With Five Eyes on China, FBI bulks up in New Zealand
New standalone office causes alarm as Wellington continues to get behind the US' Asia-Pacific pivot.
This story was first published by Consortium News
The opening of a Federal Bureau of Investigations standalone office in New Zealand has caused widespread alarm, sparking a protest outside a US consulate and vows by opposition parties to have it closed.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced his organisation’s upgraded presence in the South Pacific nation on July 31, during a visit to Wellington, standing alongside senior government officials in its parliamentary building, The Beehive.
He told media:
“Some of the most important global issues of our times are the ones that New Zealand and America work on together — countering the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] in the Indo PACOM theatre, countering the narcotics trade, working together against cyber-intrusions and ransomware operations and, most importantly, protecting our respective citizenry.”
The FBI operates legats, or legal attaches, across the world, allowing the organisation to coordinate with domestic law enforcement agencies, government officials and intelligence partners. The bureau has maintained a presence in Wellington since 2017, with its main regional office based in Australia’s capital, Canberra, since 1999.
The Wellington legat would “address shared priority areas through joint investigations, information sharing, and capacity-building,” the FBI said.
It will oversee FBI activities in Antarctica, Samoa, Niue, the Cook Islands and Tonga, as well as in New Zealand, with the Australian legat looking after the rest of the Pacific.
Government ministers were taciturn and visibly uncomfortable when asked questions after Patel made clear one of the office’s main concerns would be China, New Zealand’s top trading partner.
In the wake of the news, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun on August 1 warned that “cooperation between countries should not target any third party.”
He added:
“Seeking so-called absolute security through forming small groupings under the banner of countering China does not help keep the Asia-Pacific and the world at large peaceful and stable.”
Labour, New Zealand’s main opposition party, questioned why the office was needed and said more information would be sought before commenting further. Others were clear in expressing disapproval.
Approximately 300 demonstrators assembled outside the US consulate in Auckland on August 2 to highlight the dangers posed to New Zealand’s sovereignty and judicial system.
Officials from the other main opposition parties, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, drew cheers from the crowd after vowing to have the office shut down. Other groups, including Palestine Action, designated as a terrorist organisation by the UK government, also addressed protesters, warning the FBI’s increased presence was a threat to civil liberties and freedom of speech.
There were reports of posts on X (formerly Twitter) critical of the government’s decision being removed.
Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick had posted on social media that the opening of the office signalled New Zealand was “tying itself to an increasingly unstable Trump administration.”
“We are not, nor should we allow ourselves to be, pawns in a power struggle between the US and China,” she said.
Patel met Foreign Minister Winston Peters, Defence Minister Judith Collins and Police Minister Mark Mitchell, as well as the country’s intelligence chiefs, while in the country.
US Grip Tightening
The Wellington upgrade is a sign of increasing Western focus on the Asia-Pacific region. The US and Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partners Australia and New Zealand have been preparing for war with China, focusing on the militarisation of existing bilateral and multilateral arrangements in the region, as well as pushing narratives through annual security threat assessments that inflate threats posed by what NATO calls has called the West’s greatest “strategic competitor.”
As many analysts observe, the real threat is the rise of multipolarity, as Western neocolonial hegemony is challenged by the expanding BRICS trading group, led by China, Russia and emerging nations in the Global South. The Asia-Pacific region is relatively peaceful, with an increasing BRICS presence dovetailing with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an organisation of 10 countries in Southeast Asia, promoting economic, political, and security cooperation.
The Western power bloc sits uncomfortably alongside the two groups amid Great Power competition, with small Pacific nations finding themselves increasingly stuck in the middle.
One such nation is the Cook Islands, a protectorate of New Zealand that found itself in the Five Eyes crosshairs over its signing of a comprehensive strategic partnership deal with China in February.
A series of agreements over development and exploration of its vast seabed mineral wealth were signed, infuriating Wellington over a perceived lack of consultation. Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced an NZ$18 million cut to its budget, which he said would be reinstated when certain conditions were met, widely understood to be acceding autonomy to Wellington.
