Secrets and Lies (Hager)

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Secrets and Lies (ISBN 0-908802-57-9) is a 1999 book by Nicky Hager and Bob Burton.

The book documents the public relations information put out by Timberlands West Coast Limited in order to win public support for logging of native forests on the West Coast of New Zealand.

The material is based on a large amount of leaked documentation from the local branch of Shandwick (now Weber Shandwick Worldwide [1]), a global Public Relations company, which had been hired by Timberlands to run a secret campaign against local green groups such as Native Forest Action between 1997 and 1999.

These show its tactics of surveillance of meetings, monitoring the press and responding to every letter to the editor, greenwashing, the use of SLAPPs, cleaning anti-logging graffiti and blotting out campaign posters in public places, and managing to install its pro-logging educational materials into schools.

The book alleges that almost every pro-logging material was organized by this campaign.

In a general Parliamentary debate 2006 the Gerry Brownlee said of the author and the book:

“

This is the same Nicky Hager who wrote the book Secrets and Lies in 1999, in which he spoke about the Timberlands scandal. None of it was true. Not one of the pages in that book carried a single truth. It was roundly discredited. He is a man who indulges in intrigue and in the activities of scurrilously besmirching any individual he does not like, without any care whatsoever.^[1]

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