarily.

The US are now viewed as the leaders of the free world.

But when it came to setting up a foreign intelligence agency, then we're gonna be some pretty serious misfires. CIA had massive resources, but they were new to the game, and their judgment, or sometimes they hit. - So the CIA then embark on a barrage

of paramilitary operations, which it was unqualified to do. It recruited hundreds upon hundreds of foreigners all over Eastern Europe, and then after the Korean war started all over Asia, and trained them up to parachute behind enemy lines,

you can ducked espionage and sabotage. Well, these were suicide missions. Because the other side, the Russians and the North Koreans had completely penetrated the CIA's operation. Now, we'll come back to this idea of CIA being penetrated,

because it is going to be a bit of a theme. - The CIA then turned to a different kind of political war care operation, and in the name of anti-communism, organized coups against the democratic electorate leaders

of Iran and Guatemala in 1953 and 1954. And these were seen as, by the president of the time, White House and Howard has faintly miraculously when, in reality, they were very close to our base. - It's worth noting that they're also dangerously close

to commercial interests, firstly with the oil of Iran, being with the bananas of Guatemala and the United Fruit Company. - But again, you can see the attraction, the idea that a relatively small number of people

can find whatever leverage they need to take power in a country and bring in the right kind of government. Although it doesn't bite over reach. - And the idea that the CIA could change the course history was all the rage until the big big separation

over throw Castro in Cuba in 1961, which was a disaster. I mean, get bad begs as synonymous with disaster. - If this is one of the biggest stains on CIA, and they have been a few, around the same time,

they're even reaching out to the mafia for help to assassinate Fidel Castro, the socialist strong man of Cuba. And the Bay of Pigs turns into an absolute fiasco for CIA, and incredibly embarrassing moment for the U.S.

and I deny them the categorically.

“- This is Edite Stephenson, the American Ambassador”

to the United Nations, trying to face down accusations from Cuba that they are behind this board of attack on this tiny nation just off the coast of Florida. - The United States has committed no aggression against Cuba, and more offensive has been launched

from Florida or from any other part of the United States. - This is technically correct in that what the CIA has done is armed and trained about 1,500 Cuban exiles and get them to attack as proxies.

Then they're basically carried out the sea landing

on the Cuban coast if the inauspiciously named Bo Pigs. But the whole thing unravels very quickly, almost all the exiles army is killed or captured, including some U.S. citizens, and American fingerprints are all over it.

President John F. Kennedy is publicly humiliated. - He does an old thing that the victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan. - This is President Kennedy at a press conference, where he accepts responsibility for the boxed operation.

Although, he takes it responsibly and around about why is President. So it's kind of a carefully crafted, backstops with me lying. It's like, he's trying to say,

I'm just a good guy in a bad situation.

“Rather than the person who signed off on the whole operation,”

which is what he did do, albeit reluctantly.

- I'm not to conceal responsibility because I'm the responsible officer of the government. - Yeah, he certainly doesn't want to say too much. - I've said that as much as I feel can be usually said, by me, in regard

to the events of the past two days. In reality, Kennedy is furious with the CIA. It takes a long hard look at them. And the top two men at the agency are quietly pushed aside. Kennedy tries to steer it away

from these kinds of war-like operations and back to the core business of espionage. - Kennedy even dies just a couple of years later. - Well, dies, he's assassinated. - Yes, he's assassinated.

Not by CIA for the avoidance of doubt. There are various theories that he walls,

at least some of which were here,

to have been planted by the KGB. We won't get into it here.

“Because the Vietnam War already smoldering away”

for some years becomes a massive firestorm by the mid-1960s. Arguably, as a direct result of Kennedy not wanting to appear soft on communism after what happened in Cuba.

And the CIA's ability to get hold of intelligence and drive high-impact operations makes them useful to President's in time of conflict. - But then, they was more overraging. The Vietnam War was of course the source

of great political upheaval in the United States and President Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, between 1967 and 1973, ordered the CIA to spy on Americans in violation of its charter.

Guy has no push powers in his country. - You want to spy on Americans call them the FBI and can judge his warrant to kill it. And when the American press-- - There did this out at the end of 1974.

