Avt027 ts vid139 undercover cop tmks v2

VID139 transcript - Undercover Cop: The Mark Kennedy Story Transcription - first draft completed 26/9/14 IV = interviewer (offscreen) MK = Mark Kennedy VO = voiceover SI = Simon Israel (Channel 4 News) JS = Jon Snow (Channel 4 News) VD = Victoria Derbyshire (Radio 5 Live) AU = miscellaneous unidentified audio MM = Michael Meacher SH = Simon Hattenstone JM = Jon Murphy EX = Ex-undercover officer === IV: Have you been paid for appearing in this documentary?

MK: Yes. IV: And do you think that’s right, that you should be paid?

MK: Um… I’m sharing experiences I’m sharing my life with, with people. Um… I don’t have a job at the moment, I don’t have any future of a job, or any prospect of a job.

Um… I’m a person that you’ve said in questioning yourself how, how can I expect people to ever trust me again?

I’m trying to do this documentary so I can give in some way the reasons behind why I did things, and why, or at least tell people why, how things happened and what I did.

[Archive footage of news report] SI: The Ratcliffe Six are planning to sue for unlawful arrest over the failure to disclose secret recordings by undercover cop PC Kennedy.

[Archive footage of news report] JS: Questions were raised about the role of PC Mark Kennedy. Sporting long hair and tattoos, he’d been at the heart of direct action for six years.

MK: I felt huge guilt about letting those people down, they trusted me, they trusted Mark Stone. I can never repair that.

[Footage from Radio 5 Live radio show] VD: This morning an exclusive interview with a former undercover police officer accused of ‘going native’ after infiltrating a group of environmental protesters. It emerged that Mark Kennedy had infiltrated the protest group seven years previously;

they knew him as Mark Stone, and he was secretly passing information back to his police handlers. As well as becoming good friends with many of the protesters, he had a relationship with one of the women. All this while regularly going back to Ireland to visit his wife and children. Mark Kennedy left the police force last year, and he’s with us this morning. Hello, good morning.

MK: Good morning, Victoria.

[Handheld, back garden, green top and shades] MK: The thing that frustrates me hugely is, um, I didn’t really want this attention. I didn’t really want all this to, uh, play out like it is. But it has. And therefore I want to make a best opportunity to put the record straight.

[Rooftop photo shoot for Guardian, black shirt] VO: When I first met Mark Kennedy in March 2011 he was a huge news story.

Everyone wanted a piece of him. Here was a police officer who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist, betraying people on a daily basis.

So what was the best way to tell this past tense story? As a drama, with actors and sets and a script? Or as a documentary, a factual account of his double life? Or perhaps the answer was somewhere in between.

[MK and actors dressed as police prepare to film green screen reenactment of his assault at Drax] Part of this film is a very traditional documentary. The other part is Mark Kennedy performing his life story, and the life story of his alter ego, Mark Stone.

AU [clapper loader]: …Take two.

MK: This is the face of peaceful protest!

[Titles - UNDERCOVER COP] [Still photo of MK and brother as young children, leading into slideshow] MK (VO): I was born in Dulwich Hospital in south London. I lived in Peckham for a while, and then we moved out to Orpington in Kent when I was four years old. My dad was in the police, he was a traffic officer.

My childhood was uneventful, happy, normal. I left school at sixteen, and I got a job in the Magistrates’ Courts service in London. I was also studying law at evening classes. I met a lot of people there who went on to join the police, and it seemed like an interesting profession.

I joined the City of London Police in 1990. I got married in 1994, and the following year I transferred over to the Metropolitan Police, and I worked on some interesting stuff.

[On camera interview - black shirt, Guardian photo shoot day?]

MK: I worked on a unit that was, uh, investigating, like, ‘race crimes’, and hate crimes against, um, minority groups. And what you can do there, you can really bridge the gap between, um, how people view the police, and you can really make a difference in people’s lives, you actually make them understand that, yeah, the police are there to help them.

[BW, handheld, MK in vest and shades, walking through housing estate] MK (VO): In the mid-nineties there were a lot of operations that were all about preventing street level drug dealing on estates. A lot of it was undercover. I passed the course, and shortly afterwards I was accepted onto a team. I was a Test Purchase Officer, part of a whole investigative team usually based on a particular London estate. Basically I’d go and buy drugs from a suspected dealer. Other people would be photographing it and watching my back, and at a later date arrests would be made.

[On camera interview - black shirt, Guardian photo shoot day?]

MK: Just by watching other people going to buy drugs, you saw how they would do it, umm, and you’d adopt your own personality and your own way of doing it. It opened up other doors, um, you got to meet lots of different people involved in other investigative, sort of, styles of, of policing, so it, you know… So it broadened your horizons.

Myself and another officer, we’d get into role, and we’d be assigned to an operation for two or three weeks. And over that time, as horrible as it may sound, we wouldn’t shower - but it meant that’s we’d got into character, and then when we went into a crackhouse to buy a couple of rocks, nobody batted an eyelid.

[Actor as drug dealer, B&W] MK (VO): We must have been good, because one time in Stoke Newington, a dealer was arrested, later shown a film of me buying drugs off her, and she was told I was an undercover cop. She just wouldn’t believe it. She kept saying, ‘No way! He’s a friend of mine!’

OSC: N.P.O.I.U. NATIONAL PUBLIC ORDER INTELLIGENCE UNIT MK (VO): I was working in Brixton doing street buying, and it was suggested to me that the National Public Order Intelligence Unit would be interested in me. I didn’t even know such a unit existed. I was invited along to a couple of meetings, then I had an interview, and I was finally selected.

[MK, driving at night]

MK (VO): I was told my role was to provide information so that the authorities could proportionately police demonstrations. My field would be anti-war, left politics, the environmental scene. I went on a two week course - very intense - that covered legal rights, aspects of activism, the role of the undercover police officer, and so on. Then I was immersed for five days in a role playing situation, where I played the role of an undercover cop infiltrating a group of people.

[MK on stool, white background - green screened? - to camera] MK: At one point you sit down in a room, and they say, ‘So, tell us about who Mark Stone is.’

IV: What did your dad do for a living?

MK: He worked in the City, in the merchant bank.

IV: What football team does Mark Stone support?

MK: That’s Chelsea, true Blue all the way through.

IV: Have you ever been married?

MK: No! IV: What school did you go to?

MK: Henry Thornton.

IV: Have you got any kids?

MK: Not that I know of.

[MK getting ready in front of mirror - time lapse - puts on dark coat, cap, shades, changes clothes several times etc] VO: So Mark Kennedy becomes Mark Stone. He becomes another person. The south London police officer transforms himself into a committed vegan and environmental activist.

[Archive footage of protest samba band] VO: People are out on the streets all the time, protesting about one thing or another student tuition fees, pollution of the earth, some distant war, or current favourite, greedy bankers. It’s a democratic right to go out and demonstrate.

[Then Greenpeace banner stunt] AU: This is Greenpeace, this is a peaceful protest! Politicians’ [inaudible]!

Politicians’ [inaudible]!

[More protest footage, etc] VO: And the police would argue they have a role as well, making sure protest is carried out in a peaceful and orderly fashion. But policing demonstrations, keeping them safe, is a very long way from planting undercover officers inside legitimate groups to spy on them.

