Met Police Agent Provocateurs

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ah, time for a coverup of the Jackal techique......

Second police spy says Home Office knew of theft of children's identities

Former undercover officer Peter Francis says department helped spies by providing false passports in dead children's names

Rob Evans
The Guardian, Monday 15 July 2013 18.35 BST

Peter Francis, the former undercover police officer turned whistleblower. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

A second police spy has said the Home Office was aware that undercover police officers stole the identities of dead children to infiltrate political groups.

Peter Francis, a former undercover officer turned whistleblower, said the Home Office helped the spies by providing false passports in the names of the dead children.

His claim comes as Britain's most senior police officer, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, is due to publish a report on Tuesday about the secret use of dead children's identities.

It will be released on the same day that MPs on the home affairs select committee are due to question Mick Creedon, the chief constable who is leading the police investigation into the deployment of undercover officers in protest groups over a 40-year period.

Creedon has already conceded that the theft of the children's identities was "common practice" within a covert special branch unit which operated between 1968 and 2008.

Earlier this month, Bob Lambert, one of the leading spies of the unit, claimed that the technique was "well known at the highest levels of the Home Office".

In a practice criticised by MPs as "ghoulish" and "heartless", undercover spies in the unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), searched through birth and death certificates to find children who had died at an early age. They then assumed the identity of the child and developed a persona based on that identity when they went undercover for five years or longer.

The spies were issued with fake documents such as passports, driving licences and national insurance numbers in the child's name to further bolster their credibility.

Francis, who infiltrated anti-racist groups from 1993 to 1997, discussed the technique with the head of the SDS because he had reservations about stealing the identity of a four-year-old boy who had died. He did not disclose the name of the SDS head.

"We bounced it around what were his thoughts, what were my thoughts. It was evident that it was standard practice," Francis said.

The head of the SDS told him the Home Office knew the undercover spies "were using the children", he said, as it gave fake passports to the spies knowing that they were in the names of the dead children.

The SDS was directly funded by the government, which received an annual report on its work for much of its existence.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We expect the highest standards of professionalism in all aspects of policing. That is why Chief Constable Mick Creedon is leading an IPCC-supervised investigation which will ensure any criminality or misconduct is properly dealt with."

Francis was an important source for the Guardian when the newspaper detailed the technique, dubbed the "jackal run" after Frederick Forsyth's novel The Day of the Jackal, in February.

Speaking then as Pete Black, one of his undercover identities, Francis said he felt he was "stomping on the grave" of the boy whose identity he stole. "A part of me was thinking about how I would feel if someone was taking the names and details of my dead son for something like this," he said at the time.

Last month, he said his superiors had asked him to find "dirt" that could be used to smear the family of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager who was stabbed to death in a racist attack in 1993.

Lambert went undercover for four years in the 1980s to infiltrate environmental and animal rights groups. He adopted the persona of Bob Robinson, a seven-year-old boy who had died of a congenital heart defect.

Interviewed by Channel Four News this month, Lambert said that at the time he did not "really give pause for thought on the ethical considerations. It was, that's what was done. Let's be under no illusions about the extent to which that was an accepted practice that was well known at the highest levels of the Home Office." Lambert fathered a child with a campaigner while he was undercover.

On Tuesday, Creedon is expected to be questioned by the select committee about whether the police will apologise to the parents whose children's identities were taken. Creedon has said he has taken legal advice on whether the spies who stole the children's identities could be put on trial.

[Jan Klimkowski]

A perfect example of the non-apology apology:

Met chief sorry for police spies using dead children's identities

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe releases report on surveillance used since 1970s but refuses to inform any affected families

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 July 2013 12.22 BST
Jump to comments (9)

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said families of dead children whose identities were used would not be approached, as that could put undercover officers in danger. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

Britain's most senior police officer has offered a general apology for the "morally repugnant" theft of dead children's identities by undercover spies who infiltrated political groups.

But Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has refused to tell any families if the identities of their children were stolen by the undercover officers. He said he wanted to protect the spies from being exposed.

In a report published on Tuesday, he admitted that at least 42 police spies stole the identity of children who had died before they were 14 years old.

But the total number of such spies could be far higher as he conceded that the technique could have been more widespread than initially believed.

Hogan-Howe said he "should apologise for the shock and offence the use of this tactic has caused" among the public, after the Guardian revealed details of the policing method in February.

The commissioner argued that the families could not be informed as it could lead to the exposure of the undercover officers sent to infiltrate the political groups.

"It was never intended or foreseen that any of the identities used would become public, or that any family would suffer hurt as a result. At the time this method of creating identities was in use, officers felt this was the safest option" he added.

His decision drew immediate criticism. Jenny Jones, a Green party member of the London Assembly, said: "This falls short of coming clean to all the families whose children's identities were harvested. In giving a blanket apology they have avoided the difficult task of apologising to real people."

The Met has sent letters of apology to 15 families whose children died young, but has neither confirmed nor denied whether identities were stolen.

One case concerned a suspected spy, deployed between 1999 and 2003, who allegedly stole the identity of Rod Richardson, who died two days after being born in 1973.

The family's lawyer, Jules Carey, said that Barbara Shaw, the mother of the dead boy, was taking legal action as she felt her complaint had been "swept under the carpet".

Carey said Hogan-Howe's apology was a PR exercise. He added: "The families of the dead children whose identities have been stolen by the undercover officers deserve better than this. They deserve an explanation, a personal apology. The harvesting of dead children's identities was only one manifestation of the rot at the heart of these undercover units."

Peter Francis, one of the spies who originally blew the whistle on the tactic, said the police should offer a personal apology to the families in the cases of spies whose identity had already been exposed. He agreed that the spies whose work remained secret should be protected.

The report, on Tuesday, was produced by Mick Creedon, the Derbyshire chief constable who is conducting an investigation into the activities of the undercover spies over 40 years.

Creedon revealed that the technique was used extensively as far back as 1976 and was authorised by senior police. He reported that the tactic became "an established practice that new officers were taught" within a covert special branch unit known as the special demonstration squad (SDS), which spied on political groups.

"This was not done by the officers in any underhand or salacious manner it was what they were told to do," Creedon added.

One senior spy is quoted as saying the undercover officers "spent hours and hours … leafing through death registers in search of a name [they] could call his own".

"The genuine identities of the deceased children were blended with the officer's own biographical details," Creedon said.

The spies were issued with fake documents, such as passports and driving licences, to make their alter egos appear genuine in case suspicious activists started to investigate them.

The last time the tactic was used, according to Creedon, was 2003, by a spy working for a second covert unit the national public order intelligence unit (NPOIU) which infiltrated political campaigns.

Creedon said it was highly possible that the tactic was used by undercover officers in other units which infiltrated serious criminal gangs. "It would be a mistake to assume that the use of identities of dead children was solely within the SDS and the NPOIU."