- Yes, there was a similar verse, really, was it? At that point, who wrote the seminal piece here? - It led to long and deep hearings and investigations in the United States Senate. - This is the church in the middle of the school.

- That's correct. - Subject today, concerns the CIA's involvement and the development of bacteriological warfare materials, with the Army's biological laboratory at Fort Dietrich. - Cimalhurst was the New York Times journalist

who's front page scoop on Operation Chaos, with the CIA collected information on the political activities of Americans, lead to a massive wreaking. - Have you brought with you some of those devices

which would have enabled the CIA to use the foil for killing people? - This is American Senate at Frank Church who heated out that committee in vista getting the intelligence agency.

- Yeah, and this is extraordinary piece of footage, where he actually gets CIA officials to bring up this dark gun. (audience laughing) - And there's this really striking of I shouldn't laugh

'cause it's serious stuff, but he's holding up this dark gun and hearing about the different ways it's used to assassinate people. So does this, does this to so fire the dark?

- Yes, it does, Chairman. The round thing at the top is obviously the site. The rest of it is what it is. - But really the church committee is more about understanding what they actually do in a broader sense.

There's a series of revelations about operations carried out by CIA and the FBI and the NSA,

including some of the senators on the church committee

didn't even know existed at the time. From MK Ultra, where they're trying mine control through dragging, often unwitting subjects, family jolt, this program for the covert assassination of foreign leaders and mockingbird,

with journalists and news organizations operated for an on behalf of the agency. - So extraordinary stuff, and the context here, it all comes off the back of Watergate just a year or two earlier in the Vietnam War,

both of which had led to the serious erosion of American trust and government and both of which had links to the CIA. - Yeah, how would hunt who organizes the Watergate break and that is now synonymous with dumb political scandal

was also in charge of the brigade of Cuban exile to the Bay of Pigs, although by the time of Watergate in 1972, he had left CIA, so he was just freelancing. Three of the other four Watergate burglars

also had previous ties to CIA, but we're no longer with the agency.

- Ultimately, the impact of this church committee

is about trying to bring me intelligent agencies back to heal really and bring them under wider government oversight after years of exceptionalism, where the need for secrecy meant they got away with some pretty seriously dodgy stuff.

- At the outset of those hearings, Senator Frank Church, who was running the investigation, wondered aloud whether the CIA were not concluding him a rogue elephant, trampling people's donations,

but at the end of the investigation, he concluded correctly that when the elephant trampled people's relations, it wasn't the elephant's fault. It was the fault of the Mahukht, the elephant driver, and the elephant driver was the president of the United States.

(gentle music) - The 70s, obviously, you'd have Vietnam and there'd been a lot of controversy about CIA involvement of Vietnam, and it's just stuff. And there'd been a--

- Yeah, I mean CIA, they are three leaders that seemed a lot of fear. - Oh, yeah.

“- I think, so how did you finalize that?”

- Well, I was told, and I had no reason not to believe it. They said, you know, by the time I was there, there was no one left in the agency who'd been at Bay of Peaks, no one left. - This is kept in it's again, the New Zealander,

who began working for CIA in 1979. - It had been tipped upside down and turned around, and John Kennedy said something, like I don't remember the exact quote, but it was, you know, your failures will be heralded,

your triumphs will be completely ignored or not known about, and that's absolutely true. So we know all the bad things they did, and they definitely did some silly things. They were a pretty gung-ho up to the sixties,

but by the seventies, when I started there, Jimmy Carter was in White House. - Tim Winner, from the New York Times, agrees that the change in President makes a difference. - So when Carter takes over,

“we see somewhat of a softening of the CIA, don't we?”

- Well, again, it carries out the foreign policy of the United States and Carter's foreign policy. - Well, she went right, and his particular target was the Soviet Union. Jimmy Carter wanted to overthrow the Soviet Union,

but he wanted to do it with political warfare, and he got the CIA, smuggling books, and literature into the Soviet Union. The CIA became quite a dead, getting like his literature. - Line the iron curtain, it's greatest triumph of this,

was secret support for the solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, where it enabled solidarity not just to get books and magazines out through an underground press. It literally smuggling printing presses piece by piece into Poland, but also to set up

clandestine radio and television broadcast. - Now, this is pretty interesting,

and Tim Winner is highly critical of CIA.