MM: I absolutely do not believe that there is justification for infiltrating environmental protesters unless there is evidence they are an actual threat to national security, which means that they are going to use violence.

OSC: Michael Meacher MP FORMER LABOUR ENVIRONMENT MINISTER MM: But if they are making what I consider to be a very legitimate claim for what they consider to be a serious wrong, a serious misdirection in government policy, I think they’re absolutely entitled to, and given the pressures on the police and given the amount of crime, which is not detected because there aren’t enough police, I think it’s a waste of police time.

MK: I suppose activists are a small community of people, who don’t have a lot of resources, and who are looking for new people to get involved. If you present yourself as a person who has an interest, and a willingness to take part, and ability to achieve things, well that gets you in.

[MK in Studio, lighting, fog] MK: To start with I wasn’t really sure how to pitch it. So I went down to Fairford, where there were lots of protests going on - American planes were taking off from the runways and going to bomb Baghdad.

I looked around and I saw people from all walks of life who were there to protest.

Initially I tried too hard to look like what I thought was a stereotypical activist, because I was trying to invent Mark Stone. Then I realised that I had to step back and relax, and rather than try and force the development of Mark Stone I had to let it happen naturally, and let things take place as they were going on around him.

[Stills of MK as MS, montage of protest pics etc] MK (VO): It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to be a credible person, and you have to be able to talk about who you are and where you’re from. It’s not like the undercover word I’d done buying drugs. People actually want to know you for the person you are - as Mark Stone, a guy that’s turned up to protest against the Iraq war.

MK: I was, like, in my early thirties, so I needed to be able to fill a huge part of who Mark Stone had been when he was growing up, what he did as a teenager, what he did in his early twenties, in his mid twenties - and so it goes on. And it’s, um, and…

The lies you tell when you first start stay with you the whole time.

[Radio 5 Live radio interview] VD: Are you a good liar? Does this mean you are a good liar?

MK: I was lying because it’s what my job entailed. And, um, in many ways I regret that now. And I don’t like the fact that I did that. And it’s, it’s very hard to, um, live with that now, with people, or in respect of people who showed me so much care and attention.

SH: Had you been really good at lying throughout your life?

OSC: Simon Hattenstone THE GUARDIAN MK: Not, not in the sense of, um, of that. This is a job, and I was lying because it was my job to lie. So I’m not a dishonest person, and I don’t tell lies. But in the, in the realm of being an undercover police officer, that’s what you have to do.

JM: I think it would be churlish of me to sit here and say there isn’t an element of deceit and lying - that’s the whole nature of the tactic.

OSC: Chief Constable Jon Murphy ASSOCIATION OF CHIEF POLICE OFFICERS (ACPO) JM: But these are people who are lying within the, within the confines of, of the law, that regulates the use of undercover officers, uh, and within the clear use and conduct that’s granted to them, by undercover officers.

VO: Mark Kennedy, police officer is now Mark Stone, left wing activist. He’s formed a legend, and he’s learned the difference between anarcho-syndicalists and anarchoMarxists. Now he has to gain acceptance into the community.

[B&W, fake documentary-style ‘reconstruction’ of comedy club type situation, MK on microphone] MK (reading poem): I was sat in a chair at a table for one, my mind pondering, wondering, considering can be done; we are bleached by tourism, stricken by war, enslaved by consumerism, and we keep the poor poor. If icecaps melting, aluminium smelting, the industrialisation of resources - and like we need more fucking golf courses…

AU (random in crowd): YEAH! Fuck it.

MK: Rendition flights, this summer’s scorcher… <fade out> MK (VO): When I first started I wasn’t known at all. I began by going to some Gatherings, which were usually held over three days. They were a mixture of political

discussions and partying. I became quite vocal in these meetings, because people had to see Mark Stone as someone who contributes in the discussion process, as well as someone who is practically-minded.

MK (reading poem): …My thoughts had been interrupted by a group near to where I’m sat; a topic of conversation is about a girl who squeezed foundation on her cat, about waterproof makeup for girls and for boys… <fade out> MK (VO): At the first Gathering there were quite a few people from Nottingham, and I got chatting, and I started spinning the story about Mark Stone moving to the area.

MK (reading poem): …As I gasp for air I know back my chair, plates crashing to the floor, I stumble to the door, amidst horrified stares from this gormless bunch; I turn and shout, ‘Fuck you!’ And I leave without paying for lunch.

AU (Crowd cheering): Right on, brother!

MK (VO): I knew some element of criminality around who Mark Stone was. I’d spent some time in Pakistan, and I knew about the drugs trade, and drugs trafficking. So I spun the story that I’d been involved in dealing drugs, but I’d turned my back on it. It was a kind of shady world that I didn’t really want to discuss - which meant that parts of my life were off-limits. And that definitely worked for me.

[Background images fade from green screen as extras mingle around MK in studio as artificial smoke wafts around them] VO: The people in this scene are extras, recruited for a day in the studio to recreate some of the scenes from Mark Stone’s life. None of the real activists who knew Mark would appear in the film. Nobody wanted to discuss their time with the undercover cop who had infiltrated and befriended them, especially ones he had been very close to. They were very emphatic about keeping their feelings to themselves.

[MK driving] JM: Undercover officers are very skilled at what they do, they’re specially trained.

Somebody who has the resilience, the psychological strength - because it is very stressful to go into an undercover situation - has the social and interpersonal skills to be able to develop relationships with criminals, and the robustness and the integrity to keep that relationship, erm, professional, in the context of the job that they have to do whilst not showing that to the individuals, and secure the information and intelligence that we want.

[MK on phone, outside, night] MK: …Gonna go on the nineteenth, by the sound of it, um, they’ve asked me to drive, I’m not sure where it is yet, um, but they want me to get a minibus, and, um, yeah, looks like I’m driving, um, so if that’s alright let me know. Yeah, okay, thanks…

MK (VO): I had a dedicated cover officer twenty four hours a day. I reported to him every day for seven years. He was a link between me and the operational team, but

also to my family, so if I needed to get a message home he would arrange it for me.

All of my taskings from the NPOIU came primarily through him. I’d be told where there was a need for intelligence, and that’s where I’d be directed to.

[Archive protest footage] AU (protesters): Peace! Ful! Pro! Test! Peace! Ful! Pro! Test! Peace! Ful! Pro! Test!

VO: So why was Mark gathering intelligence about environmental activism? He was told it was so the police could proportionately deal with protest. In other words, he would gather information about how many people were expected at a demonstration.

Once the police had this intelligence, they could send the right number of officers along. Not too many, and not too few.

MK: The question of proportionality is, is a difficult one to answer, because certainly the people I was associating with, you know, um, weren’t doing anything that was of a serious criminal nature. It may have been costly, in relation to policing, and it may have been costly in relation to economics and commerce and businesses, but that’s not to say that, that couldn’t have been policed in a another way.

[Archive footage: student tuition fees demo] MK: I became more involved in lots of different projects. The lust for intelligence from the office directed me to all of these different actions. As a result Mark Stone became more and more committed, so that when I wanted to get away to see my wife and kids, I had to have a reasonable excuse for the activists as to why I’d vanished for three or four days.

