Met Police Agent Provocateurs

[Jan Klimkowski]

Simon Jenkins' article is interesting but I fundamentally disagree with his assertion that:

It would be overly cynical to imagine that Acpo was actually sponsoring green activism, to remind ministers of the importance of NPOIU and the terrible things that would happen to power stations if it was cut. But there can be no doubt of the insidious grip that the securocrats' "social terrorism" now has on the public's sense of safety.

Call me a cynic, then.

If green activists (or any "terrorist" group for that matter) simply sit round a fire, smoking spliffs and chowing nut roasts, then NPOIU and its SIS partners could not justify their funding.

I strongly suspect that the handlers of the covert agents demanded: i) actionable intelligence; ii) evidence of illegal actions starting with criminal damage to property; and, iii) evidence of protest that could be framed as a risk to national security (eg an attack on a power plant).

Kennedy claims he was told by his handler that some of his "intelligence" went directly to Tony Blair. I bet it was "intelligence" in my category iii) above.

Scare Blair by feeding into his preconceptions about a violent, militant, left that threatened "New Labour values". (To use Mandelson/Blair/Brown speak.)

Kennedy/Stone appears to have both incited acts of aggressive protest, and provided material support (cash, equipment) for such actions.

This is agent provocateur, false flag, territory.

Blair was happy to accept any "secret intelligence" that fed his agenda.

By creating false flag protest actions, NPOIU and the SIS kept themselves in funding and kept the political class in tune with their agenda.

Indeed, they dictated the agenda to the politicians.

There is, of course, a deeper political level here. One which is far more sinister.

[Magda Hassan]

Any one who knows any of the (genuine, not agent provocateurs) protesters in the environmental groups would know that their actions are not to mindlessly damage power stations but more along the lines of public actions to draw attention to the environmental dangers of the present installations and also to draw attention to the alternatives available and the lack of political will to change. :attention:They are more in the tradition of theater than terrorism.

[Magda Hassan]

From George Monbiot.

The Real Domestic Extremists

Posted January 17, 2011
Who threatens us most - peaceful campaigners or a private militia run by police chiefs?

