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The Ides of Moyle ~ Et tu Who?

People watching TV One's "Dateline Monday" last week could be forgiven for thinking that the much heralded SIS Act was a figment of the collective imagination of Rob Muldoon, Mike Minogue and 15,000 protesting Wellingtonians. On the programme interviewer Fraser mentioned the names of two SIS agents and asked a Wellington businessman what he knew about their activities as secret police. Indeed he effectively asked the businessman whether he had ever worked for or with the SIS.

Of course, Mr. Fraser could merely be following the policy of the N.Z. Journalists Union which has declared that its members will defy the SIS Act when they believe it is in the public interest to provide information about SIS activities. Either way, the new Act has failed the first test in its aim of stopping conjecture about, and disclosure of, SIS activities — a good thing in itself, but not the major factor of this article.

Quite enough unadulterated verbiage has already been written about the "Colin Moyle Affair". All a sensible person could gain from the newspaper reports would be a feeling of contempt for the arrogance and ignorance of our parliamentary politicians and a healthy distrust of anything emanating from the 'talking shop' on the hill.

However, one point that Moyle, amongst his many stories, touched upon was an SIS/Police/Army/National Party connection which he vaguely hinted had something to do with the spate of scandals that rocked the Labour Party prior to its 1975 election debate.

In a discussion with Police Commissioner Burnside and Deputy-Commissioner Walton immediately after Muldoon's accusation in Parliament that Moyle had been picked up by the police for a homosexual offence, Moyle suggested that a "dirty-tricks" group connected with the National Party had been spreading rumours designed to discredit the Labour Party.

He named in this group Bill Meldrum, Rohan Jays, Dick Dundas and Deputy-Commissioner Walton himself. Moyle half-heartedly suggested that these people were connected in some sort of Army link-age (via the Territorials) with the leakage of security documents — such as the SIS document on the "O'Brien think-tank affair!"

Considering this example, and the fact that Moyle was subject to the police action Muldoon referred to just prior to the 1975 elections, it is not at all far fetched to consider that the security police were involved with these other groups in attempts to discredit the Labour Party and tip it out of office.

Especially when one considers the now well-documented involvement of the CIA and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation in the successfully-orchestrated series of scandals that resulted in Australia's Whitlam Government being overthrown in 1975. More particularly, there is the background and connections of these men that Moyle names.

Bill Meldrum, now working for UEB Industries appears to be the link-man in the group. He is the only one that knows (or admits he does) all the others mentioned. When questioned on this score on "Dateline" he sheepishly admitted that it was a strange coincidence..... He was formerly a Major in the regular Army and served in Malaya, helping to prop up the British-installed regime there.

He is, (or was recently) an officer in the 3rd Battalion of the Territorials and is now the Chairman of the Western Hutt Branch of the National Party. He admits to being a personal friend of Rohan Jays and acquainted with Dundas and a Paul Freeman, the Auckland Businessman/secret police-man connected with Jays in the O'Brien affair. He agrees that he may have met Walton on a number of occasions — but "only on Army business".

Rohan Jays is the former SIS Agent who left the country following his implication in the leakage of the SIS document to "Truth" on the O'Brien affair. He was also in the Territorials' 3rd Battalion, along with Meldrum, as was their mutual acquaintance Freeman. Jays was a member of the Western Hutt Branch of the National Party prior to his departure from New Zealand, although Meldrum denies that he was aware of this.

Dick Dundas served with Meldrum briefly in Malaya and has met "infrequently" with Meldrum since then.

Deputy-Commissioner Walton denies knowing any of these men, except by way of media reports. However he admits that he could well have met them at Army gatherings. He is the current commandant of the Royal NZ Army Service Corps and was a senior Territorials Officer. A point worth major consideration is that Deputy-Commissioner Walton was director of the police inquiry into the "Sutch affair", during which the police had extensive contact with the SIS and various events concerning the hapless Labour M.P. Gerald O'Brien took place.

In the "Dateline" interview, Meldrum admitted knowing that Jays, his close friend, was an SIS agent but denied having ever had access to SIS information or ever having discussed the SIS with Jays until after the O'Brien leak. He thinks the implications of the scenario that is built up by these facts are ludicrous, that they make make them look like they're "operating in a banana republic situation".

However, we think that his evidence, circumstantial as it is, warrants a very close investigation of the connections between these people and others in the SIS/Police/ Army/National Party axis. When a chairman of a National Party Branch who is an Army Officer and a "very close personal friend" of an SIS agent says he didn't know that person was in the same Party Branch as him; and when he says it is a "pack of lies" to suggest that the man mentioned by Moyle had leaked secret documents to discredit the Labour Party, when one of those so mentioned had actually done that — that is when we ask Who's Kidding whom?