Met Police Agent Provocateurs

[Jan Klimkowski]

And on it goes.....

Police spies: in bed with a fictional character

Mark Jenner lived with a woman under a fake name. Now she has testified to MPs about the 'betrayal and humiliation' she felt

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013

Mark Jenner, the police spy who went by the name of Mark Cassidy for six years
Mark Jenner, the undercover officer in the Metropolitan police's special demonstration squad, who went by the name of Mark Cassidy for six years then disappeared.

He was a burly, funny scouser called Mark Cassidy. His girlfriend a secondary school teacher he shared a flat with for four years believed they were almost "man and wife". Then, in 2000, as the couple were discussing plans for the future, Cassidy suddenly vanished, never to be seen again.

An investigation by the Guardian has established that his real name is Mark Jenner. He was an undercover police officer in the Metropolitan police's special demonstration squad (SDS), one of two units that specialised in infiltrating protest groups.

His girlfriend, whose story can be told for the first time as her evidence to a parliamentary inquiry is made public, said living with a police spy has had an "enormous impact" on her life.

"It has impacted seriously on my ability to trust, and that has impacted on my current relationship and other subsequent relationships," she said, adopting the pseudonym Alison. "It has also distorted my perceptions of love and my perceptions of sex."

Alison is one of four women to testify to the House of Commons home affairs select committee last month.

Another woman said she had been psychologically traumatised after discovering that the father of her child, who she thought had disappeared, was Bob Lambert, a police spy who vanished from her life in the late 1980s.

A third woman, speaking publicly for the first time about her six-year relationship with Mark Kennedy, a police officer who infiltrated environmental protest groups, said: "You could ... imagine that your phone might be tapped or that somebody might look at your emails, but to know that there was somebody in your bed for six years, that somebody was involved in your family life to such a degree, that was an absolute shock."

Their moving testimony led the committee to declare that undercover operations have had a "terrible impact" on the lives of innocent women.

The MPs are so troubled about the treatment of the women as well as the "ghoulish" practice in which undercover police adopted the identities of dead children that they have called for an urgent clean-up of the laws governing covert surveillance operations.

Jenner infiltrated leftwing political groups from 1994 to 2000, pretending to be a joiner interested in radical politics. For much of his deployment, he was under the command of Lambert, who was by then promoted to head of operations of the SDS.

While posing as Cassidy, he could be coarse but also irreverent and funny. The undercover officer saw himself as something of a poet. A touch over 6ft, he had a broad neck, large shoulders and exuded a tough, working-class quality.

By the spring of 1995, Jenner began a relationship with Alison and soon moved into her flat. "We lived together as what I would describe as man and wife," she said. "He was completely integrated into my life for five years."

Jenner met her relatives, who trusted him as her long-term partner. He accompanied Alison to her mother's second wedding. "He is in my mother's wedding photograph," she said. Family videos of her nephew's and niece's birthdays show Jenner teasing his girlfriend fondly. Others record him telling her late grandmother about his fictionalised family background.

Alison, a peaceful campaigner involved in leftwing political causes, believes she inadvertently provided the man she knew as Mark Cassidy with "an excellent cover story", helping persuade other activists he was a genuine person.

"People trusted me, people knew that I was who I said I was, and people believed, therefore, that he must be who he said he was because he was welcomed into my family," she said.

It was not unusual for undercover operatives working for the SDS or its sister squad, the national public order unit, to have sexual relationships with women they were spying on. Of the 11 undercover police officers publicly identified, nine had intimate sexual relations with activists. Most were long-term, meaningful relationships with women who believed they were in a loving partnership.

Usually these spies were told to spend at least one or two days a week off-duty, when they would change clothes and return to their real lives. However, Jenner, who had a wife, appears to have lived more or less permanently with Alison, rarely leaving their shared flat in London.

It was an arrangement that caused personal problems for the Jenners. At one stage, he is known to have attended counselling to repair his relationship with his wife. Bizarrely, at about the same time, he was also consulting a second relationship counsellor with Alison.

"I met him when I was 29," she said. "It was the time when I wanted to have children, and 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."

Jenner disentangled himself from the deployment in 2000, disappearing suddenly from Alison's flat after months pretending to suffer from depression.

The police spy left her a note which read: "We want different things. I can't cope ... When I said I loved you, I meant it, but I can't do it." He claimed he was going to Germany to look for work.

It was all standard procedure for the SDS. Some operatives ended their deployments by pretending to have a breakdown and vanishing, supposedly to go abroad, sending a few letters to their girlfriends with foreign postmarks.

Alison was left heartbroken and paranoid, feeling that she was losing her mind. She spent more than a decade investigating Jenner's background, hiring a private detective to try to track him down. She had no idea he was actually working a few miles away at Scotland Yard, where he is understood to still work as a police officer today.