It’s not that they were suspicious, it’s just a very sociable scene, communityorientated and very supportive. At the same time, you’ve been at home with the kids for a few days, you have to be thinking, ‘what am I gonna say when I get back?’ You can’t say ‘mind your own business!’ But I’ve got to say, at the same time, I didn’t have a particularly good home life anyway. It was always difficult being at home.

[Footage from SH interview at Max Clifford’s office] SH: And had you split up from your wife?

MK: Yeah, yeah.

SH: Because I think I read that she thought you hadn’t split up..?

MK: No, we… I don’t really want to talk about that, it’s not an issue I want to discuss.

So… SH: But as far as you were concerned…

MK: We were, as far as we were both concerned we had separated, but for the benefit of her family in Ireland and the children and everything, we had a semblance of being together so the kids would be happy.

[Footage of MK playing guitar - Lead Belly’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night(!)]

MK: #My girl, my girl, don't lie to me, Tell me where did you sleep last night…

MK: It was very difficult to sort of work out what was the best way to try and have that transition between that intensity of being Mark Stone to be able to relax and be a family, a family figure, as Mark Kennedy. Um, and when you go home there is an expectation to be the family dad, husband, err, and it’s not always easy to do.

[Footage of helicopter over a protest] OSC: MAYDAY PROTEST DUBLIN 2004 MK (VO): By 2004 Mark Stone was well established in the activist community. I went to some meetings in London and it was collectively agreed that I would take the equipment out to the Mayday protests that were happening in Dublin. After all, I was the one with the van. I fed all this information back to the NPOIU, and the necessary authorities were granted for me to go to Ireland.

AU (protesters): Peace! Ful! Pro! Test! Peace! Ful! Pro! Test! Peace! Ful! Pro! Test!

MK: People were keen to make a stand, and maybe carry on some of those more up-for-it tactics that you’d seen in other parts of Europe. In the run up there’d been a massive amount of press coverage in relation to ‘anarchist terrorists’ and ‘anarchists are going to release poison gas in the streets of Dublin’. Like all these massive scare stories.

[Still of MK masked up at Dublin] MK (VO): There’s a photograph of me in one of the Sunday newspapers. The headline said something like ‘Anarchist Terrorists Come To Dublin’, and there’s, like, five of us in this picture linking arms. The media coverage had given a a lot of expectation of violence.

[Footage of riot police using water cannon, Dublin 2004] VO: Mark Stone was an enthusiastic participant at the demonstrations, which has led some people to claim he was an agent provocateur, a person who incited others to break the law. Mark has always denied this.

MM: I think he entered into it, err, with zest. I mean, I’m told when they had to scale and go up the ladders, he’d be the first one up. Well, that’s giving a lead, it’s, it’s not just joining in, so I think the anger provocateur, um, ah, description, I don’t think can be entirely cast aside.

[Footage from Radio 5 Live studio] MK: There’s been a lot said, Victoria, about me acting as an agent provocateur, like, that’s not true. There’s many people out there who probably didn’t get involved in things as a result of me saying, ‘look, is it worth doing this? Are we gonna, uh, we could all get arrested. You know, in some ways I saw, I saw my role as, as a deterrent, as much as anything, you know, to deter people from getting involved in things, so…

VD: What would your police bosses have said about that?

MK: I’ve no idea, but, you know…

[Interview with JM] IV: There’s been a lot of press speculation, again, referring to some high profile cases that have been mentioned recently, and it’s been mentioned that one or more officers have acted as agents provocateurs, you know, they’ve encouraged people to break the law, they’ve gone beyond their brief. Ids that something that you think did happen, or can you comment on that?

JM: Erm, I’m not going to comment on any particular cases, but agent provocateur is, is absolutely prohibited, and undercover officers will only enter into, err, a criminal conspiracy in order to elicit intelligence and evidence; if that conspiracy is already laid on, and they will only ever take a minor role. But they are absolutely prohibited from inducing people to commit offences that they wouldn’t otherwise have committed. And the law, the law is quite clear on that.

[MK in Studio, lighting, fog] MK: You never actually lead the action, but you go along with it. The analogy is, you never throw the first stone through a window, but once the window’s broken then you can throw yours.

[B&W footage of (actors as) riot police] VD: You became a reasonably key part of the group, you, you were popular, you had some skills that they didn’t have. Was there a point which you can identify which it stopped being a job, and you, perhaps, began to feel like one of them?

MK: That’s a really hard question. Um, I shared many, many experiences, which were not just in relation to protest and activism, and yet, you know, I’ve stood on the front line worth people at demonstrations and the camaraderie there, and the support and the solidarity is, is absolutely immense.

[Actors dressed as Black Bloc in studio in front of green screen, clapper loader in front] AU (offscreen director): Mark it…

AU (clapper loader): Slate 16, take 2.

AU (offscreen director): Action.

AU (actors): No justice! No peace! Fuck the police! No justice! No peace! Fuck the police! No justice! No peace! Fuck the police! No justice! No peace! Fuck the police! <and on, and on> VO: There’s no doubt that Mark Stone shared real support and solidarity with his activist friends. But does that mean he had divided loyalties? And presumably the NPOIU wouldn’t have left him in place for all those years if he wasn’t providing useful intelligence.

[MK throws bottles during green screen ‘riot’ shoot] VO: Mayday in Dublin brought him into direct confrontation with fellow police officers.

[Composite shot of confrontation between pretend riot police and MK & ‘Black Bloc’] MK (VO): Around the corner came the riot cops. They just, like, waded in with batons, started dragging people behind their lines and giving them a beating. I got hit on my knee, I heard it crack and I thought ‘that’s it, that’s broken, it’s busted’. I’m lying there trying to move and this police officer has gone to hit me over the head with a baton. But my buddy put out his arm and took the blow.

VO: One of the fascinating things about the story of Mark Kennedy and Mark Stone is how he could switch between the two lives. How did he feel? And who was he when he was taking blows from police batons?And did he prefer one life to the other?

IV: Was there a sense that you just thought that what you had in your life as Mark Stone was something that you were really attracted to and wanted to have, and you liked the life more?

MK: In a sense, yeah, yeah. It was, it was, you know, interesting, I was meeting interesting people, um, doing interesting things, and, you know, I, in that sense as well I also liked the job I had. You know, I did a good job, inasmuch as, you know, the taskings that were coming my way in relation to finding out about X, Y or Z, I was achieving that, as well. Um, so yeah, I, I liked the life that Mark Stone had, but I also enjoyed the job that Mark Kennedy had. Um… And that did, that did…later on become a huge conflict for me.

VO: The job that Mark was doing was bound to cause all manner of conflict. One person, two lives. Police officer, activist. Mark Kennedy, Mark Stone. An undercover cop and a husband and father.

[Pic montage of MK with kids] MK: The time that I had at home, I couldn’t just switch off Mark Stone, and crack on and do all the things Mark Kennedy was expected to do. You’d wanna go home and

you’d wanna give everything that you had possibly to give, to your children, and be there as, uh, a father and as, as a dad, you know, do all the things you were expected to do, and yet I was, I was struggling with that, because I was finding it hard to sort of, um, sort of find that I could relax first, and then be able to sort of take on that role. And by the time you sort of be in the position to do that, you’re then thinking about going back.