The FBI’s Wellington office may take a keen interest in it.
Dan Duggan Case a ‘Cautionary Tale’
Patel’s presence in New Zealand had been unannounced, until a media outlet spotted him inside the Beehive, where he was meeting with senior officials, leading to speculation as to why he was there.
The day after Patel departed New Zealand, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) revealed Patel had a secretive meeting with Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke in Sydney. No government statement announcing the engagement had been released and it only came to light after the ABC made an inquiry.
It is possible that among the issues Patel discussed while in Australia was a Federal Court of Australia hearing scheduled for August 26, when the extradition of Australian pilot Dan Duggan to the US will be challenged.
For some, Duggan’s case highlights the risks posed by New Zealand allowing the FBI to expand its reach.
Duggan was arrested in November 2022 based on a 2017 US grand jury indictment that accuses him of training Chinese military pilots in violation of a US arms embargo. He faces up to 65 years imprisonment if convicted.
Duggan, who has been held at a high security prison in New South Wales since his arrest, says he was only ever aware of training civilian pilots while employed by the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) in 2012.
While later carrying out aviation consultancy work in China, Duggan says he discussed his work with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and a US intelligence official. He claims his work activities were never flagged as breaching any laws during these interactions, but that he was asked to act as a spy while in China.
He returned to Australia in 2022 after the ASIO gave him security clearance to take up employment in aviation. On return the clearance was withdrawn before he was arrested. Media have speculated he was lured back to Australia so he could be extradited to the US.
There is no hard evidence the FBI was involved in a plot to entice him back or set him up for arrest, but inducing someone into a situation where they can be arrested for an alleged crime is a common FBI practice in the US.
Duggan’s legal team have argued a law change in 2018 was unduly made retrospective, so that the US extradition request could be approved. It made training foreign military pilots illegal in Australia too, creating “dual criminality”, a condition that needed to be met under the US extradition agreement with Australia.
Australian Citizens Party spokesman Robert Barwick told Mick Hall in Context Duggan’s treatment should be seen as a cautionary tale, pointing to the dangers FBI and Five Eyes intelligence influence over a country’s domestic agencies and political system pose.
Barwick said citizens in Australia and New Zealand were being conditioned by their politicians and media to remain blind to US foreign interference in front of their noses, while China was being portrayed as a quiet boogie man, intent on threatening democracy.
“It’s interesting to contrast the recent hysteria about a Chinese ‘overseas police stations’ operating in Australia — basically overseas cops operating with approval of the Australian authorities, handling licensing renewals and other such mundane services – with the FBI legat in Canberra, beavering away with activities that really do warrant public scrutiny…
The FBI and the OSIO co-ordinate very closely and I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case with Dan Duggan.”
Like Duggan’s lawyers, Barwick argues Duggan has been caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between the US and China.
FBI Presence ‘Terrifying’
Activist group, Peace Action Wellington, an affiliate of the US Peace Action group, points to another extradition case in New Zealand with similar themes — that of internet entrepreneur and activist Kim Dotcom, who had his home raided by anti-terrorism special tactics teams in 2012 at the behest of US authorities.
“What we learned from that was New Zealand’s intelligence agencies engaged in illegal surveillance for the FBI, and the charges brought against Dotcom were not even things that are illegal in this country,” spokesperson Valerie Morse said.
New Zealand signed off on Dotcom’s extradition to the US on fraud charges related to his defunct website Megaupload last year. He is still fighting to remain in the country.
Morse called the FBI’s presence in the country “terrifying” in light of its role suppressing protests and dissent in the US.
“The FBI anti-terrorism units have been involved in numerous raids and arrests of student activists at universities across the US. These brutal investigations have nothing to do with criminal actions by anyone and everything to do with student support for Palestine.
“That a key area of collaboration is anti-terrorism is therefore extremely alarming… We want no US police presence here.”
