Spycops roundup

Following up on the previous spycops post, Paul Lewis has tweeted something approaching an explanation over the numbering issue:

Will try to clarify later but nothing more than C4 has slightly different rules / counting method to the G.

That’s not to say everything is now clear – no explicit clarification over whether Chitty/‘Blake’ is either ‘Officer 10’, ‘Officer 11’, or someone else; or whether the silhouette represents ‘Wellings’, ‘Richardson’, or someone else – but at least we seem to be still on track.

Meanwhile, some interesting links related to the theme of spycops and to the Dispatches programme…

Emily Apple from FITwatch has written an intensely personal post on the effect of infiltrators forming close relationships with and then betraying targets like her:

I also can’t express how important it is these revelations are coming out, and the depth of the operation against so many people is being exposed. We need to know who these bastards were, and we need to get their names and faces into the public domain. But it isn’t easy, and the psychological impact is massive.

Radical History of Hackney blog has a brief article pulling together the threads linking the spycops to the borough:

The radical history of Hackney has lead to police spies being active in the Borough.

This is a theme that it will hopefully return to in more detail at some point.

Newham Monitoring Project has released a statement in relation to the vague ‘cops spied on groups that held cops to account’ story it closed the evening with yesterday:

…Whilst the limited information in the Guardian report suggests NMP was never infiltrated directly, it nevertheless raises severe concerns that we do not have the full facts and the confidential nature of our casework might have been compromised. We demand, for the sake of transparency, that the name of the second SDS officer who was responsible for spying on NMP is made public immediately…

The Met’s current muscular Chief Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has put out a statement of his own on the Lawrence family smears, distancing himself and officers now serving under him from any of the beastly business we’re hearing about, which obviously happened a long, long time ago, if it did happen, and if it did happen then it was only ever the work of a few bad apples, etc:

…Finding out the truth about what happened 20 years ago is not a straightforward task. There are many, many documents and a large number of witnesses which is complicating the review. It has proved difficult to recapture the way in which police officers in this specialist area have operated since the Special Demonstration Squad was formed in the 1960’s…

Of course, the Stephen Lawrence murder was a long time ago, twenty years back, and many lessons were learned, it couldn’t happen again. Oh wait – here’s the Yorkshire Post reporting how police tried to smear the family of Christopher Alder, a former serviceman – and would you believe it, a Black Briton – who died in police custody in 1998:

…As part of their investigation into Mr Alder’s death, Humberside Police obtained social service records dating back to the births of all the Alder children – Christopher, Richard, Emmanuel, Stephen, and Janet, who were brought up in care…

Finally the Guardian is again plugging the imminent release of the Undercover book with another titbit story, this time with the revelation that the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) tracks nearly 9,000 ‘domestic extremists’ (as those previously deemed worthy of the equally ill-defined label ‘subversive’ are now officially described):

…A total of 8,931 individuals “have their own record” on a database kept by the unit, for which the Metropolitan police is the lead force. It currently uses surveillance techniques, including undercover police, paid informants, and intercepts against political campaigners from across the spectrum.

Senior officers familiar with the workings of the unit have indicated to the Guardian that many of the campaigners listed on the database have no criminal record…

One slightly odd bit: “Francis’s unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), was disbanded in 2008, but later replaced with the National Domestic Extremism Unit.”

Yet the NDEU was more a successor unit to the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) which employed Kennedy/‘Stone’. It was one of three units run through the aegis of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) by the National Coordinator for Domestic Extremism, until the #phnat fuck-ups bled into the spycops shitstorm first flaring up in 2010. Then, along with the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU) and the National Domestic Extremism Team (NDET), NPOIU was transferred over to the Metropolitan Police in 2011, where the three were jointly rebranded NDEU. Exciting stuff I think you will agree.

Twelve become ten? More spycop number confusion…

Tonight’s Dispatches documentary, ‘The Police’s Dirty Secret’ – with The Guardian‘s Paul Lewis fronting it based on the reports filed by him and Rob Evans (and others) over the past couple of years on undercover police infiltrating protest groups – was an interesting watch.