MK (VO): My wife and kids had moved from London to Ireland in about 2005. Mark Kennedy grew up in south London, worked in south London, knew London really well. If anything, that’s where Mark Kennedy’s identity was. That’s where he was from. So when the family went to Ireland, I felt like I didn’t have any connection to any of that any more.

MK: I think I’m losing Mark Kennedy’s identity. I didn’t feel that I had much of a connection to the house in Ireland. This house that I have in Nottingham feels more like my house. Has all my stuff in it, I have more going on in Mark Stone’s life than I do in Mark Kennedy’s - more of an identity.

MK: That complete absorption in Mark Stone crept up on me. I’d go home to Ireland, I’d see the children, I actually felt that I was getting in the way. We’d go out, we’d do things, but it was like going through the motions, really. I just couldn’t put Mark Stone’s life out of my head.

[Footage of riot police at protest in London?]

MK (VO): The operation was going well, and I was getting to meet people of extreme interest to the police. There was just this hunger for this intelligence. It was almost as though it was self-perpetuating.

AU (protesters): Freedom of expression! This is democracy, what look like here!

VD: Good morning, it’s 5 Live, and Mark Kennedy is here. Stephen Miller says ‘how, how is it possible to go undercover for seven years, how about your life if you had one outside of it? Must have felt schizophrenic sometimes.’ Another listener says ‘why didn’t he resign after about a year in, but instead took seven years’ wages doing a job he didn’t believe in?’ What sort of salary were you paid, doing this kind of work?

MK: Well, a constable’s salary.

VD: Plus…

MK: Overtime.

VD: Plenty of overtime.

[Footage of Chinook at Gleneagles G8, protests etc] OSC: G8 SUMMIT

GLENEAGLES 2005 VO: Mark must have been very convincing. As the months and years went on, he became an increasingly important figure in the international activist scene. In 2005 the G8 summit of world leaders was held at Gleneagles in Scotland. It was a huge event, attracting activists from around the world, people determined to protest against the policies of leading industrial nations. Mark was instructed to gather information.

AU (crowd chanting): We want peace! We want peace! We want peace! <etc> [B&W ‘reenactment’ of MK plus actors pretending to be activists planning action over a map] MK (VO): Preparations to disrupt the G8 conference at Gleneagles started probably about 18 months before the event. I went along to an invite-only meeting - all connected people with different anarchist groups. They wanted to blockade all the roads around Gleneagles, and stop the G8 from happening. But I was a party to all the information and all the intelligence.

[Colour reenactment of MK on phone to cover officer] MK: …The plans and the maps in the lockbox of the truck. The truck’s on level 4 of the multi-storey. I put the keys in the exhaust. Okay. Have you got all that? But they’ve gotta be back within about four or five hours, okay? Right. I’ll call later.

[B&W MK wandering around] MK (VO): My cover officer made copies of the plans and the maps, and put them back before we returned to the truck. With that intelligence they could neutralise the whole blockade effort. And they did.

[Archive footage of riot police coming through barriers and fields at Gleneagles] MK: I know I was doing a job, and there’s plenty of people that I’ve spoken to who’ve said, ‘well you were doing a job, and you did a good job, that’s what your job was.’

Um, but yeah, I don’t, I don’t deny the fact that I, uh, I used people in, in that sense.

I’m not exactly proud of it any more.

AU (protester): …for peace, guys, peace.

AU (protester): …Okay, alright, we’ll get you out of here.

MK: The G8 gave me a good reputation. I was written about in books by activists.

You know, they called me ‘Transport Mark’, they spoke about how good the logistics were and how things ran really smoothly in that respect. And off the back of that I made contact with a lot of activist groups and individuals that were of a lot of interest to police services across Europe.

[Pic montage of Iceland actions] OSC: KARAHNJUKAR DAM ICELAND 2005 MK (VO): In 2005, directly after the G8 in Scotland, we went out to Iceland. There was a protest against the Karahnjukar dam project, which was being built to produce hydroelectric power to run an aluminium smelting factory.

[MK plus actress ‘reenacting’ camping in Iceland against green screen] MK (VO): I went with a group of activists, including someone I’d just started a relationship with. I want to protect her identity, so let’s just call her Megan. I knew her some time before, but it wasn’t until that time that we sort of really got involved.

[Pink shirt interview] IV: When you say ‘involved’, do you mean you had a sexual relationship? And isn’t that against regulations anyway?

MK: Well, we were falling in love. You know, these things just happen.

[B&W ‘reenactment’ of MK and Megan walking down The Lanes?]

VO: Love and sex - essential ingredients in any good spy story. More than one activist told me that Mark Stone had slept with lots of women in the protest movement. Mark says there are only two, one of whom he had a relationship with for four years. Of course, the police would prefer these sexual encounters not to take place.

JM: No, it shouldn’t, and absolutely shouldn’t have happened, let me make absolutely clear, that is never part of an undercover officer’s, erm, ‘legend-building’, if you like, in terms of gaining credibility within a group or with an individual, err, and it shouldn’t happen along the course of the deployment. Erm, reality, the reality is, from time to time people will develop relationships that go beyond what they should; it’s the responsibility of supervisors to monitor closely and to ensure that that doesn’t happen.

[Clip of that Taiwanese animate-the-news skit on MK, NMA.tv] VO: These intimate infiltrations became a news story across the world. For the Taiwanese network, using a very particular style to illustrate what was happening in the UK. It wasn’t only Mark Kennedy sleeping with activists. At least four other people who were working undercover on the same kind of beat were having sex with the people they were spying on. It’s very difficult to believe that senior officers didn’t know this was happening.

[Pringle-type sweater & checked shirt interview]

MK: I think, yeah, there was an element of becoming too close and maybe too involved, but that’s something that creeps up on you, and it’s something which enabled me to meet more and more people that were of more and more interest from an intelligence point of view to the NPOIU. VO: So on the one hand we have the police saying their officers shouldn’t sleep with the people they’re infiltrating. On the other hand they need to get close to get information. Whether the police were aware of what Mark was up to would largely be dependent on what his cover officer knew.

IV: How much would a cover officer know about the day to day life of, of one of their undercover officers?

JM: Probably more than the undercover officer’s wife. You know that… It’s a very close relationship, and fundamentally that role was about the welfare of the undercover officer. So… The intelligence that’s been, uh, ah, elicited, the evidence that’s been elicited, and the day to day life of the undercover officer is monitored by that welfare officer.

IV: So… I seem to speculate here… So, if an undercover officer was having a intimate relationship for four years with somebody, it is likely then that cover officer, their cover officer would have known, at some point, before four years was up?

JM: I would hope that anybody would be able to spot the signs.

[Ex-UCO walking streets at night, identity obscured] VO: When it became known that we were making this film, I was contacted by an exundercover officer, who wanted to talk about some of the issues involved in this kind of work. For reasons of safety his contribution has to remain anonymous.

EX: There’s a fine line, and sometimes that line will be crossed, and it will be ignored. I fully believe it has been crossed and ignored in this case. There’s no doubt that sleeping with a target, being involved in a sexual relation with a target, is wrong on just about every moral and ethical level you can be in that role. But there’s a couple of failings there. He’s been in that role for seven years. Did they expect him to live like a monk? Secondly, there’s no way he’s had a relationship for four years and his cover officer did not know about it. And the cover officer should have told the operational team. The operational team should have told the deputy SIO, and so on and so forth up the chain. For four years there’s no way that’s going to go unchecked and unnoticed, it’s impossible.