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 18th January 2011
This is what the head of a police unit set up to monitor domestic extremism said in 2009. "I've never said and we don't see - that any environmentalist is going to or has committed any violent acts."(1) That chimes with my experience. Two years ago I searched all the literature I could lay hands on, and couldn't find a single proven instance of a planned attempt in the UK to harm people in the cause of defending the environment. (That's in sharp contrast to animal rights campaigning, where there has been plenty of violence). No one has yet produced a factual challenge to that conclusion. Yet every year a shadowy body spends most of its £5m budget(2) on countering a non-existent threat that officers call eco-terrorism(3).
The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) employed the undercover officer Mark Kennedy, who was embedded and bedded for seven years among peaceful green activists. Kennedy claims that it has supervised 15 other undercover agents on the same mission(4). But what is the mission? Sorry, can't tell you. NPOIU is run by the Association of Chief Police Officers. As Simon Jenkins pointed out last week, ACPO is not a police force but a private limited company, beyond democratic scrutiny, not subject to freedom of information laws(5). While it receives much of its funding from the government, it is not accountable to the public. It looks to me like a state-sanctioned private militia, fighting public protest on behalf of corporations.
Until it was forced to back down by bad publicity, one of the other units that ACPO runs published a list of domestic extremists, to help its officers identify dangerous elements(6). Dr Peter Harbour, a 70-year old retired physicist and university lecturer, found his name on the list(7). Apart from the occasional speeding ticket, he has never been tried or convicted of an offence. So why was he on the database? Because he had peacefully marched, demonstrated and petitioned against a proposal by RWE npower, which owned Didcot power station, to drain the beautiful lake beside his village and fill it with pulverised fly ash. He had broken no law, damaged no property, issued no threats. Dr Harbour wrote to the unit, asking for his name to be removed from its blacklist. It refused.
NPOIU, the unit for which Kennedy worked, runs a similar list of extremists - which means people who have attended a protest or a public meeting(8). Surveillance officers are given spotter cards so that they can follow people on the database and monitor their movements. Vehicles which have been used by protesters are tracked all over the country by number-plate recognition cameras. One man, who has never been convicted of an offence, has been stopped 25 times because his car appears on the list(9).
There is no obvious connection between the kind of people in these files and criminality: they're distinguished only by the fact that they have taken an interest in politics. You might expect that this would mark them out as good citizens. But this policing appears to have nothing to do with the public good. If the claims that Kennedy also functioned as an agent provocateur are true(10), it has nothing to do with upholding the law. ACPO appears to be persecuting peaceful citizens who are trying to protect the places and values they cherish from destructive companies.
Twenty of the activists whose plans Kennedy betrayed to his handlers were convicted on the desperate charge of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass. This means that they had decided to step onto property belong to the power company E.On. The prosecutors couldn't find anything more serious to throw at them. Aggravated trespass is a crime invented by the previous Conservative government, to prosecute protestors who weren't otherwise breaking the law(11). The judge who passed sentence described these dangerous criminals as "decent" people with "the highest possible motives"(12) (they were campaigning to prevent climate breakdown). The case against another six was dropped when the police realised that they would have to release documents about Kennedy's activities, and tanked the trial.
This is what the £1.75m it cost to run Mark Kennedy has delivered(13); this is the sole legal product of seven years of work by a unit ostensibly fighting terrorism and extremism. Twenty peaceful people convicted on a pathetic charge, by a jury from whom the police withheld key facts; another group walking free after those facts threatened to emerge. Does anyone believe this represents good value? Does anyone think this is proportionate policing?
Even the Daily Mail yesterday fulminated about ACPO's lack of accountability and questioned its relationship with corporations and the lawfulness of its actions. It pointed out that "the right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of our democracy."(14) This looks like a possible turning point. The government might have to keep its promise to reform the laws restricting civil liberties.
But don't expect too much. Kennedy says that his superior officer told him that the information he gathered "was going directly to Tony Blair's desk."(15) This sounds plausible. It accords with the paranoid style that Blair imported into British politics. It fits with his instinctive support of power against the people, and his efforts to free the corporations (banks included) from the care they owe to society, while passing draconian laws to prevent society from challenging them. This government shares his inclinations.
The people challenging corporate power are often defamed as destructive anarchists. Yet they are seeking to defend the fabric of our lives from the anarchic destruction of market fundamentalism. The police, on the other hand, are fighting - often without obvious justification - to shield destructive companies from both unlawful and lawful challenges. They are defending neoliberalism's atomising, kleptocratic projects from those who question them.
So who are the domestic extremists? Which body represents the real threat to society, to public order and the rule of law? A group of peaceful campaigners acting on "the highest possible motives"? Or a private corporation running a secret spy ring, which looks as if it's using police budgets to try to change the political character of the nation?
This government claims to be concerned about both civil liberties and law enforcement. So here is a straightforward test. If it is committed to these principles, it will strip the Association of Chief Police Officers of its powers and its funding, shut down the units it runs and launch an inquiry into the alleged collusion between senior police officers and large corporations. Which does Cameron put first: the rule of law or corporate power? If ACPO is still operating in 2012, you'll have your answer.
http://www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Superintendent Steve Pearl, head of the National Extremist Tactical Co-ordinating Unit, quoted here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...e-campaign
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...cret-moles
3. For examples of the police using this term, see http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/05/...-the-gate/
4. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...riors.html
5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...-terrorism
6. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/12/...oia-squad/
7. As above.
8. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/25...s-database
9. As above.
10. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...undercover
11. In the 1994 Criminal Justice Act.
12. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...p-activist
13. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...porate-spy
14. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/articl...olice.html
15. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...riors.html

[Peter Lemkin]

Good piece by George Monbiot. Dare one hope it and others like it will have some effect? What? Put the brakes on the drive to neo-fascism/neo-feudalism? The very last thing the UK and the USA have 'become' are democracies, where the Plebs make any decisions or change the structure of the Polity based on their wishes and sensibilities. The Oligarchs and their Corporations rule supreme...and more so with every day. Sadly....oh, so sadly. Those of us who see what is happening, seem only to be documenting the end of civil civilization; perhaps to likely the end of civilization and life on the Planet entirely. Its not too late, but getting very, VERY close to being 'too late'! IMO.

My bet it by 2012 all the same Police [public and privatized] horrors will not only still exist, but have increased budgets and operatives...however, perhaps they'll change the names as a PR move.

The exact same [perhaps worse] goes on in the USA, by Police and FBI et al.

My prediction is that Kennedy's next step is a HUGE seven-figure advance on a book.

The more things change, the more they..........

[David Guyatt]

I don't even need to wait till next week, or even tomorrow.

Nothing will change in the slightest, other than that this sort of policing will go even further underground, for as Monbiot says:

It looks to me like a state-sanctioned private militia, fighting public protest on behalf of corporations.

[Peter Lemkin]

I don't even need to wait till next week, or even tomorrow.

Nothing will change in the slightest, other than that this sort of policing will go even further underground, for as Monbiot says:

It looks to me like a state-sanctioned private militia, fighting public protest on behalf of corporations.