Whilst much of it felt like an extended trailer for the forthcoming book, plus a stage-managed opportunity for star witness ‘Officer A’ AKA ‘Peter Daley’ AKA ‘Pete Black’ to come out from the shadows to call for an independent inquiry under his own name of Peter Francis, it was a powerful film.

Whilst much of it was built around the whistleblower testimony of Francis, it did not dwell on the personalities of the professional liars of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) or the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), but on their actions and the effects of these on their victims.

Three women – Jacqui (AKA ‘Charlotte’), Belinda Harvey (AKA ‘Sarah’), and Helen Steel (AKA ‘Claire’) – bore powerful witness to the lengths Special Branch was prepared to go to in order to maintain a political status quo.

As Belinda put it:

You hear about people having their phones hacked – well that’s nothing compared to what happened to me, and what happened to us, absolutely nothing. It’s like our bodies were hacked. It’s… It’s just unforgivable.

This was echoed just as potently by Jacqui:

For my body to be used to gain intelligence on a protest group, yeah… Well, I feel like I was raped. Multiple times, wasn’t I? It’s like being raped by the state. And I just want it all to go away, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t go away. And the thing is I’m going to have Lambert in my life for a long time because he’s the father of my son.

Both Belinda and Jacqui had been seduced by Bob Lambert, a veteran detective who went undercover in pursuit of the ALF. Animal rights activist Jacqui bore him a son. Belinda was not even involved in politics, and was seemingly a (and I know this sounds distasteful) tactical conquest for Lambert. But she still had her doors kicked in by police on a cover-bolstering search for ‘Bob Robinson’ in the aftermath of the Debenham’s bombings.

All that, plus the spying-on-the-Lawrence-family bombshell dropped earlier in the day, made it a packed three-quarters-of-an-hour programme.

Yet in places it posed more questions than it answered.

Take this curious section from Paul Lewis:

In 2008 the SDS closed its doors. But its work continues in the form of the NPOIU.

Accusations of undercover officers engaging in sexual relations have persisted.

Mark Jenner, who infiltrated left wing groups posing as ‘Mark Cassidy’, reportedly lived with an activist girlfriend for four years.

Jim Boyling is said to have had two serious relationships in his time undercover.

Marco Jacobs, who posed as an anarchist, allegedly also had two unsuspecting girlfriends before he disappeared in 2009.

And Mark Kennedy – outed as a police spy in 2010 – had several relationships with women, all over Europe, the longest lasting six years.

In total, ten undercover officers have been identified; of those, it’s alleged that nine had sexual relationships with people they were spying on.

The graphic above is then shown – from left to right, top row then bottom, we have:

• Peter Francis / ‘Officer A’ / ‘Peter Daley’ / ‘Pete Black’
• Bob Lambert / ‘Bob Robinson’ / Dr Robert Lambert MBE
• Mark Kennedy / ‘Mark Stone’ / ‘Flash’
• Andrew James Boyling / ‘Jim Sutton’
• John Dines / ‘John Barker’
• Mike Chitty / ‘Mike Blake’
• ‘Lynn Watson’
• ‘Mark Jacobs’ / ‘Marco’
• Mark Jenner / ‘Mark Cassidy’
• Unknown

But previously we have established that the Lewis/Evans team has been working with a list of (probably) twelve known – if not publicly identified – undercover officers.

The Dispatches list of ten broadly matches that list, except for the new face on the block, Mike Chitty AKA ‘Mike Blake’, mentioned nowhere else except in the brief photo gallery released a couple of days ago, in which we are told he “infiltrated animal rights campaigners in the 1980s”. This makes him a possible fit for ‘Officer 10’ or ‘Officer 11’.

 

Yet where is ‘Rod Richardson’ or ‘Simon Wellings’ on the list? Both were noted for not having had sexual relationships whilst undercover – which means either would chime with the 1/10 on the Dispatches graphic having been abstinent, if Mike Chitty (in keeping with the SDS tradecraft of the 1980s) was not.