He said that the use of the technique "however morally repugnant, should not detract from the [spies'] bravery".

[David Guyatt]

Sex with targets by undercover police may still continue says police chief.

Perhaps the caveat "may" is extraneous when reading between the lines?

Undercover police may still be having 'secret' sexual relationships, chief says

Bernard Hogan-Howe says he can't be sure that officers aren't still getting involved with undercover targets or crime victims

• Rob Evans and agencies
  
• theguardian.com, Thursday 24 October 2013 17.59 BST
  

Metropolitan police commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, said he couldn't be sure that there hadn't been the odd sexual digression by undercover officers under his watch. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's most senior police officer has said he cannot be sure that undercover officers are not still getting involved in sexual relationships with partners who do not know their real identities.
Eleven women are taking legal action against the Metropolitan police over claims that they were duped into relationships in the past with undercover officers and had suffered emotional trauma after discovering the deception.
Police chiefs and ministers have given contradictory answers about whether undercover officers were authorised to form sexual relationships with people they had been sent to spy on.
The Guardian has published evidence showing that undercover officersroutinely started sexual relationships with political campaigners during an infiltration campaign that began in 1968.
On Thursday, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said his force had guidelines that said police spies should not get involved in sexual relationships, but that the rules could not prevent "human beings sometimes failing".
He told the London Assembly police and crime committee: "We have a policy that says that our officers should not engage in sexual activity with targets or anyone else they meet, or a victim, while they are serving as a police officer.
"We think there is a need for transparency in this area. It is highly sensitive. Any policy cannot prevent human beings sometimes failing. What we need to know is, if that should happen, an individual does have sexual activity, that their manager knows and we react to that."
Under questioning from committee member Jenny Jones, Hogan-Howe said he could not be sure that officers had not continued to get involved in intimate relationships during his two years as commissioner.
"Our policy says it shouldn't, but can I be absolutely confident that it's never happened during my time as commissioner? I can't say that.
"What I can tell you is that we've got things in place via supervision and monitoring to make our best attempt to make it clear to our officers that it shouldn't, and if it does, to tell us.
"I'm confident of that, but I cannot be absolutely sure that there has not been the odd digression, or that there won't be in the future. But I do know that there's less chance of it now than there was 20 years ago."
The women who are taking legal action against the Metropolitan police had long-term intimate relationships with undercover officers between the 1980s and 2010.
After the meeting, Jones said: "It is completely unacceptable for undercover police to have sex with the people they are targeting. Other countries legislate to make clear this practice is unacceptable and it's time for the UK to do the same."

[Peter Lemkin]

More details have come to light showing how the U.S. military infiltrated and spied on a community of antiwar activists in the state of Washington. Democracy Now! first broke this story in 2009 when it was revealed that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance was actually an informant for the U.S. military. The man everyone knew as "John Jacob" was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. He also spied on the Industrial Workers of the World and Iraq Veterans Against the War. A newly made public email written by Towery reveals the Army informant was building a multi-agency spying apparatus. The email was sent from Towery using his military account to the FBI, as well as the police departments in Los Angeles, Portland, Eugene, Everett and Spokane. He wrote, "I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro." Meanwhile, evidence has also emerged that the Army informant attempted to entrap at least one peace activist, Glenn Crespo, by attempting to persuade him to purchase guns and learn to shoot. We speak to Crespo and his attorney Larry Hildes, who represents all the activists in the case.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: More details have come to light showing the U.S. military infiltrated and spied on a community of antiwar activists in the state of Washington and beyond. Democracy Now! first broke the story in 2009 that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance was actually an informant for the U.S. military. At the time, Port Militarization Resistance was staging nonviolent actions to stop military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan. The man everyone knew as "John Jacob" was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. He also spied on the Industrial Workers of the World and Iraq Veterans Against the War. The antiwar activist Brendan Maslauskas Dunn helped expose John Towery's true identity as a military spy. In 2009, Dunn spoke on Democracy Now!

BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: After it was confirmed that he was in fact John Towery, I knew he wouldn't call me, so I called him up the day after. This was this past Thursday. And I called him up; I said, "John, you know, what's the deal? Is this true?" And he told me; he said, "Yes, it is true, but there's a lot more to this story than what was publicized." So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.

So, when I met him, he admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.

