Kit Bennetts was a former SIS officer and key player in the surveillance and arrest of Dr William Sutch in 1974. He was an anonymous witness - “Mr S” - at Sutch’s trial in 1975, but his real identity was unmasked by Brian Edwards on Radio Windy.

In 2006, Spy, his account of the Sutch case was published.

He left the SIS in the mid-1980s, and went on to work for another country’s intelligence agency and Queensland Police.

He is currently an academic at Southern Cross University in Australia.

M is John Daniell’s mum and a former SIS officer. She was the partner of Jim Stewart, an SIS officer. She left the Service in 1971.

Jim Stewart was an SIS officer from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. He was previously a radio operator on merchant vessels and a TV repair man.

An electronics expert, he specialised in listening devices. He worked with the SIS operations team on the Sutch case, the Rainbow Warrior etc.

Stewart was part of the joint SIS-MI6 team on the Czech embassy raid. He was John Daniell’s step-father and M’s partner. He passed away in 2005.

A former head of the SIS operations team, he led the NZ end of the SIS-MI6 raid on the Czech embassy.

Gerald Hensley was a former diplomat and head of the prime minister’s department under Sir Robert Muldoon and David Lange. He was the coordinator of domestic and external security from 1987 to 1989 and the secretary of defence from 1991 to 1999.

Oleg Gordievsky was a KGB colonel turned double agent for MI6. He defected to Britain in 1985.

Gordievsky was credited with a key role in averting nuclear war in the Able Archer 83 exercise.

He came to New Zealand four times from 1986, where he briefed prime minister David Lange on Russian subversion and penetration of the Labour Party.

Dr William Sutch was a New Zealand economist, intellectual and senior civil servant. He was identified in the Mitrokhin archive as having been recruited to the KGB in 1950.

He retired from his position as secretary of industries and commerce in 1965 but retained close ties to power.

He was arrested meeting KGB agent Dmitri Razgovorov in Wellington in 1974, tried under the Official Secrets Act and found not guilty in 1975. He passed away later that year.

Helen Clark was the prime minister of New Zealand and the minister responsible for the SIS from 1999-2008. She was first elected as a Labour MP in 1981, and was considered to be on Labour’s left wing and a strong proponent of the nuclear free issue.

A Cabinet minister in the Lange government from 1987, she was also deputy prime minister from 1989-90 under Geoffrey Palmer and Mike Moore. She went on to head the United Nations Development Programme from 2009 to 2017.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer was the prime minister of New Zealand and minister for the SIS from 1989 to 1990 and the deputy prime minister, attorney general and justice minister from 1984-1989.

He is the author of Unbridled Power, a critique of New Zealand government and is currently a law professor at Victoria University of Wellington. He has been sitting as a member of the inquiry into Operation Burnham, looking at the conduct of the New Zealand Defence Force in Afghanistan.

David Lange was New Zealand prime minister and minister for the SIS from 1984 to 1989. He signed off on the Czech Embassy and other raids according to his chief of staff Gerald Hensley. He passed away in 2005.

Professor Rouben Azizian was the former Soviet and then (post-1991 dissolution of USSR) Russian diplomat, the deputy ambassador for USSR then Russia to New Zealand from 1991 to 1994.

He has worked as an academic in NZ and the US since 1994, specialising in international diplomacy and security.

He is currently professor and director of Massey University Centre for Defence and Security Studies.

Sir Bruce Ferguson is a former RNZAF officer, chief of Defence Force (2001-2006) and head of Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) (2006-2011).

Richard Northey is a former Labour MP (1984-1990 and 1993-1996), and former president of NZ Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Citizens Association for Racial Equality (CARE).

He is a member and one-time chair of the justice select committee, which had an oversight role of the SIS.

Paul Buchanan is a f​ormer US intelligence and defence policy analyst and academic. He specialises in matters of security and international politics and currently runs a New Zealand-based strategic assessment consultancy.

Rory Cormac is professor of international relations at the UK’s University of Nottingham. He specialises in covert action and national security and intelligence.

He is the author of Disrupt and Deny:​ ​Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy​.

John Daniell is a freelance journalist, writer and podcast producer. He is the son of M and the step-son of Jim Stewart.

Guyon Espiner is an investigative journalist at RNZ, who has more than 25 years’ experience across radio, TV and print. He is a former political editor of TVNZ and a former host of RNZ’s Morning Report. He presented and co-produced The 9th Floor, a podcast and video series of interviews with five former New Zealand prime ministers, which was released as a book in 2017.