Either way, the pond is getting muddy once more – and not helped by the post-show release of another (peculiarly vague and limp) story telling us one unnamed officer didn’t infiltrate Newham Monitoring Project…

PS Another related story released after the show:

• Trauma of spy’s girlfriend

 

More on the mystery of ‘Officer 10’ and ‘Officer 11’ – a ‘cheesed off’ former spy-cop?

Whilst googling my way around the whole spy-cops thing, I came across this user contribution on The Guardian website from October 2011, relating to the then-imminent publishing of Hogan-Howe’s HMIC report into Kennedy’s shenanigans:

Should be an interesting read then and here’s hoping that HOGAN-HOWE wasn’t helped too much in his ‘review’ by the likes of Peter BLEKSLEY and any of the other so called Undercover Police ‘Experts’.

Speaking of which, here’s is the link to the recent BBC Programme about KENNEDY if anyone needs it again. With only 3 more days to watch it, having first been broadcasted on Monday, 19:30 on BBC One (East Midlands area only)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0161mc6/Power_Struggle

Having now watched it I don’t know what personally winds me up the most hearing and seeing Mark KENNEDY still obviously in his method man role of Mark STONE and therefore evidently lying as easily as any normal person actually finds breathing. Or Peter BLEKSLEY, as ever and yet again, talking out his backside as the so called rent a ‘media expert’ on deep and long-term total undercover Covert Police work.

BLEKSLEY isn’t, never has been and never will be an ‘expert’ on this matter as long as he has got a hole in his arse.

Up until when he was finished and totally burnt out in 1996 he only ever did numerous short-term crime cover Ops for SO10. Allowing him after each and every single short term role he played, to pop back to the local Police station or NSY afterwards to continue playing with his truncheon, gun, blue lights and numerous Police friends.

His ‘expert’ knowledge is like comparing the method actors of long-term deep undercover Policing, on parr with the likes of Christian BALE or Daniel DAY-LEWIS to his own appearance alongside the cast of East Enders.

The same actually goes for another familiar rent a ‘media expert’ on Terrorism. Whom is known by them in the actual real know I.e. former Met Police Special Branch Officers (RIP) as never having spent one day in his entire 30 years Police service involved in counter-terrorism work! Yes you know who you are.

Basically, if you have ‘been there, done it and got the t-shirt ‘ like some of us have, that’s fine and go ahead and spout. Or otherwise, please just keep your gob shut because everyone is laughing at you.

Pete BLACK

Ps: If you are no doubt reading this cheesedoff69 and also watched the above programme. Well just imagine how ‘cheesedoff’ you are going to be when the full Documentary comes out about him! Then followed by the inevitable KENNEDY’S self publizing book and Film. Contact Paul and Rob (for your personal anonymity best by e-mail) who will do their journalistic best to right any perceived wrongs you or indeed anyone else feel strongly enough about.

As you can see, it’s purportedly by ‘Pete Black’, the former spy-cop who blew the whistle on the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in The Observer in early 2010. He makes some amusing references to ex-undercover Met officer Peter Bleksley, who these days punts himself around as an expert on counter-terrorism and whatever else to the media, as well as writing true crime-style books.

Anyway, it’s the postscript that is most interesting.

A quick search shows that ‘cheesedoff69’ has only ever posted once, in August 2011. That post claims that its author is a former NPOIU employee:

I used to work for the NPOIU and I can say without any fear of being accurately contradicted that the officers accounts and expenditure were always scrupulously examined and overseen by independent accountants. The vast majority of members of the unit were based in London and as such were responsible for subsisting themselves i.e. their own money not the taxpayers. I was based elsewhere and as such if I had to spend the night in London then my evening meal was paid for. Far from how Mark Kennedy portrays it I regularly ate in the Chinese Buffet in Strutton Ground, £10 including a drink. Anyone thinking that is excessive has not eaten in London. The apartment close to Tower Bridge (no view of the bridge) was rented at half the market value because the owners could not get a tenant. Mark would not know this because he had nothing to do with anything other than his own day to day expenses. Cars were leased, again the buying power of the Mets allows a much higher standard of vehicle for the same cost of a basic model, I repeat no money was wasted, the senior officers watched every penny. I had great respect for the work Mark did gathering top class intelligence against the hooligans bent on causing serious damage in the UK and mainland Europe, I find it sad that he has lost the plot despite the Support he was afforded.