So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Brendan Maslauskas Dunn speaking in 2009 on Democracy Now! He's now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against John Towery, the military and other law enforcement agencies.
Since 2009, there have been numerous developments in the case. A newly made public email written by Towery reveals the Army informant was building a multi-agency spying apparatus. The email was sent by Towery using his military account. It was sent to the FBI as well as the police departments in Los Angeles, in Portland, Eugene, Everett and Spokane, Washington. He wrote, quote, "I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro." Towery also cites "zines and pamphlets," and a "comprehensive web list" as source material, but cautions the officials on file sharing becase, quote, "it might tip off groups that we are studying their techniques, tactics and procedures," he wrote. The subject of the email was "Anarchist Information."
Meanwhile, evidence has also emerged that the Army informant may have attempted to entrap at least one of the peace activists by attempting to persuade him to purchase guns and learn to shoot.
We're joined now by two guests. Glenn Crespo is a community organizer in the Bay Area who used to live in Washington state, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the military and other agencies. He's joining us from Berkeley. And with us in Seattle, Washington, longtime attorney Larry Hildes, who represents the activists in the case.
The Joint Base Lewis-McChord Public Affairs Office declined to join us on the program, saying, quote, "Because this case is still in litigation we are unable to provide comment."
Let's go first to Washington state, to Larry Hildes. Can you talk about the latest developments in this case, and what has just come out?
LARRY HILDES: Sure. Good morning, Amy. It's interesting. What came out did not come out from this case. It came out from a Public Records Act request from a different client of ours who was arrested in an anti-police-brutality march and falsely charged with assaulting an officer, that the civil case is coming to trial in a couple weeks. He put in a Public Records Act request because he was active with PMR and was concerned that he had been targeted, and he was then subject to a number of citations and arrests.
And, yeah, the Army's investigative reports claimed that, well, there may have been some rules broken, but Towery was doing this off the job in his off-hours, unpaid, for the sherifffor the Pierce County Sheriff's Office and the fusion center. Here he is at his desk, 10:00 in the morning, using his military ID, his military email address, and identifying himself by his military titles, writing the law enforcement agencies all over the country about forming this mini-group to target and research anarchists and leftists, and it's coming out of what's called the DT Conference that the State Patrol was hosting here in Washington, Domestic Terrorism Conference. They created a book for this conference based on information largely from Towery that included Brendan Dunn and one of our other plaintiffs, Jeff Berryhill, and two other activists with PMR, listed them as domestic terrorists and a violent threat because of theirbasically, because they were targeted by Towery and because of their activism and their arrests for civil disobedience. So, he's taking something he created, labeling these people as terrorists, going to a conference with this information, and saying, "We should disseminate this and work on this more broadly."
It also puts the lie to Towery's claim and his supervisor Tom Rudd's claim that Towery was simply working to protect troop movements frombetween Fort Lewis and the public ports of Stryker vehicles going to the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're not shipping out of L.A. They're not shipping out of Portland or Eugene. And they're notnone of these are agencies that are directly involved in protecting military shipments from Fort Lewis. So it's clear there's a much larger agenda here.
And we've seen that in some other ways. There are extensive notes that we've received of Towery's spying on a conference of the Evergreen State College in Olympia about tactics for the protests at the DNC in Denver in '08, RepublicanDemocratic National Convention, and the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in '08, and who was going to do what, the red, yellow and green zones, and specifically what was going to happen on the Monday of the convention. And it was the RNC Welcome Committee, which then got raided and became the RNC 8claimed that they were planning acts of terrorism, which were in reality acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. So this goes way beyond Fort Lewis and PMR, and there's a fullthere seems to be a much larger agenda, as we've seen in other places, of nonviolent activism equals terrorism equals anarchism equals justification for whatever spying or law enforcement action we want to take.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to
LARRY HILDES: And obviously this is notsorry, go ahead, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to read from your lawsuit. You write, quote, "In addition to the Army, Coast Guard, and Olympia Police Department, the following agencies are known to have spied on, infiltrated, or otherwise monitored the activities of PMR and/or related or associated activists: Thurston County Sheriff's Office, Grays Harbor Sheriff's Office, Pierce County Sheriff's Office, Tacoma Police Department, Lakewood Police Department, Ft. Lewis Police Department, 504th Military Police Division, Aberdeen Police Department, The Evergreen State College Police Department, the Lacey Police Department, the [Tumwater] Police Department, the Seattle Police Department, the King County Sheriff's Office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Protective Service, other Divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, Naval Investigative Services, Air Force Intelligence (which has created a special PMR SDS taskforce at McGwire Air Force Base in New Jersey), The Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Seattle Joint Terrorism Taskforce, as well as the previously discussed civilian employees of the City of Olympia. This list is likely incomplete," you write. That is a very extensive list, Larry Hildes.
LARRY HILDES: It is. And it turns out it is incomplete. And those were all agencies that we had documents obtained from Public Records Act requests showing that they were directly involved. So now we're finding out there's more agencies. The Evergreen State College was giving regular reports to the State Patrol, to the Thurston County Sheriff's Office and to Towery and Rudd about activities of SDS on campus at Evergreen. And there's an extensive discussion about the conference about the DNC and RNC protests and that the chief of police is the source for the information. But, yeah, now we've got L.A. This gets bizarre. And we received 9,440 pages of sealed documents from the Army as a Christmas present on December 21st thatthat I can't even talk about, because they insisted that everything was privileged. It was supposed to be privileged as to private information and security information, but it's everything, all kinds of emails. So, yeah, I mean, it starts out sounding very encompassing, and we're finding out we were conservative about what agencies were involved.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Glenn Crespo into this conversation, a Bay Area community organizer. You were the peace activist who John Towery, you say, attempted to persuade you to purchase guns, to learn to shoot. How did you meet him, and what happened when he tried to get you to do this?
GLENN CRESPO: Well, this kind of relationship spanned over a two-, maybe two-and-a-half-year period of time. I first met him at a weapons symposium demonstration in Tacoma, Washington, in downtown Tacoma. I didn't introduce myself to him at that point, but I saw him there. He came outhe actually came out of the symposium, and this was a conference where Lockheed Martin and all these other weapons manufacturers and distributors were showing their wares. He came out of that, and it appeared to me as if other activists in Olympia had already become friends with them. He was very friendly with them, they were very friendly with him. That was the first time I saw him. That was in mid-2007. Not long after that, he organized a Tacoma PMR meeting, and I wasn't really involved
AMY GOODMAN: Port Militarization Resistance.
GLENN CRESPO: Yeah, exactly. And I wasn't very involved in that, but I did get the mass email. So I figured, because I lived in Tacoma, I might as well go check it out. He was the first person there. I was the second person there. He introduced himself. I introduced myself. And he asked me about a poster that he had made regarding an upcoming demonstration, and he said he was going to bring it to the group and see if we could get consensus on whether or not it was OK if he put it up. And I told him thatI looked at the poster and said, you know, "This is pretty general." There's no particular reason I really think that he has to get consensus on whether or not he can put a poster up that's kind of basically just time and place and description of the event. And that was the first time I met him.