The strongest clue to Jenner's real identity came from an incident she recalled from years earlier when he was still living with her. "I discovered he made an error with a credit card about a year and a half into our relationship," she said. "It was in the name Jenner and I asked him what it was and he told me he bought it off a man in a pub and he had never used it. He asked me to promise to never tell anyone."

The Metropolitan police refused to comment on whether Jenner was a police spy. "We are not prepared to confirm or deny the deployment of individuals on specific operations," it said.

Alison told MPs that the "betrayal and humiliation" she suffered was beyond normal. "This is not about just a lying boyfriend or a boyfriend who has cheated on you," she said. "It is about a fictional character who was created by the state and funded by taxpayers' money. The experience has left me with many, many unanswered questions, and one of those that comes back is: how much of the relationship was real?"

If you have information about Mark Jenner or any other undercover police officers contact: paul.lewis@guardian.co.uk

[Jan Klimkowski]

One of Mark "Flash" Kennedy's mates spilling a few carefully chosen beans.

An unhappy ship, methinks.

Undercover police 'gave drugs to dealers in return for information'

Former detective Christian Plowman writes book claiming that unit targeted low-level criminals rather than criminals at top of chain



Mark Townsend
The Observer, Saturday 6 April 2013 15.40 BST

Police raid
Christian Plowman claims that he often found himself targeting crack addicts instead of dealers and spying on ordinary people. Photograph: Toby Melville/PA

Heroin and crack cocaine bought with taxpayers' money was routinely given to drug dealers in return for information, a former Scotland Yard undercover officer has alleged.

Christian Plowman, 39, claims that officers from SO10, the elite covert operations unit of the Metropolitan police, would allow dealers to take amounts of class-A drugs as a form of bribe.

Although not illegal, the practice of officers handing over illicit drugs in return for leads is likely to reignite the debate over the ethics of undercover policing and bring fresh accusations of a lack of control over covert operatives.

"We were treading a line. Often we'd buy some drugs off somebody who would be a junkie and he would promise to take us directly to the dealer the next time, but in return for that he'd want some of the drugs he'd bought for us. We had to be careful that if we agreed to that, he took the drugs himself so he couldn't say that we supplied him," said Plowman.

But Plowman said they never sold drugs, unlike detective constable Nicholas McFadden of West Yorkshire police, who was jailed for 23 years last Thursday after stealing more than £1.2m-worth of drugs seized in police raids and selling them back onto the streets.

Speaking publicly for the first time about his experiences as a covert operative since leaving the Met in 2011, Plowman also accused the undercover unit of targeting "low-hanging fruit" instead of individuals at the top of the criminal chain. He said some covert operations became focused upon getting "heads on sticks", which Plowman said meant "let's bag as many as people as possible for whatever offence we can".

As a result, the full-time undercover officer claims he often found himself targeting crack addicts instead of dealers and spying on ordinary people.

Plowman spent 16 years in the Met and was one of around 10 full-time covert operatives. He was a close friend of Mark Kennedy, 43, the undercover officer who had at least one sexual relationship with a woman while infiltrating eco-activists. Plowman has written a book about his experiences, Crossing the Line, which is published next month.

Although he praises his colleagues, the former officer describes the culture of SO10 as riven with machismo, to the extent that undercover officers who requested psychological help were seen as not fit for the job.

"You need a culture where you can go and see a shrink and you won't be blacklisted, but there was a proper locker-room culture," said Plowman, who now lives abroad and works as a security manager for a fashion firm. Unable to ask for support and struggling to balance his aliases with his own identity, Plowman admits he contemplated suicide.

He reveals that some former colleagues have threatened him since he left. "One of them said 'next time you're in London, I'm gonna headbutt you', but who'd do that anyway? You're a policeman for starters."

Plowman's last job was working at a north London pawnshop called TJ's Trading Post that was set up by Scotland Yard to trade in stolen goods, but which he believes operated as a "honey trap" that lured people to commit crime. More than 100 people are believed to have been convicted, many for illegally trading their own passports and driving licences.

Plowman claims the store encouraged people in a poor area to commit offences by giving the impression that they could make easy money by trading ID documents. "They were not people whose arrest would make any visible impact on the community. If TJ's had never opened, those people would not have been in prison for any offence," he said.

Other decisions he disagreed with included the apparent mindset among senior officers that criminals maintained the modus operandi of south-east London gangsters in the 1970s, namely cutting deals during heavy drinking sessions. Plowman said he spent weeks drinking in pubs that were believed to be hubs of criminality but in reality were full of ordinary working men.

"They were just normal people. I felt incredibly uncomfortable infiltrating their lives, however minimal the intrusion. I just thought: 'Why am I here?' In one pub, the biggest crime I saw was a 15-year-old trying to sell some stolen makeup."

Before graduating to a full-time position in SO10, Plowman was a "test purchase officer", which entails police masquerading as drug addicts who frequent street dealers to try to obtain contact details. Even then, Plowman alleges that ambitions fell below what he expected from an elite police unit.

