Avt028 ts vid007 confessions of an undercover cop v1

VID007 transcript - Confessions Of An Undercover Cop 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 === OSC THIS FILM CONTAINS DRAMATIC RECONSTRUCTIONS [MK in vest wandering estate’s streets] VO: This is Mark Kennedy, former Metropolitan Police officer. And this is the story of how he spent seven years of his life as Mark Stone, environmental activist.

[Faked protest footage] MK (VO): You can use the word ‘spying’. I was gathering intelligence on left wing movements, on anti-fascist movements, on environmental movements.

[Black shirt interview] MK: I liked the life that Mark Stone had, but I also enjoyed the job that Mark Kennedy had.

[MK ‘pretending’ footage montage] VO: Seven years as an undercover cop, living a double life, juggling two identities.

Dealing with the pressure of lying to people every day. And if that wasn’t difficult enough, he fell in love with one of the people he was spying on.

[Black shirt interview] MK: I lived a lie with her for a long time, and it shouldn’t have happened, but you can never take away the love that we shared.

VO: This is the story of one man leading two lives, and what happened when it all came crashing down., and Mark Stone was exposed as an undercover cop.

TITLES: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNDERCOVER COP [Montage of photos of MK growing up] MK (VO): My childhood was uneventful, happy, normal. My dad was in the police, he was a traffic officer. I joined the City of London Police in 1990. I transferred over to the Metropolitan Police, and I worked on some interesting stuff.

[Black shirt interview] 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, 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, 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.

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!’

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 (VO): I was told my role was to provide information so that the authorities could proportionately police demonstrations. 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.

[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.

[Black shirt interview] IV: Why choose the name Mark Stone?

MK: Mark was my first name, it’s my first name, it’s really important to, ah, uh, you know, if you’re stood in a crowd and somebody’s shouting at you to do something, or calling you, you need to be able to react to that, so, first name… Stone, just a name out the hat, there’s no other reason for it!

[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.

[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.

[Black shirt interview] 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.

OSC: Chief Constable Jon Murphy ASSOCIATION OF CHIEF POLICE OFFICERS (ACPO) 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. 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: After the training, and with his legend in place, the newly-formed Mark Stone began hanging out at activist gatherings, slowly getting people to accept him as a valuable member of the community.

[Fake footage of MK with activists] 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.

[Fake footage of MK on phone in darkened estate; driving round] 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.

[Black shirt interview] MK: For seven years, I, I never went to a police station, once. Seven ye- never went to the office, um… The only time I actually went to a police station was if I’d been arrested, or detained, as Mark Stone.

[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.

[Footage of Dublin Mayday protests] [Pringle-type sweater & checked shirt interview] MK: 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.

[Fake protest footage] 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’. 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 interesting things about the story of Mark Kennedy and Mark Stone is how he could switch between the two. 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.

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

VO: Now that he was an accepted part of the community, Mark could start passing on information about the people he was infiltrating. He’d been told that the mission was to allow the police to proportionately deal with demonstrations. In other words, he would gather information about how many people were expected at a particular action. Once the police had this intelligence, they could then send the right number of officers along. Not too many, and not too few.

BREAK - BUMPERS [Footage of Chinook at Gleneagles G8, protests etc] OSC: G8 SUMMIT GLENEAGLES 2005 [Black shirt interview] MK: I took on a role around the, the G8, that happened at Gleneagles. I organised all the logistics for that, um… Together with other people. But, ah, you know, arranging the minibuses, transporting the equipment to the camp.

[Protest footage] VO: Mark had become a trusted and important member of the international activist community. Gleneagles was his biggest role so far. People there wanted to protest against the economic policies of leading industrial nations. Mark was instructed to gather information.

[Fake protest planning meeting footage] MK (VO): 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.

[B&W fake footage of MK talking to cover officer etc] VO: Mark removed all the maps and plans from the central planning office, and left them in his van for his cover officer.

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.

[Pringle-type sweater & checked shirt interview] MK: The G8 gave me a good reputation. 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.

[Fake MK & Megan footage] 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.

[Fake footage of Megan] MK: We shared a lot of interests, you know, we had a real, solid connection.

[Blue shirt interview] MK: I shared lot with her, I shared my love and my, my passion and care for her.

[Fake footage of Megan & MK] 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.