He later on used that conversation as a way to boost our rapport between each other, when he said that he thought that that conversation was really profound to him, that he believed that it was interesting that I kind of wanted toor suggested that he bypass some sort of consensus process regarding this poster, so that he can just doyou know, that he could do what he wants. You know, he could put the poster up if he wants to. That was very interesting. I realized that in retrospect, that that was a way that he tried to broaden or expand upon our friendship in the beginning.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, where did the guns come in?
GLENN CRESPO: Probably within the six to seven months after meeting him, so latelate 2007. He had started coming to events at the house I was living at in Tacoma. We were doingwe did a lending library. And we were doing a lot of organizing regarding the Tacoma Immigration and Customs detention center, so the ICE detention center. He would go to those meetings. He would come over for potlucks. So both public and private events, he kind of worked his way in as a friend.
He produced handgun to me in our kitchen, just between he and I. He carried it in his side pocket. He said he always carried a handgun on him. And he emptied it. He put the magazine out. He cleared the chamber, and he handed it to me. And he said he always carries one on him. And that, that was the first time he really talked about guns with me. And I was caught off guard, because at the time I was in my early twenties. I had never held aI don't even think I had seen a handgun, really, like that before. And that was kind of the beginning of him starting to talk more about guns. And he saidhe had said that if we ever wanted to go shooting, being me and my friends, or myself in particular, that he would take us shooting, or, you know, he knows where all the gun shows are at, so we could go to gun shows ifyou know, if we're interested. And then, later on, these things did happen, when he prompted myself and others to go to the Puyallup Gun Show and purchasepurchase a rifle. And then, that went into going to shooting ranges that he was already a member of. He would drive us to all of these things, take us to these shooting ranges.
And this seemed fairly innocuous to me, in the beginning. I mean, Washington is a pretty gun-owner-friendly state. It didn'tit didn't really surprise me, because he wasn't saying anything crazy or really implying anything crazy at that point. But about a year into that, there was a significant shift in his personality. Whereas in the beginning he was very optimistic and veryseemed very hopeful and kind of seemed lonelyI mean, he was, you know, in his early forties, early to mid-forties. He primarily surrounding himself with people who were in their early twenties. And he just came off as if he was kind of a sweet, harmless guy and was kind of lonely and wanted to hang out with people that he felt like he had something in common with, as far as his ideas went. But like I said, into a year into that relationship, he started to become a little bit more sinister and dark in his demeanor, in histhe things he would talk about.
And this continued to go into him giving myself and another friend a set of documents that were military strategy documents, and he said that hehe suggested that "we," whatever that meant, use those documents in "our actions." And these were documents on how to properly execute military operations. And then, following that, he showed people at my house, including myself, how to clear a building with a firearm. And these things were prompted by him. He would basically say, "Hey, do youyou know, check this out. Look, I could explain this stuff." And he would just go into it, on how to, for example, in this case, clear a building with a firearm. So he had a mockyou know, he would hold a rifle up, or a make-believe rifle, and clearstalk around the lower levels of our house and up the stairwell, all the way up the second stairwell into the attic, and the whole time talking about how he wouldyou know, how he was clearing corners and checking angles and all this stuff that nobody particularly had any interest in.
And around the same time, he had, you know, conversations with me about how he believed that anarchists were very similar to fascists, in aalmost in a positive light, where he was saying that they both don't care about the law and don't use the law to get what they need or what they want, and that he believed that the only way anarchism or anarchy would ever work, in his words, would be if five billion people died. So this is kind of in hisin the midst of his weird, sinister behavior that started to happen, that I thought that he was depressed. I thought that he was basically going through some sort of like maybe existential crisis, or maybe he was fed up with things. I wasn't really sure. He always talked about him having issues at the houseat his home. He had implied that his wife was concerned that he was cheating on her, and that's why we could never go to his house, because his wife didn't like us, his other friends, or whatever.
He submitted an article in the samelike the lastyou know, that last half of the time that I knew him as a friend. He submitted an article to a magazine that I was editor of in early 2009, that was written from the perspective of 9/11 hijackers. And I remember this very specifically, because he gave me a copy, a physical copy, when we were on our way to go get coffee. And I remember reading it, and probably about a quarter of the way through realizing I didn't even feel comfortable touching it, like touching the physical document with my hands. It was the weirdest thing in the world, because it was kind ofit was basically implyingor seeming sympathetic with the 9/11 hijackers. And he wanted me to publish this in hisin the next issue of the magazine I was editor of. So I justI actuallybecause he was being so forceful, I just didn't do the magazine again. That first issue was the last issue. And once he submitted that paper, I didn't publish it ever again.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask your lawyer, Larry Hildes, is this entrapment, I mean, when you're talking about this whole progression that Glenn Crespo went through with the man he thought was named John Jacob, who in fact is John Towery, working at Fort Lewis? He's military personnel.
LARRY HILDES: I think, absolutely, it was an attempted entrapment. He went step by step. He misjudged our folks. He thought ourhe correctly saw that our folks were angry and upset about what was going on, but misjudged them. It feels like we could have ended up with a Cleveland Five or an 803 situation very easily, if he had had his way. Fortunately, our folks' reaction was: "This is really weird and creepy. Get away from me." And it speaks to how little he understood the nature of the antiwar movement and how little he understood people's actual commitment to nonviolent action, to not seeing the troops themselves as the enemies
AMY GOODMAN: Larry
LARRY HILDES: but seeing the waryeah, I'myeah, go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Larry Hildes, we don't have much time, but I just want to ask about Posse Comitatus and the laws that separate the militaryI mean, they're not supposed to be marching through the streets of the United States.
LARRY HILDES: Yeah, right.
AMY GOODMAN: What about this issue of investigating? And how far and extensive is this infiltration campaign, where you put in people, they change their names, and they try to entrap or they change the nature of what these actions are?
LARRY HILDES: I think they crossed the line. They claim they're allowed to do some level of investigative work to protect military activities, military shipments. But entrapping peopleattempting to entrap people into conspiracies where they can get charged with major felonies they had no intention of committing, dealing with law enforcement agencies around the country to keep tabs on activists, following them to protests in Denver and St. Paul that have absolutely nothing to do with military shipments, they crossed the line into law enforcement, into civilian law enforcement.
And they did so quite knowingly and deliberately, and created this cover story that Towery was working for the fusion center, reporting to the sheriff's office, not doing this during his work time, because they were well awarein fact, he got paid overtime for attending the RNC, DNC conference at Evergreen, by the Army. So the Army was expressly paying him to monitor, disrupt and destroy these folks' activism and their lives. I mean, we hadat one point, Brendan Dunn had four cases at the same time in four counties, because they kept stopping him. Seven times he got arrested or cited; Jeff Berryhill several times; Glenn Crespo. People would get busted over and over and over. Towery was attending their personal parties, their birthday parties, their going-away parties, and taking these vicious notes and passing them on about how to undermine these folks, how to undermine their activities, how to destroy their lives. This is way into Posse Comitatus. This is way beyond any legitimate military role.
And it's exactly why Posse Comitatus exists. The job of the military, as they see it, is to seek out the enemy and destroy them, neutralize them. When the enemy is nonviolent dissenters and the First Amendment becomes the enemy, as Chris Pyle, our expert, who was the investigator for the Church Committee, put itthe First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment are an inconvenience to the Army; they ignore them; they're not sworn to uphold them in the same wayit becomes a very dangerous situation. And yes, they are way over into illegal conduct. They're into entrapment operations. They're into trying to silence dissent against them, and apparently much larger. This case just keeps getting bigger as we go. And we're set for trial, I should say, on June 2nd

