The sun never sets on the UK’s armies of private security firms (Image via Shutterstock)

In the wake of the Olympic Games vetting scandal, private security company G4S may have hoped that its period on the public rack had come to an end. But G4S’s vetting, it appears, is fraught with failure abroad just as it is in East London – only with far deadlier consequences.

Tonight on BBC Scotland, reporter Samantha Poling investigates the the deaths of private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and the lax security standards of the mutil-billion pound firms that send young men to war zones and arm them with deadly weapons.

In the summer of 2009, former British paratrooper turned private security contractor Daniel Fitzsimons shot dead two colleagues in Baghdad’s highly-securitised Green Zone. In a vodka-fuelled squabble and only 36 hours after arriving in the sandy nation, Fitzsimons killed Paul McGuigan, from Peebles in Scotland, and Australian Darren Hoare.

The three men had come to Iraq to work for the British private security company ArmorGroup Iraq, which G4S now owns.

While the media widely reported on the deaths at the time and on Fitzsimon’s subsequent trial before the Supreme Court of Iraq, BBC Scotland tonight reveals a shocking new fact: a whistleblower had sent G4S numerous emails only days before Fitzsimons arrived in Iraq warning the company that the lives of fellow contractors would be put at risk if he were given a weapon.

‘I am alarmed that he [Fitzsimons] will shortly be allowed to handle a weapon and be exposed to members of the public,’ the whistleblower wrote, who signed off as ‘a concerned member of the public and father.’

‘I am speaking out because I feel that people should not be put at risk.’

Fitzsimons had a criminal record, including firearm and assault convictions. The former British paratrooper was also suffering post-traumatic disorder from the gruesome sights he had witnessed during previous work in war zones such as Kosovo. Despite this background, G4S employed Fitzsimons and sent him to Iraq.

The mother of slain British contractor, Paul McGuigan, said, ‘[Fitzsimons] fired the bullets. But the gun was put in his hand by G4S ArmorGroup. They put the gun in that man’s hand.’

‘I want G4S to be charged with corporate manslaughter and be held accountable for what they did.’

Responding to the BBC Scotland investigation, G4S acknowledged that Fitzsimon’s ‘screening was not completed in line with the company’s procedures.’ G4S claims to have since improved.

The investigation shines a light into the murky world of private security. BBC Scotland spoke with security contactors who claim to have been forced to work on dangerous tasks with the wrong equipment. Numerous incidents have not been reported for the sake of G4S’s reputation, one of them alleged.

Bob Shepherd, a security contractor, told Poling, ‘We know when a soldier dies it’s all over the newspapers, it’s on the TV. But we never know when security contractors die.’

In response to the news that a whistleblower had repeatedly warned G4S about hiring Fitzsimons, the company told BBC Scotland that it was unable to find the email trail. It appears that a company selling security management software that allows businesses to monitor staff in the farthest reaches of the world is unable to carry out a simple email search; ‘I can’t track down the relevant individual so I am afraid we can not comment further on when we received the emails,’ G4S said.

G4S, one of the major players in the constantly growing yet constantly scandal-ridden private security sector, had a 2011 turnover of £7.5bn.

The International Code of Conduct for Private Service Providers is currently aiming to improve standards in the sector, which is dominated by UK-based companies. Out of the 511 companies to have signed up to the Code, 177 have headquarters in the UK – more than three times the number based in the United States of America.

Britannia may no longer rule the waves, but it does rule the world of private security.

BBC Scotland’s investigation, Britain’s Private War, airs on Monday October 1 at 21:00.
The editor of the Bureau worked with Sam Poling on the Scottish Bafta winning film Security Wars.
http://www.iainoverton.com/blog/?portfolio=security-wars-bafta-prix-circom

October 1st, 2012 | by Zlatina Georgieva | Published in All Stories, Bureau Recommends

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Danny Fitzsimons, 31, was sentenced to 20 years in 2011 for killing Scot Paul McGuigan, 37, and Australian Darren Hoare, 37, in Baghdad in 2009
All were working for UK security firm G4S, operating as ArmorGroup
A BBC probe claims a G4S whistleblower warned them about Fitzsimons’ previous convictions and unstable behaviour before his posting
G4S claim nobody ever saw the email warnings
Victims’ families call for G4S to be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter
It comes a week after it emerged G4S chief Nick Buckles will keep his job despite review finding the firm guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract

Security firm G4S was warned not to employ an armed guard in Iraq days before he murdered two colleagues – one of them an ex-Royal Marine, a new BBC documentary claims.

Danny Fitzsimons, 31, was sentenced to at least 20 years in 2011 for killing Paul McGuigan, 37, from Peebles in Scotland, and Australian Darren Hoare, also 37, in Baghdad in August 2009.

All were working for UK security firm G4S, operating as ArmorGroup in the region.

G4S controversially failed to supply enough staff during the Olympics this summer and was recently handed a £13million Government contract to monitor sex offenders in Scotland.

BBC Scotland Investigates: Britain’s Private War, to be screened on BBC2 tonight, claims that a G4S whistleblower sent a series of emails to the company in London, warning them about Fitzsimons’ previous convictions and unstable behaviour.

Signing one email ‘a concerned member of the public and father’, the anonymous worker warns G4S: ‘I am alarmed that he will shortly be allowed to handle a weapon and be exposed to members of the public. I am speaking out because I feel that people should not be put at risk.’

Another email, sent as Fitzsimons was due to start work in Baghdad, says: ‘Having made you aware of the issues regarding the violent criminal Danny Fitzsimons, it has been noted that you have not taken my advice and still choose to employ him in a position of trust. I have told you that he remains a threat and you have done nothing.’

The programme reports that Fitzsimons had worked as a private security contractor before in Iraq, but he had been sacked for punching a client.

In the documentary, the parents of Paul McGuigan, whose fiancée Nicci Prestage gave birth to his baby daughter in October 2009, call for the company to face criminal charges over the killing.

In the documentary, Mr McGuigan’s mother Corinne Boyd-Russell, from Innerleithen, in the Borders, said: ‘[Fitzsimons] fired the bullets. But the gun was put in his hand by G4S ArmorGroup. They put the gun in that man’s hand.

‘I want G4S to be charged with corporate manslaughter and be held accountable for what they did.’
The parents of Fitzsimons were also shocked to hear about the existence of the emails.

Fitzsimons’ mother Liz, from Manchester, said: ‘And they still took him out there? They [G4S] need to be taken to task for that.

‘The people who we feel are responsible, who we hold responsible for putting that gun in Danny’s hand, are without a shadow of a doubt G4S.’

Fitzsimons became the first Westerner to be convicted by an Iraqi court since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion when he was convicted in February last year, narrowly escaping the death penalty.

The former security contractor from Rochdale admitted shooting the men but claimed it was self-defence.

The men had been out drinking and the other two tried to kill him during an altercation, Fitzsimons said during previous testimony. He also claimed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

A G4S spokesman said: ‘We are aware of the allegation over emails but following an internal IT investigation it is clear that no such emails were received by any employee before the incident.

‘We have not been shown any formal documentation which proves Mr Fitzsimons had post-traumatic stress disorder.

‘This was a tragic case and our thoughts remain with the families of both Paul McGuigan and Darren Hoare, who were valued and highly respected employees of the company, and who continue to be sadly missed by their families, colleagues and friends alike.