So did ‘cheesedoff69’ take the advice proffered by ‘Pete Black’ and contact Paul Lewis and Rob Evans? Is ‘cheesedoff69’ actually ‘Officer 10’, or even ‘Officer 11’? Or someone who was able to make the appropriate connections, act as a conduit, and enable other former undercover officers to spill the beans?

Frankly, all a bit far-fetched. Would ex-spies really take to the comments section of a public news website to exchange exhortations to whistleblow?

When is an undercover police officer not an undercover officer? On The Guardian’s spy-cop arithmetical methodology

In many respects the reporting by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans on the spy-cop story at The Guardian over the past two years has been exemplary.

However, in some areas they can be seen to obfuscate rather than illuminate.

A case in point: in January 2013 Lewis & Evans wrote an article on the legal action brought by women activists against the Met in relation to long term intimate relationships its undercover officers entered into in the course of their operations.

As the journalists put it:

Of the nine undercover police identified by the Guardian over the past two years, eight are believed to have slept with the people they were spying on. In other words, it was the norm.

Note that this was after the January 2012 ‘Officer 10’ revelation (that an undercover who wasn’t Lambert or Boyling had fathered a child by an activist with whom he had had a brief relationship), but before the ‘Rod Richardson’ story broke in February 2013.

The legal action, started back in December 2011, names five officers: Lambert, Kennedy, Boyling, ‘Barker’ (subsequently identified – in February 2013 – as Dines) and ‘Cassidy’. Let us call that five out of five.

Both ‘Watson’ and ‘Jacobs’ had also by this point been accused of sleeping with targets. The tally moves to seven for seven.

‘Pete Black’ has said ‘it was “part of the job” for fellow agents to use “the tool of sex” to maintain their cover and glean intelligence’, though I can’t find any direct admission of having done it himself. Let’s err on the side of ‘Black’ – following in the footsteps of his predecessor libertine cops Lambert and Dines and providing a good operational example to his own mentee Boyling – using “the tool of sex’ in his work. 8/8.

At this stage the only other publicly uncovered undercover was ‘Simon Wellings’. I can find no reference to him sleeping with any targets. That gives us more or less 8 out of 9.

However, The Guardian identified neither ‘Black’ (The Observer) nor ‘Wellings’ (BBC). So let’s scrub them and take the tally back down to 7/7.

So let’s go back to the mystery ‘Officer 10’ – he definitely had sex, insofar as like Boyling and Lambert he fathered a child. We are now back at 8/8.

Now, one of the interesting things with the ‘Rod Richardson’ story that Lewis & Evans gave us in February 2013 is the assertion that “the man calling himself Rod Richardson was an exception” to the ‘rule’ of having sex with targets. If in their January story Lewis & Evans were already working the ‘Richardson’ angle, then this could give us  the magic ‘eight out of nine’.

But then what about the anonymous Special Branch officer Lewis & Evans use to corroborate their ‘Jackal Run’ stories this month (for reference purposes ‘Officer 11’)? Is ‘Officer 11’ the same person as ‘Officer 10’? Or someone who they only became aware of after the January reference to “nine undercover police identified by the Guardian”?

Given that they are journalists who have ploughed this furrow largely alone in the mainstream media, Lewis and Evans are clearly in a position where they must protect their sources. It is notable that they appear to have gained the trust of the SDS whistleblower ‘Pete Black’, who initially only featured in stories co-bylined by The Observer‘s Tony Thompson.

To this end, it is conceivable that ‘Officer 10’ is also ‘Officer 11’, or that either or both is also ‘Mark Cassidy’, or even ‘Simon Wellings’ or ‘Marco Jacobs’, and that Lewis and Evans have deliberately blurred the details in each mention of their anonymous sources.

In the case of ‘Wellings’ and ‘Jacobs’ this is unlikely without knowingly publishing false information. ‘Officer 10’ bore a child from a target relationship, and no one has come forward to indicate that either ‘Wellings’ and ‘Jacobs’ became spy-parents. ‘Officer 11’ is described as an SDS infiltrator – and the SDS was supplanted in 1999 by the NPIOU. ‘Wellings’ first appeared in 2001, and ‘Jacobs’ in 2005 – so we may reasonably discount both of them.

