‘Secret’ NZDF documents available on web: Hager

AUCKLAND: Highly secret documentation that the NZ Defence Force says cannot be released publicly in an inquiry into an NZSAS raid is available on a Nato website, says journalist Nicky Hager.

Mr Hager, who cowrite the book that led to the inquiry, said evidence of the sort needed to ensure public confidence had been disclosed in comparative inquiries abroad or could be found on the internet.

‘‘It’s a very important principle to remember when people say a document is secret. It is out there somewhere in the world. We are hiding it only from ourselves.’’

The claims were made on the first day in Wellington yesterday of hearings into the 2010 NZSAS raid in Afghanistan that the Hit & Run book claimed killed six civilians and wounded 15 others.

NZDF rejects the claim, saying nine insurgents were killed, but concedes it is possible some civilians died as a result of a faulty weapon system on a US Apache helicopter gunship.

The first day’s hearing was intended to hear views on how closed the inquiry should be and there were repeated challenges to intelligence and military establishment concerns about classified information.

Mr Hager said the inquiry had to be sceptical of simply accepting claims of national security and secrecy.

Comparative inquiries in other countries showed large amounts of information that NZDF considered to be secret had actually been made public without apparent harm, he said.

He pointed to a German inquiry that had successfully sought and published cockpit recordings of US aircraft carrying out attacks on Afghan civilians, and to intelligence reports that had been supplied to UK inquiries.

Hager said the video recordings that NZDF has claimed would ‘‘exonerate’’ its actions had to be made public and raised questions over how much effort had gone into getting the United States to release them. NZDF says it wants the information out but is bound by security objections put forward by the United States.

Details about the inquiry process emerged, revealing NZDF continued to sit on the vast bulk of information needed to get to the truth. Deborah Manning, who is representing those who lived in the Afghan valley where the raid took place, said just 324 of 17,000 relevant documents had been made available.

The intent was to get to the truth, said Sir Terence Arnold QC, former Supreme Court judge, introducing himself and former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer as the inquiry chairmen.

On one side of the equation was Hager, representing himself, and lawyers representing Hit and Run coauthor Jon Stephenson. Deborah Manning was there for the Afghan villagers.

On the other, there were lawyers for the Crown and for the NZ Defence Force.

The intelligence agencies, NZDF and the supporting government establishment have pushed for almost complete secrecy on the basis of protecting classified information associated with the raid.

Bell Gully partner Alan Ringwood was there for the media, pushing for as much openness as possible.

The inquiry’s title is Inquiry into Operation Burnham, yet submissions revealed there never was an ‘‘operation’’ called ‘‘Burnham’’. Instead, there was an ‘‘Objective Burnham’’ — one individual who was the target of the NZSAS on the night of August 22, 2010.