Why was the NZSIS interested in Betty Martini?
One thing every New Zealander learns by the age of ten is that everyone of us four million or so knows everyone else – sooner or later. The long arm of coincidence or Jungian synchronicity obviously aids in this process, which brought Abby Cormack, dedicated Wrigley’s gum addict and Dorothy Charles, wife of an NZ Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) agent, together in – of all places – Susie Clemens’ Auckland Pilates studio at the high point of Betty Martini’s 2007 tour. Certainly neither expected to see the other and, as we all know, a spook - which Dorothy’s husband most certainly is - can never retire.
You see the Charles used to live down the road from the Cormacks in Wellington’s up-market Khandallah suburb and everyone knew they were associated with Security Intelligence as gossipy Kiwis always do. And, you see, Dorothy is not one of Susie’s Pilates students and the meeting was only being held for Susie’s teacher and students so they could pass on the dangers of aspartame to their friends. Dorothy, a greying woman in her 60s, sitting there carefully taking notes, was very much the odd person out in an audience that included no one (apart from Betty Martini, myself and notorious health activist and NZ’s last remaining true Communist, 88-year-old Margaret Jones) over the age of 35.
So what was Dorothy Charles taking notes for? Betty Martini’s statements condemning aspartame are all over the Internet like a chronic rash among the nearly three million hits you get on the word “aspartame.” What is more, we aspartame subverters were saturating the news media with information about Betty’s views and activities around New Zealand. We had not, however, told anyone about Betty’s meeting with Susie Clemens’ Pilates people. To get that information you’d either have to be moving in youthful Auckland Pilates circles, tapping someone’s phone conversations or, perhaps, doing a key word search through private emails via the USA’s National Security Agency’s Echelon eavesdropping electronic surveillance station down at Black Birch Stream out among Marlborough’s vineyards. Black Birch taps into all our free nation’s Internet traffic and phone calls searching for evidence of treasonous activity among us all.
You can’t be too careful down here among the icebergs of the South Pole. Like those posters they put up during the 2nd World War, “Osama bin Laden is listening” for whispers that could lead to New Zealand becoming an Islamic state. Of course it’s hard to see how Betty Martini fits into this scenario. She was still trembling at the thought that she’d been in contact with a real, flesh and blood Communist (Marg Jones) when I farewelled her. Betty is a devout Jehovah’s Witness from the Deep South Bible-thumping state of Georgia in the US of A and has only just discovered that Auckland is not in Australia. How she ever got on the SIS radar as an object of surveillance by the matronly Dot is difficult to comprehend unless you recognise that Coca Cola and Wrigley’s are actually virtual arms of the White House and George Bush’s former administration as well as nett contributors to his presidential campaign.
So of course Betty has to be stopped! Opposing aspartame when it has been approved by Donald Rumsfeld is like peeing on the Statue of Liberty and the American Constitution. It’s like joining Al Qaeda and spitting in George Bush’s eye! Little Betty with her rather seductive Deep South drawl and flowing Hollywood Betty Grable tresses must be stopped!
They stopped her at London’s Gatwick airport two years ago and held her in close confinement for half a day while they tried to extort a confession from her of criminal or subversive intent. They “lost” her bags on her arrival in Auckland and our SIS spooks left all their usual calling signs (dropped sandwich crumbs, forced locks and a plastic glove!) when her bags were finally “found.”
So what signs of subversion was Dorothy Charles able to detect for her husband’s report back to “M” at spook headquarters down in Wellington?
Well, little Abby, bless her heart, was able to overlook Dorothy’s note taking and reports that Dot went into overload when Betty was asked a key question from her Pilates audience: “Why is aspartame not banned?”
“Profit, addiction and greed” was Betty’s reply, which will now be recorded against Betty’s name on her ever-growing file held at FBI and CIA headquarters.
Of course Dorothy, wife of a registered, card-carrying SIS agent “retired” in Auckland could just be a deeply concerned citizen gathering data to prevent the rampant paranoia Diet Coke consumption could induce in fat-conscious security agents forced by their occupation to spend hours lurking on street corners or sitting at boring public meetings taking notes.