The botched operations, the snaffos, the overreach. - The private wars, the outsize personalities. - Exactly, but he does give them a lot of credit in the space for working quietly and subtly towards winning the Cold War by patiently pushing democracy

into the bloodstream of the Soviet Union. - And the upside of this was that solidarity won the first free election in Poland. - At the end of the 1980s, and that was the beginning at the end of the Soviet Empire.

- But top-down changes in culture were not unanimously welcomed in the CIA at the end of the 1970s. - The director was a man named Admiral Stanfield Turner, and which were what they had trained as you'd,

“who would you like to meet with back to get Bennett's again?”

- But I said, "I wouldn't mind meeting the director."

"he's an asshole." Like to, "Oh, okay." But he wasn't popular. Stanfield Turner, wary of the CIA's entanglement through running human or human intelligence operations,

and impressed by the technical opportunities offered by the new technologies from satellite surveillance and the U2 spy plane. - If a U2 was developed for CIA in the 1950s, but even today it's in use.

It's a relic of a cold war, but still around, despite being quite long in the tooth now. But like the band. - It did, I did set that up for you. - Thank you.

So anyway, Stanfield Turner sees these incredible pieces of surveillance hardware as good ways of collecting intelligence, whereas the spies like to think that tick is useful, but you can't just rely on that, but like drones today,

but even though the culture has changed and the agency has had its wings clipped, kit Bennett sees the CIA that he went into in 1979, still had plenty of appetite for getting things down. - They still had that American attitude.

You know, that thing that we used to love about the Americans, you know, the Sun will come up tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar, the Sun will shine. We can do this, see that guy there, we'll get him. You know, that was their kind of attitude.

I found them very upbeat, but I kind of found it refreshing. - Was there a sense that, you know, that these Western English speaking countries were working together or did that not really form part of it to the CIA,

“I think that they were the ones leading.”

- Oh, I think they were different. They thought they were the ones leading, but they did have a respect for, yeah, that we were the good guys. And we, you know, Churchill said, you know,

what, two countries separated by a common language. I mean, we were, you know, we were all English speaking in that sort of thing. But I think, you know, the Germans and the French,

the Americans have always had an interesting conversation,

interesting relationship with the French. So they were all part of it too. - We all like to think we're the good guys, but the central grouping, the one that has stood the test of time,

is the five eyes Alliance. The grew out of the collaboration on signals intelligence and code breaking between the U.S. and the UK during the Second World War. There was expanded to bring in Canada, Australia,

and New Zealand by the mid-1950s, so it's held now for 70 years. But they can the 1970s, capabilities, it was called something different. - Hello, clearly, we call it the big five,

but yeah, I don't, you know, five eyes are much better now. - Yeah, because then it's what you see on the document, right?

“- Yeah, that's what that really means, isn't it?”

- Yes. - Who's eyes can see this? - Yes, that's right. - Yeah. - And it really was good.

The barriers were down a lot.

Not, there's always barriers.

You know, things that have on them, in the day, oh, you know, New Zealand, Australia, and Eyes Only, you know, U.S. Eyes Only, those sorts of things, that you don't share everything, but a fair bit of what we were doing, we shared.

And I definitely felt I was among the good guys. - Okay, there's that phrase again, the good guys. But you can't help but ask the question, are the CIA really the good guys? Because we've seen that they've done some pretty bad things,

and we haven't even got to the officially approved practice of torture post-9 or even. - Yeah, this is a really important question, and I'm not trying to chin stroke it away when I say that, it kind of depends.

Because I really do think it depends on who they're going up against. What the rules of engagement are, and why this is happening at all. - Okay, well, so what are the examples then?

- Each one of these is highly complex, but just to look back on the ones we've touched on with some broad strokes, even the supposedly successful operations where CIA brought about regime change in Iran

and Guatemala in the 1950s were not great outcomes for local. - No, not great, in fact. It's a bit of an understatement. I mean, there's 40 odd years of revolutions, counter-revolutions in Guatemala.

