TRUE SPIES 1. SUBVERSIVE MY ARSE BRIAN Metropolitan Police Special Branch, 1968-92 Brian: I adopted the identity of a Londoner who worked in the engineering field. I lived in a small flat and changed my lifestyle to be that person. Commentary: Their mission was to penetrate what was, to most police officers, an alien world. This was the alternative society, its enemy - the police state. Caption: ITV's THIS WEEK and Date Archive: “The audience doesn't find the song implausible, they’re apparently unaware of how a real police state - Nazi Germany, Russia, Spain - compares with theirs.” Commentary: For Special Branch officers to blend into the alternative society required a complete makeover job. Interviewer: What did you all look like? Brian: Grew a beard. Long hair. Outrageous. Brian: I wouldn't say I became a revolutionary - but certainly there were times when I became very close to being native... Brian: I seemed to develop, take on board the aims and objectives of the people I was infiltrating, Interviewer: So you became a Marxist revolutionary? Brian: Yeah. Interviewer: Take part in debates? Brian: Take part in debates, chair meetings. Interviewer: You became an expert on dialectical materialism? Brian: Almost. Difficult subject to master. Interviewer: But you had to. Brian: Yeah, the theory. Interviewer: You had to read the books, know the language.
Brian: Know, the ideology, know the language. Brian: They would probably feel that I abused the friendship. The fact of the matter is it was a friendship which I valued at the time, and I enjoyed, but the objective was to provide a service. Interviewer: But you betrayed those friendships. Brian: I don't regard it as a betrayal.
TRUE SPIES 2. SOMETHING BETTER CHANGE Nothing
TRUE SPIES 3. IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU Nothing