Dunne Vance time line and Steve Braunias

Andrea / Dunne time line:

Dr. Richard Swainson wrote these words [Manawatu Standard Sat Aug 3^rd 2013] and I quote:

“The unlawful spying on New Zealanders by a secret agency bares at least surface comparisons to the Gestapo or the Stasi, still more so when the exposure of said activity leads not to shame or apology, but to brazen attempt to indemnify the criminals”, quote ends. 

The GCSB knew they were breaking the law when they spied on Kim Dotcom, and when they spied on 88 other New Zealand citizens. They were found guilty by the courts, but have they been punished, no, because to punish them, then all involved would need to be punished.

And the list would be long, it would start at the top and work its way down. And that would expose key players and I can assure you that these key players will do all in their power to avoid that exposure. The will tell half truths, lies even, to avoid taking responsibility for what are, no matter how one looks at it, crimes against individuals and equally importantly, the state.

They will blame others and look for scapegoats, and they will change the law to make their illegal behaviour and actions legal. Richard Nixon cried out, I am an honest man, but no one believed him, why, because he wasn’t…he was a liar of the highest order.

But if the matter wasn’t so serious it would be laughable, but alas this is the way of Kiwi Hobbits, they seem to believe that if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear, that of course is simply crap and is about as intelligent as cutting off a leg to fix an ingrown toe nail…

Steve Braunias’s brilliant column [The secret diary of…John Key] would once have published in the Manawatu Standard but sadly it was pulled; who ever it was who pulled it, must have been related to the idiot who cut off his leg to fix his ingrown toe nail. It is now published in the Sunday Star-Times.

If you would like to read this absolutely wonderful column go to:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/blogs/opinion/8995339/The-secret-diary-of-John-Key

One of John Key's top advisers knew that emails between a journalist and politician were sent to the so-called Henry inquiry - but did not tell the prime minister for a month. This Top adviser was Wayne Eagleson the Prime Ministers Chief of Staff… who does nothing, and I mean nothing… without being instructed by the PM.

EAGLESON'S TIMELINE:

April 5: Inquiry terms of reference released.

April 19: I email SPSs asking for ministers and SPSs to co-operate with the inquiry.

May 8 or 9: Ministerial Services; advises me that Parliamentary Service requires the necessary approvals before meeting the inquiry's request for information on ministers.

May 9: After a phone conversation with [Parliamentary Service general manager) Geoff Thorn, I send him an email in effect authorising the release of material. My email and telephone conversation related solely to ministers and their staff. At no time then or subsequently did I either raise the matter of Ms Vance's phone records, or be asked by Geoff Thorn for a view on whether they should be released.

May 21: Geoff Thorn calls me. He says that subsequent to the earlier information being provided to the inquiry team, Mr Henry has now asked to see the content of emails for one minister (Mr Dunne) and for a number of staff. I give immediate approval for the staff emails to be provided to the inquiry, and say that if the ministers involved were National MPs, I would authorise that as well. I indicate to Mr Thorn that I am uncomfortable authorising the release of the content of Mr Dunne's emails as he is a support party minister. I ask for time to consider the matter. Mr Thorn follows up with an email setting out the request (attached). He also indicates to me that as he would be overseas for the coming days there would be an acting GM.

May 22: I ring Mr Dunne's office and outline the situation. I say that I am not prepared to authorise the release of his emails, and his office responds they will put the request to Mr Dunne. His office rings me back, to say that for privacy reasons Mr Dunne is not prepared to give approval for the release of his emails but is happy to meet with Mr Henry to discuss the emails and related matters. I call the acting GM of Parliamentary Service and tell him that Parliamentary Service cannot release the emails without Mr Dunne's permission, and that a likely alternative is Mr Dunne meeting with Mr Henry. The acting GM of Parliamentary Service says he will discuss with Mr Dunne's office.

May 23: Acting GM of Parliamentary Service sends me a brief email saying he has spoken with Mr Dunne's office, and that "spoke with Rob all ok". I respond thanking the acting GM of Parliamentary Service for that (attached).



Andrea Vance explodes and demands truth.

At last Andrea Vance speaks out…it’s about time!

Because she proves that Key is a coward, and a gutless backroom bully who hides behind others and makes others look stupid while he actually gives the orders.