[Black shirt interview] MK: Mark Stone was, you know, a recognised figure in the activist world, and I’m pretty sure there must have been people informing on Mark Stone about what car he drove, where he lived, who he was seeing, so… It would, it seems unrealistic that they didn’t know.

EX: There must be some sort of problem with their risk assessment. I mean, what if she got pregnant, how would they, you know, how are they ever going to explain that? You know? And remedy it. It’s just, well, beggars belief, really.

[MK driving ‘Megan’ actress, green screen] MK: I’d built this person Mark Stone, I’d built him from lies, about who he was, where he’d come from, about his family, all those things that I’d lied about, or, or all those things I’d created, to, to, for Mark Stone, I had to stick with.

[MK camping with ‘Megan’ actress, green screen] MK (VO): So I’m with this person who means the world to me, and yet I couldn’t tell her the truth about my family, where I went to school, all those things you share with a partner. I didn’t like talking about the past because I didn’t want to lie to her anymore. I just preferred to talk about the present, and the here and now.

IV: And she fell in love with somebody who didn’t exist?

MK: Erm… Ha, that’s interesting. She fell in love with somebody, I think, who was lying about who he really was but the love and the care and the affection that I, I showed for her was, really existed, definitely. Um, there was no lie about that at all, you know. She meant, and still does mean, a huge amount to me.

[MK camping with ‘Megan’ actress, green screen] VO: So she fell in love with an impostor, a man pretending to be someone else entirely - and also failing to mention he had wife and children.

[MK and ‘Megan’ actress being prepared for scene in front of green screen] AU (clapper loader): Slate sixteen, take one.

VO: It was inevitable that Mark would be closely questioned about this aspect of his behaviour.

[5 Live studio] VD: Some climate change campaigners have described what you did as ‘state sanctioned abuse’. They say that the women that you had relationships with were not able to give informed sexual consent because they didn’t know who they were sleeping with.

MK: Okay.

VD: How do you feel about that?

MK: Well… I don’t know what to say about that.

VD: Does it upset you? Is it true?

MK: Uh, it’s upsetting, yeah.

VD: How were you able to reconcile what you were doing - i.e. passing on information - at the same time deceiving a woman you say you loved?

MK: I haven’t been able to do that.

VD: Have you been able to apologise to her?

MK: Erm, I don’t want to discuss that at the moment.

VD: Okay. If she was listening, what would you say to her?

MK: She knows.

[Black shirt interview] IV: Are you still in love with her?

MK: I still love her, yeah, I would still, you know, I’d still be there for her if she, if she needed something, but equally I respect the fact that, um, it wasn’t, you know, what… What I was was a lie, um, and we both, we both gotta, we’ve both gotta move on, we’ve both gotta find peace and, and sort our lives out. And, um, and I don’t think there’s a place, there will ever be a place for me in that community again.

IV: You wouldn’t consider trying, to say, ‘look, let’s give it a go’?

MK: I don’t think so. I don’t think it would be fair. I don’t think, you know, I lived a lie with her for a long time, and, um, and equally she is in a group or… Uh… Uh… A community of people who, who, you know, many of which despise me for what I was as a police officer, for the betrayal that I showed them, and for the, um, the deceit that, that I had. Or that I had. You know, it, I, I deceived them.

[Protest footage] VO: Mark deceived people every day, and was duly exposed as a public face of a dubious police operation. But we shouldn’t forget that he was controlled and directed by more senior officers, going up to a high level in the command structure. Those people have avoided being publicly named.

OSC: DRAX POWER STATION CLIMATE CAMP 2006 [Montage of Drax & Climate Camp photos] VO: Drax is the largest coal-fired power station in Europe.

MK (VO): Taking the site at Drax was planned months and months in advance. Most people at the Climate Camp just wanted to march to the front gates and protest. But there was a smaller group, people I’d known for a long time and worked with quite a lot, who wanted to break in and shut down the big conveyor belts that shovel the coal into the furnaces.

[ACAB t-shirt interview] MK: The intention was to break through the fence at different places. I thought to myself, ‘right, how can I control that? How can I know where all these different groups are going to break in?’ So I came up with the suggestion to go and bury wire cutters around the perimeter fence.

MK (VO): Then I could tell the different groups where the cutters were buried. So I hid them really well, but they also made an accurate map of where those places were. Obviously that intelligence went straight back to my cover officer. So the NPOIU knew exactly where all the equipment was, and where people were going to be cutting through the fence.

[MK talking in darkened studio] MK: The police claim that they’d received intelligence telling them that there was cutting equipment hidden outside the perimeter of the fence at Drax. Obviously they knew exactly where to look, because I’d told them, but so as not to expose me, they mounted a much larger operation.

[Montage of Drax & Climate Camp photos] MK: After quite a substantial search, they found five out of the six pieces of cutting equipment. Drax was a massively policed operation. There were thousands of uniformed officers from all over the country, as well as ex-special forces in an advisory role, and lots of private security stationed inside of Drax.

[Archive footage of Climate Camp march] VO: Mark has always said that his role was to provide information so that protest could be policed appropriately and proportionately. But when you look at the numbers of police at Drax and consider the actions they took, that hardly seems credible.

AU (protester on march): We’re just trying to make a lawful protest, that’s all we’re doing, we wanna hold some banners up, and we’ve been obstructed at every turn.

So we’ve gone across, we’ve gone across the fields! What you gonna do?

VO: So why was Mark there? Was he encouraging people to break the law by burying cutting equipment? Or was he striking a blow against the demonstrators by revealing where that cutting equipment was? Or both of those things? And did the police consult with energy companies about tactics and objectives?

MM: Who Mark Kennedy actually thought he was working for is quite an interesting

question, because I think he changed in his mind over the course of the years. The indication is that this was influenced from on high by private sector interests, basically corporate, profit-making interests, who want to have the power to, uh, pursue their own objectives unhindered. And he had become, uh, an agent of that, which I don’t think anyone can support.

VO: Since Mark Kennedy was exposed, there have been lots of other revelations about undercover police officers going beyond their remit. It was recently alleged that one officer who was arrested maintained his fake identity right through a court trial.

There are currently several inquiries being conducted about the use of undercover officers.

[MK being ‘arrested’ by actors as police in front of green screen] VO: None of those inquiries is a public one.

[B&W reenactment of fence incident] MK (VO): About fifty activists broke off from the main demonstration and tried to cut through the fence. A woman started crawling through, and an officer who’d been following the breakaway group began hitting her over the back and legs. I jumped in his way, trying to calm him down. I’m pushing him away and at that point this whole bunch of officers came running up. I got dragged to the ground, and punched and kicked, and stamped on. I felt my back go ‘crack’. They dragged me to the police van.

MK: I felt embarrassed to be a police officer. I had my phone down the front of my trousers. So in the back of the police van I was taking pictures of my face, and I was texting those pictures to my cover officer, so that he could see. When I got released I was taken back to the protest camp at Drax.