[David Guyatt]

Scotland Yard in new undercover police row

Force accused over attempts to block claims by women allegedly deceived into sexual relationships

• Daniel Boffey, policy editor
  
• The Observer, Saturday 8 March 2014 20.30 GMT
  

Scotland Yard is accused of supporting a 'culture of conceit' over claims against undercover officers. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Scotland Yard stands accused of covering up "institutionalised sexism" within the police in trying to block civil claims launched by women allegedly deceived into sexual relationships with undercover officers.
Police lawyers are applying to strike out, on secrecy grounds, the claims of five women who say they were duped into intimate long-term relationships with four undercover police officers working within the special demonstration squad (SDS), a Metropolitan police unit set up to infiltrate protest groups.
The legal bid, funded by the taxpayer, is being fought despite widespread outrage and promises of future transparency by Scotland Yard, following official confirmation last week that an undercover officer was deployed 21 years ago to spy on the grieving family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
The Observer understands that police lawyers are asking the high court to reject claims against the Metropolitan police on the grounds that the force cannot deviate from its policy of neither confirming nor denying issues regarding undercover policing.
It is understood that Scotland Yard will say in a hearing, scheduled to be held on 18 March, that it is not in a position to respond to claims and therefore cannot defend it.
Last week an independent inquiry revealed that an officer identified only as N81 was deployed in a group "positioned close to the Lawrence family campaign". The spy gathered "some personal details relating to" the murdered teenager's parents. It was also disclosed that undercover officers had given false evidence in the courts and acted as if they were exempt from the normal rules of evidence disclosure.
A separate report on a police investigation into the SDS found that three former officers who had had sexual relations with women who had not known their true identities could face criminal charges.
Harriet Wistrich, a lawyer at Birnberg Peirce & Partners representing the women, said it was absurd that Scotland Yard claimed to be transparent while blocking her clients' bid for justice in open court. On Friday the former director of prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, accused the police of engendering a "culture of conceit".
Wistrich said: "They should just hold up their hands and say, 'this is terrible, we recognise that and are doing everything we can do to put it right'."
Wistrich said Scotland Yard had made no move to reverse its legal position despite calls by Theresa May, the home secretary, for transparency in the wake of what she last week described as "profoundly disturbing" findings.
"They are basically saying that we have this policy and we have to uphold the policy because we gave lifelong assurances that we would not reveal their identities. This is nonsense when some have confessed themselves to being undercover officers.
"In total, we have got five different officers between the eight claimants and our own evidence suggests there was a deliberate kind of encouragement to do this. We are not just talking about a bad apple … but a rotten-to-the-core, institutionalised sexism."
The officers accused of forging long-term sexual relationships with women while undercover are Jim Boyling, Bob Lambert, John Dines and Mark Jenner.
Last week May announced a public inquiry into the work of undercover police officers shortly after the publication of the inquiry on allegations of spying on the Lawrence family.
There are additional calls, including by shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna, for an examination of the role of undercover officers in providing information for a blacklist operation run by major companies within the construction industry which forced more than 3,000 people out of the sector.
Brian Richardson, a barrister who has set up an umbrella group, Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, said: "It is extremely important that the proposed inquiry considers the infiltration of the Lawrence family campaign and that of [all] the targets of police surveillance. However, we must continue to campaign to ensure that the inquiry is fully transparent and that those responsible … are held to account."

.

[Magda Hassan]

Women need protection from undercover officers

By deciding not to charge officers who had sexual relations with female activists, the state is looking after its own

Imagine the scenario. You meet someone and, from the outset, the attraction is mutual: silently shared smiles, lingering glances. You bond over shared interests and worldviews, and exchange telephone numbers. You start sleeping together and as your pulse quickens every time the phone rings you realise you are falling for each other. Days are spent together, walking in parks, trips to the cinema, romantic meals; time apart becomes difficult. Eventually, your partner moves in, and for years you share everything. Maybe you even have a child together. Then suddenly they appear depressed and become distant. One day, they are gone, leaving only an apologetic note on the kitchen table. You then discover everything you knew about them was false. They have invented a fake identity; their backstory, opinions, entire life, all a lie. They are undercover police officers, and were sent to spy on you and your friends.
It sounds like a dystopian fantasy belonging in the Stasi archives of former East Germany. But this is the experience of several British women who are pursuing a civil case against the Metropolitan police. Last week, the Crown Prosecution Service ruled that four undercover police officers who spied on activists would not face sexual offence charges, including rape, sexual assault, sexual intercourse by false pretences, as well as misconduct in public office. These women consented to sleeping with men they believed were fellow activists, not police officers spying on them and yet the CPS believes there is "insufficient evidence" for a prosecution.
What we are witnessing must surely be a stitch-up over what the women believe amounts to being raped by the state. The phone-hacking scandal rightly provoked widespread condemnation on the grounds that it was an impermissible violation of privacy. But what about police officers who share their lives with women, have sex with them, and in at least two cases fathered children with them? No wonder one of the women involved describes the practice in chilling terms as "body-hacking". The difference is, of course, that the women involved are activists fighting for environmental and social justice: the sort of people who enjoy very little sympathy from those with power and influence.
The response of the authorities is riddled with contradictions. The CPS might have judged that there is not enough evidence to charge the police officers with misconduct in public office. But Jon Murphy the Association of Chief Police Officers' spokesman who deals with undercover operations has claimed such relationships are not permitted "under any circumstances" and amount to "grossly unprofessional" behaviour.
The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, taking another tack, claimed sex with activists was not "part of the strategy" but was simply inevitable. And Nick Herbert a former Home Office minister declared in the Commons in 2012 that sex with members of "the group targeted" could be permitted. But surely allegations of rape and sexual assault should be treated seriously, and if individual officers are not even charged with misconduct in a public office, then the focus should move on to those employing them to spy undercover.
One of the women involved tells me that, in a sense, she is conflicted about the CPS judgment. On one hand, if the officers had faced charges, it would have drawn "a very clear line in the sand", deterring future officers from having sex under false pretences on the basis that a rape charge could await them. But her understandable fear is that the individual could take the flak, leading to the conclusion that the institution is clean. Rather than being treated as a systemic problem, a defence of individual misconduct of a few "bad eggs" acting beyond orders could be used instead. It is certainly fanciful to imagine that undercover police officers' handlers were unaware of long-term relationships being established with activists they were spying on.
There are real grounds for believing the CPS has its own reasons for wanting to move on from this scandal. There are those who suspect that the CPS is itself implicated. In 2011, Guardian investigative journalists Rob Evans and Paul Lewis covered a case in which the CPS used tapes recorded by police officer Mark Kennedy who spent seven years masquerading as an environmental campaigner in a prosecution which had to be abandoned, as a result of the tapes being suppressed, not disclosed to lawyers for the accused. The CPS hired Sir Christopher Rose the chief surveillance commissioner to investigate the claims, leading him to conclude that only one junior prosecutor in the East Midlands was involved. But a 2012 Independent Police Complaints Commission report revealed emails suggesting that very senior prosecutors in London knew about Kennedy's evidence.
In March 2014 the home secretary, Theresa May, announced a public inquiry into undercover police officers after revelations that the family of Stephen Lawrence had been spied on by the Met. Its remit must surely include examining the role of the CPS. One of the women has voiced a concern that the public inquiry will concentrate above all else on the horrifying appropriation by undercover police officers of the identities of dead children; another concern is that only the Special Demonstration Squad, a murky unit that existed between 1968 and 2008, will be examined.
In the meantime, the women are suing the Met for emotional trauma. Alison is one of the women: she had a five-year relationship with Mark Jenner, who lived with her for four years. "I thought it was one of the best relationships in my life," she tells me. "In a matter of weeks after he left, it turned into one of the worst nightmares. I had been living with him, sharing a life with him, and thought I had a future with him: it all just dissolved." But the women are survivors and fighters, not victims. "The irony is they've thrown together some of the most able, most passionate, brightest activists in one group," she says.
This case will not attract the attention of the supposed rightwing libertarians who rail against state intrusion into the lives of the individual. These inspiring and courageous women are up against a highly resourced state that looks after its own. They deserve support and solidarity. As they are aware, this is not simply about their own traumas. It would be naive to imagine that the police institutionally averse as they are to dissent are not spying on those they regard as troublemakers as well as alleged terrorists. Other opponents of the status quo could today be forming relationships, sharing lives and beds with those spying on them. That is why this institutional conspiracy must be confronted head-on.
This article was amended on 25 August 2014. Due to a subbing error the original article stated that Alison, one of the women suing the Met for emotional trauma, had a relationship with Mark Kennedy, which was not the case.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...-activists

