Codename "Muldoon" - Robert Gilchrist

The "leftist activist" who spent a decade working undercover for New Zealand police and intelligence

Kia ora, this is the first post in a series on New Zealand's post-9/11 counter-terror security regime, how the state has used (and abused) it, and consequently, where this might be headed over the coming years. In the context of increasingly escalatory actions from Five Eyes countries, I think it's worth re-excavating the trajectory of the New Zealand security state over the 21st century's first quarter, and where that might lead us down the road.

I'll be releasing pieces (roughly) fortnightly here, with a mix of this series alongside a few other one-off topics. If you know me from Twitter, it'll be the same coverage of the strange sides of Aotearoa New Zealand, just in long-form. I don't plan to paywall any posts on here for the foreseeable future, but if you enjoy my work and would like to help out, I have set up a Ko-fi. Till next time, tēnā koutou. - Smith K. Stead

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Robert Gilchrist, pictured in 2008

For most people who’ve been watching over the past few years, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the New Zealand government is ramping up its mechanisms for state repression against political dissent. The “counter-terror” structures and justifications set up after 9/11 have morphed into tools for the state to respond with a hammer to anything that might seem out of place. With the recent flurry of news, including the passing of the Foreign Interference Bill, changes to the 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act, criminalising protests outside of private homes, and the opening of an FBI office in Wellington (with FBI director Kash Patel promising "strengthened and enhanced cooperation" with our agencies), it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better any time soon.

In the present day, even with all the advances in the state’s ability to track, collate, and punish “threats” to its existence, human intelligence and infiltration is still a crucial part of surveillance and counter-subversion. Under this recent backdrop, it might be pertinent to revisit a decade or so old story. One of an undercover informant, part of the post-9/11 expansion of the security state, who infiltrated and wrecked the local left-wing movement for 10 years before being exposed, caught up in the middle of the biggest counter-terror prosecution in New Zealand history.

Codename “Muldoon”

State infiltrators of political movements are nothing new, either here or abroad. During the heady days of the early 20th century labour movement, the New Zealand Police Force (the agency then responsible for intelligence operations) had their work cut out for them infiltrating the ranks of militant unionists, syndicalists and communists. However, this sometimes had unintended results. One undercover agent filed a report detailing a Communist Party meeting, describing one speaker as "doubtlessly the most dangerous communist in the country". He was unaware that he was referring to another undercover operative.

In 1998, Christchurch police approached 30 year-old sickness beneficiary and former NZDF reservist Robert Gilchrist with the offer to become an undercover informant, in exchange for $600 a week on top of reimbursing "work" expenses. Of course informants are used for a number of reasons, but police didn’t want Gilchrist infiltrating organised crime groups or the violent far-right gangs operating in Christchurch at that time. The Threat Assessment Unit, responsible for tracking political groups, were interested in infiltrating various left-wing activist causes. Gilchrist, christened with the codename "Muldoon", reinvented himself as a black-bloc anarchist and began ingratiating himself into New Zealand’s left-wing scene.

Gilchrist entered during a tumultuous time for the left in New Zealand, with the unions having been decimated by legislation changes in the 1990s, a decade and a half of hardline neoliberal governments, global protest campaigns against free trade agreements, and the disintegration of the Alliance bloc. Over his 10 years as an informant, Gilchrist became involved in causes as disparate as anti-war protests, vegan groups, unions, benefits' rights collectives, environmental groups, and political parties.

To people inside the activist scene, Gilchrist was often seen as a shifty character. Veteran Christchurch activist Murray Horton wrote that the groups he was involved with “picked him for a spy from Day One”. Another Christchurch-based activist I spoke to remembered him as "a bit weird", with a lot of money for an anarchist. He owned recording devices, police scanners, and other high-end tech, often using them at protests. He talked a lot about guns, but never showed them off publicly. He seemed to bounce from group to group, hanging out mainly with other anarchists, and was often seen as standoffish and an agent provocateur. He was quick to throw out accusations of "infiltration" when cops would show up 5 minutes before the start of a planned action, and often pushed people and groups to commit illegal actions, backing out at the last minute if plans went through.