[Archive footage of Climate Camp march] [Black shirt interview] MK: The solidarity and the support and the love that I was shown by the people that I was, I was infiltrating, like, you know, it brings, it brings tears to, to my eyes, you know. That is a huge part of, of, of the guilt that I feel. Because of the way that I was looked after. When I came back from hospital people showed me so much care, more care than I got from the police. I had, they broke my finger, I had a gash across my head, and it was the stamping on my back and on my hips that dislocated my spine.

IV: This must really been screwing you up. I mean, uh… You come out of hospital, all these people gathering around you, looking after you and, and you’re still lying to them.

MK: Yep. IV: How do you… I… Where was your release, how could you… If you couldn’t tell

the truth to anybody, what… How could you deal with it?

MK: I, I don’t know. I don’t know, Brian, it’s, um… I don’t know. I just, I just ticked on.

[Footage of MK driving along road] MK (VO): I was told by my cover officer that I was being investigated for assaulting these police officers. They’d suspended me for about three months. I went to see the kids, and I spent some time with them, and with my parents.

VO: We don’t know why Mark was suspended from duty, or why he was instructed not to talk to his activist friends, or even why it was suggested that he might face assault charges. Those charges never materialised.

[Archive footage of protests] VO: And after being left to stew for a while, Mark was unexpectedly recalled to action, and deployed all over Europe. Suddenly he was the go-to cop for foreign governments who needed information about their own activists.

MK (VO): There was, was the only person who really had access to everything that was going on. I spent a lot of time writing about it, so the police could understand the reasons why people were doing the things they were doing. The NPOIU were asked

by European governments for intel, and I was getting sent all over the place Iceland, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Poland, Belgium, France. Huge pressure to get this intelligence and feed it back. I infiltrated the planning groups for the G8 protests in Germany. I was chased by German riot police and arrested. I learned all about making incendiary devices. In Copenhagen I got into a house full of squatters and gave the intel that allowed the cops to storm the place.

AU (protestor): We gotta do something!

AU (protestor in Danish): How big a threat is she to you? What’s the danger money for beating up innocent people?

VO: The ‘Youth House’ [Ungdomshuset] infiltrated by Mark in Copenhagen was a long-established and well-regarded community resource for young people. But when the city council sold the property to a church, they needed to get rid of the existing tenants. Using information supplied by Mark, the Danish police felt confident enough to evict the residents.

AU (cop in Danish): The next one who runs gets knocked to the ground.

AU (protester in Danish): You idiot, lay off!

VO: Of course Mark wasn’t involved in that part of the action. He was just a British bobby on loan to the Danish government.

AU (protester in Danish): You can’t just beat people up!

AU (cop in Danish): Sit down!

AU (protester in Danish): I am sitting down!

VO: I asked him if he ever felt guilty about his job.

MK: I think it devastates lives.

[MK interviewed in Max Clifford’s office?]

MK: You’re not infiltrating people who are selling crack cocaine, or selling a gun, or selling child, children, uh… Um, for the sex trade. You’re infiltrating people who, who have a social conscience.

[Archive footage of march] MK: In some respects, you know, police have had a result by me being exposed, because everybody’s looking over their shoulder, and doesn’t know who to talk to.

The paranoia levels, I imagine, within the activist community have, have probably gone through the roof.

[MK belaying ropes etc on climb] VO: It seems clear that Mark was living for the moment, whether he was Mr Kennedy or Mr Stone, or not really sure who he was at any one time. And he also knew that nobody could live a double life forever. At some point there would be a slip up.

MK: No, I knew it was all going to come to an end at some point. I didn’t know how, or when.

[MK in Studio, lighting, fog] MK: It was totally staggering, how much information I was passing back, and how much access I had to people’s lives, and the hundreds of people that I knew, uh… It couldn’t have gone on forever. But then I was just living it day by day. Just trying to keep it afloat.

IV: Did you ever inform directly about something which was being done or being planned to be done by the woman you were in love with?

MK: No. No. IV: That would’ve been…hard, I imagine.

MK: I wouldn’t have done it.

IV: Wouldn’t you?

MK: No.

IV: Really? You’d have…

MK: I wouldn’t have said anything. I wouldn’t have said anything.

JM: Quite clearly any long-term infiltration is gonna bring additional problems.

Problems around, erm, the potential for mission drift. The potential for… The welfare needs of the officer, uh, erm, perhaps not being given due regard, err, and, err, the impact on the private lives of the, of the officer. So these decisions are not lightly taken. Erm, but there are measures in place to ensure that the welfare of the officer are looked after. Every officer is deployed with a cover officer, they have contact with them every day, and they are subject to regular, ah, psychological assessments.

[Interview with SH] MK: Part of being an undercover police officer is to attend regularly, on a threemonthly basis, erm, a psychologist, who assesses your ability, whether everything’s, whether everything’s okay. But, you know, there were long,long periods of time when, erm, that, that was never arranged for me. Erm, for whatever reason…

SH: And do you feel you needed that? I can’t imagine doing this job, anyone doing this job, and it not doing your head in.

MK: It’s not until now, I’m suddenly like… Ooh, it, it’s… It’s not until after the…

SH: How does it feel, like that?

MK: Well like I say, I’m living day by day, it’s really difficult. I don’t, you know, I don’t know quite what to think.

SH: I mean there was a story that you’d felt suicidal.

MK: Yeah, I did. I did.

SH: Had you actually thought about, if you were going to kill yourself, how you would kill yourself?

MK: I had a couple of ideas, yeah.

[Radio 5 Live studio] VD: Right, some more messages from our listeners. Um, Rachel in Kent says ‘sounds like Mark Kennedy wasn’t supported by his employers like he should’ve been, poor man. Let’s hope they learn from it.’ Ian, in St. John’s Wood in London, says ‘sounds as though Kennedy is gearing himself up to suing the police. Good work if you can get it. ’ Any truth in that?

MK: Like I say, I’m taking some legal advice, and they’re gonna, erm, have a look at the opportunity for that, and if there is a case then maybe I will. I don’t know.

OSC:

RATCLIFFE-ON-SOAR NOTTINGHAM 2009 VO: The events that led to the exposure of Mark Kennedy as an undercover cop started in April 2009, when a large scale action was planned against a giant power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire.

[Footage of Ratcliffe-on-Soar] MK (VO): I was approached about Ratcliffe-on-Soar by a person whom I’d known for a long time. They were planning to break in, shut it down, and occupy a smoke stack for as long as they could. I knew the NPOIU would never let me take on a climbing role, but I needed to still show interest, so in the end I said I’d drive a lorry. The senior management said I had to be there. They wanted me to record the meetings. I was very reluctant to wear a recording device. That was the first time as Mark Stone that I’d used one. So to suddenly be asked to produce evidence against people who were my friends, all that was a great worry for me.

VO: For seven years Mark had provided information and intelligence about the activist community. So why was he now being asked to provide evidence?

[Footage of MK pretending to be an activist on the phone] MK: There’s going to be hundreds of people, they’re going to be coming from all over the country. Right… Yep… MK (VO): The police, in relation to activism wanted to step up the arrest and charging processes. There was a lot of concern that these kind of undercover operations were quite costly, and yet they don’t have a return in relation to the number of people arrested and charged. Rather than just charge individuals with a minor offence they wanted to collectively charge everybody with a conspiracy. That’s a Crown Court trial with a harsher penalty. They wanted that as a deterrent.