‘We confirmed publicly on September 15 2009 that, in this particular case, although there was evidence that Mr Fitzsimons falsified and apparently withheld material information during the recruitment process, his screening was not completed in line with the company’s procedures.

‘Our screening processes should have been better implemented in this situation but it is a matter of speculation what, if any, role this may have played in the incident.’

Since his conviction G4S has been roundly criticised for its handling of Olympic security arrangements.

Last week, it emerged G4S chief Nick Buckles will keep his job despite an independent review finding the bungling security firm guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract.

Mr Buckles, whose pay and benefits package was worth £5.3million last year, had been widely expected to lose his lucrative post over the fiasco.

But instead, two of his deputies will pay the price for the group’s failures during the Games.

The company’s UK boss David Taylor-Smith and events chief Ian Horseman Sewell have both resigned.

…

By Graham Grant

PUBLISHED: 08:30 GMT, 1 October 2012 | UPDATED: 09:33 GMT, 1 October 2012

Find this story at 1 October 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Olympics security Seventh Report of Session 2012–13 Volume I

and

Olympics security written evidence – United Kingdom Parliament 

But board decides chief executive Nick Buckles should keep his job in ‘best interest of company and all its stakeholders’

G4S’s chief operating officer David Taylor-Smith has resigned but chief executive Nick Buckles keeps his job. Photograph: PA

Two senior executives at G4S have resigned over the company’s failure to deliver its contract for the London 2012 Olympics, but chief executive Nick Buckles has kept his job.

David Taylor-Smith, chief operating officer, and Ian Horseman-Sewell, managing director for G4S Global Events, are stepping down following the firm’s failure to meet its Olympics commitments. The G4S board, though, has concluded Buckles should stay on “in the best interest of the company and all of its stakeholders”.

Taylor-Smith and Horseman-Sewell are leaving following an inquiry into the Olympics debacle by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It found G4S had failed to strengthen its management and its “structures and processes” to handle the “unique and complex” task of delivering more than 10,000 trained guards to protect Olympic venues.

G4S summarised PwC’s conclusions in a statement to the stock market on Friday morning. It said: “The company has management and other structures and processes that have proved highly effective in delivering the company’s regular business over many years but it did not recognise these structures and processes needed augmenting for the Olympic contract.

“The monitoring and tracking of the security workforce, management information and the project management framework and practices were ineffective to address the scale, complexities and dependencies of the Olympic contract. Together this caused the failure of the company to deliver the contract requirements in full and resulted in the identification of the key problems at a very late stage.”

G4S’s failure meant the British army was called in to provide security during the Olympics fortnight.

The G4S chairman, John Connolly, said the company admitted it had not delivered. He said: “G4S has accepted responsibility for its failure to deliver fully on the Olympic contract. We apologise for this and we thank the military and the police for the vital roles they played in ensuring the delivery of a safe and secure Games.”

Buckles faced heavy criticism when he appeared before the home affairs committee in July, where David Winnick MP told him the company’s reputation was in tatters.

The G4S board, though, has concluded that Buckles should not lose his job.

“Whilst the chief executive has ultimate responsibility for the company’s performance, the review did not identify significant shortcomings in his performance or serious failings attributable to him in connection with the Olympic contract,” it said.

…

Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 September 2012 08.08 BST

Find this story at 28 September 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Report found monitoring and tracking of security workforce was inadequate
Also concluded that management failed to appreciate scale and exact nature of the project

The head of bungling security firm G4S will keep his job despite an independent review finding the company guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract.

Embattled Nick Buckles, whose pay and benefits package was worth £5.3million last year, had been widely expected to lose his lucrative post over the fiasco.

But instead, two of his deputies will pay the price for the group’s failures during the Games.

The company’s UK boss David Taylor-Smith and events chief Ian Horseman Sewell have both resigned.

G4S signed a £284million contract to provide 10,400 Games security guards, but just 16 days before the opening ceremony it admitted it had only fulfilled 83 per cent of contracted shifts and could not deliver and the army was drafted in.

A damning report by accountancy firm Pricewaterhouse- Coopers found the company’s handling of the deal was ‘ineffectual’.

It said the group was ‘capable of fulfilling the contract’ but ‘did not recognise’ the scale of the work, and listed a catalogue of errors, including bad management.

Controversially, however, PwC said it was not ‘in the best interests of the company’ for Mr Buckles to leave, despite the fact he was twice dragged in front of MPs to explain the fiasco.

G4S said in a statement: ‘Whilst the CEO has ultimate responsibility for the company’s performance, the review did not identify significant shortcomings in his performance or serious failings attributable to him in connection with the Olympic contract.’

Labour MP Keith Vaz, who is chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee and led the hearings into the G4S blunders, said the decision to keep Mr Buckles was ‘not closure’.

But G4S chairman John Connolly said: ‘[Mr Buckles] couldn’t be expected to in detail be responsible for every large contract.’

Chief operating officer David Taylor-Smith, pictured left, is one of two senior directors to have resigned after the G4S Olympics security fiasco

The report said the contract problems were largely specific to the Olympics, with the company not planning sufficiently for the scale and complexity of what was needed.

Taylor-Smith was responsible for the contract and for ensuring it was delivered on budget and on time, while Sewell was the account director who said just before the Games that the company could have delivered two events of that scale at the same time.

However, Buckles, who has been with the world’s biggest security group for 27 years, has been the face of the Olympic failure, taking to television and radio to apologise to the British public and twice being hauled in front of a Parliamentary Committee to explain what had happened.

London Mayor Boris Johnson told LBC 97.3 radio it was right the G4S bosses quit over the Olympics fiasco.

He said: ‘The rank and file, the troops on the ground, did a wonderful job, but when you look at what happened in the management of those hordes of G4S employees who did a great job, I’m not going to try and persuade them to stay this morning.’

G4S fulfilled 83 per cent of contracted shifts at the Games, but failed to provide the required 10,400 contracted security guards
G4S PRISONER ESCAPES

Police have issued a photograph of a prisoner who escaped from custody by climbing out of a window at a court.

Michael Davidson, 27, absconded from Tain Sheriff Court in the Highlands on Tuesday afternoon.

Northern Constabulary said that while he is not dangerous, he should not be approached.

They urged anyone who sees him to contact police immediately.

The force said that the man was the responsibility of security firm G4S at the time.

It is believed the prisoner escaped through a window in the building.

G4S said they are carrying out a full investigation into the incident and will be working closely with the Scottish Prison Service and relevant authorities to investigate the circumstances.

G4S has largely prospered under Buckles, who has presided over a share price rise of some 76 percent since being elevated to group CEO in July 2005.

But investors have worried that the Olympics affair could jeopardise G4S’s relationship with the government, a core customer, at a time when Britain wants to heavily involve the private sector in running public services.

Government deals account for over half of G4S’s £1.8billion of British revenue and make up more than 20 per cent of its pipeline of potential UK work, which includes prison management deals and electronic tagging contracts.

G4S, which has estimated its loss on the Olympics contract at around £50 million, is the world’s biggest private security company with more than 650,000 staff worldwide.

…

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 08:00 GMT, 28 September 2012 | UPDATED: 23:51 GMT, 28 September 2012

Find this story at 28 September 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Olympian hubris prompts world’s second-largest employer to sacrifice its senior executives. Kim Sengupta reports

Asked in an interview not so long ago what had been his best experiences in life, David Taylor-Smith responded that one of them was “being chased by a rhino”. The chief operating officer of G4S must have felt he was undergoing something similar in the aftermath of the Olympics debacle with the sensation perhaps not so enticing this time around.

