The Fundamentally Dishonest Spycops Blog

 

 

This week[1] at the UCPI evidence hearings has been a tough and disappointing one. Last week, on October 31, the Chair, Sir John Mitting, found himself obliged to impose “reporting restrictions” on aspects of undercover officer’s (UCOs) allegations about the activities behaviour of the citizens they were spying on. These restrictions would not apply to the allegations being made in the hearings. But they would but would apply to any reporting of the allegations being discussed in the hearing by any lawyers witnesses (state or police). This would also include live streaming of the audio or video of the evidence.

These are just latest reporting restrictions  to be imposed on the “public” inquiry, and to date the inquiry have responded to the risk of “blurts” by imposing a ten minute delay and issuing a specific reporting restriction on the blurt. It has worked even when one of the UCOs - Trevor Morris – seemed to deploy blurting as a deliberately disruptive  tactic. Even then, Mitting didn’t feel obliged to warn the UCO of the risk of being held to be in contempt.

At the October hearing  he informed the lawyers he was minded to suspend any live streaming for the public and core participants. On Tuesday morning he held a hearing to allow lawyers for non-state witnesses to make representations against  that decision. They did,  but he upheld his own decision. Although he did agree to publish transcripts quickly, and to publish videos several days later

It seems to have been an unnecessary, unreasonable  and frankly petulant decision designed to rob the non-state witness of the ability to put their message across in an effective and timely way. In this, it echoes Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 ban on broadcasting republican politicians in northern Ireland. Who knows, it may turn out to be just as futile and counter-productive as that was?

Certainly the first two victims of the Inquiry’s petulance, Dave Morris and Gabrielle Bosley. both of London Greenpeace, succeeded in challenging the veracity of the evidence of UCOs Dines and Lambert. And those reporting their evidence after a ten minute delay,  led by Tom Fowler, managed to convey that it was done in a fantastically  dignified, absolutely honest and convincing way. And they did this by reporting what they said without the live streaming or yet the timely transcripts or video recording being abailable. My fear is that that Lawyers for the MPS and the former Police witnesses will now lay siege to the constitutionally feeble UCPI , pressing for greater reporting restrictions for the evidence from UCOs who are to give evidence later in this session.

We do however already have the transcript of Sir John Mitting’s ruling on this on Tuesday. In that he points out the Lambert’s evidence about his role in attacks on Debenhams which resulted in others being jailed is contested and that:

 

 “One of the issues that  I must determine is who is telling me the truth about these matters. I must also determine the accuracy of the evidence of those witnesses who I am satisfied are telling me the truth. These are complex and difficult questions and it is of vital importance that evidence about them is given by witnesses who are subject to the least possible interference in the giving of evidence.”

 

That is of course absolutely true and indisputable, but it is nonetheless reassuring to see it stated so unequivocally. However it is not the Inquiry’s key or central task to worry away at clear cases in miscarriages of justice and set in motion their remedy. This is an inquiry into Policing. The inquiry needs to make general observations about, and identify institutional and constitutional flaws and failings about this method gathering intelligence.

The increasing number of challenges to the accuracy of the intelligence reports compiled by SDS managers from the UCO reports and circulated with the met  and to Box 500 should be a matter of concern to the inquiry. As an activist myself during Tranche 2 in London and elsewhere having read most of the reports so far published they simply do not seem to  reflect the world in which I was living then.

The question is not so much the incidents, but the incidence, of incompetent intelligence gathering, misjudgement and downright lies. That question goes directly to the overall and absolute assessment of the reliability of evidence obtained by undercover police officer and how its handled and used.

 

How reliable are UCOs as Human Intelligence Sources?

The US Army has been producing field manual on intelligence gathering since at least 1940 these are not restricted documents  the use of the expression Humint became increasing popular in  military and circles in the 1950s and American approaches to Humint became central to NATO thinking and strategy and in 2010 Nato opened a Humint Centre of Excellence in Ordea in Romania. By then then the latest version of the Field Manual address intelligence gathering in terms of Humint and specifically had formulated an useful categorization of the reliability of Human Intelligence Sources:

.

Evaluation of Source Reliability.

