British Case Study: Second Police Infitrator Revealed
Posted by Mike E on January 14, 2011
The following appeared in the British Guardian. The first police infiltrator was discussed here.
We have also recently learned of a multi-year undercover FBI infiltration of Freedom Road Socialist Organization in Minnesota.
Revealed: Second undercover police officer who posed as activist
Spy spent four years living in Leeds and played a central role in planning a demonstration to shut down the Drax power station
by Paul Lewis, Rob Evans and Vikram Dodd
The controversy over a police surveillance network embedded in the environmental protest movement has deepened dramatically after the Guardian identified a second undercover officer who spent years living a double life as an activist.
The woman’s name has been known to a group of six activists since Mark Kennedy – the police infiltrator identified by the Guardian on Monday as having spent seven years inside the movement – claimed she was also a police officer when confronted by them about his own identity last October.
Senior police chiefs said they were concerned for the safety of the second spy, and a major operation involving several UK forces is now under way to identify other operatives whose safety may have been compromised by Kennedy.
The second spy spent four years living as an environmental activist in Leeds, gaining the trust of dozens of activists and playing a central role in planning a demonstration to shut down Drax power station in North Yorkshire.
Her deployment ended in 2008, when she told activist friends she was leaving town for personal reasons. The Guardian has established the identity of the officer, who is from a force in the south-east of England, but has decided, after representations from senior police officers, to refer to her only as Officer A, and to use pixellated pictures of her.
Meanwhile politicians across Europe demanded information about the activities of Kennedy, the first undercover operative identified, who was on Tuesday accused of having had several sexual relationships with activists while undercover. Senior police sources have described these relationships as “unacceptable”.
His UK-based handlers have flown to the US in an attempt to find an agent now accepted to have “gone rogue”.
Aside from questions over his conduct while undercover, Kennedy, a Metropolitan police officer, committed a serious breach of protocol when he told friends from the protest movement that Officer A was his colleague. A police chief with detailed knowledge of the deployments of undercover officers in the protest movement said Kennedy’s breach of protocol could lead to the “relocation of a considerable number of people”.
That included undercover officers currently involved in ongoing police investigations across the UK and their families. “This is serious stuff,” the police chief said. “Lots of people are at risk – their lives are at risk.”
Kennedy, who has expressed remorse over an operation he told friends was “wrong”, now appears to have been a key player in a pan-European network of leftwing and environmental groups.
Using a fake passport, he travelled to more than 22 countries from his base in Nottingham. A parliamentarian in Germany said Kennedy had been “operating on the border of illegality” in the country, and demanded disclosure about the operation. Kennedy’s activities in Iceland, Ireland and Italy are also coming under scrutiny.
Documents obtained by the Guardian also suggest that, after quitting the Met last March, Kennedy attempted to continue to use his adopted identity to infiltrate protest groups. In an indication he planned to turn his hand to corporate espionage, Kennedy, who is said to have had money problems, set up two companies. One is connected to an individual who previously worked at Global Open, a private security firm set up by a former special branch detective. The company specialises in keeping a “discreet watch” on protest groups.
Police chiefs discussed the unfolding crisis at a meeting of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) yesterday, which has limited company status and to which Kennedy and Officer A were seconded.
It is now believed several undercover police officers have been living long-term in the environmental movement, feeding intelligence back to the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), an Acpo body that runs a nationwide intelligence database of political activists. After concerns were raised about the accountability of NPOIU, police chiefs came up with a plan to move the unit to Scotland Yard. Subject to agreement, the unit will be taken over by Met officers next month.
However, a major review will now be under way into the oversight of officers such as Kennedy. Explaining why he and Officer A had spent so long undercover, the police chief said: “It is simply because of the environment. If you are a deeply ideologically motivated person … then getting close to you to understand your thought processes – and some idea of what you’re doing – takes a lot longer.”
He added that Kennedy’s numerous sexual relations with women would not have been officially sanctioned. “That is conduct that is not acceptable,” he said.
cigar guy said
It seems to me that the looser the basis for unity of an organization, the greater risk for infiltration. The anti-war (Iraq) coalitions were so broad based that there was little focus. Almost every group had its own demands. Most of the coalition orgs. were united around their own single issue. Not only can this lead to a lack of focus/direction of a demonstration, but also make it easier for provocateurs to cause desention within a demo.
Not that a strong, disciplined, communist organization is immune to infiltration. The RU was compromised at its center in the early days, which led to the infiltrator testifying before Senate hearings. But we learn from that. Recruitment is done more carefully. In mass organizations this is more difficult, but in communist organizations, more time can be spent both developing individuals and assessing them. All that being said, the guiding principle is to rely on the masses. We must rely on the masses, but not with blinders on. As a movement grows among the masses, the possibility also grows that more agents will attempt to infiltrate, that contradictions will lead some comrades to turn their backs on the movement, on revolution, on the masses. This is an example that everyone and everything is in flux. We must know this, but not let it slow us or diminish our resolve to make revolution.
Every infiltrator, agent provocateur, and turncoat must be exposed to the masses as the pigs that they are. And every effort must be made to prevent infiltration to the degree possible. The best way to do this is to conduct good, honest, communist work among the masses and wage comradely two-line struggle both internally and externally.
Nil said
A somewhat more unusual under-cover infiltration operation in the UK: The infiltrator ends up tipping off the infiltrated, quitting his job, and leaving the country.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8249734/Trial-against-environmental-activists-dropped-after-undercover-Met-police-officer-switches-sides.html
Monte Letourneau said
As you identify, a mass movement is rife with infiltration opportunity, for this reason a movement must be fun enough, and viable enough, to convert the infiltrator and the uniforms. It is also the reason a movement should be, from the start, robustly immune to infiltration by not having secrets, not having leaders, and not doing violence. I am sure there are other methods equally resistant to outside power.
I have commented in more detail @ http://kasamaproject.org/2011/01/13/minneapolis-more-on-the-fbi-infiltrator/#comment-46295 , in reference to the validity of inhibition against ongoing discussion of infiltration, yet the need to discuss it as a basis for a commonly understood rational for important praxis considerations.
The degree to which one runs a security culture or deep affinity based organization, is the degree to which it couldn’t grow to be a mass movement anyway.
Powerful ideas are immune to the static of such petty interference, powerful actions, less so.
Universal democracy looks like opportunity for infiltration, but it requires the transparency that makes infiltration irrelevant.