The are other elements which muddy the water. When ‘Watson’ was identified in the wake of the Kennedy story in January 2011 in a pair of stories by Lewis and Evans co-written with Northern Editor Martin Wainwright – first tangentially and then directly – The Guardian gave her a pseudonym and sat on pictures of her. This was:

At the request of intelligence officials, the Guardian has agreed to withhold identifying details about the woman, who is still a serving officer, and will refer to her only as “Officer A”.

It was three days after the first mention of the female undercover officer on 10 January 2011 that The Guardian published a pixelated photo of ‘Watson’ (story by Lewis, Evans and Crime Correspondent Vikram Dodd). It would not be until 19 January – a full nine days on from the original story – before her cover name was used, in a story attributed to Rajeev Syal, who covers the Whitehall beat, and Wainwright. Note that her undercover name and photos of her were already circulating via IndyMedia from at least 13 January.

A similar situation came about on 15 January 2011 with the initial unmasking of ‘Marco Jacobs’ – again without naming or picturing him:

The latest officer, whose identity has been withheld amid fears for his safety in other criminal operations, worked for four years undercover with an anarchist group in Cardiff.

That story was bylined to Lewis, reporter Matthew Taylor and Syal. Again, his ‘true fake identity’ and picture were not published until 19 January 2011 (story by Syal), despite his details being published on FITwatch (14 January), IndyMedia (15 January) and elsewhere before then.

These are clearly not issues relating to the protection of sources: this was a favour extended to the Met, ostensibly to facilitate the safe exfiltration of ‘Watson’ and ‘Jacobs’ from the undercover operations they were then engaged in.

And if nurturing and protecting sources is so important, why in 2009 did Lewis give assurances to his source that the CO11 spotter card he had been shown in confidence would not be published in full if he could not deliver on that promise?

Of course we all make mistakes. But to stonewall straightforward requests to elucidate on opaque reporting is not the way to remedy them.

ETA:

Paul Lewis has clarified in a series of tweets [1, 2, 3] that the ‘eight of nine identified undercover officers slept with targets’ reference takes into consideration all those identified publicly, with ‘Simon Wellings’ the only abstinent (and not for want of trying):

Ha. Well. The nine are all those who have been identified in public, by us and others.

Doesn’t include Rod, or the others we know of/have spoken to, but not yet identified. Includes Black and Wellings.

PS: Blog post is right: Wellings is the one who didn’t have sex. (Though he often complained he wasn’t getting any)

That means the “nine undercover police identified…over the past two years” when that particular report was published in January 2013 are:

1. ‘Pete Black’
2. Mark Kennedy
3. ‘Lynn Watson’
4. ‘Marco Jacobs’
5. Jim Boyling
6. ‘Simon Wellings’
7. Bob Lambert
8. John Dines
9. ‘Mark Cassidy’

…And that “eight are believed to have slept with the people they were spying on

1. ‘Pete Black’
2. Mark Kennedy
3. ‘Lynn Watson’
4. ‘Marco Jacobs’
5. Jim Boyling
6. Bob Lambert
7. John Dines
8. ‘Mark Cassidy’

He also confirms that ‘Officer 10’ and ‘Officer 11’ are different people:

They’re not the same person.

With the subsequent ‘Jackal Run’ articles of February which revealed ‘Rod Richardson’, and the confirmation above of the existence of ‘Officer 10’ and ‘Officer 11’ as separate individuals, this indicates that the ‘Dirty Dozen’ list I posted up yesterday is accurate.

That certainly clears up some of the confusion. Thanks Paul.

A dirty dozen, and then some more… Just how many spy-cops did Scotland Yard infiltrate into protest groups?

It’s a question that bears asking. Ever since ‘Mark Stone’ was publicly exposed within activist circles as Constable Mark Kennedy back in October 2010, there has been a drip-drip-drip of revelations, as groups around the country have identified further infiltrators.