"We ended up buying drugs off proper junkies who were forced to sell them by dealers. They were threatened with violence, were often homeless or their flat had been taken off them by dealers. They shouldn't have been convicted, in my view."

He described one infiltration of a crack den in Richmond, south-west London, in which police targeted Jamaicans who had recently arrived in the UK. "These were very low-hanging fruit. These were guys coming over who had either been threatened or had been paid to sell crack. They were farm boys, essentially. But in the police world, instead of saying we arrested three Jamaican farm boys who didn't know what they were doing, the headline would be: 'Three yardies arrested'."

The Met declined to comment.

[Magda Hassan]

One of Mark "Flash" Kennedy's mates spilling a few carefully chosen beans.

An unhappy ship, methinks.

Undercover police 'gave drugs to dealers in return for information'

Former detective Christian Plowman writes book claiming that unit targeted low-level criminals rather than criminals at top of chain

I'm shocked. Shocked.

[Peter Lemkin]

Surveillance

UK: Undercover Policing Faces Tighter Regulation after Mark Kennedy Scandal

By Rob Evans and Paul Lewis / The GuardianJune 18th, 2013no responses

• • inShare
  
  

Photo: The controversy about undercover policing began with the Guardian's revelations about Mark Kennedy. (Philipp Ebeling for the Guardian)

New approval procedures for using spies will be required under legislation announced by minister for policing

Ministers have announced proposals to tighten up the regulation of undercover police following a succession of scandals over the infiltration of protest groups.
Damian Green, the minister for policing, told MPs on Tuesday that under the plans to be brought before parliament the police spies would be deployed only following approval from an outside body.
In a second reform, the use of the spies would only be authorised by chief constables. Previously, officers as junior as a superintendent had the power to deploy spies. The officers infiltrated political groups over many years.
The announcement of the new legislation follows a long-running Guardian investigation that revealed abuses by the spies in an undercover operation monitoring political campaigns since 1968.
The investigation showed that the undercover police routinely formed long-lasting, intimate, relationships with the activists they were sent to spy on. At least two police officers had children with activists while they worked undercover.
Police have also conceded that it was common practice for the agents to adopt the identities of dead children to develop their fake personas.
The controversy began two and a half years ago when the Guardian revealed details of the seven-year deployment of the police spy Mark Kennedy, who lived among climate change campaigners and who had several relationships with women upon whom he spied, one of which lasted six years.
Three senior judges later found that Kennedy might have acted as an agent provocateur.
Called before the home affairs select committee, Green said that any covert deployment lasting more than a year would need to be authorized by the office of surveillance commissioners, which monitors covert operations by state agencies.
The watchdog, led by the retired judge Sir Christopher Rose, has been criticised for failing to rigorously invigilate the use of many kinds of surveillance by government bodies, ranging from the police to local councils. Under the plans, the office would have to be notified before any operation was begun.
Green said: "Undercover police operations are vital in the fight against terrorism and serious organized crime. However, covert powers must be used proportionately and only when necessary."
He said the new measures would "provide enhanced judicial oversight of all undercover police deployments".
The proposed legislation brings into force proposals by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary last year, in a report into Kennedy, who infiltrated environmentalists for seven years.
Sir Denis O'Connor, then chief inspector of constabulary, said the level of authority needed to deploy an undercover police officer for several years in a protest group was less than was required to plant a listening device in the car of a drug dealer.
Under present rules, a warrant from the home secretary is required for a wire tap, but police can take on new identities, living in the homes of their targets, with nothing more than a signature from a superintendent.
O'Connor described the discrepancy as surprising, and said "serious consideration" should be given to legislation that would make undercover policing as accountable as other forms of intrusive surveillance.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/18...regulation

[David Guyatt]

That's nice. To be overseen by a compliant outside agency headed by a reliable pair of hands. Very tough new legislation eh.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Definition: Traditionally, an agent provocateur (plural: agents provocateurs, French for "inciting agent(s)") is an agent employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act or falsely implicate them in partaking in the illegal act. More generally, the term may refer to an undercover person or group of persons that seek to discredit or harm another group (often, peaceful protest or demonstration) by provoking them to commit a wrong or rash action (thus, undermining the protest or demonstration as whole).

McLibel leaflet was co-written by undercover police officer Bob Lambert

Exclusive: McDonald's sued green activists in long-running David v Goliath legal battle, but police role only now exposed

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 June 2013 14.54 BST
Jump to comments (388)

Bob Lambert posed as a radical activist named Bob Robinson.

An undercover police officer posing for years as an environmental activist co-wrote a libellous leaflet that was highly critical of McDonald's, and which led to the longest civil trial in English history, costing the fast-food chain millions of pounds in fees.

