DIGGING DEEPER

Nicky Hager

National Portrait C3

"Do I have social and political motivations? Of course. Why else would I spend hundreds and thousands of hours working on things? That's why I do it."

I t was far from the week Nicky Hager would have hoped for. He was supposed to be on the offensive, pushing for an inquiry into a botched SAS raid, which his new book alleges killed six Afghan civilians.

Instead, he’s been defending Hit & Run‘s accuracy, conceding he and co-author Jon Stephenson mis-mapped the raid’s exact location, with the ensuing confusion threatening to undo all those thousands of hours of research. A stray ‘‘bollocks’’ emerged from those usually tightlycontrolled lips, in the face of Defence Force denials. Yet here he is, mid-firestorm, talking about his life and motivations in that same quiet, calm, even tone that is his trademark.

Any post-release ‘‘turbulence’’ is minor compared with the effort of writing a good book, Hager explains. And he doesn’t believe in putting his personality too much into his work.

Which is why he finds it weird that 25 years of ‘‘talking in what I think is a calm and reasonable way about things’’ has earned him a long legacy of personal insults, ranging from ‘‘sanctimonious lying commie creep’’ to the ‘‘Left-wing conspiracy theorist’’ tag favoured by former prime minister John Key.

His champions call him a defender of democracy and decency; his critics call him a politically-motivated smear merchant and master of PR, who stage manages his book releases for maximum impact and trashes people’s reputations to make money.

Hager (rhymes with lager) calls himself an author or investigative journalist. Not an activist - he hates that term. And not a Labour or Green Party stooge. But certainly political, in the sense he’s motivated by morality and social issues and the need for change.

‘‘Do I have a party political agenda? Not in the slightest. Do I have social and political motivations? Of course. Why else would I spend hundreds and thousands of hours working on things? That’s why I do it.’’

Sitting in the modest harbour-view house he built himself, Hager looks an unlikely public enemy. He’s the quiet, bright kid who sings and tramps and can name all the plants in the bush. The 58-year-old doesn’t have a cellphone or television as they waste precious thinking time. As he puts it - ‘‘I organise the choir, I spend my life trying to do what I think is right’’.

But he likes delving into subjects others would rather keep secret, from his first book Secret Power, investigating previously unknown spy agency GCSB, to the latest,

Hit & Run, which alleges New Zealand SAS involvement in civilian deaths, and a defence force cover-up.

His books fall broadly into two categories - war (intelligence gathering being an extension of military work) and dodgy politics. The first is personal - Hager comes from a family ‘‘really shockingly influenced by the fact the world had gone to war’’.

He grew up in Levin, the son of immigrants with a social conscience. His father Kurt fled Austria and the Nazis as a teenager and wouldn’t talk of the war. That strained silence was a powerful influence, Hager says.

‘‘So the work I’ve done about war ... I feel like that’s my life’s work ... if we don’t do that then we’re just endlessly tricked into going to the next war and making the same mistakes again.’’

His mother, Barbara, was born in Zanzibar.

She studied horticulture and was an accomplished singer and handed down both interests to her son. Hager loves his garden succulents line the windowsill and the feijoa tree is just fruiting. His first research job was working on native forest ecology for DSIR.

Hager was an apolitical teen, fixing up his old van and sweeping the floors of his father’s fancy shirt factory. But when he moved to Wellington at 17, he discovered social causes, becoming the spokesman for nuclear disarmament, and campaigning for forests.

With degrees in physics and philosophy, he wondered what to do with his life. Despite a brief flirtation with the Values Party, politics never tempted him. A safe conventional job didn’t appeal and he never considered journalism.

His brother-in-law offered him building work. It was, Hager says, a great apprenticeship for writing books - being disciplined and breaking big projects into small chunks.

Ten years of building funded his budding research career. On weekdays, he fixed rotten weatherboards and on weekends he visited the Tangimoana secret spy base and noted number plates. When he located the cars’ owners in a public service staff directory, they were all tagged ‘‘radio officer class’’. It turned out to be the key to identifying GCSB staff.

Hager never considered himself a journalist until American intelligence expert Jeffrey Richelson called Secret Power a ‘‘masterpiece of investigative reporting’’. He is the only New Zealander on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, but some still argue he’s not a journalist because he does not give those in the gun the opportunity to respond.

He makes no apology for that, saying all he would get back would be spin.

‘‘The responsibility to be accurate, fair and balanced has to be dealt with in your research.’’

Hager is also decried for digging dirt for money and once appeared on the NBR’s Rich List, without explanation. If there’s a secret stash, he hasn’t spent it on his house. Hager says writing is his primary income and he makes anything upwards of $10,000 a book. Dirty Politics was his biggest earner, at about $50,000. He survives by having a mortgage-free house and living a frugal life.

‘‘Nobody in their right mind who is doing it for the money would be writing these books.’’

The Hit & Run mapping inaccuracy is a blow to Hager’s credibility. But for all the insults and dismissals, he has never been sued over a book. And he says it gets ever easier to get people to talk to him, so not everyone believes the slurs.

Hager insists the public opprobrium rarely gets him down. And he doesn’t fear for his safety, despite Dirty Politics characters publishing his address. However, the 2014 police raid on his home, in search of the source of Dirty Politics‘s hacked emails, was ‘‘quite shocking’’.

His daughter Julia, who is one of the few things more important to him than his work, was home at the time.

‘‘I couldn’t bring myself to tell people it had happened. It felt really bad. And then we got over it.‘‘

He’s not entirely unflappable, however. Asked if he’s scared of anything, Hager laughs a deep belly laugh. He’s afraid of heights.

‘‘I can climb all over the building while I’m building something and I go in the mountains all the time, but there are some situations where I’m deeply frustrated at myself, that my head for heights gets me. Everyone has fears.’’