No country is immune

They come in on false passports, posing as tourists, and rent a white van. A scout is dispatched to scope out the intended target and the others arrive later, in groups. One group is in charge of planning and the others do the dirty work. They strike without warning.

When it later emerges that the attackers are not a rogue terrorist group but the government of a long-time ally, a diplomatic row breaks out and locals denounce it as an affront to the country's sovereignty.

We could have just described the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in 1985, but we haven't.

It's another country - Italy - and another secret service - the United States' CIA - carrying out another covert operation in violent disregard for local laws.

Still think the Rainbow Warrior bombing was an aberration?

The Americans were this week accused of infiltrating Milan in 2003 to kidnap an Egyptian terror suspect, Abu Omar, even though Italy is an ally in the US-led Coalition of the Willing.

The Italians have issued arrest warrants for 13 Americans over the affair and are investigating six others, but like most of the French secret service agents involved in the Rainbow Warrior bombing, they're not likely to be brought to justice.

Canada, Germany and Sweden are also investigating America's role in disappearances of their citizens and residents.

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazief reckons US agents have seized 60 or 70 Egyptians abroad.

Could New Zealand be among these countries? Would we know about it?

Would we have known that France was responsible for the Rainbow Warrior bombing if it wasn't for a handful of observant New Zealanders who reported a string of strange events to police?

"I think [the Rainbow Warrior bombing] was a bit of a wake-up call to assess everything and not to just be trusting of people who might have views on other issues close to yours," says Green MP Keith Locke.

"You'd expect of a socialist Labour-type government in France (a) not to bomb you and (b) not to just blatantly and continuously lie their way through it."

An editorial in the Auckland Star in 1985 called the bombing incomprehensible. "It is still hard for New Zealanders to imagine an individual deranged enough to act like this, or a terrorist group or state-backed sabotage squad dedicated to such acts," the paper said.

Is it so hard to believe now, with the United States sneaking into countries to kidnap their nationals so they can be interrogated without legal protection, with Israelis working for the Mossad secret service infiltrating New Zealand and even Australia floating the idea of launching pre-emptive strikes against countries it sees as harbouring a threat?

Australian journalist and best-selling author Geraldine Brooks says the lesson she learned from the Rainbow Warrior affair is that you can't be too cynical.

She recalls the editor of the weekly newspaper she was working for at the time striding through the newsroom muttering, "It's the bloody French".

"I thought to myself, give it a rest. As if the French Government would blow up a boat just because it was protesting their nuclear tests," she wrote on a website.

"I think it took about 24 hours for the scuba tank with Property of French Spy written on it to wash up on the beach. Since then I've rarely met a conspiracy theory I wouldn't entertain."

Massey University terrorism expert, Associate Professor Jeff Sluka, says not only is it possible for a state-sponsored terrorist attack like that on the Rainbow Warrior to happen again, but it's become more likely since September 11.

Worldwide, governments, including New Zealand's, have empowered themselves with untested, and in some cases draconian, new laws in the name of fighting terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.

The irony, say Locke and Sluka, is that state terrorism is our greatest threat and always has been, and the 20th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing is a timely reminder of that.

It remains the only terrorist attack on our shores, and it was perpetrated by an ally. And at the time our Government was far more likely to have been keeping an eye on Greenpeace in the fear it was an eco-terrorist group than the French Government.

"I would say the chance of state terrorism in New Zealand has increased [since 1985] because governments now are even bolder and have more secret intelligence operations and things going on," says Sluka.

"They may well then be prepared to occasionally do things like the French Government obviously decided to do in the case of the Rainbow Warrior.

"So we say, no government in the world has any rational reason to blow up something in New Zealand. Well, neither did France."

Locke shivers at vows by Australian Prime Minister John Howard and US President George W. Bush to launch pre-emptive attacks on countries that harbour threats.

"France's raid on the Rainbow Warrior would have been legal and appropriate under John Howard's rationale for 'pre-emptive' strikes.

"You can end up in the mindset of 'we know best and we're the force for democracy and we would never do anything wrong' - we being Bush or Howard," Locke says.

The French saw the Rainbow Warrior attack as defending its vital interests, which lay in developing nuclear weapons. The danger still exists in the reverse - now countries such as Israel are threatening to invade countries like Iran to disable their nuclear potential.

Sluka says the Western panic about terrorist groups is skewing people's views of the world. He worries that people believe the rhetoric that terrorism is the greatest threat to democracy.

"No, the greatest threat to democracy is that our governments will dismantle it and use the excuse of fighting terrorism to do it.

"There is a greater risk - this whole political fear climate that's been created which allows the expansion of the very kind of intelligence agencies which were responsible for the Rainbow Warrior."