Whale Oil Beef Hooked (generally referred to as WhaleOil) is the personal blog of Cameron Slater which he started in 2005. Slater, the son of former National Party president John Slater, claims WhaleOil is a "super-blog" attracting over one million unique visits every month. He admitted at that time to suffering from depression and has a reputation for vitriol and anger. He said in 2010 that he didn't care if people regarded him as 'stupid, a bully, or vicious' but would resent being called a hypocrite.

In January 2014, WhaleOil was hacked some time after he posted a blog post with the headline "Feral dies in Greymouth, did world a favour." Three other children in this family had already been killed in accidents and the post provoked a 'furious public reaction'. Some weeks later, Hager received an 8 gigabyte USB stick in the mail containing thousands of pages of emails hacked from Slater's website. Hager contacted the hacker, known as Rawshark, and persuaded him that putting the information in a book would provide "something more lasting and of bigger value" than releasing it on Twitter. Hager says Rawshark was motivated by his dislike of Slater, and that he secretly met the hacker in public parks to discuss how the information should be released. He then spent a significant amount of time analysing the content and only published material which he believed was in the public interest. He was careful to avoid releasing sensitive material about Slater and others mentioned in the hacked emails which did not involve a significant public interest.

Production

The production, printing, and distribution of the book was done in secret by Craig Potton Publishing. Co-owner of the publishing company, Robbie Burton, said: "It was one of the great and surreal and scary moments of my publishing career." Burton said the secrecy was necessary because they were wary that the book might annoy some people with "deep pockets" who "might be inclined to revenge". The book was produced very quickly by Craig Potton Publishing, where staff worked on it from Thursday evening to the following Tuesday. Once the book was finished, first it was printed in secret in Wellington, before being shipped back to Nelson and stored in a warehouse, and then finally being sent unannounced to stores around the country.

Dirty Politics was released at Unity Books in Wellington on 13 August 2014, with a crowd of approximately 150. Prior to the release of the book, details of what it would be about were the subject of substantial speculation, as the topic of the book was kept secret in order to avoid it being blocked from release by a court injunction.

Four days after release, it had sold about 10,000 copies, in addition to 1,000 e-book sales. Robbie Burton, executive director of Craig Potton Publishing, said: "I've never seen anything like this before, in terms of the speed at which it's happening." A week after release, sales had reached approximately 15,000, and by mid September, sales were at almost 20,000. The first two chapters are available free on-line.

Two weeks after the release of the book, Hager spoke at the four-day biennial Writers & Readers Festival in Christchurch. About 5000 people attended 57 events, one of which was a public discussion called Secrets, Spies and Free Speech featuring Dirty Politics author Nicky Hager, Guardian journalist Luke Harding and Australian journalist Richard King. The discussion was mainly about the freedom of speech in Western democracies.

Hager provides numerous incidents of dirty politics in the book. He describes multiple email exchanges between Cameron Slater and National Party spin doctor Jason Ede who works for Prime Minister John Key. Up till August 2011 Mr Ede was employed by Ministerial Services and, in effect, was paid by the taxpayer. Hager says Ede tried to avoid scrutiny by using a 'dynamic' IP address, one that changed frequently making it difficult for him to be identified. When the book was published, Mr Ede was employed by the National Party, rather than by John Key, but was still working from the Prime Minister's office. He resigned the day before the election.

Dirty Politics also describes numerous email contacts between Cameron Slater and Judith Collins who are long-time friends. The email records span from 2009 to 2014 covering the entire time she was in Cabinet. One particular email shows that Collins asked Slater to edit her Wikipedia page and sent him a new photo with the message: "Cam, any chance of a better photo going up?? Eek it looks really bad." Slater appears to have obliged using the pseudonym 'Jc press sec', which was subsequently changed to Polkad0t.

In return, Slater also asked Collins for favours. The emails indicate Slater asked Ms Collins to get a prisoner moved to a different prison, while she was Minister of Corrections. Slater asked Collins to get him moved because he was friends with the prisoner's ex-wife, who wanted the man moved further away from their daughter who had been visiting him in prison.