The rhino has caught up with Mr Taylor-Smith with painful consequences. He is one of two executives who have paid the price for the security firm’s failure to provide enough guards for the London Games and the humiliation and opprobrium that followed.

The way Mr Taylor-Smith was treated at the end, say his friends, was grossly unfair towards someone who has worked hard for the company for the last 14 years. The news of his departure was leaked to Sky television 36 hours before the board made their decision public; he was, they held, being made a scapegoat for failings which go far wider in the management.

Mr Taylor-Smith’s detractors, and there are a few in G4S, hold that he was the author of his own misfortune and that the Olympics shortcomings were the result of his management style which was characterised by an unwillingness to listen to the views of others and surround himself with yes men.

Following the company’s failure to provide the 10,400 security guards for the Olympics, G4S commissioned an inquiry by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It found that G4S had failed to strengthen its management and its “structures and processes” to handle the “unique and complex” task it faced.

Although Mr Taylor-Smith and Ian Horseman-Sewell, managing director of global events, resigned, the chief executive, Nick Buckles, has kept his job, the board deciding on this “in the best interest of the company and all its shareholders”. Whilst the chief executive has ultimate responsibility for the company’s performance, the review did not identify significant shortcomings in his performance or serious failings attributable to him in connection with the Olympics contract.

Until the recent turn of events, allies of Mr Taylor-Smith hoped that he would one day succeed Mr Buckles, heading the world’s largest security company with branches in 125 countries, and, with 657,000 employees on its books, the third-largest global employer after Wal-Mart and Foxconn.

According to some former colleagues, a private dinner in January celebrating the chief operating officer post was described as in honour of “the king-in-waiting”.

The Olympics put paid to that. It is ironic that the military had to step in to make up the shortfall in the security numbers. Mr Taylor-Smith had been an Army officer and, during his tenure, there was a dramatic increase in the numbers of ex-servicemen who were employed with huge excitement, it was said, on his part if they were SAS or from the Special Boat Service. Some of these appointments, say colleagues, were successful. But others not.

After the Army, Mr Taylor-Smith worked in conservation programmes in Latin America and Africa – where he had his rhino experience – before joining Securicor, which later formed part of G4S, in 1998. In 2006 he was appointed CEO of G4S in the UK and Ireland when the company was undergoing rapid expansion which saw it swallow up firms such as ArmorGroup and Chubb.

One of Mr Taylor-Smith’s main claims to fame in the company, and a great boost to his upward trajectory was the acquisition of justice sector, contracts from the Government enabling them to operate detention centres. The business was highly lucrative but also led to controversy. There were highly publicised and embarrassing cases of prisoner escapes. Last year it was claimed that G4S guards had been repeatedly warned about the use of force on detainees and asylum seekers after the death of an Angolan deportee, Jimmy Mubenga, on a board a departing British Airways flight. An internal document urged management to “meet this problem head on before the worst happens” and that G4S was “playing Russian roulette with detainees’ lives.”

…

Kim Sengupta
Saturday, 29 September 2012

Find this story at 29 September 2012

The Independent
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© independent.co.uk

Taken on the beach at West Wittering, a small seaside resort in Sussex, the photograph shows a young Keith Richards giving a friendly hug to a man he knew only as ‘Acid King David’.

As his nickname suggested, the Rolling Stones’ mysterious new hanger-on possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the newest strains of LSD, combined with an almost magical ability to procure them.

For Richards, that was reason enough to embrace anybody, but the friendly smile of the ‘Acid King’ in that picture, taken on a cold Sunday afternoon in February 1967, belied the intent of a man who was far from all he seemed.

He had joined Richards, Mick Jagger and various of their entourage for a weekend at Redlands, Richards’s pretty half-timbered cottage, just a few miles away from West Wittering.

This chocolate-box country residence seemed bizarrely at odds with Richards’s hard-living vagabond image, but its name was about to become synonymous with one of the most notorious drugs busts in rock ’n’ roll history.

Many lurid details would emerge from the Redlands raid.

Most famously, there were reports that the police had discovered Mick Jagger’s then girlfriend Marianne Faithfull in a compromising position with a Mars Bar.

This story, pure invention as it turned out, has overshadowed a far more intriguing detail of the case.

As I have discovered, while researching a new biography of Mick Jagger, the Redlands raid was part of an extraordinary plot, orchestrated by our own MI5 and the FBI and designed to put an early end to the Rolling Stones’ career.

The details were revealed to me by Maggie Abbott, a British film agent based in Los Angeles.

During the Eighties, she befriended an eccentric figure named David Jove, producer of one of the earliest cable television shows, and the host of numerous fancy-dress ‘happenings’ at his cave-like studio in West Hollywood.

After swearing her to secrecy, Jove confided that his real name was David Snyderman and that he was the man known to the Rolling Stones as ‘Acid King David’.

And any doubt about this is dispelled by photographs of him in various of his strange avant-garde productions.

Although he is camouflaged by facepaint, his short curly hair and sensitive cheekbones are unquestionably those of the weekend guest photographed with Keith Richards on West Wittering beach a few hours before the bust.

In January 1967, according to the account he gave Maggie Abbott, Snyderman was a failed TV actor, drifting around Europe in the American hippie throng with Swinging London as his final destination.

At Heathrow Airport he was caught with drugs in his luggage and expected to be thrown into jail and instantly deported.

Instead, British Customs handed him over to some ‘heavy people’ who hinted they belonged to MI5 and told him there was ‘a way out’ of his predicament. This was to infiltrate the Rolling Stones, supply Mick Jagger and Keith Richard with drugs, and then get them busted.

According to Snyderman, MI5 were operating on behalf of an FBI offshoot known as COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) set up by the FBI’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, in the Twenties to protect national security and maintain the existing social and political order.

By 1967, COINTELPRO was focusing on the subversive effect of rock music on America’s young, particularly the kind coming from Britain, and most particularly the kind played by the Rolling Stones.

That they were such a target for the intelligence services had much to do with the machinations of their first manager, Andrew Loog Oldham.

As Beatlemania swept the nation, and the Fab Four appeared on the Royal Variety Show, respectfully ducking their mop-tops before the Queen Mother, he realised that The Beatles’ original fans felt let down by their mainstream success. Where was the excitement, the rebellion, in liking the same band your parents, or even grandparents did?

Oldham set about marketing the Rolling Stones as the anti-Beatles, the scowling flip side of the coin being minted by the Liverpudlians’ manager Brian Epstein like some modern-day Midas. ‘They don’t wash much and they aren’t all that keen on clothes,’ Oldham told the Press. From then on, the word that went ahead of them was ‘dirty’.

Nothing was further from the truth. Mick was utterly fastidious about personal cleanliness and Brian Jones washed his eye-obscuring blond helmet so religiously each day that the others nicknamed him ‘Mister Shampoo’.
Rolling Stones first manager Andrew Loog Oldham set about marketing the band as the anti-Beatles… ‘They don’t wash much and they aren’t all that keen on clothes,’ Oldham told the Press. From then on, the word that went ahead of them was ‘dirty’

The Stones were also fashion-mad but Oldham always insisted they should go onstage in the same Carnaby Street gear in which they’d arrived at the theatre. In an era when pop bands invariably wore matching suits, this appalled the parents of their young fans, but it was as nothing compared to the scandal caused by the Stones’ hair.