The true identity of one of the authors of the "McLibel leaflet" is Bob Lambert, a police officer who used the alias Bob Robinson in his five years infiltrating the London Greenpeace group, is revealed in a new book about undercover policing of protest, published next week.

McDonald's famously sued green campaigners over the roughly typed leaflet, in a landmark three-year high court case, that was widely believed to have been a public relations disaster for the corporation. Ultimately the company won a libel battle in which it spent millions on lawyers.

Lambert was deployed by the special demonstration squad (SDS) a top-secret Metropolitan police unit that targeted political activists between 1968 until 2008, when it was disbanded. He co-wrote the defamatory six-page leaflet in 1986 and his role in its production has been the subject of an internal Scotland Yard investigation for several months.

At no stage during the civil legal proceedings brought by McDonald's in the 1990s was it disclosed that a police infiltrator helped author the leaflet.
McLibel: Helen Steel and David Morris, outside a branch of McDonald's in, London, in 2005 The McLibel two: Helen Steel and David Morris, outside a branch of McDonald's in London in 2005 after winning their case in the European court of human rights. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

A spokesman for the Met said the force "recognises the seriousness of the allegations of inappropriate behaviour and practices involving past undercover deployments". He added that a number of allegations surrounding the undercover officers were currently being investigated by a team overseen by the chief constable of Derbyshire police, Mick Creedon.

And in remarks that come closest to acknowledging the scale of the scandal surrounding police spies, the spokesman said: "At some point it will fall upon this generation of police leaders to account for the activities of our predecessors, but for the moment we must focus on getting to the truth."

Lambert declined to comment about his role in the production of the McLibel leaflet. However, he previously offered a general apology for deceiving "law abiding members of London Greenpeace", which he said was a peaceful campaign group.

Lambert, who rose through the ranks to become a spymaster in the SDS, is also under investigation for sexual relationships he had with four women while undercover, one of whom he fathered a child with before vanishing from their lives. The woman and her son only discovered that Lambert was a police spy last year.

The internal police inquiry is also investigating claims raised in parliament that Lambert ignited an incendiary device at a branch of Debenhams when infiltrating animal rights campaigners. The incident occurred in 1987 and the explosion inflicted £300,000 worth of damage to the branch in Harrow, north London. Lambert has previously strongly denied he planted the incendiary device in the Debenhams store.
A McDonald's sign While McDonald's won the initial legal battle, at great expense, it was seen as a PR disaster. Photograph: Image Broker/Rex Features

Lambert's role in helping compose the McLibel leaflet is revealed in 'Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police', which is published next week. An extract from the book will be published in the Guardian Weekend magazine. A joint Guardian/Channel 4 investigation into undercover policing will be broadcast on Dispatches on Monday evening.

Lambert was one of two SDS officers who infiltrated London Greenpeace; the second, John Dines, had a two-year relationship with Helen Steel, who later became the co-defendant in the McLibel case. The book reveals how Steel became the focus of police surveillance operations. She had a sexual relationship with Dines, before he also disappeared without a trace.

Dines gained access to the confidential legal advice given to Steel and her co-defendant that was written by Keir Starmer, then a barrister known for championing radical causes. The lawyer was advising the activists on how to defend themselves against McDonald's. He is now the director of public prosecutions in England and Wales.

Lambert was lauded by colleagues in the covert unit for his skilful infiltration of animal rights campaigners and environmentalists in the 1980s. He succeeded in transforming himself from a special branch detective into a long-haired radical activist who worked as a cash-in-hand gardener. He became a prominent member of London Greenpeace, around the time it began campaigning against McDonald's in 1985. The leaflet he helped write made wide-ranging criticisms of the company, accusing it of destroying the environment, exploiting workers and selling junk food.

Four sources who were either close to Lambert at the time, or involved in the production of the leaflet, have confirmed his role in composing the libellous text. Lambert confided in one of his girlfriends from the era, although he appeared keen to keep his participation hidden. "He did not want people to know he had co-written it," Belinda Harvey said.

Paul Gravett, a London Greenpeace campaigner, said the spy was one of a small group of around five activists who drew up the leaflet over several months. Another close friend from the time recalls Lambert was really proud of the leaflet. "It was like his baby, he carried it around with him," the friend said.

When Lambert's undercover deployment ended in 1989, he vanished, claiming that he had to flee abroad because he was being pursued by special branch. None of his friends or girlfriends suspected that special branch was his employer.

It was only later that the leaflet Lambert helped to produce became the centre of the huge trial. Even though the activists could only afford to distribute a few hundred copies of the leaflet, McDonald's decided to throw all of its legal might at the case, suing two London Greenpeace activists for libel.