VO: Perhaps there was a desire to see tangible results in terms of arrests and heavy sentencing. Around 120 people gathered in a school in Nottingham to take part in the action.

MK: The plan was to still climb the massive chimney, um, put some people on top for a few days, and to shut down the power station. Because I knew that the arrests, or that the raid was coming, and people were, ah, going to be detained, and that no one was actually going to leave the school, um, I was able to say, for my credibility, for future actions, that I would, and it would be okay for me to be involved in a climbing action. I knew that was never going to happen.

[B&W reenactment of Iona raid by riot police] MK (VO): Just after midnight the police raided.

AU (police-actors): [inaudible shouting]

MK (VO): They went through the whole school, and smashed every door. We were all put in a big room. I was sat next to a guy that I knew really well. He says, ‘I’d like to get my hands on the person that grassed us up’. And I was sat there thinking ‘yeah’.

[B&W reenactment of MK in police interview room] VO: 114 people were arrested that night at the Iona School. One of them was Mark Stone.

AU (police-actor): So what’s your name? IS your name Mark Stone? What’s your phone number? What were you doing at the Iona School? Were you planning to occupy the power station? Were you…

MK (VO): I was interviewed by the police. I apologised afterwards, because I just completely stared her down in the interview. I didn’t say a word. And afterwards I’m like, ‘no hard feelings but that’s the way it is’.

[MK pretending to talk to cover officer on phone] MK: No, it was just a quick interview, this time, but I’ve been bailed, ah, with everybody else, to go back in a month’s time, for a second interview. So, yeah, so you should have plenty of time to have it squared away. And, um, sort it out, okay?

MK (VO): A month later, I still heard nothing.

[MK on phone to cover officer in front of green screen] MK: So when is it going to get dropped? What the fuck’s going on?

[B&W reenactment of MK in police interview room for second interview] MK (VO): I went back for the second interview and there were two detectives there with a whole wealth of evidence against Mark Stone and his involvement in the conspiracy.

AU (detective-actor): We know you’re part of ‘Black Team’, we know what your name is, we know your name is Flash, we know what your telephone number is. What do you think these are for? What’s this picture? Where are you? No? Where are you in this picture? You going to talk to us? No? Hello? Hello? Are you speaking to me? Am I speaking English? Hello?

MK (VO): They knew that my nickname was Flash, they knew my phone number, they knew the fact that I was driving vehicle 2 for the Black Team, they knew a lot.

AU (detective-actor): You’re just not playing ball, are you? You will be playing ball!

You will be playing ball! So what about this, then? And that, yeah? Hello? Hello?

Hello? Christsakes…

MK (VO): Because I was an undercover police officer, and Mark Stone wasn’t real, I wasn’t allowed a solicitor.

AU (detective-actor): …And that…and that…

MK: I was concerned that there was a weight of evidence that the police had against Mark Stone, um, they were definitely moving towards charging Mark Stone along with everybody else. As an authorised police officer, err, you know, I couldn’t have been charged, um… If they had continued down the line of charging Mark Stone then the whole operation would have finished, it would have dropped out, I’d be exposed, um, and that would’ve then meant that I’d have to give evidence in court against people that I’d, I’d become really close to, that’d been friends of mine for years.

IV: Were you really, the, the, your greatest concern was that, presumably, the fact that the woman who you were in love with and who loved Mark Stone, would suddenly realise that she’d been conned.

MK: That’s true, yeah, yeah. Very much.

[MK walking streets at night] MK (VO): I just couldn’t work out how it was going to end. Everything was at stake, absolutely everything.

MK: I prepared the case against twenty-seven people, erm, right at the very end, a week before everybody was going to be charged, they dropped the case against Mark Stone. Right out the blue. No one else…got… that had cases dropped, just me.

IV: So what did that mean?

MK: Well, spot the informant, you know? It was, like, so obvious. Um, again, Mark Stone slips through the net, no charges…That whole, that whole period, was, I had huge anxiety, I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, um, it was really stressful. Um, nobody in the NPOIU would get a hold of it, nobody in the NPOIU appeared to be wanting to give me any support. I felt right out on my own, right out on a limb, um, and the way it was managed and handled completely exposed me. And I lost complete faith in the management.

[Archive footage of Ratcliffe] VO: His management, the NPOIU, is currently under review by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. Questions are being asked the role of this secretive police unit. Who gave them authorisation to infiltrate activist groups? And why was it considered necessary?

MM: My suspicion is that behind it, err, are the corporate interests, because they are the ones who want to run their coal-burning power stations, err, they want to run their nuclear power stations, um, and they don’t want interference, ah, and they don’t want public opinion aroused against a product which is extraordinarily, um, profitable

for them. Um, I might be wrong about that, but I can’t think of any other possible reason, I just find it unbelievable that any Chief Constable regards this as a priority on his patch for his policemen.

MK: I mean intelligence is a commodity, it’s like a lucrative commodity. You know, I don’t, I don’t know necessarily what, I’m not making any allegations, but it’s quite possible that the information that I was providing was possibly being used to influence other, um, decisions made in relation to private companies.

[Archive footage of police EGs/FITs at protest, protests etc] VO: There’s clearly money to be made from gathering intelligence on protest movements. Several companies operating within the law specialise in providing large corporations with information about groups such as environmental campaigners.

One of those companies is Global Open, which is now run by the man who first set up the NPOIU, and who first recruited Mark Kennedy into that unit. It’s all about gathering and passing on information, and that’s what Mark was doing at Ratcliffeon-Soar. That case quickly turned into a farce, with the Crown Prosecution Service and Nottinghamshire Police squabbling over who had what evidence, and whether it supported conspiracy charges. Before long the case against some of those arrested was dropped completely.

[Archive footage of Ratcliffe Six outside court] SI: The Ratcliffe Six, as they are known, are planning to sue for unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution following the collapse of their trial over the failure to disclose secret recordings by undercover cop PC Kennedy.

VO: Perhaps the reason why the police exposed Mark Kennedy in such a public fashion was because he’d gone past his sell-by date. Perhaps they no longer trusted his intelligence. Whatever the reason, Mark received a phone call, telling him that his seven year mission was over, and he had to pack his bags and leave.

[MK pretending to be on phone to cover officer] MK: What about all the friendship, everybody I’ve known for seven years? I know what you’re saying, but I can’t, I can’t just vanish, and disappear in a week. This doesn’t happen, it isn’t real, is it?

[Archive march footage] MK (VO): I’m not actually sure if any of the cover officers understood the scene, or the lifestyle we were immersed in. They still saw people, like, that we were infiltrating as tree-huggers. I don’t think they got that these are normal people who come from all different walks of life to protest.

MK: The operation came to an abrupt end. Um, the whole extraction policy, err, around Mark Stone vanishing was appalling. Um, as it was for other officers as well, you know. There, there was very little thought, was put into extracting an officer away from a situation, a lifestyle they had adopted for such a long time.

IV: Do you think the fact that they exposed you was just bungling incompetence, or was there something more sinister about that? Did they want you to be exposed?

MK: I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t… It’s crossed my mind. Other people have talked to me about that, other people have intimated, um, that, um… I don’t want to think about it like that.