He is so used to getting his own way via his cheque book and imposed threats that he just can’t understand what freedom means to real people.

Key we are presented with via the media is not a real person; he is a created public relations image, created by brought people to whom truth is alien.

He is a portrait painted using water colours, when you splash water on it, it melts and runs and reveals what’s behind the image…nothing but damp squid, smelly, fishy, unappetizing and of no value.

And the public now knows it.

What the wider public is at last comprehending is that all those who work around or are employed by Key get contaminated and they too then start to smell, John Banks, Peter Dunne, Steven Joyce, Sky City, Mediaworks,

Here is what Andrea Vance had to say: You decide if she has a case.

In other circumstances, I could probably find something to laugh about in revelations that the journalist who broke a story about illegal spying was snooped on by Parliament's bureaucrats.

Let alone the irony that the reporter previously worked for the News of the World, the tabloid at the centre of a privacy violation scandal.

But I am that journalist and I'm mad as hell.

Anyone who has had their confidential details hacked and shared around has the right to be angry.

My visit to Speaker David Carter's office on Tuesday left me reeling.

My jaw dropped when he sheepishly confessed that a log of all calls I placed to people around Parliament over three months was released to an inquiry focused on the leak of the Kitteridge report on the Government Communications Security Bureau.

After weeks of Parliamentary Service dodging Fairfax Media's questions about the phone records, I was finally assured on Thursday - thanks to questions lodged by Greens co-leader Russel Norman - that my calls hadn't been scrutinised.

It was a small comfort, after learning my movements around the building had been tracked using the security swipe card that hangs around my neck most days.

On Tuesday, an IT staffer showed me pages of "metadata" - a record of hundreds of calls I made between February and May.

The conversations, of course, aren't disclosed, but you can glean a lot from matching numbers, time and the dates of published stories.

After the news broke, I fully expected my phone to fall silent as sources shied away from being burned. Thankfully, it hasn't.

Now the Speaker and Prime Minister John Key claim a cock-up (by a low-level contractor) over conspiracy.

Forgive me if those assurances ring hollow.

Details of inquiry head David Henry's intrusive and outrageous behaviour have had to be dragged from all parties. (He, curiously, omitted any reference of the swipe card records from his report.)

Can I, and my sources, be confident the records weren't viewed? They were held on a Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet server up until Tuesday night.

Why - if they had acted so properly - did the Henry Inquiry not notify me of this intrusion? It rankles that Key was told days before I was.

I don't know who had access to my records, and I'm suspicious why, on June 5 - less than a week after the unauthorised release - NZ First leader Winston Peters was making some startling allegations in the House about phone records.

Ad Feedback The prime minister's office, the Speaker, and Parliamentary Service have been unable to offer a guarantee that there was no leak to Peters.

However, all this is not really what's got me fizzing.

What has got my goat is the casting aside of something we journalists hold very precious: press freedom.

I watched with horror at the news, in May, that the US Justice Department had quietly obtained records listing incoming and outgoing calls, and their duration, of Associated Press reporters.

It chilled me to the core that the identities of journalists’ sources were laid bare to investigators, with no opportunity for AP to put up a fight.

Rather naively, I assumed it could never happen here: Surely not in little old, top-of-the-transparency-index New Zealand?

What was I thinking?

Key insists that he "values the role of the fourth estate".

He might well cherish the opportunities it gives him to beam into our living rooms at teatime, but it has become rather obvious that this government has a casual disregard for media's true role as an independent watchdog.

Journalists were dismissed in a tantrum as "knuckleheads".

The teapot tapes fiasco - when Key laid a complaint about eavesdropping on a personal conversation - led to police raids on newsrooms.

This week, the Defence Force stood accused of monitoring the phone calls of war correspondent Jon Stephenson, a man whose credibility Key has previously impugned.

That contempt for the press continued yesterday with the obfuscation around what Henry had actually requested.

He might not have asked for details of all the phone calls I made, but he certainly asked what calls I placed to ministers and their staff.

It amounts to the same thing.

Crucially, Key ordered that inquiry and he can no more shrug off responsibility for how it was conducted than Henry can.

I don't want an apology.

But I wish both men would do New Zealand's media the courtesy of taking responsibility for the unreasonable activities undertaken by that inquiry, which undermined the freedoms I and my colleagues hold so dear.