Desquads, all sorts of things, tens of not hundreds of thousands did. - Yeah, they have pegs. You can argue that Castro has imposed himself as a military dictator in Cuba,

but the guy he was replacing was not particularly legitimate, is no moral high ground there. It's just that the Americans have a brain explosion, because suddenly there are communists, 90 miles from Miami.

And of course, in any case, the whole operation was a disaster. - But the big picture is, of course, the Cold War, the fight against the Soviet Union. And this is where even Tim Weiner says, they ended up on the right side of history.

- I think that's true, but it's hold-off on this. In a later episode, we'll get more insights around that from someone who actually came to New Zealand, representing the Soviet Union and then Russia.

- I guess the crucial question for us is

to what extent is New Zealand on the right side of history, by lining up with the US and by extension the CIA? Particularly when they are doing some pretty dirty deeds. - I think we have to keep telling the story to understand the answer to that.

“But I think it is important to ignore it,”

that it is very hard, if not impossible, to be not just the leader of the free world, but also the defender of the free world.

to do it in good taste, with no areas of judgement or overreem.

“- Which isn't to say, though, that you give them a free pass.”

- Absolutely. - The least you can say is that there are some pretty big areas of judgement, and let's not forget, they are self-appointed leaders of the free world.

- Yeah, that's complicated, though, isn't it? As we record this in mid-March of 2026, the American end is really worn on a run is top of mind and could go anywhere. It would be crazy to try to predict an outcome.

But whatever happens, the US has taken a big risk and it could have some very fair reaching effect for the whole world. But prior to that, the liberal democracies, certainly the English-speaking liberal democracies

that make up the five eyes, and very much including us, have been pretty keen to see the US take a leading role in world affairs. - Yeah, just recently, the idea that Donald Trump might let

lead a mere Putin do whatever he likes in Ukraine freaked a lot of people out. - This is it. They might have got a lot wrong, but in an era of massive change,

since the Second World War, the US has underwritten 80 odd years of peace in a rules-based world order. - That's right. It was known as Pax Americana, the American Peace.

- Yeah, although they have always been American wars

during the American peace, Iran is not the first.

“- So the only thing Western having America and charge”

of the world is not having America and charge of the world. - Well, give what you wish for. If they withdraw from that role, the balance of power shifts, and we might not like what happens after that.

But let's keep telling this story, keep being in story, because it really does tell us a lot about what goes on behind the scenes. - So where will he,

he's gone off to the US to start his training, right? - Well, the irony is that as he points out, even if he hasn't had all the bells and whistles of CIA training, before that, in his early 20s, and even before Bill Sachs was caught,

he'd spent a lot of time learning by experience. When he was trying to follow the KGB resident in Wellington, this is the guy who was here in the late 60s and early 1970s. - This man, Yuri's vision, was really good. He was really good, and I learned my trade from him,

by being caught out by him by just not being able to to surveil him because he was so clever and so good, which made me better and better. And by the time he went, he was replaced by man who wasn't as good. And so I'd been very well trained by the KGB

on how their counters of ours worked, and they made the mistake of doing lots of counters of ours before they had a meeting in a city the size of Wellington. In our hometown, and where we worked really well, and so if we lost them, we could pick them up very quickly

because we'd worked out how to do that.

“- That's how they picked up Bill Sachs in 1974.”

- Yeah, hands-on experience is always useful.

So he's got a bit of a hit stat, but he now finds himself in a slightly different role when he goes to Washington. - So we went off to do training there in 1979, and it was fascinating training.

A lot of it was trade craft training, but with a slightly different edge, 'cause I was now going on the attack. I was basically here, I was a counterintelligence officer, you know, I was trying to catch spies.

Now I was going to go undercover or in-cover, which is more correct to him rather than undercover. So I was working in-cover, under-clared, targeting, so-beating intelligence officers, and East European intelligence officers,

if they were around, but primarily Soviet intelligence officers. And that involved what we call, you know, Belly Debelly Contact, you know, I'd borrowed a range to meet these people under whatever guise, at functions, that sort of thing.

And I was in my element, you know, glass of wine in the hand, talking balls. Yeah. So what sort of training skills do you mean? They did a couple of things.