[B&W MK & ‘Megan’ acting] MK (VO): I started to put the story in about moving to America for a couple of months, that I was feeling burnt out. Megan was really worried. She must have understood that something was going really wrong with how I was feeling. But I thought, ‘okay, maybe this is for the best, maybe this is the right thing to do, for her, and for me’.

[MK driving around] VD: David in Acton, London, says ‘what a brave man. If we have more people of such moral courage what a better world this would be’. Brian says ‘the Kennedy operation was an amazing waste of public money. What did they think they were going to achieve? Did heads roll? And Kennedy just sat there and took the money.

Did he ever say to his bosses, “Is this going anywhere?” Or was he so involved in sex and dosh it distracted him? An absolutely disgraceful operation, and a complete waste of huge amounts of public money’.

[MK on train] MK: I came back from America, and went for a meeting with the Head of Personnel for the Met. The meeting lasted just twenty minutes. She had an empty file, no details about me at all, very little understanding about my mental state. I was basically told ‘you have no skills and we don’t have a suitable job for you’. So I’d gone from being the leading expert on extreme left activism, I’d worked all over Europe for seven years, an officer with twenty years’ experience, someone who had fed intelligence back that was being used to make huge operational decisions, to being told ‘who are you?’

[Stills of MK] MK: That just compounded the feelings of nothingness. Just actually a huge sense of everything vanished overnight. Not only Mark Stone, but also who Mark Kennedy was as well, because he didn’t really exist either. And in the end I just thought, ‘you know what? Fuck it! I just can’t do this any more.’ So I resigned.

[MK kickboxing in gym] AU (trainer): Okay, one-two… Good shot…

MK (VO): So there was no reason for Mark Stone to be around any more. There was no more intelligence to be gathered. The police wanted me to just vanish from the

activist community. But it’s naïve to think I could just disappear, and everyone’s going to sit back and think, ‘oh - Mark’s gone - anyway, let’s move on’. Much more likely that people would say ‘where is Mark? Is he okay? Let’s go and see if he’s alright’.

People really cared for me. They really loved me.

AU (trainer): Try and slow that breathing down.

IV: And after you resigned from the police…

MK: Mmm… IV: …You went back into that community, didn’t you?

MK: I did, yeah.

IV: Why did you do that?

MK: Huh… Um, because I missed them, and I felt bad, um, about the way that I’d left my girlfriend. The way that I was after seven years of such a full-on deployment and the intensity of it and the experiences that I’d had, I couldn’t really see anything else to do.

IV: But you weren’t gathering intelligence, then?

MK: No. IV:For anybody?

MK: No. Nope.

[MK driving] MK (VO): So I was back in the community, even though I had no policing role any more, there was a reason for me to be there, to take care of Mark’s conscience, and Mark’s feelings towards those I’d been close to for seven years.

[Radio 5 Live studio] VD: Through the whole of our discussion this morning, you, you have referred to Mark Stone, the man you were when you were part of this protest group. The way you have described him, in the third person, it’s very much as though he is a separate person, a very different person. Is that how you feel about your alias?

MK: No. I don’t think so. Um, I’m trying to sort of establish who I am now. But I think, you know, I have to, kind of, um, put Mark Stone in the background and try and think about where I am going.

[MK driving at night] MK (VO): I was still living the lie of who I was before. I knew there was some

suspicion of me because of what had happened at Ratcliffe, but I went on holiday with Megan anyway. We went climbing in Italy and had a great time. One day I went out cycling, and when I came back there was a real atmosphere between us, a very distinct change. Megan had found my passport. Well, it was Mark Kennedy’s passport, and she didn’t know who Mark Kennedy was.

[Pink shirt interview] MK: When we got back to the UK she did talk to some people, um, and I think they may have had some other concerns, and the alarm bells started ringing.

[MK pretending to receive phone call in Ireland] MK (VO): I went to visit my children in Ireland, and there I got a phone call. I knew the voice. They said I should come back to Nottingham and explain myself. I could have said ‘no’, but I felt I owed them an explanation.

[Black shirt interview] MK: All manner of things were going through my head as to, uh, as to what might now happen. And I, I, I felt as much as I needed to go and maybe give some explanation as to… who I was and what I’d done, I also felt that I needed to go and to find out what they knew.

[External footage of ‘Nottingham house’ at night] MK (VO): I sat on a sofa and people were on chairs in a circle around me. It was definitely an interrogation.

[Black shirt interview] MK: I think they felt completely and utterly betrayed, and, uh, and it showed, on, on their faces. Um… But, you know, they didn’t threaten me, it was dignified, they, you know, just felt completely let down and they had to do what they had to do. Um, and about half past five in the morning I, uh, I got up and I, I walked out of there. You know, I think we were all so utterly tired and exhausted, erm, it just had to be that way, and I, uh, I turn, turned my back on, at the door and, that was it, I haven’t seen them again.

[MK walking streets at night] MK (VO): I experienced some of the best friendships I’ll probably ever had as a person who doesn’t even exist.

[Paper lampshade interview] MK: I do miss her so much. It’s, uh, it’s hard to work that through, she me- she means so much, and, um… Like, despite everything, you know, still, still lied to her, and everybody else.

EX: He’s been left hanging in the wind. He’s going to deal with this, clearly, for the rest of his life. There’s no walking away from this for him. His name’ll ring out, you know, internationally.

[MK on phone in street; MK sitting on a wall] EX: He’s probably going through that roller coaster at the minute. Being angry, being reflective, being wanting to make amends, and feeling overconfident that everything’s alright, back to angry, then sad… It’s just, it’s a maelstrom, it’s a washing machine effect, and it’s particularly unpleasant.

MM: It’s the accountability issue which is the really important one. Who actually initiated this, what kind of consultations were there, um, and was that person at a middle rank or was it a top rank, which it you would certainly expect it to be, and even if it were the top rank within the police, is it right that they should take that sort of decision? Now, ah, maybe until this whole issue blew up this was not, um, a political issue. It certainly now is, and I think it would be completely unacceptable for anything of this kind to be undertaken again except within political parameters with broad public support.

[Student tuition fees protest footage] EX: You know at some point he’s gone into that job with the best intentions. Um, honourable intentions, and it’s gone wrong. But it’s not just him, I’m not going to defend him and say, you know, ‘he’s acted correctly’, but there’s something far, you know, behind that, that’s allowed it to happen. And not only allowed it to happen, they’ve allowed it to continue. And look what it’s done. Blown his career apart, it’s blown that job apart, it’s affected public confidence massively, ‘cause yet again it’s just another load of egg on the face of the police.

[Pringle sweater interview] IV: You’ve lost the woman you loved…

MK: Mmm-hmm.

IV: ..You’ve parted from your wife…

MK: Mmm-hmm.

IV: ..And your children. You’ve left your career…

MK: Mmm-hmm!

IV: So if you add all those things up, it would seem to be not…

MK: It’s a pretty negative, isn’t it?

[Student tuition fees protest footage]

VO: It was a pretty big negative for a lot of people. Apart from those directly involved, the British taxpayer might have some questions. In the years Mark spent undercover, not a single person was successfully prosecuted and had their conviction upheld as a result of his work.

[MK staring out to one side at Pringle sweater interview] VO: So it seems reasonable to ask, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;what was the point of it all?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; OSC: The police declined to comment regarding the Mark Kennedy operation. <CREDITS>