When they burst on to the music scene in 1963 it was in a Britain that still equated masculinity with the Army recruit’s stringent ‘short back and sides’. Curling over ears and brushing collars, the Stones’ long locks were almost as much as an affront to polite society as Mick Jagger’s unusually large mouth and vivid red lips. These seemed to have an indecency all of their own, even before they snarled out the Stones’ highly provocative lyrics.

In June 1965, their single Satisfaction created the greatest scandal in America since Elvis Presley first swivelled his hips exactly a decade earlier. With the line ‘tryin’ to make some girl’, it contained the first direct reference to sex in any pop song, an outrage compounded 18 months later when the Stones released Let’s Spend The Night Together.

There had been innumerable songs about nocturnal trysts but never one with so barefaced an invitation to get between the sheets. The furore was such that, when the Stones previewed the song on America’s Ed Sullivan television show in January 1967, Mick was forced to change the crucial phrase to Let’s Spend Some Time Together.

He agreed to do so, but only with much pointed eye-rolling every time he reached the newly-neutered line.

All this was bad enough, but then came a truly unforgivable incident. A week after that appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, and just three weeks before the Redlands drugs bust, the Stones were invited to top the bill on Sunday Night At The London Palladium, the much-loved TV variety show which had been the making of The Beatles.

During rehearsals they announced that they would not take part in the hallowed tradition of acts waving goodbye to viewers from a revolving podium during the grand finale.

In the end they compromised — standing off the podium and waving, with clear sarcasm and disrespect. This highly rebellious act won them few friends.
The cumulative effect of the band’s many ‘outrages’ became clear when the FBI asked for MI5’s co-operation in getting Mick Jagger and Keith Richards charged with drug possession, thus ensuring that they would be denied visas for the U.S. tours which were essential if they were to remain at the top in the music business’

The cumulative effect of all these outrages became clear when the FBI asked for MI5’s co-operation in getting Mick Jagger and Keith Richards charged with drug possession, thus ensuring that they would be denied visas for the U.S. tours which were essential if they were to remain at the top in the music business.

By now MI5 was more than happy to assist in the thwarting of these public menaces, and the detention of David Snyderman at Heathrow Airport presented an opportunity too good to miss. Within a couple of weeks of agreeing to help the secret services, he had somehow become friendly with all the front-line Stones, although he was to prove far from an ideal agent provocateur.

The bait with which he had piqued Keith’s interest in particular was a new Californian-made variety of LSD known as ‘Sunshine’, said to provide a more tranquil and relaxing kind of trip. He duly arrived for that weekend at Redlands with a business-like attaché case containing quantities of the new drug, excessive consumption of which appears to have lowered his own guard.

He kept his cover throughout the Saturday but the following day he almost gave the game away, talking enigmatically to Stones’ photographer Michael Cooper about spying and espionage. ‘He was into the James Bond thing,’ recalls Cooper. ‘You know, the whole CIA bit.’

Fortunately for the Acid King, this was interpreted by the others as so much drug-induced rambling and all remained set for the trap to go ahead.

At around 5pm on the same Sunday afternoon which had found them all on West Wittering beach, a Detective Constable John Challen answered the telephone at West Sussex Police Headquarters in nearby Chichester.

An anonymous male voice, never since identified, informed him that a ‘riotous party’ was going on at Redlands and that drugs were being used.

Like most other regional forces, West Sussex did not have a dedicated drugs squad. The nearest they had to a narcotics expert was a Detective Sergeant Stanley Cudmore, who had recently been diagnosed with a brain tumour and given light office duties while he underwent outpatient treatment.

He had used the time well, reading up on the various illegal substances then said to be circulating in Britain, and was now summoned to join a task force of 18 officers descending on Redlands.
Detective Constable John Challen recalled being momentarily disoriented by the scene in Keith’s living room – the rubble of bottles, ashtrays, guitars, flickering candles and smouldering joss sticks, among which long-haired, long-robed figures of not instantly determinable gender reclined on large Moroccan floor cushions

The occupants did not hear the seven police vehicles draw up outside, or notice anything amiss, until a female detective’s face appeared at the leaded window of the big, high-raftered living room where they all happened to have gathered.

Even then, she was thought to be a Stones fan who, like many before, had got on to Keith’s property without difficulty and would be appeased by a friendly word and an autograph.

After thunderous knocking, the front door was opened to reveal the impressive figure of a Chief Inspector Gordon Dineley.

This was West Sussex’s first drugs raid and he had marked the occasion by wearing his full dress uniform, complete with white-braided peaked cap and military-style cane.

If Mick and the others felt shock and disbelief at the subsequent surge of police officers into the house, the raiders themselves were equally at a loss. None had ever been inside a rock star’s home before.

DC Challen recalled being momentarily disoriented by the scene in Keith’s living room – the rubble of bottles, ashtrays, guitars, flickering candles and smouldering joss sticks, among which long-haired, long-robed figures of not instantly determinable gender reclined on outsize Moroccan floor cushions.

Even Keith’s choice of paintwork to set off the old oak beams, not healthy-minded white or cream distemper but dark matte shades of purple, brown and orange, struck DC Challen as incriminatingly ‘strange’.

But one decorative detail above all mesmerised constable and chief inspector alike.

On returning from the afternoon’s walk to the beach, Marianne Faithfull had gone upstairs for a bath and rejoined the others swathed only in a fur rug pulled from one of the beds.

It was left to Detective Sergeant Cudmore, West Sussex Constabulary’s nearest approach to a sniffer dog, to inhale the air around Marianne for what he alone could recognise as the tell-tale odour of cannabis.

While this was going on, her behaviour was almost tantamount to obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty. From time to time she deliberately let her fur rug slip down around her shoulders, showing ‘portions of her nude body’.

Each of the plain-clothes officers collared an individual house-guest to search while the uniformed element guarded the exits. There was some initial confusion when woman detective constable Evelyn Fuller approached a King’s Road flower child named Nicky Cramer, who wore makeup as well as exotic silk pyjamas, and mistook him for a female.

The first finds were made on Acid King David: a small tin box and an envelope containing what DS Cudmore recognised as cannabis. Yet as the police executed their search warrant to the utmost, rummaging minutely through every cupboard and drawer, the incriminating attaché case somehow lay undisturbed in the middle of the room.

…

By Philip Norman

PUBLISHED: 21:07 GMT, 30 September 2012 | UPDATED: 14:42 GMT, 1 October 2012

Find this story at 1 October 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Take a trip back in time to when two governments(who once hated each other) teamed up in an attempt to assassinate the Rolling Stones‘ career. They attempted to do so before The Rolling Stones could fill the minds of the youth with rock & roll.

The Rolling Stones are celebrating 50 years of rocking, and now Philip Norman writes in his book ‘Mick Jagger’, that the FBI and MI5 plotted against the band. The author alleges the two agencies teamed up after Acid King Dave cooperated in lieu of going to jail. The failing actor, after being busted at Heathrow Airport with drugs, cut a deal with MI5.

Phillip says that led to dealing drugs to the Rolling Stones which turned into the infamous Redlands bust. The idea he claims was all the FBI’s who wanted to keep Keith and Mick off of American soil. Both did jail time, Keith Richards was convicted for allowing marijuana to be smoked at his estate and Mick Jagger for amphetamines.