I mean, I did more trade craft stuff, but some of the trade craft was a reverse of what I did. So, you know, I was reasonably good at surveillance, and understanding the way the Soviets were counter-sabounds. What I had to now become good at was me being the target.

So this training is happening in the streets and and around the American capital, Washington, DC. CIA headquarters in Langley are in the suburbs there. And keep in it just getting ready for this new role, because he needs to look as clean and innocent as possible.

Being a New Zealander is a good start, but if anyone following him sees him doing this counter-sabbalanced, they will immediately be suspicious, because businessmen aren't supposed to do that kind of thing. They'd put a team on me to follow me.

And I had to try and identify the team,

but the most important thing was that I could not give the team

So, my counter-sabounds had to be claimed to stand counter-sabounds. I had to try and identify who was following me without them thinking I was, you know, I had to behave perfectly normally. And that was kind of hard to do.

It's very hard to do, in fact. And you learn how to do all sorts of things like, you know, if you can, yeah, the off the old tricks that everyone talks about, yeah, you look in the, in the windows of a shop and look at people, you know,

and you find yourself looking at a shop with women's underwear and because you're looking at the people behind you, that's a bit obvious that you're doing counter-sabounds.

But what you would try and do is always put people

through pinch points and funnels. So, you know, if you could get them, if you could be at the end of the alley and watch people walking across the alley, you'll, and you see that person twice, you know,

man and redhead, you know, woman and blue dress, you know, that's the thing in your follows away.

“Do I see that person again, you know, that sort of thing?”

(dramatic music) There was also a psychological aspect that's training where I did a raft of tests and things, interviews and, you know, stuff that made miles, brings look like, you know, just incredible,

you know, when did you first start hating your horse? All of that, you know, incredible questions, interviews, that sort of thing. - I mean, it's these interviews to count the best part of a week and the following week.

The psychiatrist came back with the results. - He taught me things about myself that he should not

know and that I didn't tell him, but he knew.

And I don't mean anything bizarre. But, you know, just things about yourself, that are not in the arena, that you see yourself. He was able to tell me about those. And he was able to give me some great guides

as to what I shouldn't shouldn't do. So, for example, he said, "If everybody thinks good judges of character." Do you think you're a good judge of character? I said, "Well, you know, I've been around a bit."

Oh, no. He said, "Well, I'm here to tell you you're not." You're not a good judge of character. And it's a flaw that you've got that you like people. And you can very easily make excuses for conduct and things.

“And you need to be very careful about that.”

- He said, "Do you ever hear the little bells "and you're head going something interesting about that?" And I said, "I guess sometimes." He said, "Listen for those bells." And follow them.

Don't follow your instinct. Follow the bells. That was so helpful.

Has always been helpful in my life.

That, you know, I really like someone, but there's something not right. And that's what I go with. - Do other practical skills as well? - Did you learn how to pick locks?

- Right. Rake locks. I can't pick a lock. I can rake a lock. - Or is it? - Well, picking a lock is when, you know,

to have a little pins. And you go along and you have a little tension bar. And you hit the split point on the little pins and do each one at a time. And you just, it's very painstaking.

And you gotta be very good at it. But if you know how to rake, you have that tension bar and you get, you just get the pins jumping. And if you just keep doing it,

and keep doing it gently enough, they'll all align at some stage and you'll be able to roll it. So, you know, you yell locks and pad locks and things here.

I can do those. - Do you think it's took another course?

“One, it would help him in his cover role as a businessman?”

- One of the most interesting, but subtracting I did was I did a sales course. And they said there's two reasons for this. It helps you get into the commercial way of thinking. But far more importantly,

it teaches you about dealing with people. In the people at deal with people best, people at sell. And you know, you know, learning, you know, people buy from people they like, you know, it's absolutely true.

People drive past shops and go out of the way to go somewhere else because they don't like a person or they go to somewhere because they do like a person. - So this goes back to something that keeps coming up in the espionage world.

- How do you trust and how much do you trust them? - And is there story credible? - And perhaps also, what's in it for me? - I remember in this course, they stressed a lot about how you solved

and you sell by selling benefits. You know, you don't tell someone that's really great. You're telling someone, this is really great for you. This is just what you need. And that's what the salesman do.

