Met Police Agent Provocateurs

[Paul Rigby]

Paul - is it your judgement that anything published by The Guardian on police or intelligence undercover assets must have come directly, or indirectly, from MI6?

Among other things, I was mightily impressed by the detailed biographical sketch of Officer A: Lynn Watson ("Police among protesters," 20 Jan 2011, p.7), which seemed to defy the infiltrator's compartmentalized career over a geographically-dispersed area and five years. Did she really give up all this info to her "friends" in Leeds; and did one or more really take notes?

I was additionally impressed by the thoroughly selective nature of the Grauniad's reporters' curiosity. One example, taken from the story by Paul Lewis, Rob Evans, & Rowena Davis, "How an activist fell in love with a police spy - and went on to have children by him," 20 Jan 2011, p6.

"Laura," the wronged woman, started an affair with undercover nasty "Jim Sutton" (alias of plod Jim Boyling). Sutton left Laura in September 2000, vanishing into thin air. Laura, love-lorn, hunted far and wide for her beloved, including, reportedly, a visit to that old bolt-hole for British spies, South Africa. No joy. But then...but then:

"Tipped off that Boyling had returned to England and was living in Kingston..."

Now, tell me, Jan, who would know that an undercover plod had returned to England? Did the Greenies have a spy in the passport office? Within NACPO? Or, rather more likely, I would have thought, was it a rival spook bureaucracy?

And so to one Paul Lewis, Grauniad hammer of the Met supreme. Who is Paul Lewis? Well, here's a brief sketch from the paper's own website:

Paul Lewis is Special Projects Editor for the Guardian. He was named Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards 2010 and won the 2009 Bevins Prize for outstanding investigative journalism. He previously worked at the Washington Post as the Stern Fellow.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/paullewis?page=5

So what exactly is a Stern Fellowship? What manner of disinterested truth-seeking org sponsors this jolly?

Laurence Stern, right, was a highly respected editor at the Washington Post. He died in 1979. He had a fascination with all things English. This internship was set up in his honor by friends in the Washington and international journalism communities. The money was originally managed by the Washington Journalism Center on behalf of the Stern Fellowship. In 1993 the Washington Journalism Center became a part of the National Press Foundation, which assumed the fund management. Each year the Washington Post selects a British journalist who works in Washington during the summer.

For further information, see the fellowship listing on City University's website or contact the Executive Editor's office at The Washington Post (202-344-6000).

http://nationalpress.org/awards/detail/l...gton-post/

Does this reassure me? Oddly, no.