Foreign intelligence agencies might therefore see New Zealand as a "back door" into the intelligence worlds of the United States or United Kingdom.
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Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer has stated that "it would be wrong to assume New Zealand was free from foreign threats or that New Zealand may be too small and unimportant to be of great interest to hostile foreign-intelligence organisations".
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On occasion, foreign spies may be active in New Zealand for reasons not connected with the country itself — the French bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was aimed at Greenpeace rather than New Zealand, and China is sometimes alleged to target New Zealand-based Chinese democracy activists and Falun Gong members more often than it targets the New Zealand government.
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In 1985, agents of the DGSE, the primary foreign intelligence agency of France, bombed the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour.
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