And that's what I had to do. I had to convince Soviets to listen, what you were to do is come and work for us because we're the good guys. And if you stuff up, you'll get shot in the back of the head.

But, you know, there's a lot of benefits in coming and working for us. (upbeat music) - There's a photo of developments. You'll see it on the website.

Jan, the star show wearing dark glass was with a greenstone necklace. Taking some time around 1989 in the early months of his engagement with CIA. And that's in the pacific on trying to think

where it was could have been you, Mia. I did some of my early work was in the pacific.

the America's be jumping over themselves,

“but no one really cared much about the pacific in those days.”

I had a good friend who was a foreign minister in (beep) with bleeped that out. That could have been it's request. He wanted us to hide the name of the country

because it would identify his target personally. - It's a pacific nation. - We were ready to use him before we needed to, but no one was kind of interested. - And then we moved to Asia.

- But I should start a working in the pacific, which was kind of quite good. - Where were you targeting these people and how did you determine who to target?

- Well, that, you kind of first of all,

get to meet the one you can meet. So like if you're in a commercial cover, you're gonna be meeting the trade people perhaps. And you try and piggyback off them to the people you want,

because it's very useful to have a recruitment of someone who was a genuine diplomat, but what you really wanted to recruit was an intelligence officer

“because then you get to know what they're doing.”

So I set up as a marketing consultant and found out what a marketing consultant might be. And I set up a little office in Wellington and a pie rise and the car and the car back. And then I met a offices and sort of,

I'd be changing from an intelligence officer to a businessman theoretically. And you managed to get yourself invited into these sort of diplomatic situations. - Yes, or whatever.

And how does that work?

- I used a couple of organizations.

I joined a couple of organizations and that gave me an end. And all I needed to do, I got invited to a couple of diplomatic functions and that's all I needed. I just needed a toe hold.

And then I put myself out there. - Now this is clearly painstaking work. There are no guns, no fast outcomes that can be forced by gadgets or hand-hand combat or anything like that. Just a lot of quiet, graft really getting close to people,

gaining their trust. And I really like doing it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the company of these people. They were intelligent people.

They were interesting people. And all I had to do was in an odd way,

“I kind of did passive recruitment of them too.”

We became friends. We saw each other, went to functions, had lunch. Dad invited me to a function. And then I could latch onto a target. And that's what I did.

So it takes time. - Yeah, so those diplomatic functions, you've got the Western block and the Eastern block is that we're all in the same space at the same time. So you'd have lunch at the French embassy or whatever.

But the chicks and Russians and the Americans there as well, is that right? - That's exactly right. And it would be, normally it would be cocktail functions. You know, diplomats love having those things

and they'll wander around and eat thing to food and drink. You know, have a glass of wine and things like that. And so I was in my element there. And I would just move around until I could cozy up with someone I really wanted to be friends with.

Still remain friends with all the others. So that my little smiling face was at lots of functions. Like a lot of others who were genuine. I wasn't genuine, but I was there at those functions and that's how it worked.

- This is the point where if you were going to turn this into a Hollywood movie, you'd need that montage scene. You know, months of cocktail parties, polite laughter, dry white wine and the constant exchange of business cards.

- So a lot always a lot of luck involved,

but you know, sometimes a hearty work, the luckier you get and I work hard at it. And you get frustrated because you go to things and you just didn't meet the right people or you couldn't get to them.

And you just had to keep doing it until you did. And then I got, I started getting success from, I got successful against a couple of Soviets and a couple of East European's. And I became friendly with them.

And that's where it developed from. - So you're talent spotting effectively at these things, you're working out who the best target might be reporting back presumably to the Chief of Station.

- Yes, and to the surface, it was going back to the surface. - Yeah, everything that I was doing was being reported back to the surface. - So just, so what is the, are you being debriefed by the surface and CIA at the same time?

- No, no, I would, I'd just write it up. I would write up, I'd do my contact reports, but I would discuss it with Jamie Mercer, for example, things that I was doing and with the guy above him as well. And for like, I know the Chief of Station

would often get together and talk and about how it was going and that sort of thing. - How many people in the CIA station in Wellington when you were there? - Not many, yeah.