They still couldn’t keep the Rolling Stones from rocking the U.S., but then guitarist Brian Jones did until his ‘misadventure’ death in 1969.

By: Kain | Yesterday
Find this story at 2 October 2012

It is one of the most intriguing chapters in the history of the Rolling Stones.

The drugs raid on a party at guitarist Keith Richards’s Sussex home, Redlands, more than 40 years ago very nearly destroyed the band.

And one of the 1967 episode’s unexplained mysteries was the identity of the man blamed by Richards and Mick Jagger for setting them up, a young drug dealer known as the Acid King.

He was a guest at the party – and supplied the drugs – but vanished after the raid, never to be seen or heard of again.

Jagger and Richards were arrested and jailed for possession of cannabis and amphetamines, though later acquitted on appeal.

Richards claimed last week in his autobiography, Life, that the Acid King was a police informant called David Sniderman.

The truth appears to confirm Richards’s long-held belief that the band was targeted by an Establishment fearful of its influence over the nation’s youth.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Sniderman was a Toronto-born failed actor who told his family and friends he was recruited by British and American intelligence as part of a plot to discredit the group.

After the Redlands bust, he slipped out of Britain and moved to the States where he changed his name to David Jove, and lived in Hollywood, later working as a small-time producer and film-maker.

Maggie Abbott, a Sixties talent agent, met him in Los Angeles in 1983 and became his lover. He told her how he infiltrated the group but said he was now ‘on the run’.

She said: ‘David was a heavy drug user but had a quick wit. He was the perfect choice to infiltrate the Stones.

‘He never showed any remorse for what he did. It was all about how he had been “the victim”. He was a totally selfish person.

‘Mick had been my friend as well as a client and I thought about trying to persuade David to come clean publicly.

‘But he was always armed with a handgun and I feared that if I gave him away, he’d shoot me.’

His identity was confirmed by a scion of a family of American philanthropists,
James Weinstock.

Two years after the Redlands raid, ‘Dave Jove’ married Mr Weinstock’s sister, Lotus, in Britain.

‘They’d come up with some new way to make acid and decided to go to the UK and sell it,’ Miss Abbott said.

But David was caught carrying pot by Customs.

‘Some other guys turned up – he implied they were MI5 or MI6 – and they gave him an ultimatum: he’d get out of prison time if he set up the Stones.’

The British agents were in cahoots, he told Miss Abbott, with the FBI’s notorious Counterintelligence division, known as Cointelpro, which specialised in discrediting American groups deemed to be ‘subversive’.

On Christmas Day in 1969, ‘Jove’s’ new wife, Lotus, gave birth to a daughter, Lili. Their marriage lasted 18 years, though they never lived together.

‘I first met David when I returned to California from Bali, where I had gone searching for God,’ said James Weinstock, Lotus’s brother.

‘One New Year’s Eve, he showed me a gun and said he’d just killed a man who was messing with his car.’ Later he was rumoured to have murdered a TV personality, Peter Ivers, the presenter of a TV show that ‘Jove’ produced.

Miss Abbott said: ‘There was talk that Peter had decided to leave the show and David was angry. ‘I discovered “Jove” wasn’t David’s real name when he shot himself through his heel with his gun.

‘When we checked him into hospital, he used a made-up name and later I found out his real name was Sniderman.’

His first half-hearted admission was to Mr Weinstock: ‘He told me he was tight with the Rolling Stones in England, but had a falling-out with them,’ he said.

‘He was arrested for some serious offence, but managed to extricate himself, and he said it all looked very suspicious when the police busted the Rolling Stones. They froze him out after that.’

In 1985, Miss Abbott and an old friend, Marianne Faithfull, went out for dinner in Los Angeles.

Miss Abbott introduced her to ‘Jove’ – but Ms Faithfull soon told her she wanted to leave.

Miss Abbott says: ‘When we got into my car, she said, “It’s him, the Acid King. He set up the Redlands bust. Don’t ever see him again”. ’

Miss Abbott added: ‘Two months after the evening with Marianne, I finally had it out with him.
‘To my amazement, he told me everything. He said, “It’s a relief to be able to talk about it”. ’

…

By Sharon Churcher and Peter Sheridan
UPDATED: 13:46 GMT, 24 October 2010

Find this story at 24 October 2010

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

“When police forces and intelligence services engage in international cooperation, parliamentary oversight is the loser. The increasing significance of undercover police networks is making this situation far more critical.” These comments were made by Bundestag Member Andrej Hunko in response to the Federal Government’s answer, which is now available in English (see below), to his Minor Interpellation.

The purpose of the interpellation, a written parliamentary question, was to heighten awareness of the following little-known police structures:

•    the Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group (CSW), comprising mobile task forces on surveillance techniques, drawn from 12 EU Member States and Europol;

•    Europol’s analysis work file entitled Dolphin, which entails the surveillance of left-wing activists in areas such as animal rights and anarchism;

•    the Remote Forensic Software User Group, which was created by the Bundeskriminalamt, the German Federal Criminal Police Office, to promote sales of German Trojan software abroad.

•    the European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG), comprising spy chiefs from Member States of the EU and from countries such as Russia, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine;

•    the International Working Group on Undercover Policing (IWG), comprising spy chiefs from European countries as well as from countries such as the United States, Israel, New Zealand and Australia;

Mr Hunko went on to say:

“One of the main parts of the interpellation focused on the undercover activity of British police officer Mark Kennedy, whose infiltration of European leftist movements exemplifies police cooperation conducted beyond the bounds of parliamentary oversight. It remains unclear under whose orders the undercover investigator was operating during the years of his activity.

Kennedy used his infiltration of the Icelandic environmental movement to worm his way into leftist circles from Finland to Portugal through the information events he staged. The Icelandic police are stubbornly rejecting requests from the Minister of Justice to release full details of his activity into the public domain, claiming that disclosure would prejudice British security interests. Even though Members of the Icelandic Parliament have a right to ask questions on police matters, they are not being given any information.

The exposure of the British police officer, by contrast, has been the focus of deliberations in the European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG), of which Iceland is not a member. The Federal Government has not revealed the substance of German and British contributions to this discussion. The remit of the ECG, which meets behind closed doors, includes the creation of false identities and the examination of legal frameworks in the countries that send and host undercover agents.

Foreign police officers must obtain authorisation before entering the territory of a sovereign state. They must not commit any criminal offences during their stay. Kennedy, however, sought to impress activists in Berlin by setting fire to a refuse container. Arrested by the police, he even concealed his true identity from the public prosecutor. This is illegal, as the Federal Government has indicated now.

Last year, Germany, together with Britain, urged the European Commission to exempt cross-border undercover activities from a planned new directive establishing a European Investigation Order. This would also make parliamentary oversight of such activities even more difficult.

The necessity of this parliamentary oversight is illustrated by the government use of software to hack into personal computers. In 2008, the German Federal Criminal Police Office established a cross-border Remote Forensic Software User Group with a view to helping police forces in other countries to introduce German spyware.

The Federal Criminal Police Office has also sent delegations to Canada, Israel, the United States and other countries to discuss Trojan programs with police forces and intelligence services. Although the German supreme court had imposed rigid limits in 2007 on the widespread practice of searching entire computer systems, representatives of the Criminal Police Office travelled to the United Kingdom and other destinations to ‘share experience’ on that practice.

