Former Wellington Chamber of Commerce chief executive, diplomat and Government adviser Charles Finny has been named by WikiLeaks as the United States’ top Kiwi contact.
But Mr Finny denied being a spy and said the “key contact” mentions were flattering. He is quoted often in the US diplomatic cables controversially made public by website WikiLeaks, and in a cable from May 19, 2006, was singled out as a “close [US] embassy contact”.
“I am regularly talking to embassies, high commissions and journalists in New Zealand and around the world, in areas where I have expertise,” Mr Finny said.
“I don’t want to be big-headed about it but I do know quite a lot about what goes on in some parts of the world and also about international organisations and how they operate. I am regularly consulted all over the world.”
Mr Finny is employed by public relations company Saunders Unsworth and works with domestic and international clients on tertiary education policy, international trade, aviation policy, infrastructure policy and government procurement.
He has spent much of his life studying and working overseas, living in the US, Britain, Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Taiwan.
Before joining Saunders Unsworth in July, he spent five years as Wellington Chamber of Commerce chief executive. He previously had 22 years’ experience in international trade, economics and diplomacy, serving in the Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry, the Trade and Industry Department and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
He is also a member of the Victoria University Council and was an unsuccessful candidate for the Greater Wellington regional council in this year’s elections.
Mr Finny said he often saw important embassy contacts at functions in Wellington.
“You see them at cocktail parties, you have lunches occasionally and sometimes they formally call on you … once every four or five months. But you would probably see them once a week at cocktail parties.
“I would say I speak most often to the Australians and the Americans and I also do work for the New Zealand Government from time to time.”
The US embassy was less keen to discuss Mr Finny. “We do not comment on materials, including classified documents, which may have been leaked,” spokeswoman Janine Burns said.
“Any unauthorised disclosure of classified information by WikiLeaks has harmful implications for the lives of identified individuals that are jeopardised in other countries, but also for global engagement among and between nations.
“While we cannot speak to the authenticity of any documents provided to the press, we can speak to the diplomatic community’s practice of cable writing. Cables reflect the internal day-to-day analysis and candid assessments that feed the governments’ foreign relations deliberations.
“These cables are often preliminary and incomplete expressions of foreign policy, and they should not be seen as having standing on their own or as representing US policy.”
Mr Finny’s main area of expertise is international trade negotiations in Asia. “We just talk about what’s going on and what’s happening in various places around the world,” he said.
He “absolutely” was not a spy. “I talk to lots of people across the business community, the diplomatic community, international organisations and media.”
Do you want safety for you and your family? How about we build a fence too keep all the dangerous people outside, and we will put barbed wire on it to keep people climbing over, and electrified cables to keep people digging under it, and guard towers to see anyone approaching it, with machine guns to scare the dangerous people off and make sure they cannot get in. and the the fence will ring your house to keep the dangerous people out and the safe people safely inside, and we cannot risk your safety by ever letting you out.
UNDER FIRE: Former ALP senator Stephen Loosely says Senator Arbib is no spy. Picture: AFP Source: The Australian
MARK Arbib was not a spy and was in fact acting in Australia’s interests when he told US diplomats what was going on inside the ALP.
Anyone who says otherwise is anti-American, insists former ALP senator Stephen Loosely.
Mr Loosley said Senator Arbib was doing nothing more than politicians from the Labor and Liberal parties had been doing for decades when it came to frank, private political discussions with envoys from Australia’s closest ally.
Senator Arbib, the Sports Minister, was portrayed as a spy in the Fairfax press yesterday after he was named in WikiLeaks cables as one of several politicians who discussed with US envoys the inner workings of the Labor Party, including leadership issues, just before Kevin Rudd was deposed as prime minister.
Mr Loosley admitted that he was one of several Labor Party members who tipped off US diplomats in Sydney in late 1991 about the probability that Paul Keating would depose Bob Hawke as prime minister.
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“A lot of people, including myself, were involved in those conversations with the Americans, because it was very much in our national interest that the Americans were clear about what was happening inside the government,” Mr Loosley told The Australian yesterday.
“The notion that Mark Arbib is somehow a spy is truly absurd and offensive. The Australia-US relationship is based firmly on trust, and the reason we have such a relationship is because both sides are constantly working the patch as far as politics and policy is concerned.”
Mr Loosley, a member of the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, attacked Senator Arbib’s critics as anti-American.
