P.M. dismisses suggestion of C.I.A. operation

Press, 12 August 1986, Page 9

P.M. dismisses suggestion of C.I.A. operation

By

ROBERT LOWE

NZPA Suva The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, dismissed suggestions yesterday that the Government’s anti-nuclear stance had made it the likely target of an American Central Intelligence Agency operation. Such an operation would play into the hands of the New Zealand Government, he told a postSouth Pacific Forum news conference in Suva.

“I don’t accept that the CJ.A. would operate that way in New Zealand,” he said. “I don’t accept that it is any part of an American strategy.”

Mr Lange said he thought such a campaign needed to be carried out in a country where there was inherent instability.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that any power has the capacity to change the whole political climate by

a few skilled operators,” he said.

However, he said that if the CJLA. were working in New Zealand, the effects were already being seen. “The National Party is now in its third leader since the election,” he said.

On Sunday, a former C.LA. agent, Mr Ralph McGehee, said in Christchurch that he believed the CIA. had increased its involvement in New Zealand.

The aim was to reverse the nuclear-free policy and to install a Government that would accept nuclear warship visits and nuclear war-base facilities, he said. One indication of this was the increasing news reports in the American media about New Zealand and the increasing Soviet presence in the South Pacific.