‘At protests, Gilchrist was often the one taunting police, says Mark Eden of Wellington Animal Rights Network, who regarded Gilchrist as a friend. “If it didn't involve adrenalin and confrontation, he wasn't interested,” Eden told the Star-Times. During protests he has used a radio scanner to monitor police communications and often took the role of "police liaison" for the protest organisers.

"He was always interested in who was keen on illegal actions and would often make it known that he was keen to be involved in anything illegal or undercover. On a few occasions he would take people out for a drive and sit outside a factory farm or an animal laboratory and encourage them to talk about planning a break-in or other illegal activity.

"He would be really pushy and persistent about planning illegal activities and then would suddenly lose interest, claiming it was too difficult or that he was busy. He was always keen on planning dodgy stuff, but on the occasions when we did break the law, for instance an open rescue of battery hens, he would always have an excuse and pull out at the last minute."’

Special Investigations & Operation Eight

In 2005, in the wake of the 9/11-accelerated focus on counterterrorism, the Special Investigation Group (SIG) was formed as a joint unit between the NZP, NZDF, NZSIS and GCSB (later renamed the National Security Investigations Team in 2016). Due to the "political climate" at the time, the SIG was ostensibly set up to combat Islamic terrorism. Shockingly, there weren't any Al-Qaeda sleeper cells in Ashburton. Instead, a shiny new intelligence unit with expanded powers and the full cooperation of the security apparatus turned its attention elsewhere. Gilchrist's handlers subsequently moved to the new SIG, and the left-wing infiltrator began working for a Global War on Terror security unit.

Gilchrist's move to the SIG in 2005 is interesting timing due to his relationship to Operation Eight. In late 2005, police began surveilling what they alleged were paramilitary training camps for left-wing and Māori activists deep in Te Urewera mountains, southeast of Rotorua. Cameras were placed at the locations (some by Tim Jago's brother Geoff), phones were tapped, and evidence was collected until a series of raids took place across the country in October 2007. These raids against activists were designed as media spectacles to show off the state's new counterterror abilities, with news crews filming black-clad police kicking in doors and setting up roadblocks in Te Urewera.

When the dust settled, 18 people had been arrested, and the prosecution attempted to charge them under the 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act due to other acts not allowing the type of evidence collected. In November 2007, the Solicitor-General announced it would be nearly impossible to prosecute them under the Terrorism Suppression Act due to the Act being "incoherent and unworkable". Charges were later dropped against 13 defendants in 2011 after the Supreme Court found much of the evidence and its collection illegal. Only 4 people, including Tāme Iti, ended up being convicted in 2012 of weapons charges, with the jury hung on convicting the 4 of belonging to an organised criminal group. The surveillance and raids was estimated to have cost $8m at the time, and the subsequent trial was at the time the most expensive in New Zealand history, costing $6m.

Many argued at the time that this was the inevitable result of funding the security services to find terrorism where there wasn't. Journalist Nicky Hager said in 2009 "there were a whole lot of new units and equipment and resources brought in for anti-terrorism, where New Zealand hasn't had an indigenous terrorist threat. But they have headed down the track of seeing things in those terms and, for example, interpreting radical bravado talk as preparation for murdering people." However, what did come out in the trial was Gilchrist's proximity and involvement to the case.

Gilchrist provided information to the SIG on at least 3 people caught up in the raids, and a defendant's lawyer alleged he had sold camouflage gear and police scanners to other activists. Gilchrist had also held "training camps" for other members on using scanners and conducting surveillance, which he had been emailing police about. Gilchrist's record as an agent provocateur is cast in a different light when we consider his centrality to the first (unsuccessful) attempt at prosecution under post-9/11 anti-terror legislation in New Zealand.

Exposure

You might be wondering how Gilchrist's correspondence with police came to be known. In 2008, when Gilchrist was 40, his 22 year old activist partner Rochelle Rees was fixing his laptop. When checking to make sure his files were still intact, she stumbled across emails between Gilchrist and police. Instead of confronting him, she downloaded a full archive of his communications and worked with Nicky Hager to release the information to the media. It’s worth stressing how abnormal of an occurrence this was. On the few occasions that political informants are definitively exposed, it’s even rarer that we’re given a glimpse into specific communications with their handlers. This is something that governments usually get away with, and this abnormality reveals how the security state functions, and the full extent of Gilchrist's work and infiltration.