“For some elements of the political class, the closeness in our relationship with the Americans is always equated to subservience, but that is simply not true,” he said. “It is a two-way process, and this sort of discussion also helps Australia form views about our allies.”
Former politicians and diplomats said yesterday the unique nature of the Australia-US relationship meant there was broader and more open dialogue between diplomats, politicians and decision-makers than occurred between other countries.
Senator Arbib is one of many Australian politicians who attend the leadership dialogue, an annual bipartisan forum of leaders from government, business and the media from both countries who engage in frank discussions on the bilateral relationship under Chatham House rules.
The leaked US cables said Senator Arbib was “an influential factional operator” who “has met with us repeatedly throughout his political rise”.
Strategic analyst Hugh White said Senator Arbib had not done anything wrong in speaking frankly to the Americans about Labor Party issues.
“The standard we should apply here is whether he has said anything which damages Australia’s national interests,” Mr White said. “I don’t think it does any harm for the private machinations of the Labor Party to be shared. Lots of politicians have been doing the same thing for years. These are not matters of national security.”
Left-wing journalist and author John Bilker said the revelations about Senator Arbib’s links with the Americans raised questions about whether the US government played a role in the deposing of Mr Rudd as prime minister, given that Senator Arbib was an architect of Mr Rudd’s demise.
He said the US might have been unhappy with Mr Rudd because he appeared ambivalent about Australia’s continued military involvement in Afghanistan.
One senior Labor figure, who asked not to be named, said that although Senator Arbib had not broken any rules in talking about party affairs with US diplomats, he would be ostracised by many within the Labor movement because of his activities.
A former Australian Secret Intelligence Service agent, Warren Reed, said the nature of Senator Arbib’s links with the US embassy and its staff should be explored more closely.
“If the Americans are referring to Mr Arbib as a ‘protected source’ then they clearly believe he is of value to them,” Mr Reed said.
Greens leader Bob Brown said he would not be surprised if conversations he had had with US officials were the subject of secret embassy cables.
“I regularly . . . get asked to meet the US ambassador and indeed a few other ambassadors from countries around the world,” Senator Brown said. “I’m always very careful about that, because you know the information is going back to the home capital, whether it is Beijing or Washington or Wellington, or wherever.
“I think it’s good that this (the Arbib cables) has seen the light of day. We all have to answer as elected members of parliament for any information we’re giving to foreign embassies.”
The son of one of the highest-ranking CIA officers to betray his country dodged a prison sentence Tuesday after making a deal with prosecutors to help build their case against his father.
Nathan Nicholson apologized in court for his role in a scheme to get his father’s Russian handlers to pay the man he once idolized: Harold “Jim” Nicholson, who is serving 24 years at a federal prison in Oregon for his 1997 espionage conviction.
U.S. District Judge Anna Brown sentenced Nathan Nicholson to 5 years on probation and 100 hours of community service after agreeing with a joint recommendation by prosecutors and defense attorneys who said he was manipulated and groomed by his father.
“Once this defendant was confronted, he did not hesitate to accept responsibility,” Brown said in court.
Nathan Nicholson had already pleaded guilty to acting as an agent of a foreign government at his father’s bidding and conspiracy to commit money laundering, and Brown said his actions will remain with him for the rest of his life.
‘I want to be my own man’
The 26-year-old told The Associated Press and The Oregonian newspaper that he had idolized his father, but “after this, I want to be my own man now. I don’t want to live in someone’s shadow.”
In a case that unfolded like a fictional thriller, from 2006 to 2008 the 26-year-old former Army paratrooper traveled the world at his father’s bidding to meet with Russian agents — in San Francisco, Mexico City, Peru and Cyprus — to collect payments the father believed were long overdue.
His father trained Nathan in CIA tradecraft, advising him to hide money from the Russians in different places, to never deposit more than $500 in his bank account, and to pay for trips in cash to avoid a paper trail.
It began in the summer of 2006 when the incarcerated Harold Nicholson asked his son to help him contact the Russian government for “financial assistance,” a sort of pension for his past work. Nathan Nicholson, then 22, was a student at Lane Community College.
The younger Nicholson was excited about the prospect of doing clandestine work for his father, according to the sentencing memo.
Harold Nicholson told his son to go to the nearest Russian consulate to make initial contact, and over the next two years, the son met with Russian agents six times. Prosecutors say Russian agents agreed to meet with the younger Nicholson because they wanted to learn how the FBI caught his father and to obtain information about the CIA.