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power"

-Benito Mussolini

"Fascism is capitalism plus murder."

-Upton Sinclair

[David Guyatt]

I'm more inclined to the Hitler model of National Socialism where the state and wealthy elites joined together in a thousand year Reich.

Hitler's plans for the thousand-year Reich were laid in 1925, and kicked off in 1933 --- that's 78 years ago with 922 years remaining.

[Peter Lemkin]

I'm more inclined to the Hitler model of National Socialism where the state and wealthy elites joined together in a thousand year Reich.

Hitler's plans for the thousand-year Reich were laid in 1925, and kicked off in 1933 --- that's 78 years ago with 922 years remaining.

...ah but as you well know...some embers were not extinguished and have been saved and nurtured, given new fuel and are now about to re-ignite [if some have their way...and, IMO, they are well on their 'way'!......... IMO, Hitler was, as Lenin would have said 'a useful idiot' and a figurehead. Others, behind him, backing him, prodding him, allowing him, were equally to blame. That ilk are still around, powerful and ready, willing and able...unless we [all!] stop them....and put all the embers out forever.

[David Guyatt]

My point entirely Pete.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The coverup is launched.

The government is suggesting that the power to run undercover agents will be removed from ACPO plc.

All fine and dandy. Except that undercover agents are not being abolished. They're simply being moved to management by another body such as the Metropolitan Police.

I'ts just a shuffle of the cards, giving the agents provocateur a new reporting line.

When they get caught hoisting those false flags again, we'll get another "oh dear" from the Home Office and another new management reporting line.

Mark Kennedy undercover spy case sparks shake-up of police operations

Association of Chief Police Officers will be stripped of power to run operational units, says Home Office minister

Alan Travis, home affairs editor guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 January 2011 16.54 GMT

The Association of Chief Police Officers is to be stripped of its power to run operational units in the wake of the case of Mark Kennedy, the undercover police officer who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist.

The Home Office minister, Nick Herbert, acknowledged for the first time that "something had gone very wrong" in the Kennedy case, which led to the collapse of the trial of six people accused of planning to invade a Nottinghamshire power station.

Herbert told MPs the case demonstrated strongly that Acpo should no longer have the responsibility for national organisations such as the unit that runs covert operations gathering intelligence on domestic extremists in England and Wales.

He disclosed to the Commons home affairs select committee that the Metropolitan police is poised to take over control of the national public order intelligence unit (NPOIU) to provide "proper accountability" for its activities.

He said a lead force such as the Met or the soon to be established National Crime Agency should take over national operational units such as the NPOIU.

"The government is strongly of the view that there needs to be proper accountability for Acpo and its successor body," he said.

"Units like this should not be operated by Acpo and they should be operated either by a lead police force or in future the National Crime Agency where there is proper governance in place." Acpo currently runs national units involved in running counter-terrorism work, domestic extremism, vehicle crime and criminal records.

A second blow to the future of Acpo, the professional strategy body for the police service, was dealt when it emerged today that the Association of Police Authorities have refused to continue to fund the body, pleading lack of finance. The home secretary, Theresa May, has written to the APA asking them to reconsider their decision.

Senior Met officers today promised that the activities of undercover officers will be brought within the London's force's "control and command system" to ensure such operations are conducted within the rules, lawfully and ethically.

"We have to make sure that we don't overexpose them," said the Met's acting commissioner, Tim Godwin. "We have to make sure that we don't leave them too long if that is the case."

Godwin said the domestic extremism unit had already been identified by Acpo as needing proper accountability. "As a result negotiations are in hand to bring it into the Met so that it would come within our command and control system, which would ensure a) compliance with the law, b) compliance with rules and c) compliance with ethics."

Herbert told MPs he had no knowledge of the case until the Guardian disclosed that the prosecution of six activists planning to invade Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station collapsed because of Kennedy's role in organising and funding it.

He also refused to comment on claims by MPs that both the names of the business secretary, Vince Cable, and the Green party leader, Caroline Lucas, were listed on the domestic extremism database simply because they had been present at peaceful protests.

The home affairs committee chairman, Keith Vaz, who said Kennedy was "no James Bond", also pressed the minister to investigate the alleged £200,000 expenses bill run up by Kennedy.

Herbert said such undercover operations were matters for the police within the legal framework of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and under the oversight of the surveillance commissioner.

"In this case it is clear that something operationally has gone very wrong and that is now the subject of an Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation," said Herbert.

"I think everybody is concerned by the Kennedy case and we have an IPCC precisely to investigate this kind of thing. It is right that the IPCC should look into it and then we should take note of that."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/18...NTCMP=SRCH