Afghanistan Inquiry: Progress Report No 1: 4 June 2019
We have observed the practice of other inquiries to issue ‘progress reports’. From May 2019
onwards our intention is to periodically post progress reports to provide updates. These will be a
substitute for the Indicative Timeline previously posted.
Completed staff interviews: Tranche 1
We completed the first tranche of agency staff interviews on 19 April 2019. The first tranche
included individuals from both the NZSIS and the GCSB. It covered individuals who were operating in
Wellington, as well as some staff deployed to Afghanistan during relevant events.

Cooperation with Government Inquiry into Operation Burnham
We have held regular meetings with the Government Inquiry members in relation to our respective
Inquiries. This dialogue, carried out in accordance with the published MoU, has been of benefit to
both inquiries and included mutual exchanges of references to inform the identification of relevant
documents and witnesses.

Upcoming Interviews: Tranche 2
Over the coming weeks we are setting up the second tranche of staff interviews. These will be
focused on individuals who were identified, from documentation or by interviewees in the first
tranche, as highly involved in the relevant matters. We aim to have the second tranche completed
by the end of June 2019. Interviews with other staff are possible, but are not currently anticipated.

Production of/access to relevant information by the intelligence and security agencies
Through our independent accesses and concerted efforts we have now been able to review the
majority of relevant material held by the NZSIS and GCSB. Official records of the time, central to this
Inquiry, are often in the form of staff emails, or attached to emails, and remain stored in individual
staff email accounts, rather than in a central organisational record system. The IGIS’s right to directly
access these records was initially called into question by the agencies, but eventually resolved.
Nonetheless, the challenge of accessing all relevant staff emails has remained a recurring point of
difficulty.
Access to the historical mailboxes of specifically requested staff members was sought by 5 October
2018; it was provided in January 2019. It amounted to several tens of thousands of emails. The
review process for these emails revealed certain anomalies in the document production process,
affecting principally the GCSB. The IGIS team spent considerable time pursuing these issues. Our
efforts resulted in the GCSB in May 2019 locating and producing over 115 000 additional staff emails
for our review, being emails previously left out of the document production process due to an
oversight. Some of these will also be relevant to the Government Inquiry. The Inquiry team has met
with the Bureau to satisfy itself about the search methodology used and the technical reasons for
some anomalies in the results.