[Footage of MK on phone, people bustling about him] VO: So Mark Stone was in love with a woman, but deceiving her at the same time.

The big question here is whether the police knew if he was intimately involved with someone.

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.

[Footage of MK wandering around on phone, people bustling about him] MK (VO): I thought my cover officer didn’t know about my having a girlfriend. I didn’t tell him. But now, I’ve thought about it, it seems unrealistic. They must have known.

Nothing was ever said about my relationship with Megan.

VO: And Mark wasn’t saying anything to his girlfriend about having a wife and two children. He’d been married in 1994. Whenever he could he’d get away to see his family, but the pressure of leading two separate lives was never was to deal with.

[Pic montage of MK with kids] [Black shirt interview] 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.

IV: Did your wife know about it? Did you tell her?

MK: She guessed. Yeah. She knew. Yeah, I… I didn’t say too much about it, but yeah, she knew I was having a relationship.

[Protest footage] VO: Mark’s then-wife claimed she didn’t know about any other relationship until October 2010. Mark became ever more involved as an activist, and every single day he called his cover officer, passing on information and intelligence - often about his friends. At that stage nobody suspected him. His nickname was Flash, because he always seemed to have money, and he didn’t mind spending it.

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.

[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.

[Archive footage of Climate Camp march] VO: The police have always maintained that the role of Mark Kennedy was to help them behave in a proportional way at demonstrations. But when you consider the numbers of police and private security guards at Drax, and look at the way they behave, 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?

[Photos from Drax protests, and 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.

[ACAB t-shirt interview] [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.

MK (VO): It was always difficult being at home. I didn’t have much of a relationship with my wife, and we couldn’t sit down and talk about work very often.

[Footage of MK going for a run in the country] VO: Back in Ireland, with his family, Mark was suspended from duty, and told he might face charges of assaulting the officers at Drax. He was forbidden from communicating with his activist friend, but that was an order he couldn’t obey. After all, these were the people he wanted to be with. Mark was never charged with assault, but after being left to stew for three months he was suddenly recalled to duty. He was deployed all over Europe. He was the go-to cop for foreign governments who needed information about their own activists.

[Protest footage] MK (VO): 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. 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 just supplies the intelligence that facilitates action. I asked him if he ever felt guilty about his job.

[Protest footage] AU (cop in Danish): Sit down!

[Pringle-type sweater & paler blue checked shirt - Guardian photo shoot? - interview] MK: I think it devastates lives. 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.

BREAK - BUMPERS [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. He knew that it could all unravel at any time.

[Blue checked shirt darkened studio interview] MK: No, I knew it was all going to come to an end at some point. I didn’t know how, or when. 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.

[MK on a climb footage]

[Black shirt interview] 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.

[MK on a climb footage] 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.

OSC: RATCLIFFE-ON-SOAR NOTTINGHAM 2009 VO: The events that led to the unmasking of Mark Stone, environmentalist, as Mark Kennedy, Metropolitan police officer, started in April 2009, when a group he was involved with plotted to break into, and shut down, the huge power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire.

[Footage of Ratcliffe-on-Soar] MK (VO): They were planning to break in, shut it down, and occupy a smoke stack for as long as they could.

VO: Around 120 people of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar protesters gathered at a Nottingham school to go through the details of the action. They planned to leave the school in the early hours of the morning, and occupy the power station. Mark Kennedy passed on those plans to his police colleagues.

[Footage of MK wandering around estate in dark] [Fake footage - 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’.

[Black shirt interview] IV: So did you go to bed wracked with guilt, thinking ‘I’ve just… Today’s I’ve betrayed such-and-such..’?

MK: I’m not sure if… I’ll, I’ll try and explain it, but… Because… Yes, I did, in some ways, but as I’ve said, like, my… My role wasn’t necessarily to report upon individual people. I was involved in the case regarding Ratcliffe-on-Soar, and that became far more personal, because that was about people that I, I knew really, really well.

[Police footage of MK from arrest & processing of Iona school detainees] VO: None of the dozens of officers who raided the school knew that Mark Stone was one of them - a fellow cop.

AU (police officer): …You’ve been mass arrested, mate - just face here - you’ve been mass arrested and you’re gonna be individually arrested by this officer, okay?

VO: So like everyone else, he was arrested, and charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass.

