Rainbow Warrior bombing should have led to French Watergate

Fernando Pereira going ashore at Rongelap Atoll in May 1985. Photo: © David Robie

ANALYSIS By David Robie

THE unmasked French bomber who sank the Rainbow Warrior 30 years ago had some revealing comments during his interviews with the investigative website Mediapart and TVNZ’s Sunday programme, none more telling than “the first bomb was too powerful, it should have ended as a Watergate" for French President François Mitterrand”.

"The last secret of the Greenpeace affair" proclaims
the French investigative website Mediapart.

Mitterrand stayed in office for 14 years - a decade after the bombing and before he finally stepped down when his second presidential term ended in May 1995, the year that nuclear tests ended.

The bomber, retired colonel Jean-Luc Kister, added that had Operation Satanique involved the United States, “more heads would have rolled”.

But while the “innocent death” of Portuguese-born Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira has clearly played on his conscience for all these years, Kister’s sincere apology wasn’t without a hint of trying to rewrite history.

The claim that the secret sabotage operation never meant to kill anybody is unconvincing for anybody on board the Rainbow Warrior on that tragic night of 10 July 1985 when New Zealand lost its political innocence and the crew lost a dear friend.

About rainbows, warriors and ship naming

The original Rainbow Warrior leaving London on her maiden voyage in early 1978
just months after being renamed from the Sir William Hardy. She was refitted as a sailing vessel
for her Pacific voyage in 1985. Photo: Greenpeace

WHEN the 30th anniversary edition of my book Eyes of Fire (Little Island Press) was published on the day last month marking the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985, Susi Newborn questioned my account of the naming of the Greenpeace environmental flagship. She was involved in the buying of the Aberdeen-built fishing trawler Sir William Hardy that was then renamed as the Rainbow Warrior. 

In the interests of historical accuracy, I have thus double-checked my sources for the book, including interviewing some of those involved at the time. I am quite satisfied there was no major inaccuracy in that section of my book comprising two paragraphs.

There was only a minor one which I am revising in future copies thanks to modern printing-on-demand technology. The decision to rename the rusty old ship Greenpeace UK had just bought was a collective one, taken in October or November 1977 at a small meeting on board the vessel in West India Dock, London, following a proposal made in writing a few weeks before by Rémi Parmentier to dub her Warrior of the Rainbow.

Those present at that meeting were Denise Bell, Charles Hutchinson, David McTaggart, Susi Newborn, Rémi Parmentier and Allan Thornton. Parmentier had first heard of the Rainbow Warrior Native American legend from a fellow called Georges Devez who had worked with him for some time in 1977-78.

Rainbow Warrior ... launch of the new 'last voyage' and bombing book

DELAYED video of last month's launch of David Robie’s new Eyes of Fire edition about the last voyage and the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior, marking the 30th anniversary of the sabotage in New Zealand.

This fifth edition (following two others in New Zealand and one each in the United States and United Kingdom) tells the story of the voyage of the first Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace vessel protesting against nuclear testing in the South Pacific, to Rongelap Atoll and the Marshall Islands.

Coinciding with the anniversary of the bombing by French secret agents on 10 July 1985, the launch brought together many of those who had been involved with the vessel over the years, including chief engineer Davey Edward, now head of the Greenpeace global fleet, who travelled out from the Netherlands for the reunion.

Rainbow Warrior: My Eyes of Fire anniversary message

David Robie speaking at the Eyes of Fire launch last night.
Image: Del Abcede/PMC; background screen image: John Miller

COMMENT: This was David Robie's book launch address.

IT'S HARD to believe that it is now 30 years – three whole decades – since state-backed terrorists blew up the peaceful environmental ship Rainbow Warrior – a vessel with such an inspiring name – and our friend and campaigner Fernando Pereira lost his life. 

I vowed to myself that I would continue the crusade as an engaged journalist by telling and retelling this story on any occasion I could.

This was the best I could do to keep Fernando’s memory alive, and to support the struggle of the Rongelap people – and all Pacific peoples harmed by the nuclear powers and their testing for more than a half century.

I remember the launch of the very first edition of Eyes of Fire in early 1986 out on the Viaduct aboard an old Auckland ferry.

Thanks to publisher Michael Guy, we had this giant cake iced with the French Tricolore. Dancing on the top of the cake were three frogmen and the phrase “J’accuse”.

Rainbow Warrior legacy 30 years on - Eyes of Fire book launch

TODAY is the 30th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 1985. Cafe Pacific brings you Selwyn Manning's wide-ranging interview on Evening Report with David Robie about the Rainbow Warrior's Pacific voyage - its last - the Rongelap evacuation, the legacy of nuclear testing by the three nuclear powers in the Pacific and looking forward to the challenges of climate change.

The book launching of Eyes of Fire by outgoing Greenpeace New Zealand executive director Bunny McDiarmid, is at The Cloud on Queen's Wharf at 4.30pm today, just near to where the environmental ship was bombed by French secret agents.

• The Eyes of Fire microsite
• EOF book details 
• Little Island Press
• Beyond the Rainbow Warrior - the French Pacific catastrophe 

Rainbow Warrior and NZ’s Pacific nuclear-free legacy

Alistar Kata's Rainbow Warrior report for Pacific Media Watch.

A PROGRESS report on the new Eyes of Fire – it's very different from previous editions, with an even greater emphasis on the Rongelap and Polynesian casualties of American and French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

The new Eyes of Fire ... out on the 30th anniversary
of the Rainbow Warrior bombing, July 10.

New Zealand media has too much preoccupation with the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, and has largely ignored the greater Pacific tragedy.

Outrageous as this attack by French secret service agents was, it pales into insignificance alongside the atrocities inflicted on Kanak independence activists at the same time, such as the Hienghène massacre, the assassination of Éloi Machoro and the bloody ending to the 1988 Ouvea cave siege as exposed in the 2011 docu-drama Rebellion.

The publishers describe the new Eyes of Fire as being as being the "definitive work on Western treachery in the Pacific".

Rainbow Warrior reflections - new Eyes of Fire on way

Flashback: David Robie presents Eyes of Fire to PM Ham Lini in August 2006.
Vanuatu Daily Post story

CAFÉ PACIFIC offers a bit of nostalgia. In just over a couple of months, New Zealand and the Pacific will be marking the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in an outrageous case of state terrorism by French secret agents in Auckland's Waitemata Harbour on 10 July 1985.

Dutch photojournalist Fernando Pereira was killed as part of the double-bomb plot. An unwarranted attack on a peaceful environmental ship.

The word is that there will soon be a fresh new (fifth) edition of David Robie's book Eyes of Fire. Out of a dozen books or so to surface out of the l'Affaire Greenpeace, David's was the only one written by somebody actually on board. There will be new content and new pictures.

The publishers, Little Island Press, also have a surprise package planned. More about that later.