Even in the national context it is difficult to detect illegal practices on the part of police forces and intelligence services. Securing judicial convictions for criminal offences is even harder. How much more, then, must the increasingly cross-border nature of police cooperation muddy these waters.

This is why the activity of undercover police networks must be relentlessly exposed. This applies especially to cooperation with the private business sector, which became just as blatant in the case of spyware as it had been in the criminalisation of animal-rights activism, to the benefit of British companies such as Gamma International, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca.

I call on the UK Government to disclose all information regarding the activity of Mark Kennedy in Germany and to inform all interested parties retrospectively of his activity. This is the only way in which key questions can be answered, such as whether he had sexual relations on false pretences with targets or contacts in Germany, as he did in the UK.

I must assume in any case that the use of British undercover agents to infiltrate left-wing movements was unlawful, because no police officer is allowed to spend years investigating activists in the absence of any specific grounds for suspicion or any other defined investigative objective.”

Download the answer to the parliamentary question concerning secretly operating international networks of police forces (in English): http://www.andrej-hunko.de/start/download/doc_download/236-concerning-secretly-operating-international-networks-of-police-forces

Download the answer in German (International im Verborgenen agierende Netzwerke von Polizeien): http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/098/1709844.pdf

Find this story at 22 August 2012 

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

Statewatch can reveal the existence of a previously unknown international police working group geared towards discussing and developing covert investigative techniques. At the same time parliamentary questions in Germany have seen further details of other police networks emerge – although many questions remain unanswered – in particular on the work and activities of former policy infiltrator Mark Kennedy.

Project ISLE

Recent research by Statewatch has led to the discovery of an EU-funded project known as ISLE (International Specialist Law Enforcement), a project initiated with the aim of building “a network of [EU] Member State organisations that may develop coordination, cooperation and mutual understanding amongst law enforcement agencies using ‘specialist techniques’.” [1]

Project ISLE has its origins in a “pilot seminar consisting of twenty-six ‘specialist technique’ practitioners” held in London in 2006, and was created to increase cooperation and coordination amongst EU law enforcement authorities utilising “specialist techniques”: “covert entry into premises or vehicles and the facilitation of covert searches of property, covert forensic capabilities and covertly installed technical devices.” [2]

In 2010, as part of its programme “Prevention of and Fight against Crime”, the EU awarded €115,614 for the project to the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). SOCA is one of three main “project partners”, alongside Belgium’s Commissariaat-Generaal Special Units (CGSU), and Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (BKA).

SOCA provides a project manager and administration, and as part of the steering group with the CGSU and BKA has a mandate to “create a larger Working Group” consisting of “full-time practitioners from organisations where their countries [sic] legislation supports ‘specialist techniques’.”

The “workgroup of practitioners” will:

– “Expand on existing partnerships and create new ones, including developing Member States, to promote and develop coordination, cooperation and mutual understanding of ‘specialist techniques'”;
– “Broaden the range of ‘specialist techniques’ by sharing knowledge on capability, identifying common standards and jointly developing new technologies”; and
– “Implement an agreed control strategy with shared responsibility and engagement in achieving a long-term program of activity toward the development of ‘specialist techniques'”

A document outlining the group’s terms of reference states that:

“Participants and their organisations must be prepared to promote and encourage international, inter-agency cooperation in ‘specialist techniques’ and contribute to the establishment of a long-term program.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, secrecy is clearly the order of the day:

“Organisations with diplomatic/political responsibilities may find it difficult to participate openly during information exchanges and due consideration should be given to their role in the project.”

Europol provides a secure database and communication channels in order to permit secure communication and information exchange between participants.

ISLE’s official starting date as an EU-funded project was 9 November 2009, with one document stating that the project “will take no more than 36 months, including three months for the production and submission of the final report.”

The group should currently be moving into the phase of producing this final report. The financing, participants, practices, and accountability of the group are currently the subject of further research.

One of many

Project ISLE is the latest addition to a growing list of publicly-known but highly secretive international police networks concerned with infiltration and surveillance. They include:

– The Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group, made up of “mobile task forces on surveillance techniques, drawn from 12 EU Member States and Europol”;
– The Remote Forensic Software User Group, created “to promote the sale of German Trojan software abroad”;
– The International Working Group on Undercover Policing (IWG), made up of “spy chiefs from European countries as well as from countries such as the US, Israel, New Zealand and Australia”; and
– The European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG)

In May this year, the German MP for Die Linke, Andrej Hunko, received a lengthy response to a number of parliamentary questions that have now been translated into English. The answers to some of his questions reveal further details of these the composition and practices of these groups, although many of the government’s responses cite “reasons of confidentiality” for refusing public access to information. [3]

The Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group (CSW) first met in 2005, and its meetings have included representatives from thirteen states (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK) and Europol, whose representative contributes “Europol’s technical perspective.”

The German government has refused to say on whose initiative the group first met and what “operative and tactical options” were raised by the German delegation at CSW meetings. It has also refused to disclose what contributions Europol has made to the group in the last five years. In nine of his thirteen questions about the CSW Hunko was told that for “reasons of confidentiality” the government could not make their answer publically available.

However, there is more transparency over meetings concerned with surveillance software used for telecommunications interception and the remote searching of individuals’ computers – products that German police forces have in the past used to “surveil people’s internet activity beyond what is allowed by the law.” [4]

Details are provided in the German government’s answers at ten different meetings held since 2008, with law enforcement agencies from a number of different states attending, including France, the Netherlands, Canada, the USA and Israel.

Their answers reveal that a meeting in October 2010 was devoted to discussion of the software package FinSpy, produced by the German company Gamma International. Assessment of the product by the BKA was “fundamentally positive” from a technical point of view and they “purchased a licence for the FinSpy software for a limited period of time for test purposes in early 2011.”

Gamma has also offered its products to the authorities of countries such as Oman, Turkmenistan, Egypt, and Bahrain, and in 2012 received a Big Brother Award for its willingness to cooperate with “government agencies of countries where human rights are respected to a far lesser degree than here in Germany.” [5]

In April, the European Parliament called for the introduction of strict rules on the export of tools that could be used to block websites and monitor communications, although no new legislation has yet been drafted. [6]

The German government’s answers also confirm that the International Working Group on Undercover Activities (IWG) was established in 1989, when the BKA joined. The German Customs Investigation Service (Zollkriminalamt) began participating in 2000. Once again, however, the government declined to answer the majority of questions publicly for “reasons of confidentiality.”

The European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities was also the subject of a number of questions from Hunko, and the German government has stated the group was established for:

“The promotion of international cooperation by law enforcement agencies at the European level with respect to the deployment of undercover investigators to combat organised crime.”

It is unclear why the “covert deployment of the British police officer Mark Kennedy” was discussed at the group’s meeting in 2011, considering its apparent concern with organised crime. Despite seven years undercover, there is no clear evidence that his work succeeded in preventing or exposing any specific incidents that would amount to serious or organised crime.