Nathan Nicholson was paid a total of about $47,000 by the Russians.
The imprisoned ex-spy encouraged his son by praising his work, saying “he had performed as well as, or better, than some of the CIA employees” he had trained for the agency, according to the sentencing memo.
But as he jetting around to his meetings with them, the FBI was already on to the father and the son. In February 2002, a “concerned citizen” told the FBI that Harold Nicholson may have tried to contact Russian agents through other inmates and an investigation was begun, leading to an indictment in January 2009.
Harold Nicholson pleaded guilty Nov. 8 to the same charges as his son. He faces sentencing Jan. 18.
Dad caught in 1996
Harold Nicholson had risen to CIA station chief before he was arrested in November 1996 at Dulles International Airport in Virginia with 10 rolls of film he had intended to hand over to Russian agents. Federal officials say that before his arrest, he had been trotting around the globe to hand off documents to the Russians and that he was paid for his work.
Nathan Nicholson said he was about 10 when he first learned his father worked for the CIA. At the time, Harold Nicholson was an instructor at a CIA training camp in Williamsburg, Va.
The family had moved around a lot, and Nathan said he rarely saw his father but soaked up his stories about Harold Nicholson’s own military career in the Army.
In their sentencing memo, federal prosecutors said the elder Nicholson had “significant emotional power” over the son, using his skills to “groom and manipulate him” while in prison.
Nathan Nicholson said he now wants to rebuild his life — a “very frugal” existence on VA benefits and financial aid at Oregon State University, where he’s studying computer science.
“I want to restore the honor that was lost,” he said.
MANAMA (AFP) – A regional centre to fight Al-Qaeda must be created to help countries join ranks and eradicate the Islamist “danger” which threatens the world, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief said on Friday.
“The danger threatens all of us and the fight against terrorism necessitates international action,” Prince Turki al-Faisal said in Manama, which is hosting a major conference on Middle East security.
“We must relaunch the idea of (setting up) a regional centre to fight” against Al-Qaeda, Prince Turki said.
“There should be no obstacles between countries on the exchange of information” about Al-Qaeda, he added.
In 2005 Saudi Arabia first floated the idea of a regional centre based in the ultra-conservative kingdom, where Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was born, to pool international resources against the Islamists.
Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi, whose country is the ancestral homeland of Bin Laden, told Friday’s meeting the “struggle against Al-Qaeda failed in part because we don’t see this as a global issue.”
“Each one of us is concentrating on their own national security. We need a unified strategy,” Kurbi said.
For his part, British Defence Minister Liam Fox said that “transitional terrorism by definition has no borders.”
“We have to learn to act together,” Fox said.
The annual Manama Dialogue organised by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies draws prime ministers, defence ministers, military officials, intelligence chiefs and private sector heads from across the region and beyond.
LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistani police have arrested five suspects linked to an attack on a spy agency building in Lahore last year which killed 24 people, the city’s police chief said.
“The suspects have confessed their role in the suicide attack on the intelligence agency building,” police chief Aslam Tareen told reporters, adding that the group had been planning more terror attacks.
“The five were arrested a couple of days ago from Shahdara,” a neighbourhood in Lahore, the country’s eastern hub, Tareen told a press conference.
“We are in a warlike situation and this war on terror has spread across Pakistan, but we are trying to do our best to maintain security,” he said. It would take time to complete the investigation, he added.
Police said the suspects belonged to the previously unknown Al-Toheed-wa-al-Jihad faction which falls under the umbrella Pakistani militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and had trained in North Waziristan.
“They were activating themselves and planning terrorist activities in Lahore,” Tareen said.
The group was also engaged in kidnapping for ransom, an investigator said.
“They kidnapped people for ransom in 2009 in Faisalabad and Sialkot,” senior police investigator Zulfiqar Hameed told the press conference.
“Their next target was some security forces buildings in Lahore,” he said.
“Police have recovered four suicide vests, one rifle, 32 hand grenade pins, 13 number plates of vehicles, eight mortar shells and ammunition.”
At least 24 people were killed, including 13 policemen, civilians and security officers, in the May 2009 suicide attack on an Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) building.
A group calling itself “Tehreek-i-Taliban Punjab” claimed responsibility for the blast in a Turkish-language statement posted on jihadist websites.
Around 4,000 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since government forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007. The attacks have been blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked networks.