Gilchrist was operating as a funnel of information, forwarding all the mailing lists and news he received to police. Murray Horton alleged that Gilchrist had also managed to convince multiple groups to use a mailing list he set up and moderated, giving police a direct line onto public events and activist emails. This was similar to a previous case in the 1970s where an NZSIS informant asked to look after a left group’s mailing list index cards, before subsequently disappearing. Gilchrist sent information about an anti-taser protest the Greens were organising to police with the subject line "Hehehe - Look at the source of this :)". He also forwarded a Wellington Women’s Refuge meeting agenda about planning actions during the 2007 police rape trials. His handlers would email back with general questions like “Climate Change Groups: What is happening with climate change groups in Auckland? Who is involved? What actions might they be considering for the future”.

He was also conducting an ongoing census of the activist network, providing information on the internal politics and relationships of both groups and people, along with the addresses and photos of activists. Police asked Gilchrist to send a list of which activists were travelling to Australia for a protest against APEC, including where they were staying. Gilchrist had managed to worm his way into an exhaustive number of groups over the years, including but not limited to:

Anti-Bases Campaign, Auckland Animal Action, Beneficiaries Action Collective, Council of Trade Unions (and a number of other unions), GE-Free New Zealand, Greenpeace, The Green Party, multiple Peace Action Network branches, Save Animals From Exploitation, Save Happy Valley, Vegan Balaclava Pixies, Wellington Animal Rights Network

Gilchrist's long time undercover in the activist sphere is similar to overseas programs like the FBI’s COINTELPRO or Spycops in Britain. Particularly controversial in the Spycops saga was the practice of marrying into activist networks, with informants living double lives for decades. Similar concerns can be raised about Gilchrist, considering not only the age gap of his relationship with Rees, but also some of the other emails he sent to police. Rees alleged that in 2005 Gilchrist emailed a photo of a naked underage activist to police with the subject line "needs a shave....". Also allegedly discovered on his laptop were photos of other underage activists, some in various states of undress, alongside a series of photos of one young activist "posing with one of Rob's guns pointed to her head, and in her mouth".

Following his exposure in 2008, Gilchrist sued police in 2013 for $550,000 for lost income, distress, and humiliation, among other claims. The police settled the case for an undisclosed amount. Gilchrist has now dropped off the map. Rees, the woman who initially exposed Gilchrist, said in 2015 that she believed police were still implanting informants into activist networks. She added "it has got little to do with any crime. We know from Rob it wasn't about gathering evidence to prosecute a crime. It was about gathering intelligence."

Conclusions

Critics of the waves of post-9/11 terror legislation rightfully pointed out that increased powers for security agencies would not result in increased safety, but instead heightened state repression. Gilchrist was a cog in this new machine, deployed by the state to spy on activists engaging in largely peaceful and legal activity, and in no way an actual threat to the New Zealand government. Gilchrist was instead the one goading people into committing illegal actions to justify the surveillance state’s existence. This culminated in his involvement with the 2007 Urewera raids, with the government spending months surveilling activists and $14m to convict just four people on weapons charges.

Now, with the backdrop of a new Cold War brewing in the Pacific, the same build-up of the security state is happening again. The Foreign Interference Bill, new changes to the Terrorism Act, and the opening of an FBI office all signal the government's intention to follow lockstep with its Five Eyes partners in ramping up its tools to crack down on dissent. “Strengthened and enhanced cooperation” with the FBI means sharing their tactics, their intelligence, and their aims. What is happening in the US, and the UK, and the rest of Five Eyes, will inevitably come here. It still remains to be seen what the New Zealand government and its security apparatus will exactly do with these newfound powers. We only know about the extent of Gilchrist's work due to someone stumbling across some suspicious emails. How many more informants are out there?

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Thanks to the people who helped make this happen, including Kyle, William for making this (literally) technically possible, LWF, Anna, and many others. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you next time. If you enjoyed this, you can subscribe to Exit From Affco below, check out my Ko-fi, or share with someone you think might also enjoy it. Ka kite.