[Magda Hassan]

Mea culpa. Four years ago, when I first read about Mark Stone, I made a series of flip remarks. He was the environmental activist who had been uncovered as an undercover police officer, Mark Kennedy, and the story carried quotes from "Anna" who had had a relationship with him. Stone's goatee, earring and shaggy hair were just a cover, it turned out.
"We've all been there," I wrote. We've all met someone who didn't quite live up to billing. The nice man with the love of literature who turned out to be not so nice and read Harry Potter. Or the friend who, horror of horrors, accidentally slept with a Tory."
Except it was nothing like that. A year later, I read and reviewed the brilliant book written by the Guardian journalists Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police, and the truth was shocking and horrifying. By then, all sorts of revelations had come out: how police had spied on Stephen Lawrence's family, how they had taken the identities of dead babies.
But it was the women's stories that I couldn't get out of my head, women who'd been gulled, hoodwinked and systematically deceived by officers trained and paid by the state. Women, who, when the truth started coming out, encountered nothing but evasion and obfuscation. It has taken four years for the Met to even acknowledge that it happened. But yesterday it finally did and issued an apology. The relationships "were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong".
It's a landmark moment, a huge victory. And yet, at some level, it seems as if the case has failed to generate the horror it should have. It has been a busy news period, but yesterday's announcement barely caused a ripple. And you can't help but wonder if that's because these were crimes against women. Crimes disguised as domestic disappointments: love affairs gone wrong, hearts broken, trust betrayed. The stuff of everyday life. And yet it wasn't that at all. You only have to read some of the stories.

It's easy to make accusations of sexism, but there is something deeply troubling about the case

Jacqui's, for example, who in 2012, sat down for a cup of coffee in the garden with a copy of the Daily Mail. And there was a photo of a man who had vanished from her life back in 1987: her son's father. "I had not had news of him for approximately 24 years and there was his face staring back at me from the paper. I went into shock. I felt like I couldn't breathe and I started shaking." She'd met "Bob Robinson" when she was 22 and was involved with an animal rights group. He was in his 30s and they embarked on a relationship that became increasingly serious. They moved in together and later had a baby. And then, when her son was 18 months, he vanished.
There were no letters, no child support, no contact. Until, 24 years later, when she discovered via the Mail that he was actually called Bob Lambert and at the time he met her he already had a wife and two children. He was promoted to the deputy head of his division the special demonstration squad and later left the police to become an academic. He is, to this day, a lecturer at London Metropolitan University.
Jacqui's "crime" was to be loosely affiliated to an animal rights group. Another woman, Alison, told the Commons home affairs committee about her five-year relationship with a man she knew as Mark Cassidy but who turned out to be an officer called Mark Jenner. "I met him when I was 29 and he disappeared about three months before I was 35… for the last 18 months of our relationship he went to relationship counselling with me about the fact that I wanted children and he did not.[…] This is not about just a lying boyfriend or a boyfriend who has cheated on you. It is not even about a boyfriend who is having another relationship with somebody else. It is about a fictional character who was created by the state and funded by taxpayers' money." Alison's crime? She was an anti-racism campaigner.
It does make you wonder what would be different if these abuses had been perpetrated, not against women, but men. Because it's easy to make accusations of sexism, but there is something deeply troubling about the case. About the way that it was women who were targeted, abused and exploited systematically, institutionally. About the way the Met dealt with the fall-out and the question that remains: what is still happening, in our name, paid for by our taxes, carefully concealed from sight? This was sex used as a weapon. Emotional intimacy as a instrument of state surveillance. These were bystanders, members of the public. They had been convicted of no crime. The policemen acted as "the judge, the jury and the person who sentences", said another woman, Clare, in her testimony. "They can do what they like to you. There is no oversight. You do not get a trial."
Can it ever be justified? the MPs asked. "Would you task an officer with raping a child to infiltrate a paedophile ring?" responded Alison.
David Cameron has suggested that the events in Paris could lead to a fast-tracking of the investigatory powers bill. Boris Johnson declared in the Telegraph that he had "less and less sympathy with those who oppose" increased surveillance powers. And George Osborne announced that the budget for surveillance and cyber-crime would double to £2bn.
Bob Lambert graduated from spying on animal rights groups to become head of the Met's Muslim contact unit. The stakes are higher today. It's not just vegans and anti-racists who need rounding up. Is sex still being used as a weapon? Against women who have been convicted of no crime?
Not by the Met, according to Friday's statement. But other police forces? Other agencies? Who knows? We certainly don't.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...r-policing

[Magda Hassan]

While the revived Snooper's Charter' (Investigatory Powers Bill) will likely see the legitimation of mass surveillance by the UK's intelligence and security services, the resumption of the Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing acts as a timely reminder of the underlying political nature of policing. Indeed, you only need to glance at the Inquiry's list of core participants to see that it reads like a Who's Who of agitprop over the last two decades or more. Undercover policing targets included workers of all types as well as many political activists/groups and even MPs. The undercover police officers who form part of the Inquiry are listed as core participants too but only as coded numbers (even though their identities are already known). [B]Prosecutions of the undercover police officers are still possible, as are legal challenges to the previous decision by the CPS not to prosecute. But one very prominent person Jeremy Corbyn MP is not listed as a participant at the Inquiry which is surprising, given he was spied on by one of the undercover police officers listed and was arguably being groomed' by a former spycop' supervisor, whose indiscretion probably and ironically helped expose the entire spycop scandal. But Mr Corbyn has an ally at the Inquiry: Ken Livingstone MP who is listed as a participant. So, in the weeks or months to come we may well see Mr Livingstone (and possibly Mr Corbyn too, if he is called to testify) in the same hearing as not only the officers who spied on the MPs, but also the undercover police officer who turned whistleblower and who will have the opportunity to elaborate further on what is detailed below…
[/B]
A. Introduction
The Pitchford Inquiry has been rightly criticised for its narrow terms of reference. For example, the Inquiry will be restricted to the activities of undercover policing in England and Wales yet some of the officers concerned operated elsewhere in the UK and with certain individuals outside of the UK too. Nor does it appear that the inquiry will examine the role of those who supervised the undercover police officers and the authorisations that were given for their activities. Furthermore, the inquiry will not examine the activities of those undercover police officers who, after leaving the police, took up positions in private industry as intelligence consultants' for constructions firms, or for private surveillance companies, or in academia.
The main thrust of the Inquiry will be to examine a policing culture that was allowed to ruin and compromise thelives of women with whom these undercover police officers befriended and had formed sexual relationships; to ruin the lives of workers, who simply wanted better working conditions; and to ruin the lives of political activists, who merely sought more justice in our societies.
In the meantime, there is a sub-narrative to the scandal that deserves our attention if only for the political implications…
B. Jeremy Corbyn and the spycops (and MI5)

