The GC(SB): A touching story of everyday spies

Rebecca Kitteridge, Director of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. Photo / Mark Mitchell

As if readying ourselves for Pam Corkery's expletive-deleted meltdown on Dancing With the Stars wasn't excitement enough, along comes spy chief Rebecca Kitteridge dreaming of a show featuring her very own spooks.

"If the public could see the people of the Security Intelligence Service doing their work, they would be delighted to see what hardworking, terrific people our intelligence officers are. I would love the service to have a television show like Border Patrol."

If history is any guide, perhaps a Days of Our Lives soap would be a more achievable goal. Starting, perhaps, with the hapless spook who mislaid his briefcase on the wall of press gallery journalist Ian Templeton's Wellington home in 1981.

It was picked up by my colleague Fran O'Sullivan's 10-year-old son. Inside were three ID cards, one identifying the owner as an SIS spy, the other two as a research officer for both the Prime Minister's office and the Ministry of Defence.

Also inside were three meat pies, two Christmas mince pies, a Penthouse magazine, a Listener, and a notebook with observations about assorted diplomats, one, he surmised, homosexual - then a crime. Oh yes, and a letter from SIS boss Paul Molineaux giving him a pay rise.

In 1974, the SIS bungled an attempt to catch retired civil servant Bill Sutch passing "secrets" to a Russian attache. The SIS's blurred photograph of the Russian haring off down a dark and rainswept Wellington street in homburg and umbrella is hilarious.

More seriously, in August 1981, Prime Minister Rob Muldoon released a memo from Mr Molineaux naming 15 people as either members of "subversive organisations" or "radicals" who had infiltrated the anti-Springbok tour movement.

It accused one, Don Carson, of planning to use the irritant chloropicrin in protests. Subsequent proceedings accepted the chloropicrin was a soil steriliser for use on his father's Otaki market garden. He eventually received unspecified damages.

Leaping forward 30 years, Ms Kitteridge's programme can remind us the SIS was still happy to play politics for a National Party Government. Nicky Hager's book Dirty Politics revealed that in 2011 the Prime Minister's Department worked with the SIS to feed politically damaging material about former Labour leader Phil Goff to right-wing blogger Cameron Slater.

Recently, the Herald revealed that two years later, the SIS's sister organisation, the GCSB, was taking these tactics overseas at the Government's behest, monitoring email and internet traffic to spy on rivals of Trade Minister Tim Groser in the race to be director-general of the World Trade Organisation.

No series would be complete without the SIS's failure in 1985 to spot French state terrorists assembling in Auckland to blow up the Greenpeace protest ship Rainbow Warrior. It took eagle-eyed Aucklanders and local police to solve that mystery - unfortunately afterwards.

Another own-goal was the bungled break-in at Christchurch free trade activist Aziz Choudry's home in July 1996. Caught in the act by lecturer David Small, the spooks scarpered, but not before Dr Small recorded their vehicle registration number, later traced back to an SIS front company. The spies similarly recorded Dr Small's name - he was wearing a conference name tag - and surprise, surprise, a week later the police raided his house for "bomb-making materials".

After prolonged legal battles, the Government apologised and settled with Mr Choudry out of court for an undisclosed amount. It also rushed to legalise SIS break-ins in future. Dr Small received $20,000 under the Bill of Rights as a victim of "unreasonable search" and a further $5500 in costs.

Of course no series would be complete without a cuddly cross-generational family story, and who better than the Lockes, prominent communists Elsie and Jack, and their equally activist children, Keith and Maire Leadbeater. The kids both had files as pre-teens. Keith was just 11, Maire 10. Keith's first mention was for attending a leftist social evening. Maire's first entry documented her subversive activities delivering the communist paper People's Voice.

Very spookily, Keith received a note of condolence from SIS director Warren Tucker when his mother died.