- Totally declared, all declared, so no no no. - No, no, no, no, not here, not. - It's interesting 'cause I've heard someone else say that the word. - Yeah, well, if they were, I didn't know about them.

Over time, Kit Bennett's was able

and the East Europeans.

“I got a bit lucky, but it took me a while”

and I got, well, the KGB officer,

so I was working face to face at KGB officer. And he, and I wanna go into it, and this is very bit, he inadvertently helped me develop a really good way of getting overseas and into some KGB NGO officers.

And I'm very grateful for the KGB for doing that 'cause I didn't have success with him here, but I, he gave me some success overseas. I would like to think without knowing it. - He says after that sales course

and in consultation with the CIA chief of station in Wellington, he decided to offer his Soviet and East European contacts a product that was uniquely of New Zealand and would be useful in countries where they often had snow on their boots.

- He got in touch with a company that, for obvious reasons, didn't have representatives in Southeast Asia.

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 and 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.

- Now, keeping it to selling these sheepskin products at cost price as samples. And the beauty of this product is that it effectively does its own market. - So if it's his, well, other people

and how machines are being interested in that. So I then look at places that are gonna be Soviet missions that my chief of stations enable to advise what aren't your 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 and office furniture or whatever. And I'll find go, oh well, you know, well, 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 you interested in having a sheepskin coat or whatever. So and that's how it developed.

So I developed the relationships that way. - The catch now was that to follow up on these very promising content. Keep minutes, we'll be operating offshore. - As far as I understand that the service

doesn't really deploy, no, it's not an hour remit, but essentially having gone from working on a joint operation 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's, and it was New Zealand's interest in a broad sense in the five-ise sense. - Who's paying the-- - Who's paying the truth? - It was like, where's the money coming in?

- I was being paid by the service and then nothing changed in that. I got no more money or anything like that. But everything that I did, you know, when I went overseas, I had this-- - Yellow buff in below, full of dead presidents.

And I had to account for every single penny of it. - So with the service paying his salary and the agency paying his expenses, keep minutes is going to spread himself and his sheepskin goods around the Asia Pacific area.

He'll meet up with Soviets and Eastern Europeans at a range of different embassies across these Asia. But we're gonna dig into one particular contact that will go a long way. By going into Asia, Ben, it's no sea's moving out

of New Zealand's direct sphere of influence. But he's told that this has worked for the alliance and that's important for New Zealand. - The new Chief of Station that kind of commits me that we're all on the same side.

This is what we're doing. While it may not be strictly speaking and New Zealand issue, it is an issue for the five-- the five, you know, that for the big five. And that's what you're doing.

So I did that.

“- That's what led you to mill all of us.”

- Yeah, I actually am concerned about just sign the bill because a friendly country needs to be-- - We have previously discussed it and I think long time ago. And I think the thing is that it's actually quite important in the sense that we've got that whole, you know,

the strategic importance of the Philippines and of the bases, the naval bases and what's the stuff.

- The thing is that I was never working against the Philippines.

I was there working anywhere I went. Any of those countries in Asia I was working solely against Soviet. Undeclared, that's the thing. - Now, it's worth remembering the stakes involved here.

Kit Bennett is going to be working under cleared as a knock and he's going to be doing it a very long way from home.

- Yeah, knock spans for non-official cover.

Traditionally, over the years,

“the CIA officers working overseas host as diplomats”

and they had diplomatic cover. They had diplomatic passport, see if they got caught. They couldn't be arrested under the rules of diplomacy. They would be declared persona non-grata and deported. A knock-word pose has a business man or a criminal

and recruit foreigners to spy for the United States without the protection of the diplomatic passport. The objective of what I was doing was to do an RIP, a recruitment in place. So, in other words, to get ideally a KGB officer

to come and work for us. And I don't mean to fit. I mean to work in place for us. And the Americans and the Brits highly skilled at that. They would run agents back in Moscow.

Can imagine how difficult that is.

“But sadly, when they had people like Ames and Hansen”

who were traitors and worked for the Soviets, they had the Soviets were catching our people and killing them. But the objective of someone doing what I was doing was to snuggle up to a KGB officer if you like. Get to know them.

