NZ agent in secret Iraqi mission

By EUGENE BINGHAM

A New Zealander has secretly held one of the world's most sensitive jobs - gathering information about Iraq's weapons of war.

Don McIver, former Army chief and head of the Security Intelligence Service, hunted out top-secret intelligence now being used by United Nations inspection teams who travelled to Iraq this week.

The Weekend Herald can reveal that Mr McIver was crucial to the monitoring and inspection programme.

He travelled incognito around the world making contacts with a range of sources, including government agents and Iraqi defectors.

He reported solely to the chief UN inspector, Dr Hans Blix, who recruited him as the programme's intelligence officer. Some of the information he gathered was so sensitive it was seen only by Mr McIver and Mr Blix.

Mr McIver spoke publicly about his role for the first time yesterday, although he refused to be drawn on exactly what he had discovered.

"I thought we gathered information of some reasonable significance, and information which is being helpful now inspectors have gone in," he said.

"Certainly there was information that gave some indication of the direction in which one might proceed."

The inspectors have returned to Baghdad for the first time in four years, backed by a UN mandate to search the country.

Eight New Zealand servicemen are among the UN personnel in Iraq.



Last night, Foreign Minister Phil Goff said the Government knew of Mr McIver's role, but kept it low key.

"It was an international position where you don't stress the nationality.

"Also, it was a somewhat sensitive job and probably the less said about it publicly the better."



Mr McIver, 66, had retired from the SIS when Dr Blix rang him at home and asked him to set up a new intelligence position.

He spent two years in the role, standing down in July despite pressure to stay a third year.



Weeks after he left the New York posting, murmurings began that the inspections were about to resume.

"I would have liked to have been there to put things in place for the inspection teams," said Mr McIver.



His first job was to establish contacts with people holding clues about Iraq's weapons.

"It involved ... earning their confidence and getting them to share that information.

"In everything I did I had to take security, so using a telephone was not necessarily the best way of doing things.

"There may have been circumstances where I had to be a little bit careful about arranging to meet people - not because I felt I was at risk but sometimes the inter-relationship needed to be safeguarded."

Asked how closely the Iraqis followed him, he said: "I just got on airplanes and travelled quietly and met people in various locations; went to people's homes. They may have known about it. Who knows?"

Once he had information, he would verify it and sometimes obtain satellite images of the area, and then store it in a highly secure area to guard against espionage.



The policy of restricting access to Mr McIver and Dr Blix was seen as crucial to the programme's success.

Said Mr McIver: "The fact that [the inspection teams] are there and there isn't a war in Iraq represents the value that it's had."

* eugene_bingham@nzherald.co.nz

Herald feature: Iraq