📸

10

EYES WIDE OPEN

To see it all clearly, you need to step back to 14 December 2011 and take a seat at the table with those who were planning the raid.

The spies listened as Detective Inspector Grant Wormald, deputy director of the Organised and Financial Crime Agency and the officer overseeing New Zealand's assistance to the FBI, spoke. There were details to be ironed out.

It was just over a month until Kim Dotcom turned 38. His birthday party was expected to be the "end date" for Operation Debut. He would be arrested, along with his alleged co-offenders, and extradited to the United States.

Operation Debut was moving to a new phase: paperwork would have to be filed with the courts and legal hurdles would be encountered and dealt with. It was time to expand the cone of silence around the FBI case and let more people in. Wormald had called in two advisors from the police legal section, another lawyer from the Ministry of Justice, three lawyers from the Crown Law Office, and police officers from the elite Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand.

There was a need for those involved to know the "nature and scale" of the operation — and to impress on them the need for "strict confidentiality", Wormald later said. His notes of the meeting, surrendered to the High Court, detail the issues discussed — a reminder to "brief surveillance today".

After the meeting, the police officers involved would disappear into the New Zealand summer. Christmas was just over a week away. The briefing set up the raid for January 20.

A lot of things needed to be put in place before then. Wormald's

📸