Two campaigners Steel, who was then a part-time bartender, and an unemployed postal worker, Dave Morris unexpectedly stood their ground and refused to apologise.
McLIbel: Helen Steel and David Morris Steel and Morris outside the high court at the start of the first proceedings in the McLibel trial in 1990. Photograph: Photofusion/UIG/ Getty Images

Over 313 days in the high court, the pair defended themselves, with pro bono assistance from Starmer, as they could not afford to hire any solicitors or barristers. In contrast, McDonald's hired some of the best legal minds at an estimated cost of £10m. During the trial, legal argument largely ignored the question of who wrote the McLibel leaflet, focusing instead on its distribution to members of the public.

In 1997, a high court judge ruled that much of the leaflet was libellous and ordered the two activists to pay McDonald's £60,000 in damages. This sum was reduced on appeal to £40,000 but McDonald's never enforced payment.

It was a hollow victory for the company; the long-running trial had exposed damaging stories about its business and the quality of the food it was selling to millions of customers around the world. The legal action, taking advantage of Britain's much-criticised libel laws, was seen as a heavy handed and intimidating way of crushing criticism. However, the role of undercover police in the story remained, until now, largely unknown.

On Friday, Morris said the campaign against the burger chain was successful "despite the odds overwhelmingly stacked against us in the legal system and up against McDonald's massive and relentless advertising and propaganda machine.

"We now know that other shadowy forces were also trying to undermine our efforts in the most disgusting, but ultimately futile ways. All over the world police and secret agents infiltrate opposition movements in order to protect the rich and powerful but as we have seen in so many countries recently people power and the pursuit of truth and justice is unstoppable, even faced with the most repressive and unacceptable Stasi-like tactics."

[Magda Hassan]

McLibel leaflet was co-written by undercover police officer Bob Lambert

An undercover police officer posing for years as an environmental activist co-wrote a libellous leaflet that was highly critical of McDonald's, and which led to the longest civil trial in English history, costing the fast-food chain millions of pounds in fees.

I'm pleased some one put him to good use. A much better use of police resources than infiltrating environmental groups. I wonder if McDonald's would have a case against the police now?

Lambert declined to comment about his role in the production of the McLibel leaflet. However, he previously offered a general apology for deceiving "law abiding members of London Greenpeace", which he said was a peaceful campaign group.

They all have more integrity in their tiny toe than he could ever dream of.

Lambert, who rose through the ranks to become a spymaster in the SDS, is also under investigation for sexual relationships he had with four women while undercover, one of whom he fathered a child with before vanishing from their lives. The woman and her son only discovered that Lambert was a police spy last year.

Lambert was one of two SDS officers who infiltrated London Greenpeace; the second, John Dines, had a two-year relationship with Helen Steel, who later became the co-defendant in the McLibel case. The book reveals how Steel became the focus of police surveillance operations. She had a sexual relationship with Dines, before he also disappeared without a trace.

This is just appalling the worst kind of abuse of another human being. Utterly soul destroying. A gross abuse of trust. It amounts to rape. I don't know how these bastards can sleep at night.

Dines gained access to the confidential legal advice given to Steel and her co-defendant that was written by Keir Starmer, then a barrister known for championing radical causes. The lawyer was advising the activists on how to defend themselves against McDonald's. He is now the director of public prosecutions in England and Wales.

How can this not be anything but interfering in a legal case and perverting the course of justice? Totally corrupt.

"We now know that other shadowy forces were also trying to undermine our efforts in the most disgusting, but ultimately futile ways. All over the world police and secret agents infiltrate opposition movements in order to protect the rich and powerful but as we have seen in so many countries recently people power and the pursuit of truth and justice is unstoppable, even faced with the most repressive and unacceptable Stasi-like tactics."

Yep.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Tonight's Channel 4 documentary was pretty explosive.

Former Special Demonstration Squad whistleblower, Peter Francis, aka "Peter Black", admitted to having PTSD and not knowing "who he was", after infiltrating the protest movement and being told by his Special Branch bosses that if he was going to have sex with a protestor, "he should use a condom".

I suspect that just as he was tasked with trying to "smear" everyone from environmental and anti-fascist protestors to Stephen Lawrence's family and friends, Francis will himself now be the victim of a smear campaign.

They'll whisper "poor Peter, he's not very well you know, a bit funny in the head, it's very sad" hiss hiss.....

Scotland Yard spied on critics of police corruption

Exclusive: undercover officers in Special Demonstration Squad targeted political campaigns against Metropolitan police


Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Monday 24 June 2013 21.14 BST

Scotland Yard
At least three officers from the Special Demonstration Squad spied on activist groups based in London. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Scotland Yard deployed undercover officers in political groups that sought to uncover corruption in the Metropolitan police and campaigned for justice for people who had died in custody, the Guardian can reveal.

At least three officers from the controversial Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) spied on London-based activist groups.

Mark Jenner, an undercover officer, used the identity "Mark Cassidy" in the 1990s to penetrate the Colin Roach Centre, which was named after a 21-year-old black British man who died in the foyer of Stoke Newington police station in north-east London. The campaigners worked with people who said they had been mistreated, wrongfully arrested or assaulted by police in the local borough Hackney which was at the time mired in a serious corruption scandal.

