INTELLIGENCE BUREAU

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26832, 10 September 1952, Page 10

INTELLIGENCE BUREAU

Work Discussed In House OPERATION SINCE 1947 (New Zealand Press Association) WEIJJNGTON. September 9. The activities of the Joint Intelligence Bureau were discussed in the House of Representatives to-uay when the vote on the estimates for the Prime Minister’s office was considered. “Have we now established in this country an MI5?” asked Mr F. Hackett (Opposition, Grey Lynn). The Minister of Defence (Mr T. L. Macdonald): MI4.

Mr Hackett: Is it anything to do with “snoopers” or MIS or the Gestapo? The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Nash), querying an item of £93 shown as expenses of an officer visiting Melbourne. asked whether there was a joint organisation between Australia and New Zealand or among the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The Prime Minister (Mr Holland) said that the Joint Intelligence 'Bureau in Wellington was a department which was established by the late Prime Minister. Mr Fraser. Its function was complicated. Its main job was to provide the Government with not so much secret information as intelligence such as the state of harbours in the Pacific, the state of wharves and airports, radio stations, where submarine cables emerged from the sea, and so on. It listed vital points which could be supplied to those concerned in the event of any threat to the country. Mr M. Moohan (Opposition, Petone) said that the four officers on the staff of the Joint Intelligence Bureau surely could obtain all the information required from the General Manager of Railways if they wanted to know the carrying capacity of. the systeirt. The Post and Telegraph Department would provide all the information necessary about submarine cable outlets; the Royal Commission on the Waterfront could tell how many ships came and went.

“If all that they are doing is what the Prime Minister said, they could get their information from the departments.” said Mr Moohan. Mr Macdonald said that the decision to establish the bureau was taken in 1947. It was a most unfortunate title, and the organisation should be called the Office of Strategic Information. The staff had many contacts, and there was a very great need for the information it could supply. It was largely concerned with information about the Pacific islands. “In the last war ’there was much about the islands that we did not know, and if ever we become involved in the Pacific again the information now being obtained will be useful.”