 

A Reliable

No doubt of authenticity, trustworthiness, or competency; has a history of complete reliability

B Usually Reliable

Minor doubt about authenticity, trustworthiness, or competency; has a history of valid information most of the time

C Fairly Reliable

Doubt of authenticity, trustworthiness, or competency but has provided valid information in the past

D Not Usually Reliable

Significant doubt about authenticity, trustworthiness, or competency but has provided valid information in the past

E Unreliable

F Cannot Be Judged"

https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/FM%202-22.3 

 

Much is made in the enquiry about length of time since the events  being discussed with witnesses and the difficulty  in recalling them, certainly vividly. There is some disingenuity in this, because  in most instances the discussion is initiated by a contemporary intelligence report prepared and circulated by the UCO’s line managers and based on intelligence reports written by the UCOs.

 

By the time the UCPI started taking the latest oral evidence  the had published 4,745 of the these mostly very short reports only 697 have been submitted by1 the MPS, none as far as I tell  are original reports by a UCO. The remainder have come from Box 50O – that is MI5.

 

In it is fairly easy to identify the information in an intelligence that can only have come from a UCO, but information that comes from open sources, and plain clothes activity, is harder to attribute and may also have come from a UCO.

 

The UCOs are, for understandable if not forgivable reasons, hostile witnesses. One form that hostility takes in addition to sullen ambiguity about whether the report has anything to do with their UC work,  tediously disowning authorship and disowning  any responsibility for any inclusion that might be embarrassing.

 

This makes  them not usually reliable  present day sources, but this does not necessarily  affect the reliability of the intelligence report or their contribution to it.

 

The inherent unreliability of the intelligence  reports is driven by other factors and perverse incentives associated with undercover political policing.

 

The inquiry has already established that there was substantial financial incentive for the UCOs who had guaranteed, very high overtime  and expense opportunities as well as a car.

 

That continuation of that financial benefit was dependent on the ability of the unit to continue to deliver valuable information, and this was incentive to invent, embellish  and exaggerate the risks posed by the UCOs targets and to cross the line into being influencer and an agent provocateur.

 

The role of MI5 in tasking UCO also help to let them know the sort of information to deliver.

 

We are beginning hear of examples where UCOs are covering up their provocation by fingering innocent group members.

 

These are all general perverse incentives which have negative impact on the quality of the intelligence being provided vy UCOs . This would as minimum render an diligent UCO at best fairly reliable and depending on the their own motivations and proclivities could make them unreliable or not usually reliable.

 

But the reality of the undercover operations was that there was precious little in the way of “triangulation” or verification  of the stories that were being fed to MI5 and the Security Service and without that triangulation  reliability cannot be judged.

 

A final integral and structural flaw in undercover political policing  is  to be found by invoking a legal term which is now increasingly  import in in personal injury law. In  public service like the police in which  honesty, truthfulness and integrity are “mission critical”,  covert political policing is “fundamentally dishonest”.

 

One PI law firm describes the legal concept on its website:

 

“Fundamental dishonesty is a concept that was introduced under Section 57 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 to deter fraudulent or exaggerated personal injury claims.  The defendant must prove the claimant has been fundamentally dishonest. Examples of fundamental dishonesty include an individual claiming that since the accident, they can no longer carry out a particular task when this is untrue.  Further, it can include fabricating symptoms or exaggerating the impact of an injury”.[2]

 

This will come as no surprise to the core participants in the UCPI who have been calling the spycops “professional liars” for more than a decade. Hopefully equating that precise and evocative  phrase  to a precise and evocative legal jargon may have a positive impact.

 

On a more positive  ending note the UCPI has already  gone quite a way to recognising  the abject failure to triangulate tissue of lies, misjudgement, exaggeration and inventions that the MPS has fed into the corridors of power for almost half a century:

 

“In the era of the Cold War and the “Troubles”, applying the standards of the time, the infiltration of groups which in fact threatened the safety or well-being of the state (or in the 1952 formulation, gave rise to an internal danger to it) could also have been justified. In the period covered by Tranche 1, only three groups penetrated by the SDS satisfied either of these criteria – (Provisional) Sinn Fein and two groups identified in the closed interim report. The great majority of deployments by the SDS in this period did not satisfy either criterion.”

UCPI judgement made in Interim report into Tranche 1  Phase 1.

 

[1] It is Tranche 2 of phase 2 of the inquiry and started on Monday Nov 4.

[2] https://www.pinneytalfourd.co.uk/fundamental-dishonesty/