Jenner, who was married with children, had a four-year relationship with a woman he was spying on before his deployment ended in 2000.

A second SDS spy was used to gather intelligence on another group that represented the victims of police harassment and racist attacks in a neighbouring part of east London. The second spy, whose identity is not known, did not infiltrate the Newham Monitoring Project directly, but got inside associated groups and was able to monitor its activities.

The revelation comes a day after the Guardian revealed that Peter Francis, a former Met officer turned whistleblower, was asked to dig for "dirt" on the family of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence. The revelation provoked anger across the political spectrum, led by the prime minister.

David Cameron promised an investigation into what he called the "absolutely disgraceful" disclosure that police sought to discredit the Lawrence family in the weeks after their loved one was stabbed to death by a racist gang.

"To hear that, potentially, the police that were meant to be helping them were actually undermining them that's horrific," Cameron said.
Link to video: Undercover police officer: 'How I spied on the Stephen Lawrence campaign'

Boris Johnson, as mayor of London ultimately responsible for the Met, describing the Stephen Lawrence revelations as "deeply, deeply unsettling".

In an urgent Commons statement Theresa May, the home secretary, told MPs she would ask two ongoing inquiries to investigate the Lawrence revelations.

But Neville Lawrence, Stephen's father condemned the response as "completely unsatisfactory".

He said: "I am convinced that nothing short of a judge-led inquiry will suffice and I have no confidence that the measures announced today will get to the bottom of this matter."

Francis said the Met planted a number of spies in groups that politically opposed the force. Of the Newham Monitoring Project, Francis said: "Every single event they were organising was being reported back to the SDS. We knew everything that was going on in the NMP."

Francis, using the alias of Pete Black amongst others, went undercover in a group called Youth Against Racism in Europe between 1993 and 1997. He said he was specifically asked by his superiors to gather intelligence on the so-called "black justice campaigns", which were seeking justice for mostly black or Asian men who died either in custody or after contact with police. Many of the campaigns were led by grieving relatives although more radical groups also campaigned alongside them.

Francis recalled one episode during which he attending a candlelit vigil outside Kennington police station, for a man who had died after police contact. "I found myself questioning the morality of my actions for the first time," he said.

"To some extent these campaigns had been taken over by extremists but at their heart were families who had lost their loved ones and simply wanted justice. By targeting the groups, I was convinced that I was robbing them of the chance to ever find justice."

On Monday night, after being asked to comment on the latest disclosures about the deployment of undercover officers in police monitoring and black justice groups, Scotland Yard replied with a general statement from the commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, on the Lawrence revelations. Hogan-Howe said that he was "personally shocked by the allegations that an undercover officer was told to find evidence that might smear the Lawrence family". He added: "It's imperative that we find out the truth about what happened as quickly as possible."

The full details of Francis's deployment are charted in Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police, which will be published on Tuesday.

After telling MPs they should show "zero tolerance of police corruption and wrongdoing", the home secretary said the latest revelations would be handled by an existing inquiry into allegations of corruption in the murder investigation into Lawrence's death which is being conducted by a barrister.

May said the issues raised by Francis would also be dealt with by an internal Met police review which has been ongoing since 2011. Operation Herne which the Met has indicated will not conclude until 2016 is being overseen by the chief constable of Derbyshire Police.

Herne is also investigating why undercover police adopted the identities of dead children and developed long-term sexual relationships with the people they were spying on.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Whilst working as an undercover agent infilitrating legitimate left-wing political movements, Peter Francis lost his moral compass.

Now, he appears to have found it again, and is trying to do the right thing.

Francis added: "My very clear position now is that police should no longer be involved in any undercover work against political activists."


But will his testimony be heard?

"I will not co-operate at all with the two inquiries the home secretary said can deal with these matters," he said. "Only a judicial-led or public inquiry not just into the Stephen Lawrence allegations, but into the wider controversy has any chance of ever establishing the truth. If there is a public inquiry, I will happily give all my evidence under oath, explaining what I personally know about the SDS and covert policing of protest groups."

Peter Francis: undermining family's campaign for justice was my low point

Ex-officer who claims to have spied on Stephen Lawrence family describes regret over infiltrating Brian Douglas campaign

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 June 2013 17.59 BST

Peter Francis said he felt he was reducing the chances of justice for the family of Brian Douglas, who was hit with a police baton. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Peter Francis, the former police officer who claims to have spied on the Stephen Lawrence campaign, has said his lowest point was undermining the campaign of another family who wanted justice over the death of a boxing instructor who was struck on the head by a police baton.

Francis, who is calling for a public inquiry into covert policing, said he infiltrated the family-led campaign for justice over the death of Brian Douglas, a 33-year-old who was hit over the head with a police baton in 1995 when he was stopped for driving erratically.