Global infiltration

Kennedy was exposed as a police spy following the collapse of a prosecution against environmental activists in the UK in early 2011, sparking a public outcry and the subsequent outing of a number of other infiltrators in protest movements. [7]

Whilst deployed undercover, Kennedy visited “11 countries on more than 40 occasions,” feeding back information to the UK’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit (now the National Domestic Extremism Unit) and subsequently police intelligence units from other countries. [8]

Outside of the UK and Northern Ireland, he visited the Republic of Ireland, Germany, Spain, Denmark, the USA, Poland, France, Italy, and Iceland, and according to the ruling of the UK Court of Appeal in the case that finally led to him being exposed, “Kennedy was involved in activities which went much further than the authorisation he was given,” and was “arguably, an agent provocateur.” [9]

Oversight and accountability

Despite fairly detailed knowledge of some of Kennedy’s movements and activities [10] national parliaments are still being denied information on his work, as noted by Andrej Hunko:

“The Icelandic police are stubbornly rejecting requests from the Minister of Justice to release full details of his activity into the public domain, claiming that disclosure would prejudice British security interests. Even though Members of the Iceland Parliament have a right to ask questions on police matters, they are not being given any information.”

Invoking “British security interests” would seem to suggest that there is clearly still much more information on the deployment by British authorities of police infiltrators overseas to come to light.

A report published earlier this year by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary on “national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest” was condemned by one police monitoring group, Fitwatch, as “a farce” that “fails to address any of the concerns addressed by activists.” [11]

Those concerns include the matter of sexual relations between infiltrators and activists, an issue also raised by Hunko, who has called for the British government to:

“Disclose all information regarding the activity of Mark Kennedy in Germany and to inform all interested parties retrospectively of his activity. This is the only way in which key questions can be answered, such as whether he had sexual relations on false pretences with targets or contacts in Germany, as he did in the UK.”

Numerous examples of infiltrators entering relationships with activists have come to light, and eight women are currently engaged in a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police alleging that they “were deceived into having long term intimate relationships with undercover police officers.” [12]

Yet despite one chief police officer stating that it would be “morally wrong” and “grossly unprofessional” for infiltrators to sleep with activists, the UK’s policing minister, Nick Herbert, has endorsed the practice, saying that a ban: “would provide a ready-made test for the targeted criminal group to find out whether an undercover officer was deployed among them.” [13]

Kennedy is now reported to be working for the Densus Group, “a US company that targets anti-capitalist demonstrators” run by Sam Rosenfeld, a “former British Army officer who toured Northern Ireland.” Kennedy “provides ‘risk and threat assessments’ to companies that suspect they might fall victim to ‘direct action’,” according to London’s Evening Standard [14] in an article seemingly based largely on reports originally posted on Indymedia UK. [15]

It remains unclear whether the full details of what happened during Kennedy’s seven years of undercover work will ever come to light or be comprehensively addressed by the authorities. As admitted by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary: “no single authorising officer appears to have been fully aware either of the complete intelligence picture in relation to Mark Kennedy or the NPOIU’s activities overall,” and “the full extent of his activity remains unknown.” [16]

Information currently in the public domain makes up only a small piece of a global puzzle of police working groups and networks dealing with infiltration, intrusion and surveillance not just of criminal groups, but political activists.

That there is a pan-European effort to collect and collate information and intelligence on left-wing activists is clear from the existence of Europol’s Analysis Working File Dolphin, which contains information on the No Borders network and “attacks against railway transports,” taken by some to cover either protests against trains carrying nuclear waste, or the No TAV (Treno Alta Velocità) movement in Italy that opposes the construction of a high-speed railway line. [17]

The legal implications of the deployment of undercover officers and intrusive surveillance techniques are significant, as is their impact on individuals. According to Hunko, the internationalisation of police work means that “parliamentary oversight is the loser.” He has called for secret international police networks to be “relentlessly exposed”, stating that:

“Even in the national context it is difficult to detect illegal practices on the part of police forces and intelligence services. Securing judicial convictions for criminal offences is even harder. How much more, then, must the increasingly cross-border nature of police cooperation muddy these waters?” [18]

Note: This article was amended on 28 August 2012 to show the correct amount of money awarded by the EU to SOCA. This was originally published as being €70,000.

Sources
[1] ‘International Specialist Law Enforcement’, Document 1, 2009
[2] ‘International Specialist Law Enforcement’, Document 2, 2009
[3] German Bundestag, ‘Answer of the Federal Government to the Minor Interpellation tabled by the Members of the Bundestag Andrej Hunko, Jan Korte, Christine Buchholz, other Members of the Bundestag and the Left Party parliamentary group’, 31 May 2012, in English and in German
[4] Statewatch Analysis: ‘State Trojans: Germany exports “spyware with a badge”‘ by Kees Hudig, March 2012
[5] ‘Category Technology’, Big Brother Awards, April 2012; Vernon Silver, ‘Cyber attacks on activists traced to FinFisher spyware of Gamma’, Bloomberg, 25 July 2012
[6] ‘Parliament wants EU rules for firms exporting internet censorship tools’, European Parliament, 18 April 2012
[7] Paul Lewis, Matthew Taylor and Rajeev Syal, ‘Third undercover police spy unmasked as scale of network emerges’, The Guardian, 15 January 2011
[8] HMIC, ‘A review of national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest’, February 2012; Statewatch Analysis: ‘Using false documents against “Euro-anarchists”: the exchange of Anglo-German undercover police highlights controversial police operations’, June 2012; ‘Mark Kennedy: A mole in Tarnac’, Monitoring European Police!, 17 April 2012
[9] Eveline Lubbers, ‘HMIC’s ’empty’ review leaves little hope for robust scrutiny of undercover cops’, SpinWatch, 28 March 2012
[10] ‘Mark Kennedy: A chronology of his activities’, PowerBase
[11] HMIC, ‘A review of national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest’; ‘HMIC report into domestic extremism – disgusting and farcical’, Netpol, 2 February 2012
[12] Rob Evans, ‘Women start legal action against police chiefs over emotional trauma – their statement’, The Guardian, 16 December 2011
[13] Tom Whitehead, ‘Undercover police not banned from sleeping with targets’, The Telegraph, 2 February 2012; Martin Beckford, ‘Undercover police must be allowed to have sex with activists’, The Telegraph, 14 June 2012
[14] Tom Harper, ‘EXCLUSIVE: Undercover detective in eco trial fiasco now works for US firm that spies on activists’, London Evening Standard, 21 June 2012
[15] ‘Ex-police spy Mark Kennedy’s current business activities’, Indymedia UK, 1 June 2012
[16] ‘A review of national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest’, p.24
[17] Andrej Hunko, ‘Abolish international databases on anarchy!’, 5 June 2012; ‘Europol boosts its reach, scope and information-gathering’, Statewatch News Online, 1 June 2012
[18] Andrej Hunko, ‘Secret police networks must be relentlessly exposed’, 22 August 2012

Find this story at 28 August 2012

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AMSTERDAM – Eind juli is een journaliste benaderd door ‘twee personen die zich bekendmaakten als agenten’, die haar vroegen om tegen betaling foto’s te maken voor de politie.

Daarvan heeft de Nederlandse Vereniging van Fotojournalisten (NVF) dinsdagavond melding gemaakt.

De 26-jarige studente/fotojournaliste werd op haar privéadres benaderd door twee agenten die zich bekendmaakten als politie. Ze zeiden haar foto’s op Facebook te hebben gezien.

De journaliste gaf ondanks herhaaldelijk verzoek te kennen niet te willen meewerken. Ze voelde zich geïntimideerd, toen de agenten maar bleven aandringen.