First, some background…
According to ex-F2 (MI5) staffer (then whistleblower) Annie Machon, F Branch regarded the following well-known individuals worth monitoring: "John Len*non, Jack Straw MP, Ted Heath MP, Tam Dalyell MP, Gareth Peirce (soli*citor), Jeremy Corbyn MP, Mike Mans*field (bar*ris*ter), Geof*frey Robertson (bar*ris*ter), Patri*cia Hewitt MP, Har*riet Har*man MP, Garry Bushell (journ*al*ist), Peter Man*del*son (European com*mis*sioner), Peter Hain MP, Clare Short MP, Mark Thomas (comedian), Mo Mow*lam (politi*cian), Arthur Scar*gill (NUM leader, who fam*ously had his own record*ing cat*egory: unaf*fili*ated sub*vers*ive), Neil Kin*nock (politi*cian), Bruce Kent (peace cam*paigner), Joan Rud*dock MP, Owen Oyston (busi*ness*man), Cherie Booth aka Blair, Tony Blair MP, David Steel (politi*cian), Teddy Taylor MP, Ron*nie Scott (jazz musi*cian), Robin Cook MP, John Prescott MP, Mark Steel (comedian), Jack Cun*ning*ham MP, Mohammed Al Fayed (busi*ness*man), Mick McGa*hey (former union leader), Ken Gill (former union leader), Michael Foot (politi*cian), Jack Jones (former union leader), Ray Bux*ton (former union leader), Hugh Scan*lon (former union leader), Har*old Wilson (politi*cian), James Callaghan (politi*cian), Richard Norton-Taylor (Guard*ian journalist)…. I also came across a file called: Sub*ver*sion in con*tem*por*ary music', which con*sisted of press clip*pings about Crass, then a well-known, self-styled anarch*ist' band; the Sex Pis*tols; and, rather sur*pris*ingly, UB40."
Bob Lambert: as then and is now