In a webchat with Guardian readers, Francis said: "The lowest point I reached morally was when I was standing outside Kennington police station for the Brian Douglas justice campaign in May 1995. It was a candlelit vigil and his relatives were all there.

"By me passing on all the campaign information everything that the family was planning and organising through Youth Against Racism in Europe I felt I was virtually reducing their chances of ever receiving any form of justice to zero. To this day, I personally feel that family has never had the justice they deserved."

Francis said the same applied to the family of Wayne Douglas, 25, who died in police custody in 1995, another campaign Francis infiltrated. The former police spy's full story is contained in Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police, which is published this week. The cases of several other police spies are contained in the book.

Francis worked for the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), one of two secretive Metropolitan police units that have deployed undercover officers in political groups.

Francis told the Guardian webchat his operation was justified by superiors as necessary to combat "subversives", a term that was loosely defined and included "people who are now mainstream politicians".

"To name one: Jack Straw," he said of the former home secretary. "I read Mr Straw's rather large file. I would suggest he asks to see a copy. It will be a pink file with his individual 'RF' (Registry File) number. The same for [MPs] Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn and Imran Khan, the lawyer for the Stephen Lawrence family. The human rights solicitor firm Bindmans also had its own dedicated file."

Francis added: "My very clear position now is that police should no longer be involved in any undercover work against political activists."

Francis answered challenging questions by Guardian readers. Asked why he had not spoken out sooner, he said: "I didn't want to go to prison. I have been personally threatened on several occasions that if I ever talked about my work in special branch and especially the Special Demonstration Squad I would be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.

"The reason I have come forward now is, partially, because I cannot imagine in the present context the director of public prosecutions bringing a case against a whistleblower revealing important information that is in the public interest."

Francis said the "one reservation" he had about revealing how he was asked to spy on and try to smear the Lawrence campaign was that it could overshadow the campaign brought by women who were duped into long-term relationships with undercover officers working for the SDS and its sister squad, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

The former police spy has offered to give evidence on behalf of women bringing a lawsuit against the Met police for the psychological damage caused by relationships they had with undercover police. Francis said he had two sexual encounters with women, which he said were "one night-stands".

"I can rest slightly easier at night than several other SDS officers, because I never promised women I ever loved them or cared about them," he said. "I never said I wanted to spend the rest of my life with them or wanted to father children with them."

Asked why he should be trusted, Francis replied: "Good question. Until yesterday, no one in my life family, friends, people I work with knew anything about my undercover life. Coming out in this way has not been easy. But I am doing it because I feel that by coming out of the shadows, and speaking publicly, gives the best chance to try to get a public inquiry."

Francis said he did not have faith in the two already existing inquiries that Theresa May, the home secretary, said would handle his allegations. Stephen Lawrence's father, Neville, also said he had "no confidence" in May's proposals.

"I will not co-operate at all with the two inquiries the home secretary said can deal with these matters," he said. "Only a judicial-led or public inquiry not just into the Stephen Lawrence allegations, but into the wider controversy has any chance of ever establishing the truth. If there is a public inquiry, I will happily give all my evidence under oath, explaining what I personally know about the SDS and covert policing of protest groups."

[Jan Klimkowski]

Video clips with serial shagger "Bob Lambert", the undercover cop, can be seen at Channel 4 News.

This is clearly an attempt at damage limitation by "Lambert", but why should anyone believe a word this guy says?

05 July 2013 UK

I was weak and cruel, admits ex-undercover police boss

Andy Davies Home Affairs Correspondent

Sexual relationships, fathering a child, using dead children's identities and a false name in court - in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview Bob Lambert talks about his years as an undercover officer.

The first time I tried to get Bob Lambert on camera was in January 2010. "Er, no," he declined politely.

"I think Jonathan would be much better suited than me for that", or words to that effect, referring to his colleague Jonathan Githens-Mazer sitting beside him.

The two Exeter University academics had just written a report on Islamophobia in Britain and they were trying to drum up media interest. I put Lambert's reticence largely down to modesty or a general nervousness about how he'd come across on camera. Eighteen months later I came across the following headline in the Guardian: "Progressive Academic Bob Lambert is Former Police Spy". The penny dropped.

Lambert was exposed as a former undercover police officer, the most senior to date, in October 2011. Challenged at a conference by former activists in the London Greenpeace movement, he was chased down the street. He ran, but the unravelling scandal of undercover policing would soon engulf him.

Up until then the focus had been largely on another police spy, Mark Kennedy, exposed for having infiltrated a group of climate change campaigners and found to have possibly acted as an agent provocateur. Now Lambert stands at the heart of this spying scandal, accused of firebombing a department store, giving a false name in court, co-authoring the famous McLibel leaflet, and fathering a child with a "target".