[Pink shirt interview] MK: 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]

[Pink shirt interview] 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.

[Footage of MK on phone] VO: Suspicion of Mark grew in the activist community. He was left wondering what he could do to regain the trust of people. But without warning he received a phone call from his cover officer telling him that his seven year mission was over, and he had two weeks to get out.

[Black shirt interview] 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. But I thought, ‘okay, maybe this is for the best, maybe this is the right thing to do, for her, and for me’.

[Footage of MK driving around] VO: Mark went to the United States for two weeks, and stayed with his brother and considered his future. His undercover mission was over, but he was still a serving police officer, and he was still in love.

[MK on train]

[Street window interview] 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’.

[Stills of MK] MK: 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?’ 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.

[Pringle-type sweater & paler blue checked shirt interview] 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.

[Montage of MK stills] MK (VO): You know, people have said to me, ‘oh, they’re not your real friends, they weren’t your real friends’. Well, you know, they were Mark Stone’s real friends, and the emotions and the feelings that Mark Stone had are very similar to the ones that Mark Kennedy had. Whether that’s right or wrong, I don’t know.

[Montage of Mark Stone paperwork] VO: You can’t lead a double life without the paperwork to back it up. Mark Stone was fully loaded with all of it - he had solid credentials. All that fell apart one day when his girlfriend, looking for her sunglasses, found a passport in the name of Mark Kennedy. It had the picture of the man she knew as Mark Stone.

[B&W fake MK & Megan footage] MK: I had a story, I had a cover story for it, why I had a different name. It involved Mark Stone’s previous life, erm, and it was plausible. But I think together with everything else that had gone on, um, all of those things mount up. Never being charged or, not having the solicitor. You know, ‘how come he got off and 26 people got charged?’ There’s a number of things just rang alarm bells.

[Footage of MK driving at night] VO: Megan told other people about the passport. They put two and two together and came up with cop. Mark was telephoned, and they asked him to come and explain himself.

MK (VO): 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: 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 through streets at night] VO: None of the people who infiltrated by Mark Stone would agree to be in this film.

Despite repeated requests, not a single activist would tell us about their dealings with the undercover cop.

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.

BREAK - BUMPERS [MK driving in day] 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.

[Rooftop photo shoot for Guardian, black shirt] VO: When Mark Stone’s former friends went public and told the world he was a police officer who’d duped them for the best part of a decade, he immediately became the hottest news item in town.

[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.

[Green hoodie self-interview] 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.

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

OSC: Victoria Derbyshire BBC RADO 5 LIVE MK: I was lying because it’s what my job entailed. And in many ways I regret that now. And I don’t like the fact that I did that. And, um, 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.

[Clip of that Taiwanese animate-the-news skit on MK, NMA.tv] VO: After Mark was exposed, it was revealed that other undercover officers had literally got into bed with the people they were spying on. The story became international, and a Taiwanese network came up with a novel treatment of a very British scandal. But back at home the sexual side of the infiltration provoked some more serious questions.

[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.

[Ex-UCO walking streets at night, identity obscured] VO: Whatever moral issues Mark has to face, there was still a question of whether his bosses knew that he and other officers were sleeping with people. And if they did know about it, why did they ignore it? I spoke to another, ex-undercover officer, who has to remain anonymous for reasons of safety.

[Interview with ex-UCO, face in shadows] EX: 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.

[Interview with ex-UCO, face in shadows] 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.

[Montage of MK photos] VO: The story of Mark Kennedy is a lot more than who he was sleeping with, and whether his bosses knew about that. I’s about why he was deployed for seven years to infiltrate the environmental movement. And why did the police believe it was acceptable to prevent people from exercising their democratic right to protest?

[Helicopter footage of climate protest on House of Commons roof] 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.

[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.

[Drax protest footage] VO: In the seven years that Mark Kennedy spent infiltrating activists, not a single person was successfully convicted of any crime as a result of his work, which makes you wonder why the police spent millions of pounds spying on these people.

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.

[Radio 5 Live interview] 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’.

[MK driving around] VD: 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’.

[Pringle-type sweater & paler blue checked shirt interview] 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?

[MK photo montage] [Pringle-type sweater & paler blue checked shirt 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?

OSC: The police declined our invitation to comment regarding the Mark Kennedy operation. <CREDITS>