Maire Leadbeater “The Enemy Within”

Written By: - Date published: 4:13 pm, December 7th, 2024 - 9 comments
Categories: China, defence, FiveEyes, nuclear war, nuclear-free, Peace, Russia, us politics, war - Tags:

The Enemy Within

Maire Leadbeater, Potton and Burton, Nelson, 2024

With extensive use of internal documents, Maire Leadbeater’s excellent exposition of the various iterations of the security intelligence services tells a story of constant make-work in search of an adversary defined only by ideology.

The title of the book is a deliberate double entendre. The agencies’ targets so often miss the real external threats to our security, that we are invited to consider that the real threat to our security comes from the agencies themselves.

This is all the more so as the agencies, or should we now say the AGENCY, as GCSB has been merged with the SIS following the unlawful surveillance of Kim Dotcom, has emerged from the shadows into the sunlight as the official arbiter of how we should think about the threats to our prosperity. Security intelligence has become a double oxymoron; with the growth of the internet there are multiple sources of accurate intelligence available to anyone, and official antagonism to China with the accompanyimg threat of war is a far greater threat to our security than increased cooperation with China would be.

Leadbeater’s writing is crisp as she tells the stories of so many of those who have worked tirelessly for peace and justice in Aotearoa/New Zealand. There is a personal element; Leadbeater first featured in agency reports at the age of ten, as she attended a meeting with her communist parents. But one can hardly think of any people less likely to jeopardise New Zealand’s security than Maire Leadbeater, her mother Elsie and brother Keith Locke, all of whom feature in official files.

The repeated revelations of useless and irrelevant detail collected by the agencies manifest the worst form of bureaucratic groupthink. Unfortunately this is not just limited to Aotearoa/New Zealand, as one is left with the impression that the agencies’ main job is to serve and protect the Five Eyes. As Leadbeater says, they can themselves be the source of foreign interference.

Another interesting feature of spy agency history is that as one debacle after another leads to official inquiry, the conclusion is inevitably that more resources are needed to catch the phantom enemy. If there is an ultimate in useless and expensive back office bureaucracy, the so-called security services are it. Much money is wasted.

Leadbeater’s conclusion is that “it is time to leave crime, including terrorist crime, to the country’s police and court system, with their built-in accountability procedures. It is time for the state to stop spying on society’s critics.” Her case is well made.

Maire Leadbeater will discuss her book together with Nicky Hager for the Fabian Society at 2/57 Willis Street, Wellington, at 5:30pm on Tuesday 10 December. All welcome. If you would like to attend, please register here. The event will be live-streamed and the link for that is here.

9 comments on “Maire Leadbeater “The Enemy Within” ”

  1. Dennis Frank 1
    7 December 2024 at 4:45 pm

    The title of the book is a deliberate double entendre.

    Well worth considering! Enemy of what?? Our national interest is the obvious answer, yet who defines that? Democracy suggests it is redefined by each change of govt.

    Ah, but the Deep State, you will think. Rightly so! It remains in the collective interests of the Nat/Lab binary mainstreamers to ensure that spooks know their priorities regardless of any change of govt – because the change is merely cosmetic.

    Sceptics will wonder if the traditional hegemony of mainstream normalcy will continue to prevail. Hipkins has declared a non-AUKUS future if Labour wins next election, which even seems sensible. Lux will have to conjure up a semi-plausible foreign threat (unlikely) then sell it to kiwis (more unlikely) if he wants to do traditional western loyalty. Somehow I can't see him as an adept thin-ice skater.

    Our spooks aren't much good at preventing domestic terrorism (Chch massacre) because the enemy came within from without.

    Leadbeater’s conclusion is that “it is time to leave crime, including terrorist crime, to [our] police and court system, with their built-in accountability procedures. It is time for the state to stop spying on society’s critics.”

    I'm tempted to agree, but I'm open to considering any credible basis for continuing to employ govt spooks. Fronting in the media with a plausible rationale would help to identify any such basis. Can any politician or academic actually do it? Most unlikely.

    Reply
  2. Obtrectator 2
    7 December 2024 at 5:39 pm

    Commander Crast: "I have a big job to do – and you ought to know as well as I do how important it is."

    Cosmo Saltana: "I don't, though. How important is it?"

    Commander C: "I'm talking about national security."

    Cosmo S: "So am I. And as I've already told [the Brigadier], I think it's a lot of expensive rubbish."

    – J B Priestley, The Image Men

    (There's more elaboration on the theme further down the page.)

    Reply
    • Dennis Frank 2.1
      7 December 2024 at 5:59 pm

      smiley Presuming you forgot to include a link, I'll improvise: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/j-b-priestley-10/the-image-men/

      impoverished British professors, Cosmo Saltana (thin, gaunt, Philosophy) and Owen Tuby (chubby, charming, English Lit.) become instant sociologists and specialists in something they call "Social Image."

      potential riches of one gay widow, Mrs. Elfreda Duke, whose Oregon U.S.A. deceased husband had set up a sociology foundation, is the spur.

      Once handsomely established at a struggling British university, the buccaneers cut a wide and silly swathe through the world of academe, astound TV & other media, rally student protestors to their side in the fight to keep their shaky Foundation, consult in motivational research, revamp a movie vamp, and collect a coterie of passionate, bed-hopping ladies.

      The academic world was indeed livelier in '69, but so was the spook scene – englamoured by Ian Fleming & his shaken but not stirred hero.

      Reply
  3. Ad 3
    7 December 2024 at 6:35 pm

    We have real and effective terrorist threats, and the intelligence services consistently are elsewhere.

    Leadbetter is so right that open institutions have shown to be better protectors of threats to our interests: Police and gangs (at least in 2024), public health and pandemics, MPI and mass animal disease outbreaks, MFAT and trade deals, NZDF and regional civic breakdowns.

    Reply
  4. gsays 4
    8 December 2024 at 5:21 pm

    Thanks for the heads up re the streamed book launch.

    I had my first Microsoft Teams experience the other day. 16 caretakers in a union meeting at once! Surprisingly smooth event.

    Reply
  5. Tiger Mountain 5
    9 December 2024 at 8:46 am

    My experience is that the majority of the activists, commos, unionists, environmental campaigners, left academics, Republicans, international solidarity fighters and other progressive types that I have met over the years are way more the patriot than the “pie and Penthouse” brigade sucking up to 5 Eyes will ever be. Some internationalists will of course frown on the concept of being patriotic to a nation state.

    John Key gave massive funding increases to the “service” and what did NZers get for their money? certainly not accountability or targeting immediate threats like the perpetrator of the Mosque Massacre. Maire Leadbeater and the likes of John Minto, Mike Treen and a cast of thousands have provided so much service to this country from the Waihi Miners strike to the 1951 waterfront lockout to the activists of the 70s/80s. Great that this work has been published.

    Reply
  6. Ad 6
    9 December 2024 at 2:55 pm

    Just wanted to give a shoutout to the Leadbetter and Locke families who for decade upon decade and for several generations have been a probing Pacifist searchlight of conscience into the darker machinery of power and in particular against war, militancy, opporession by tyrants, and colonial violence.

    Sure hope more of you find your way into Parliament to hold that hard bright light up.

    Reply

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