The central job of the CIA officer overseas is to commit four years to commit treason against their own countries but treat their countries from spy for the United States. And that's the highest goal. You don't necessarily tap them on the show.

And so, hey, come and work for CIA. But slowly, they would start to realize that there was more to you that you were. And that meant that if they had the seeds of doubt in their minds as an awful lot of them did, they'd be weighing up in their mind.

They actually recruit themselves.

“- Often the best cold war recruits were people who wanted”

to change sides for ideological reasons. Only Gordiuski, the KGB colonel we mentioned. - Your family friend? - Yeah. Gordiuski was ultimately known as a defector

but where he did his most valuable work was those years he was in place as a double agent for MI6 inside the KGB. And he was what they call a war camp. He approached the brits on his own. He just thought the Soviet regime was terrible

and he was very clear that he was doing it for honorable reasons. He didn't want any money. - Yeah, this is really interesting. - Kit Bennett says Western media played a part in winning hearts and minds.

- In the agency, we always talked about time magazine recruitments.

And time magazine recruitments were KGB officers who are highly skilled, highly trained, well-educated, came out to the West. And for the first time they were exposed to the media and the West which they really didn't understand. So they'd pick up a time magazine and they'd open up the first page

and there's bridge and off being ripped up for all bad things he was doing and that's typically exactly what you'd expect in the West' turn on the page and they're under on a wagon and what he's going and they go, "What's this about?" - It's hard to know the reality of it,

but it is quite an image isn't it, a KGB officer, leaving for a time magazine and it calms down to turn in the heat. - Yeah, it's really interesting. The things we, I guess, take the granted.

I mean, the media had never been perfect.

They out now, they weren't then. But the fact that Western media could openly question the way society was working, could point out the faults of the powerful and offer objective information to the public. There was something totally alien to KGB operatives. That's see the media getting stuck into leaders of Great Britain and Germany

and Australia and that sort of thing. And so they would then, there'd be time magazine recruitment. They would see that there was something that was a certain fairness in our media often not recognized today as an issue would be. You don't know what you got till it's gone.

But if the open society of the West created opportunities in terms of recruitment, it was still incredibly rare for Soviet intelligence officers to just walk in and genuinely offer themselves up. And the Soviets, knowing they might lose people who just flat out preferred to live in the West, read their own operations, back at these Western intelligence agencies,

with fake defectors, knowing as dangles, presenting themselves to Western intelligence agencies. In fact, Peacecolors was so common that every walkin had to be scrutinised with enormous skepticism and took months and even years for them to be properly vetted, including a guy like Oligoreevsky. And don't worry if you're headspinning a little bit here.

I mean, the world of espionages is so full of mine games and double crosses.

We kept in its finally comes Belly to Belly with his Soviet target in Manila.

“It isn't going to go the way anybody saw it.”

In fact, Kit Bennett's who thinks he's going hunting is going to start to wonder whether he has become a hunter.

These gentlemen, to Philippine Airlines, welcome to Manila.

For your safety, these remains he'd have put your seat belt's pass and

“until the pass that he puts in a spit-switched off.”

Please refrain from opening a neck and neck of the front wheel.

The agency was produced, written and hosted by John Daniel and me, Guy and Espenham.

Our executive producer, 4 RNZ, was John Heart of Alt, and our executive producer, 4 Bird of Paradise Productions, is Noel McCarthy.

“The original music by Anthony Tottenham, graphic design by Oliver Wall.”

For RNZ, sound production and final mix was by Mark Chestman. Production coordinator was Brianna Eurich Greek, thanks to Steve Varage, Ali Marston, Jeremy and Silk and William Saunders. Thanks to Megan Willen and thanks also to Susan Velvet Action. The visual director at RNZ was Cole, Eastom Farrely,

and our camera operator was Jess Chalton. Thanks also to Sarah Guy Tarnos for the article about Bill Sachs that appears on RNZ.co.inZ. Thanks also to CNN TV NZ BBC, the ABC, Universal, and Paramount. To read more about the documents and articles we've mentioned,

you can go to RNZ.co.inZ/theagency and you can see the links in the show notes.