Obituary: John Lindsay Smith

By ARNOLD PICKMERE

Former Deputy Chief of the General Staff and
Director of the Security Intelligence Service.

Died aged 76.

There was apparently some talk in 1983 as how come the new director of the Security Intelligence Service bore a name as anonymous as John Smith.

In fact the former Army Brigadier preferred to be called Lindsay or Lin through most of his life - and was anything but anonymous.

At the time of his appointment to the SIS (he replaced Paul Molineaux), there was some mistrust in the country about the scope and style of the service's covert operations.

But Brigadier Smith, who described himself as "a pretty conventional sort of chap" and lived at Pt Howard near Wellington, might have been the only security chief in the Western World who was personally listed in a local telephone book.

Asked if he was going to change that he looked startled.

"Why should I do that?" he asked the Herald reporter. "I'm the visible member of the organisation. That's what I'm meant to be. I'll still go running round the suburbs and take out my trailer sailor."

When Smith entered the SIS it had a modern charter, which pleased him.

Previously, in 1975, a former Secretary of Industries and Commerce, W.B. Sutch, was acquitted on spying charges.

Public controversy led to an investigation of the SIS by former Ombudsman, Sir Guy Powles. The recommendations of his report formed the basis of the 1977 SIS Amendment Act.

Some of those amendments - especially those allowing telephone tapping and mail intervention - were widely criticised.

But Smith, on his appointment, also pointed to rules declaring that the SIS was not to be involved with the class of person engaged in lawful protest or dissent.

"You can't get anything clearer than that," he said. "I'm certain the service abides by these rules."

In the event, Smith's appointment did not seem to attract much criticism, although the New Zealand Party leader, (later Sir) Robert Jones, did allege in 1983 that the SIS had tried to infiltrate the party in Auckland.

The then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, accepted Smith's report that neither an SIS officer, nor anyone impersonating an officer, had been involved with the New Zealand Party.

As head of the SIS in the 1980s, Smith viewed espionage, subversion and terrorism as the principal threats to New Zealand's security.

Lindsay Smith was born in Kumara, Westland, in 1926 and grew up in a Christchurch working-class family.

He worked as an uncertified teacher in the tiny West Coast town of Haupiri and in 1945 attended teachers' college. He also gained a BA at Canterbury University.

People were just coming back from World War II in those days and he was boyishly frustrated he had not been part of it.

So he was keen when the chance came to join the occupation J Force in Japan.

So were student friends. One called Bill Rowling used Smith's birth date on his application. But the underage future PM's deception was uncovered and he stayed home.

Later Smith joined the territorials, went on active service in the Korean War in 1952, serving with the 16th Field Regiment of the Royal New Zealand Artillery. The Army became his life.

For much of his career he served as second in command to the late Major General Brian Poananga, Chief of the General Staff. Smith served with him in Borneo and Vietnam and later as deputy to Poananga's administrative leadership of the Army.

Smith held numerous positions in the army including commander of the New Zealand Army Field Force, then commander of the New Zealand force in South-east Asia and finally Deputy Chief of General Staff in Wellington until he retired in 1981. He moved to the SIS after being BP New Zealand's adviser on Government affairs.

He was made an MBE in 1966, a CBE in January 1980 and a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1991, the year he retired from the SIS.

Lindsay Smith is survived by his wife Pauline, a son and three daughters. He was given a full military funeral in Tauranga.