And, later, there were the spycops'…
Mr Bob Lambert was one of the undercover police officers who had spied on environmental and animal rights activists (and who formed relationships with at least two women to advance his intelligence activities). Lambert later attempted to associate himself with Jeremy Corbyn MP. Coincidentally, some years earlier Mr Corbyn had been placed under surveillance by Peter Francis. Francis was an undercover police officer assigned to Special Branch between 1990 and 2001, but was subsequently deployed at the Special Demonstration Squad his manager being none other than Lambert.
In an interview to the Guardian, Francis revealed that between 1993 and 1997 he personally collected information on three London MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and the late Bernie Grant. Seven other MPs, including former Home Secretary Jack Straw, were also spied on. Francis named a further ten MPs who he had seen files on, including Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Dennis Skinner, Joan Ruddock, Peter Hain, Diane Abbott, Bernie Grant and Harriet Harman.
Jeremy Corbyn and Bob Lambert had first met in 2005, when the latter headed up the Metropolitan Police's Muslim Contact Unit, which was involved in helping to turn Finsbury Park Mosque away from the radical cleric Abu Hamza.
Some years later, in September 2011, not long after retiring from the police force, Bob Lambert gave a speech "Partnering with the Muslim Community as an Effective Counter-Terrorist Strategy" at Chatham House and in that speech he references Mr Corbyn. (Here is the full transcript of the speech.) This neatly tied in with the Government's much-criticised Prevent Strategy' (see Appendix 2, below) launched in 2008.
This, of course, was all part of Lambert's attempt at creating a new identity that of a respectable academic, working closely to promote good relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. His new Muslim friends no doubt welcomed his overtures, little suspecting that Lambert's entire working life had been a fraud.
But Mr Lambert, in his arrogance, clearly forgot some of the basic rules of spycraft and happily cockily thrust himself centre-stage.
It was also in September 2011 that Lambert published a book, "Countering Al-Qaeda in London: Police and Muslims in Partnership', on police efforts to deal with Muslim extremism in London. The Cordoba Foundation, a London-based Muslim Brotherhood related think-tank, promoted the parliamentary launch of the book.
This event was jointly organised with the Council for Arab-British Understanding and none other than Jeremy Corbyn MP.
Needless to say, none of Lambert's more colourful' background was known or revealed to those whom he was attempting to befriend and groom'. Indeed, the typical spycops' modus operandi which Lambert had mastered both as a police officer and in his new guise is simple: to be nice, helpful and to show empathy to those who are targeted.
But it was less than a month after his very public book launch that Mr Lambert was finally and spectacularly stopped in his tracks and exposed by activists.
Lambert was speaking at a conference, organised by Unite Against Fascism, to promote anti-racism and multiculturalism (again, all fitting in to his new persona). He was outed by London Greenpeace. (There is poetic justice here: using the alias "Bob Robinson", Lambert had posed as an activist in the London Greenpeace between 1984 and 1988 and was also responsible for writing the infamous McLibel leaflet.)
And, so, it was supremely ironic that one of the leading spycops in his post-policing ambitions not only allowed himself to be outed, but in doing so may well have helped expose his former colleagues in undercover policing and, subsequently, the entire spycops scandal.
C. Corbyn challenges the spycops
Once Mr Corbyn was made aware of Mr Lambert's true background, he issued the following statement: "I worked with Bob Lambert around Finsbury Park Mosque, he was good in that role. Later I was interested in his book at the time and I was involved in the launch. But for all I know he could have had me under surveillance. I am looking forward to what the inquiry gives me and I think I should be given the full report without any redactions."
Elsewhere Mr Corbyn gave a speech in the House of Commons on undercover policing, mentioning Mr Lambert:
"The Guardian reported at great length on Saturday the behaviour of two undercover police officers, Bob Lambert and John Dines. Bob Lambert is known to some of us in this House and is a very clever operatorthere is no question about that. It is also clear that during the undercover operations used against the Lawrence family and in the McLibel case and a number of other cases, senior officers in Scotland Yard must have known who was doing what and known of the disreputable personal behaviour of such people, and must still know. I hope the inquiry is not restricted within the police force but, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), is open and public, and that heads roll at a high level in Scotland Yard for those who have covered up the truth and allowed smearing and injustice to go on for a very long time. Unless that inquiry gets to the bottom of these matters, there will be no credibility and no public confidence in policing."
(A full transcript of the Commons speeches on this matter is here.)
In an email to the Islington Tribune, Lambert responded by saying: "I was employed by the Metropolitan Police from 1977 until 2007. To the best of my recollection, at no time during that employment was I involved in any kind of surveillance against Jeremy Corbyn." But this statement only referred to himself and not to any of the officers under his supervision or within the SDS.
Merrick Badger, an activist with Islington Against Police Spies, commented: "Bob Lambert was running the unit [SDS]. He sent the spies out to do the work and was managing the unit. The spies in the 1990s were modelled into his image, using his methods developed in the 1980s. If spying on MPs was going on and he was the manager, then he is either complicit, or was at best incredibly negligent."
Meanwhile, despite his fraudulent background, Mr Lambert retains his MBE and his associations with academia.
D. Prosecutions?
To date, most of the undercover police officers involved in the spycops scandal have succeeded in avoiding prosecution on how they had severely compromised the lives of the women they had relationships with though many may argue that the CPS decision not to prosecute was seriously flawed and is still open to legal challenge (just as the decision re the Janner case was challenged and subsequently overturned).
As the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS) puts it: "How many other women were similarly abused? How many other children searching for their fathers are doomed to failure because it's a name a police officer made up or stole from a dead child? How many campaigns were stymied? What other outrages have occurred that none of the known officers committed? At least 500 groups and uncountable thousands of individuals were spied on. They all have a right to know."
Also, the opportunity remains to prosecute these undercover police officers and their supervisors for their activities in perverting the course of justice (to say the least). Indeed, in his opening comments at the Inquiry, Lord Justice Pitchford stated: "Evidence may emerge that an undercover police officer may have committed, by his or her unauthorised action, a criminal offence while performing an undercover role. Unless that officer subsequently receives immunity from prosecution, they will be liable to prosecution."
The Pitchford Inquiry is anticipated to run for three years. During that time there will be a lot of submissions, many testimonies and many examinations of witnesses. These witnesses will include MPs, abused women, trade unionists and political activists wrongly accused (and in some cases jailed) of crimes they did not commit. There will also be present representatives of political campaign groups such as McLibel, London Greenpeace, Colin Roach (campaign), Stephen Lawrence (campaign), Cherry Groce (campaign), Advisory Service for Squatters, Reclaim the Streets, Blacklist Support Group, National Union of Mineworkers, Genetic Engineering Network, the Drax and Ratcliffe accused and many, many more. Legal representation will be provided by some of the top lawyers (solicitors/barristers/QCs) in the country.
And so the months ahead are likely to reveal much, with all the tragedies of what happened exposed all over again. But at the end of it all, no one will be satisfied unless justice is done and seen to be done.
It has been estimated that there are at least 1200 undercover police officers at large in the UK: how many of these have also compromised people's lives via sexual relationships or by perverting justice is yet to be revealed. According to Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) there were 3,466 undercover operations in England and Wales between October 2009 and September 2013 alone and that at the most recent count, 1,229 officers in 39 units were trained as undercover officers. On this basis there are likely to be tens of thousands of victims of politically-motivated undercover policing over many decades.
Pitchford may well be only the beginning.
See also: MI5, spycops, the media baron and the counter-subversion think-tank
Appendix 1: profiles of Bob Lambert
(The following is adapted from Powerbase.)
Bob Lambert was an officer in Special Branch over a period spanning 26 years up to 2006. When as Operational Controller he headed the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in the 1980s and 1990s he was responsible for a number of undercover police officers (and their activities) such as Peter Black and Jim Boyling. He left the SDS in 1998. Between 2002 and 2007, Lambert ran the Muslim Contact Unit, a Scotland Yard department. He retired from the police in 2007.
After leaving the Met, Lambert became a Research Fellow at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies in the University of Exeter's politics department a post he held from 2008 until 2011. Whilst at Exeter he set up the European Muslim Research Centre. In 2008 Lambert began teaching, lecturing and supervising dissertations on the e-learning MLitt terrorism studies course provided by St. Andrews University's Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. In September 2012, Lambert was hired by the John Grieve Centre for Policing and Community Safety at the London Metropolitan University.
During his undercover work Lambert infiltrated London Greenpeace, the ALF (Animal Liberation Front) and was accused of burning down the Harrow branch of Debenhams department store as part of an anti-fur trade operation, which saw branches in Luton and Romford targeted at the same time on the same night.
In 1995 Lambert was present at a meeting to discuss the sharing of intelligence between the MI5 case officer responsible for monitoring Militant, Peter Francis and other Special Demonstration Squad managers.
(The following is adapted from an article by Islington Against Police Spies.)
These days Robert Lambert works part-time, lecturing on Criminology and Policing at London Metropolitan University. But this expert' on Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism has a dark past.
Lambert spent the 1980s and 1990s in Special Branch's now discredited Special Demonstrations Squad, spying on community and activist groups. While pretending to be an activist involved in peace and animal rights campaigns, he acted as agent provocateur, encouraging people to carry out actions that would lead to their arrest. He was eventually named in Parliament as having planted an incendiary device in a Debenhams store in 1987 one of three simultaneous arson attacks which saw two animal rights activists sent to prison for four years.
Lambert also had sexual relationships with several women campaigners, lying to them about his identity and then disappearing from their lives. This abuse had a severe and lasting emotional impact on those affected (one woman had a child fathered by Lambert).
After acting as an infiltrator, Lambert went on to head the Special Demonstrations Squad, supervising spies in many other political campaigns. Following Lambert's example, almost all of the thirteen other undercover police so far exposed used their positions to sexually exploit women who were unaware of their real role.
Lambert's protégés also included undercover police officers who spied on numerous families and campaigns opposing police racism and/or violence and murders, as well as the environmental activist group London Greenpeace, Reclaim the Streets, anti fascist groups and campaigners against genetically modified crops. Lambert was directly implicated in police attempts to spy on, smear and discredit Stephen Lawrence's family campaign against the police failures to investigate Stephen's racist murder in 1993.
Lambert was also implicated in the mysterious' passing of Special branch files to a private company, paid by large construction companies to compile a blacklist of trade unionists active in the building trade many of whom were consequently fired and victimised.
Appendix 2: (ACPO) Police Prevent strategy document

https://undercoverinfo.wordpress.com/201...e-scandal/

[Michael Barwell]

"Phone hacking: CPS calls end to prosecutions" - 11 December 2015 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35070715 . The CPS passed to the police, guidance for criminality as regards 'phone hacking: 'If the voicemail has been listened to by the intended recipient, then 'phonehacking it is not a crime'; this is "RIPAbollocks" Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
Nice to see that the victims're not taking it lying down - "Phone-hacking victims expected to challenge CPS decision to end inquiry" - 11Dec'15 - http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/de...nd-inquiry

(six separate logins in 18minutes I've had to do)