Watch the video: Bob Lambert's extended interview with Andy Davies

Under scrutiny

Last week, in a Dispatches documentary, his old unit was linked to an alleged smear campaign against the family and supporters of the Stephen Lawrence campaign, at a time when Lambert was second-in-command. "There was no smear campaign," he insists, but he and his old friends at Special Branch are under scrutiny like never before.

It is the revelations regarding Lambert's behaviour with the women he duped while undercover which have drawn the most intense public indignation. He admits that during his four-year deployment infiltrating the Animal Liberation Front, he slept with four women linked to the groups he was targeting.

With hindsight I can only say that I genuinely regret my actions, and I apologise to the women affected in my case. Bob Lambert

Incredibly, he even fathered a child with one of the women. She recently described her treatment at the hands of the Metropolitan police as amounting to "state rape".

Did his wife know what was going on? "No", he replies. Does he accept that what he did was morally reprehensible? A gross invasion of people's privacy? "Yes, I accept that" says Lambert, quietly.

"With hindsight I can only say that I genuinely regret my actions, and I apologise to the women affected in my case."

At one point he ventures: "I'd always been a faithful husband. I only ever became an unfaithful husband when I became an undercover police officer".

He denies there was a deliberate tactic to target the women and talks of love, emotional immaturity, weakness, adding: "Probably I became too immersed in my alter ego, Bob Robinson".

It will be up to a major police investigation, Operation Herne, currently examining allegations of widespread misconduct by undercover officers, to establish the truth of that latter claim.
Dead children's identities

Bob Lambert became "Bob Robinson" in June 1984, four years after he'd joined Special Branch from the panda patrol life of a police constable based in Hampstead. As was routine, it seems, for members of the Met's elite Special Demonstration Squad during that period, the cover name would have been picked from a list of dead children. In Lambert's case, the identity belonged to Mark Robert Robinson, a seven-year-old boy who died of a congenital heart defect, on 19 October 1959.

The tactic of "harvesting" dead children's identities, revealed during the Guardian's investigation into undercover policing, has been roundly condemned.

"A careless and bullying intrusion into the most shattering human grief", wrote the former Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald recently; "gruesome" said a committee of MPs.

Lambert says he didn't give pause for thought at the time on the ethical considerations: "That's what was done." He adds that later, as a manager in the SDS and after the death of his own daughter, he helped introduce "alternative approaches". Perhaps more significantly, however, he claims that the resurrection of dead children's IDs was a practice "well known at the highest levels of the Home Office".

Lambert's "tour of duty" lasted four years. He became the first undercover officer to infiltrate the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), some of whose members would become involved in a campaign of arson attacks across the country. His alter ego Bob Robinson, the long-haired radical who emerged onto the scene from relative obscurity, had honed his "anarchist" credentials whilst based with the London Greenpeace movement.

But did he take his immersion role too far? Did he become an agent provocateur? It was claimed in parliament last June that he planted an incendiary device in a Debenhams store in Harrow in 1987. Lambert is quick to deny it as a "false allegation".
False identities in court

He does, however, appear to make a significant admission on another highly contentious issue currently under investigation, namely the use of false identities in court. Bob Lambert, in his wide-ranging interview with Channel 4 News, reveals that he was arrested "four or five" times while undercover and that in 1986 he appeared in a magistrates court charged with what he claims was a "minor public order offence".

He can't remember if he was convicted but maintains he had to appear as "Bob Robinson", his alter ego, in order to "maintain cover". Others may view this differently, as the actions of someone who knowingly duped the court and could be investigated for possible perjury. Lambert himself won't be drawn further on the issue.

I was certainly a contributing author to the McLibel leaflet. Bob Lambert

Bob Lambert also confirms that he was one of a group of activists who co-authored the so-called McLibel leaflet. It prompted one of the longest libel trials in British history, as McDonald's sought to prove, at great cost, that the leaflet was defamatory.

"I was certainly a contributing author to the McLibel leaflet", he says. "Well, I think, the one that I remember, the one that I remember making a contribution to, was called What's Wrong With McDonald's?". I ask him if it was ever disclosed to the court that one of the supposed activists behind the authorship of the leaflet was in fact a Special Branch man. "I don't know the answer to that question," he replies.

There are plenty of questions for Bob Lambert over the coming months. Still working as a lecturer, he says he'll cooperate fully with any investigation. He is a man seen by many as utterly discredited, but he still hopes to salvage one aspect of his career - the Muslim Contact Unit which he set up at Special Branch to foster ties with Muslim groups post 9/11:

"My reputation is never going to be redeemed for many people, and I dont think it should be. I think I made serious mistakes that I should regret, and I always will do. I think the only real comfort I can take from my police career is that the Muslim Contact Unit was about learning from mistakes."

Whether he and other colleagues exposed over this scandal are believed - after so many years of consummate deception and duplicity - will now be a matter for the various inquiries. It appears the men and women of the Special Demonstration Squad, for so long protected from public scrutiny, are being called to account in a way they never imagined.