Below is a list of twelve people. We have the real names of only four of them, and cover names for ten. Two of them we know only what the journalists Paul Lewis and Rob Evans of The Guardian choose to tell us, and we have no way of verifying whether they are any of the others named or even each other – though the scant details provided indicate they are not.

1. ‘Pete Black’ AKA ‘Officer A (Observer)’ – infiltrated Militant’s Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) and also the M11 link road roads protest, 1993-1997 whilst working for the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). ‘Black’ came forward in March 2010 in interviews with Tony Thompson of The Observer. Previously worked for two years in Special Branch.
2. ‘Mark Stone’ AKA ‘Flash’ AKA PC Mark Kennedy – infiltrated mostly environmental groups (but then also tried anti-fascist and animal rights networks) in the UK and across Europe between 2003-2010. He joined the City of London Police in 1990 and then the Met in 1994, was recruited to an undercover training course in 1996, before being transferred to the Animal Rights National Index (ARNI) – which subsequently became the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPIOU) – in 2002. His involvement included anti-G8 actions at Gleneagles in 2005 and the abortive Ratcliffe-on-Soar protest in 2009. He was outed on IndyMedia in October 2010 and then in mainstream news media from January 2011. In December 2011 he was named as one of five officers who participated in long term intimate relationships with women targets whilst undercover, in a legal action initiated on behalf of eight such women.
3. ‘Lynn Watson’ AKA ‘Officer A (Guardian)’ – infiltrated various political networks between 2003-2008, including Aldermaston peace camp, the UK Action Medics Collective, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) and the Common Place social centre. She was identified as an undercover police officer in the aftermath of the Kennedy outing, something confirmed in the mainstream media in January 2011.
4. ‘Marco/Mark Jacobs’ AKA ‘Officer B’ – attempted to infiltrate groups first in Brighton and then in Cardiff between 2005-2009, including Cardiff Anarchist Network, activist gatherings, anti-G8 Dissent! network and climate change group Rising Tide. Like Kennedy he also went on trips to Europe in the guise of an activist. Outed and identified in January 2011 in much the same way as and at the same time as ‘Watson’.
5. ‘Jim Sutton’ AKA PC Andrew James Boyling – infiltrated Reclaim The Streets (RTS) and other groups between 1995-2000, before disappearing. He resurfaced a year later, and entered into a relationship with an activist, whom he married in around 2005, having eventually confessed to her that he was a cop and made her change her name by deed poll. They divorced in 2009, having had two children together. His identity and role as a police spy were publicly revealed in the mainstream media in January 2011 along with ‘Watson’ and ‘Jacobs’, in reports which claimed he was still a serving officer with SO15 (Counter Terrorism Command), the successor unit to Special Branch. He was one of five officers who participated in long term intimate relationships with women targets whilst undercover and so named in a legal action initiated on behalf of eight such women in December 2011.
6. ‘Simon Wellings’ – infiltrated the SWP’s Globalise Resistance group between 2001-2005, travelling also to Europe and the US, before inadvertently exposing himself to a member of the group by accidentally dialling their answerphone whilst being debriefed by another officer. After being confronted by the group, ‘Wellings’ disappeared. Globalise Resistance released details of the incident to the mainstream media in March 2011.
7. ‘Bob Robinson’ AKA Detective Inspector Bob Lambert AKA Dr Robert Lambert MBE – infiltrated London Greenpeace as well as the wider environmental and animal liberation movement between 1984-88, engaged in long term intimate relationships with women activists, fathered a child by one of them, and arranged for a non-activist lover (who was unaware he was a police officer) to be raided by Special Branch to add to his credibility. By the late 1990s he had moved up within Special Branch to take charge of SDS operations, supervising other undercover officers within those networks, including Jim Boyling and Pete Black. Between 2002-2007 he ran the Muslim Contact Unit (MCU) for Special Branch, through which he fostered relationships with Muslim groups and individuals variously described as Salafis, Islamists or ‘radicals’. During this period he began to develop a twin career as an academic specialising in engagement with Islamists, and since leaving Special Branch he has continued this, with involvement at both the University of St Andrews and Exeter University. He was exposed as a police infiltrator by London Greenpeace in October 2011, with the mainstream media quickly picking up on the story. Lambert was one of the five undercover officers named in December 2011 in a legal action on behalf of eight women with whom they had had long term intimate relationships.
8. ‘John Barker’ AKA PS John Dines – infiltrated ‘anti-capitalist’ groups between 1987-1992 for the SDS whilst a Special Branch sergeant. He engaged in a long term intimate relationship with at least one activist woman, with whom he lived for two years. Following exfiltration he was given a desk job in Scotland Yard. Having over the years pieced together small clues, by 2010 the woman had come to realise that ‘John Barker’ was an undercover police officer who had assumed the identity of a dead child. In December 2011 Dines was named under his assumed identity as one of five officers who participated in long term intimate relationships with women targets whilst undercover, in a legal action initiated on behalf of eight such women. He was identified as Sergeant John Dines in mainstream media reports in February 2013.
9. ‘Mark Cassidy’ – like John Dines (under his ‘John Barker’ identity), in December 2011 ‘Cassidy was named as one of five officers who participated in long term intimate relationships with women targets whilst undercover, in a legal action initiated on behalf of eight such women.
10. ‘Officer 10’ – an unnamed undercover officer who is referred to in a January 2012 report as having had a child with a woman activist following a brief intimate relationship.
11. ‘Officer 11’ – the anonymous second SDS source (alongside ‘Pete Black’) for the February 2013 ‘Jackal Run’ stories in The Guardian.
12. ‘Rod Richardson’ – infiltrated a number of anti-capitalist groups between 2000-2003, including Movement Against the Monarchy (MA’M) and White Overall Movement Building Effective Libertarian Struggle (WOMBLES), participated in summit-hopping activism across Europe, and lived in an activist house in Nottingham where Mark Kennedy would subsequently stay. ‘Rod Richardson’ was named by Jules Carey, a lawyer representing the family of the real Rod Richardson, whose identity the undercover policeman assumed, in evidence before the Home Affairs Committee in February 2013, with The Guardian following this up in more depth in an article in the ‘Jackal Run’ series.

