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Major failure by New Zealand’s media

As reported in multiple previous press releases, Harmon Wilfred, a CIA whistleblower in possession of testimony against Bill and Hillary Clinton that should have had significant influence on NZ foreign policy, has been living in New Zealand since 2001. He has been stateless, without travel documents and unable to leave the country ever since his request for political asylum was rejected in 2006.

In 2011, immediately following a summit between John Key and Hillary Clinton, he was issued with an unenforceable deportation order. In September 2015, Carolyn Wilfred, with the full prior-knowledge of INZ, visited her daughter in Canada. Without any advance warning, INZ issued an all-ports ban on her re-entry - thus separating the couple, with no chance to say their farewells, potentially, for the rest of their lives. A few days ago (with a new government in power) INZ rescinded the deportation order. However it continues to insist that Carolyn remains in exile and that, even though he has no travel documents, Harmon should leave New Zealand and thus reside in international waters, or undocumented, attempt entry into another country. In the next few weeks, the Hon. Kris Faafoi, the new Associate Minister of Immigration, is scheduled to reassess Harmon Wilfred’s situation.

Over several years, starting in 2008, a series of deeply calumnious and misleading articles about the Wilfreds appeared in the Christchurch Press. The reporter responsible never once spoke to, or met the victims of his vicious assaults. The articles would seem to have been written to fit perfectly into the CIA’s SOPs for the punishment of those whistleblowers outside the range of its ‘cleaning’ department: destroy their reputations; rubbish their evidence; make them unemployable and if possible drive them into bankruptcy.

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Other than the Christchurch Press articles, which determinedly avoided the truth, there has been a single gallant attempt to reveal the real Wilfred story by a reporter of the ODT. His full-feature article, based on several months’ research through Harmon’s voluminous archives, was inexplicably spiked immediately before publication.

With those exceptions, and one or two very brief mentions in sundry blogs, the New Zealand media has almost completely ignored the story of the extreme injustice the Wilfreds have suffered at the hands of the NZ government. The same is true of the behind the scenes, political skulduggery in US/NZ relations. The funds poured into the highly suspect Clinton Foundation, other than a brief mention in the NBR, have scarcely earned a mention.

So, finally, the challenge of honest investigative reporting has been taken up in New York.

Charles Ortel, an investigative journalist specialising in financial fraud, has been investigating the Clintons and their Foundation for the past several years. For Ortel, Harmon’s knowledge of the ‘coincidental’ setting up of the Clinton Foundation at the same time as the CIA opened a multi-million stream of funding for its black-ops, explains much of subsequent events. In his first of several planned interviews, Ortel goes at length into the NZ tax-payers’ funding of some dubious overseas Clinton Foundation transactions.

Broadcast last weekend on Jason Goodman’s New York blog, ‘Crowdsource the Truth,’ Ortel’s ‘Sunday with Charles’ program, featured an hour-long interview with Harmon Wilfred. Within the first few hours, it received thousands of views and multiple comments and appears to be making increasing waves. Despite the complimentary things Ortel had to say about New Zealand’s new Prime Minister, the facts displayed could well prove somewhat embarrassing for NZ. This broadcast should shame the negligent and/or gutless NZ media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rfm4SN9seY

This is a two and a half hour broadcast. There is much, specifically NZ, detail that starts at around the forty-five minute mark. Harmon’s hour-long interview starts about an hour into the programme. So far, in the past sixteen years, no New Zealand journalist, other than the hapless ODT reporter, whose article was spiked, has seen fit to interview either of the Wilfreds.

If the NZ public is kept in the dark about such matters as its government’s heartless abuse of the Wilfreds and the tax-payers’ funding of dodgy international scams such as the Clinton Foundation would appear to be, how can an intelligent and well-informed democracy function?

This is an egregious failure by the NZ media and should be a matter of grave concern to all New Zealanders. What other human rights abuses, mis-spending of public money and secret squirrel deals are taking place behind their backs? In these two instances, it has been with impunity and in broad daylight.


www.khakispecs.com is the blog of Hugh Steadman, a friend and business partner of the Wilfreds. Hugh lives in Blenheim NZ. His email is hugh@khakispecs.com This and previous press releases concerning the Wilfred saga can be found at http://www.khakispecs.com/?cat=800

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