Govt didn't know about drone strike: Key
Prime Minister John Key has denied a claim that the government would have had advance knowledge of the US drone strike that killed a New Zealander in Yemen last November.
The man, who went by the name Muslim bin John, was killed alongside three others, one of them an Australian.
Australian media has identified the New Zealander as Daryl Jones.
Mr Key has previously said he had links to al-Qaeda.
Jeremy Scahill, the American author of the book Dirty Wars, was interviewed on TV3's The Nation programme on Saturday and said he had seen "dozens of top secret documents" provided to the government by the US.
"They indicate that New Zealand is extremely aware of the extent to which the United States is engaged in drone strikes around the world and is briefed fully on the infrastructure of that programme," he said.
Mr Scahill also suggested that if the Government Communications Security Bureau had held any information on Jones, it would almost certainly have passed it on to its partners in the Five Eyes international surveillance network.
Asked to comment at his post-cabinet press conference on Monday, Mr Key said Mr Scahill was wrong.
"I saw this guy making these comments on The Nation at the weekend and certainly the way I interpreted them, they're completely wrong," he said.
"It would be useful if he provided evidence... then we would respond to that."
Mr Key again refused to say whether more than one New Zealander had been killed by drone strikes in the Middle East.
