Attache named as C.I.A. agent at Wellington embassy

Press, 23 May 1977, Page 1

Attache named as C.I.A. agent at Wellington embassy

By

JOHN ROSS,

London correspondent

Daniel Cameron, described in the United States diplomatic list as an attache, has been named by the former C.I.A. agent, Philip Agee, as a member of the agency’s New Zealand office.

He revealed that he had worked in Uruguay with a woman, Cane Dalrymple, who was later posted to the C.I.A. office in New Zealand.

He named last week five agency officers working in Australia, whose names were later confirmed by Government sources. On Thursday, he issued a further three names of Aust-ralian-based C.I.A. agents. Mr Agee, who is now a journalist and is preparing * a second book on C.I.A. activities, has also cug» gested that the C.I.A. has infiltrated the trade unions in Australia and possibly New Zealand, in order to •'dampen down” militant activities.

Mr Agee said yesterday that he was “quite convinced” Mr Cameron is head of the C.I.A. operations in New Zealand. “I have my own way of finding out who is working for them and who isn’t,” he said from his Cambridge home.

At a press conference in London on Thursday, Mr Agee, who is awaiting deportation from Britain, said he was sure the C.I.A. was working in New Zealand.

A spokesman at the United States Embassy office in Wellington said last evening that all matters should be referred to the embassy when its offices open at 8.30 a.m. today.

The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) has denied that the American secret service organisation operates in New Zealand. But he admitted in Auckland that there was a member of the C.I.A. working in New Zealand, liaising with the Security Intelligence Service. He also repeated previous claims that the Russian secret service organisation, the K.G.8.. had members in New Zealand involved in covert activities.

Mr Muldoon said that, because of his position, ha was the only person in the Government who knew exactly what was happening on security matters.

“The C.I.A. does not operate in New Zealand — it has not operated in New Zealand.” he said. “There is a C.I.A. member in New Zealand. He is a liaison officer. He will not be identified, but he is here.” Mr Muldoon said New

Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service exchanged information with its counterparts in Australia, Britain, and in many other countries.

Its counterpart in the United States was the C.1.A., and the C.I.A. man in New Zealand had the task of passing American information to New Zealand, and information the S.I.S. had gathered in New Zealand to the United States What the K.G.B. did in New Zealand was different.

“It operates here. We know it has operators here and we know they operate on covert activities,” Mr Muldoon said. ‘These are facts of life in a modem world.”

Mr Muldoon, speaking at the start of the golden jubilee celebrations of Mount Albert Grammar’s School House, suggested that people talked of agencies such as the C.I.A. too emotionally. “To have the freedom of a democracy you have to take whatever steps are necessary to preserve it—from subversion as much as from attack,” he said. - Organisations such as the C.I.A. and the S.I.S.

might sound sinister but an intelligence service was necessary to counter espionage and to keep an eye on those people, who were present in every country, who sought to do things not to that country’s advantage.

Mr Muldoon said the amount of information being passed between the S.I.S. and the security organisations of other countries had increased lately because of “this horrible thing, international terrorism.” New Zealand was an obvious target, and so more precautions were being taken than ever before and more information was being provided from overseas.

Referring to the revelations last week about C.I.A. operatives in Australia, Mr Muldoon said: “We have at present some American traitors to use the old-fashioned term, who are betraying their oaths and making public information that should not be made public. T can do nothing but condemn this sort of thing.”