Police Spy: 'How we stole dead children's identities' Title of Programme: Police Spy: 'How we stole dead children's identities' – Guardian Video Duration: 4 minutes Source: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/video/2013/feb/04/police-spy-howwe-stole-childrens-identities-video Synopsis: Undercover police have used an estimated 80 dead children’s identities. A police operative, who used the alias of Pete Black to spy on political protest groups, explains the process behind how the Special Demonstration Squad used to do this. In the video, his identity is concealed and he is only referred to by his alias, Pete Black, but we now know him to be Peter Francis, as he has revealed his true identity since the video was made. Transcribed by: Jessi Gutch, 07512204384, jessicagutch@hotmail.co.uk Date finished: 12/01/14 Key: PB: Pete Black 00:05
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PB: What you’re basically talking about is a person who has died being resurrected to live to betray people for four to five years of their life. The SDS, since 1968, had facilitated an undercover system whereby you were adopted the persona of a recently deceased child, er, best in literary terms it was described by Frederick Forsyth in his novel The Day of the Jackal and SDS officers deployed actually referred to it as being the jackal run PB: We went along, all of us, er, when we were deployed to St Catherine’s House in London where they kept the register of births, deaths and marriages PB: You actually go to the death binders which are actually great big visual binders that you’d sort of find in an old dusty library, sort of the equivalent of, and you start to go through there, and what you’re looking for is a child who died, and they’re of a certain age, but you actually do it in reverse. You find a death certificate first and then what happens is you then marry it up with a birth certificate PB: You then have to create this legend about the child, now what you do is you find out where the child was born, and what you try to do is you work out if that can be blended into your own background PB: My, er, pretend father was a Royal Marine, er, which if you look at that it may not sort of be suitable for political stuff, but it actually worked out absolutely ideal for me, er, because I had a persona who was very violent on the streets, er, built to be very violent, expected to be very violent, so I actually built into it the fact that my father was a trained Royal Marine and he used to beat me up and so I became an extremely good fighter
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PB: You actually fully become that person. You go back to the house the child was born in, and obviously probably unfortunately died in there, to get a feeling for the background and just notice anything that really if somebody else came from there you’d actually be fully aware of what there was there PB: Basically I justified it because the other 10 SDS officers at the time all did exactly the same and I think I’ve actually, er, in my own ways, at the time, justified similar things I did when I was deployed, some of them involved the use of sex as a tool as well, and I think I was able to justify that by looking around me, everybody done exactly the same, whether or not that’s morally justified, er, to this day that’s one of the problems I now face myself PB: If the public actually really wants to make an informed decision on this issue, they really have to think very carefully, but what you have to bear in mind is that these tactics, these extraordinary, almost bordering on Stasi, police tactics are being used against just political activists PB: I think there should be a full public inquiry, preferably a judicial inquiry, along the lines of what’s now happened with the Leveson Inquiry PB: Now if I was to plant a bug, which I also did on behalf of the Special Branch, in your house, I would have had to have Home Secretary’s approval PB: The irony is, me as an undercover officer, I actually spent four years living betraying people and the only thing, authority, I actually needed for that was a police superintendent PB: If you go in a cemetery and say, for example, if you were now to walk across the grave of somebody you didn’t know, I’m very hopeful to anybody who’s actually, er, you know watching this, would actually have sort of a pang as they were doing it, and I think that’s about the easiest way is what I could acquaint it, that’s what it felt to me. I was almost, not desecrated by a long way, but I was walking over a grave PB: As you become more into the role it intensified. You actually felt more because you felt more real being the person who was actually dead then you actually felt you were yourself