In Kennedy’s self-serving account to the Daily Mail, he claimed that he knew of fifteen other officers carrying out similar work throughout his time undercover, “at least four” of whom remained in place when he left.

Elsewhere (infuriatingly I have temporarily lost the reference) he mentions that there were ten officers undercover at any one time.

He also claims that he was paid £250,000 per year.

That adds up to a lot of money, and a lot of undiscovered or unidentified undercover cops roaming around.

(Thanks to Merrick for inspiring this post)

Fourth spy-cop ‘John Barker’ named as PS John Dines; five more to go (and then the rest)

The Guardian today published a number of disturbing stories [1, 2, 3] related to the massive Metropolitan Police operation to infiltrate spy-cops into protest movements over a period of decades, and named the ‘fourth man’ as Police Sergeant John Dines from Special Branch. They also published pictures of him.

Dines, previously known only by his assumed identity of ‘John Barker’, is one of five police officers who entered into long-term, intimate relationships with eight women on whom they spied who are now bringing legal action against the police and individuals concerned. A further three complainants are represented in a similar action.

The other officers are former Police Constable Mark Kennedy, AKA ‘Mark Stone’; former Police Constable Andrew James ‘Jim’ Boyling, AKA ‘Jim Sutton’; former Detective Inspector Dr Robert Lambert MBE, AKA ‘Bob Robinson’; and an undercover police officer known only as ‘Mark Cassidy‘.

A number of other police officers who infiltrated protest groups, social justice groups and political organisations over the years have also been unmasked in recent times, including ‘Lynn Watson‘, who targeted the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army; ‘Mark/Marco Jacobs‘, who disrupted the Cardiff Anarchist Network; and ‘Simon Wellings‘, who reported on Globalise Resistance.

Another ex-infiltrator, ‘Pete Black’, came out in 2010 to spill the beans on the Met’s Special Demonstration Squad, which later morphed into the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). He backs up the claims in today’s Guardian stories that undercover officers are trained to adopt the identities of dead children.

Edited 2:38 for clarity with regards the legal action.