The more serious allegations in Dirty Politics are described below. Radio New Zealand political editor Brent Edwards says that while the book is not always definitive,

The Labour Party website

One of the main allegations is that during the 2011 election campaign, Cameron Slater and Jason Ede took advantage of a badly-configured website to enter the database of the Labour Party website. This enabled them to look at emails and personal details which were then used to attack the Labour Party. 18,000 emails, lists of the party's donors and supporters and their credit-card transactions were downloaded. The book reveals Mr Slater and Mr Ede both accessed the site more than once and then "plotted how best to reveal the downloaded material on Mr Slater's blog". Slater did not deny he had accessed the website in May 2011, and said: "I was certainly into the backend of the Labour Party's website, if they couldn't manage security of their website, their credit card details and financial information about their membership, well then they weren't really fit for government at the time."

Hager alleges that material from the website breach was selectively released by Slater, starting from 12 June.

In response to being accused of illegally accessing the Labour website, Slater published a blog post titled "My confession: How I accessed the Labour Party web site". In the post, he shows how he claims to have accessed information on four Labour party websites, and denies allegations of "hacking". Using easily accessible links, he could view all the files on the web server, including sensitive membership and credit card information which was unencrypted.

Mr Key also claimed there was nothing wrong with Jason Ede accessing the Labour Party website because "they left their website open." He justified the action to Radio New Zealand by saying: "If the Wallabies on Tuesday night had left their starting line-up up on their website, on their private website, would the All Blacks go and have a look? The answer is yes. The reason I know that is it's happened."

The Security Intelligence Service

Another allegation is that in 2011, the Prime Minister's office facilitated the release of confidential Security Intelligence Service (SIS) documents to Cameron Slater so he could use them to embarrass Phil Goff. Slater made an Official Information Act (OIA) request to the SIS for confidential documents which confirmed the SIS had briefed Phil Goff about suspected Israeli spies who left the country after the second Christchurch earthquake – after Goff had said publicly he was not briefed. Slater was given access to documents within 24 hours – long before other media outlets who had also asked for them. Slater's emails described in Dirty Politics suggest he knew what was in the documents before they were released and that the OIA would be expedited in unusually quick time. Goff believes this inside information could only have come from the SIS director Warren Tucker or from staff in the prime minister's office.

Attacks on public servant

The book also presents evidence which suggests that Justice Minister Judith Collins leaked the name of public servant, Simon Pleasants, to Cameron Slater. Pleasants worked in the ministerial property department at Internal Affairs, and Collins assumed he was responsible for leaking details of Mr English's accommodation payments to Labour in 2009. Slater then published a series of blog attacks on Pleasants – who subsequently received a torrent of abuse including death threats. Pleasants denies ever leaking any information about English.

Nick Bryant, Gerry Brownlee's press secretary is identified in Dirty Politics as the user of the pseudonym "Former Hack" to post anonymous comments on Whaleoil encouraging Cameron Slater's campaign against Pleasants. On 23 August, The New Zealand Herald reported it was able to confirm the use of Mr Bryant's ministerial computer and subsequently revealed that hundreds of messages were sent from ministerial or government computers to the comments section of Slater's blog. The messages are linked to email addresses on government servers and IP addresses from which they were posted.

Commercial 'hit' jobs

Dirty Politics also refers to hacked emails which suggest Slater allowed his website to be used for commercial "hit" jobs supplied by PR consultant, Carrick Graham, whose clients include tobacco and alcohol companies. For instance, Slater has frequently used his WhaleOil blog to attack Professor Doug Sellman, a leading authority on addiction and an outspoken critic of the alcohol industry posting blogs with pejorative titles such as “Confirmed: Doug Sellman Gone Mad”. These were based on information supplied by Carrick Graham, son of former National party member Sir Douglas Graham. Hager says Carrick Graham's company, Facilitate Communications, paid Slater $6,555 a month and speculated that it was for him to do attack blogs.

Katherine Rich

Former National MP Katherine Rich, the chief executive of the NZ Food and Grocery Counci