AIVD

Ze maakt regelmatig foto’s in de kraakscéne. Enkele weken eerder was haar camera gestolen. In het onderzoek daarnaar had de politie Amsterdam de geheugenkaart bekeken om strafrechtelijk materiaal te verzamelen, bevestigt een woordvoerder van de politie aan de NVF.

Maar de politie Amsterdam weet niets van het voorval, het bezoek staat daar niet geregistreerd. De woordvoerder denkt dat het ‘andere mensen’ zijn geweest.

De NVF heeft de AIVD benaderd, maar die kunnen niks over dit specifieke voorval zeggen. Wel laat een woordvoerster aan de NVF weten dat de AIVD ‘geen politie’ is.

Geen verlengstuk

De NVF is onderdeel van de Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten (NVJ), die eerder al te kennen gaf het ronselen van journalisten sterk te veroordelen. “Journalisten zijn geen verlengstuk van justitie.”

NVJ-secretaris Rosa García López van de sectie NVF geeft toe dat de agenten strikt juridisch ‘niets illegaals’ hebben gedaan. “Het enige dat we nu kunnen doen is het signaleren en hopen dat er een waarschuwing van de NVJ vanuit gaat”, zegt ze tegen NU.nl. “Daarom hopen we dat meer journalisten bij wie dit gebeurd is zich melden.”

Peking

In juni werd bekend dat de AIVD tijdens de Olympische Spelen in Peking in 2008 sportjournalisten zou hebben benaderd tegen betaling foto’s te maken van Chinese officials.

…

Find this story at 22 August 2012

Copyright © 1998-2012 NU.nl is onderdeel van het netwerk van Sanoma Media Netherlands groep

“De betrokkenheid van de deelnemende organisaties in de CT Infobox is op verschillende grondslagen gebaseerd. Dit levert naar het oordeel van de Commissie op sommige punten een onduidelijke positie op ten aanzien van ieders taken en verantwoordelijkheden. In dit kader hebben zich in het verleden ook daadwerkelijk fricties voorgedaan.”

Grote stilte gedurende deze verkiezingsperiode over de inlichtingendiensten en het terrorisme beleid. Dat is de laatste tien jaar wel anders geweest, maar misschien zijn de partijen inlichtingendiensten moe, hoewel de debatjes over controle na het tienjarig bestaan van de CTIVD anders doen vermoeden. Minister Spies kondigde zowaar een evaluatie, weliswaar alleen van de wet, aan. Dat allemaal in verband met een nieuwe wet die momenteel voorbereid wordt.

lees meer

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has admitted to destroying even more files relating to the right-wing extremist scene — this time on orders from the Interior Ministry in Berlin. The ministry denies the files contained any clues about the murderous National Socialist Underground trio.

Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic intelligence agency, has admitted to destroying additional files related to investigations on the right-wing extremist scene. A new agency report discloses that six files from secret wiretapping operations were destroyed in response to a Nov. 14, 2011 order from the Federal Interior Ministry in Berlin. The order came just days after revelations that the right-wing terror cell known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU) was responsible for the murders of nine small businessmen of Turkish and Greek origin.

The new incident once again exposes the seemingly chaotic state of the investigation into the murderous right-wing trio. For weeks, the BfV has been under public scrutiny after it became known that a senior agency official had shredded several files on his own initiative relating to informants in the right-wing scene just days after the NSU cell was discovered. The episode, referred to in the German press as the “Confetti Affair,” has cost agency head Heinz Fromm his job.

The BfV says that the two incidents are unrelated and that the deleted files were of no great importance. According to three agency reports, all of which have been obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, none of the lost data contained information relating to the NSU trio. The reports say that the files concerned separate investigations into the right-wing scene. Still, the admission and the timing of the deletions are likely to raise new questions about the agency’s professionalism and the effectiveness of its leaders.

Germany’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the BfV, claims that the destructions of the files were routine and justified the act as being in adherence to rules governing the length of time that surveillance files are allowed to be kept. That the files were destroyed so soon after the NSU trio was uncovered, the Ministry says, is mere coincidence — a claim seemingly substantiated by the fact that the Interior Ministry informed the parliamentary committee investigating the Confetti Affair about the deletions of its own accord at the beginning of this week.

Deepest Crisis in its History

The new agency reports are to be discussed at a special session of the parliamentary committee on Thursday morning. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich is scheduled to brief the committee on the destroyed files. Friedrich repeated on Wednesday his commitment to an extensive investigation into the BfV’s handling of the right-wing terror case. Months of revelations uncovering serious BfV errors during its investigation of the murder spree — which lasted from 2000 to 2007 — have plunged the agency into the deepest crisis in its history.

According to agency documents, the destroyed files related to six surveillance operations in the right-wing scene. One had to do with the formation of a right-wing group to target political opponents in the eastern state of Brandenburg. Another focused on a separate group established to distribute right-wing propaganda. And still another related to a possible presentation by right-wing extremist talking head Horst Mahler, who planned to read from a manifesto at the former concentration camp in Auschwitz in the summer of 2003. The NSU trio did not play a part in any of the surveillance operations.

BfV research also sheds light on the circumstances surrounding last week’s sudden resignation of Reinhard Boos, head of domestic intelligence in the eastern state of Saxony. Boos had asked to be replaced by August 1 after it emerged that transcripts of telephone conversations within the right-wing scene wiretapped by his agency in 1998 had recently come to light. The transcripts put enormous pressure on Boos, who had previously guaranteed Saxony’s state parliament that the responsible state investigative committee had been provided with all relevant documents.

The documents in Saxony include 163 pages of transcripts from BfV wiretaps of conversations between suspected members of the neo-Nazi rock bank “Landser,” the first band to ever be classified as a criminal organization by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice. The conversations were recorded between June 1998 and April 1999. But, for six months, surveillance activities also focused on Jan W., who was briefly suspected of having provided the terror trio with weapons. However, BfV officials said that they hadn’t found any evidence pointing toward involvement with the NSU and that they were only able to determine that W. had been selling outlawed Landser CDs.

Increasingly Embarrassing

As part of their eavesdropping operations, investigators were interested in gathering information on the underground NSU trio, which would later go on its murder spree across Germany. After receiving an informant’s tip from their intelligence colleagues in the state of Brandenburg that Jan W., a Chemnitz-based neo-Nazi, might be in contact with the three extremists who had slipped off the radar, officials in Saxony decided they wanted to eavesdrop on W. as well.

Then, however, they learned from BfV officials that W. was already under surveillance because of his affiliation with Landser as part of an operation known as “AO 774.” Federal officials supplied their colleagues in Saxony with several transcripts of their eavesdropping activities.

For intelligence officials, investigations into the files have become increasingly embarrassing. The documents make clear just how chaotic the situation related to purging and exchanging files had become. This has resulted, for example, in discrepancies between the list of files that BfV officials sent to Saxony and the list of those that have now turned up there.

These new reports might very well lead the parliamentarians on the investigative committee to wonder whether additional files with possible relevance to the NSU trio have also been destroyed. One list itemizing the deleted files indicates that a comparatively large number of dossiers related to right-wing extremism were destroyed after the terror cell had resurfaced. The itemization says that there were seven cases of document destruction in November 2011, 12 for December and seven more in early 2012.

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Find this story at 19 July 2012

07/19/2012 12:14 PM
Neo-Nazi Terror

By Matthias Gebauer

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012
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