Such fears may be well founded. There is evidence suggesting New Zealand is not only enhancing the interoperability of its military with US and NATO forces, but also aligning its laws with those of other Five Eyes partners.
A leak from the Ministry of Justice in July shows that New Zealand has been secretively consulting over plans to revise the Terrorism Suppression Act to make public statements deemed as material support for a proscribed organisation an offence. It further reveals the government wants to widen the criteria for proscribing organisations, putting it in line with other increasingly repressive Western countries.
It is also seeking to push through draconian legislation on foreign interference, considered so wide ranging that critics say it could be used to suppress foreign policy dissidents and environmental activists.
The increased presence of the FBI will only heighten concerns around these issues further.
Deepening Commitment to Washington
Auckland-based geopolitical analyst Trevor Johnston told said a series of diplomatic moves, law reforms, defence reviews and military pacts on top of the FBI upgrade all pointed to a deepening commitment to Washington:
“Patel was quite explicit that ‘countering the CCP’ in the Indo-Pacific was a primary objective of the office. The presence of dedicated senior FBI staff in Wellington, with frequent high-level access to our political leadership and personnel in our police, defence departments and intelligence agencies, will significantly increase US influence.
When you join all the recent milestones together, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion New Zealand is now very deeply enmeshed in US security interests and posture, as in Australia with the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, which ties it to US strategic interests, destined to be a belligerent in any US war with China.”
New Zealand has begun implementing military upgrades and expansion plans envisaged in defence reviews written after NATO consultations and direct engagements with the US.
It increased its four-year military budget by $9 billion, to $12 billion this year, after Defence Minister Collins signalled a big hike at the Munich Security Conference in February.
New Zealand has sent defence personnel to defend Israeli-bound shipping in the Red Sea and help select targets in Yemen as part of a US-led coalition. Diplomatically, it has failed to recognise the state of Palestine and refused to speak out against Israel’s act of aggression against Iran in June, or condemn Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
It trains Ukrainian soldiers and has deepened its involvement in the Western Russia-Ukraine proxy war.
It is making moves to join a US initiative to militarise space and has agreed to act as regional node in the US defence industry.
This year Wellington signed new bilateral security and defence agreements with Japan and the Philippines after attending a NATO meeting in Washington in July 2024, where the details were discussed.
In October last year, its navy transited through the Taiwan Strait in an act of provocation with NATO-aligned partners.
It participated in US-Australia biennial Talisman Sabre military exercises in Australia that started in July, involving 30,000 troops from 19 nations, designed to gain combat readiness in the Indo-Pacific region.
“The US’ long-run intent to contain its adversaries is clearly manifest in conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as in parallel preparations for conflict with China,” Johnston says.
“It looks like we are being drawn into yet another conflict not of our making, with an enemy not of our choosing.”
It was not intended that the New Zealand public should be privy to the opening of the FBI office in Wellington. When the presence of Patel was sprung by an RNZ reporter a press conference was so hastily convened that Patel, Peters and Collins had no time to agree on what they were to say publicly, which quite clearly could not be the same as what they were saying between themselves. Thus Patel let the cat out of the bag with his comments on the CPC, leaving Collins and Peters scrambling to jam it back in.
The initial secrecy, and subsequent dissimulation, surrounding the office exposes the hypocrisy of New Zealand's condemnation of the Cook Islands government for negotiating an agreement with China without providing a blow-by-blow account of negotiations to New Zealand and the Cook Islands public.
Does the presence of the FBI change much in Wellington? Not really. The United States already has its people ensconced in the senior ranks of the SIS, GCSB and NZDF, and those who are not formally in the service of the US are for the most part willing agents.
It rather serves to confirm New Zealand's colonial status as a vassal state of the US. This is a situation that will not change until rangatiratanga is fully restored throughout the motu.
Thank you Mick for reporting on all of this. It’s vital we have this information and you are one of the very few providing us with it clearly and comprehensively.