First published in: Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywreching, 1985
Undercover police activity has become a standard feature of the contemporary political terrain. Disclosures in recent years indicate that environmentalist, anti-nuclear and animal rights groups are likely to be targeted for surreptitious investigation. This can take many forms, from an inconspicuous stranger who turns up to help at a demonstration, to a trained "deep cover" operative who may spend years working inside a target organization. These operations can be launched locally by a police or sheriff's department, or by any of a number of federal agencies.
Another major source of inside information for investigators is the "CI" or "confidential informant." These informers can be private citizens recruited to infiltrate a group, or fearful members who turn on their friends (usually to save themselves). WIthout the existence of the CI, or "snitch," there would in fact be very few arrests made for major crimes. However, CIs do have major short-comings from a police perspective, including their general unreliability, questionable status as testifying witnesses, and frequent refusal to testify in open court. Therefore, the information garnered from a CI must be backed up by the testimony of undercover police officers or supplemented by an intensive police investigation (which may involve surveillance and the use of search warrants) to build a case without putting the informer on the witness stand. In fact, the use of a CI in an arrest is usually not revealed, so the investigation may appear to be nothing more than competent police work.
Any monkeywrencher who suspects surveillance, should examine associates, study who has access to information now believed to be in the hands of the police, notice anyone who suddenly attempts to distance themselves, and be alert to any other indication that investigators are receiving inside information.
The Undercover Infiltrator
Both government agencies and private companies are routinely involved in running undercover operations. Small police departments and private firms (ranging from the large agencies like Pinkerton and Burns down to the security divisions maintained by large corporations and often staffed by former law enforcement agents) typically rely on the solitary agent to ferret out information which is then passed on to the agent's supervisors. Larger state and federal agencies have the resources to mount far more extensive infiltration efforts. Major efforts entail a team approach, with extensive backup equipment and personnel to exploit the information provided by the undercover cop. The team's job is to protect the undercover agent and assemble a mass of evidence so that a subsequent prosecution doesn't rely entirely on the testimony of one officer.
The increasing sophistication of undercover operations has made it more difficult to spot these people. Today's undercover officer can look and sound like anyone. Many years ago, an undercover cop might be exposed when suspicious associates pilfered his phone bill from a mailbox and found that it listed numerous calls to a recognizable police phone number. Those days are gone as the quality and training of undercover operatives has improved. Only the crudest attempts to infiltrate, such as those occurring at demonstrations or other well-publicized events, are likely to be obvious due to the appearance or demeanor of the plainclothes officer.
There are two broad categories of undercover operative: deep cover and light cover.
From Elite undercover squad uses tactics learned in Iraq war to catch rogue Republicans by David Young
An elite, hand-picked team of undercover soldiers is mounting a 24-hour surveillance operation on dissident Republicans intent on carrying out terror attacks in Northern Ireland, it was disclosed yesterday.
The squad, from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, is using round-the-clock communications intercept tactics currently deployed on enemy targets in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The decision by Sir Hugh Orde, Northern Ireland's chief constable, to call in the half-dozen specialist Signal Intelligence (Sigint) officers to support police has prompted an outcry from nationalist politicians.
But Sir Hugh defended the move yesterday, claiming the team's expertise was needed in the battle against dissidents.
He also rejected the notion it represented the return of special forces operations synonymous with the SAS during the Troubles.
From Undercover tactics get the message across
Government health and safety websites for young people are ditching the 'gov.uk' domain to boost appeal, says Michael Cross
In theory, government websites are supposed to identify themselves with the domain name "gov.uk". Yet several more creative government sites, generally aimed at young people, go to some lengths to disguise who runs and funds them.
The official drugs advisory site, www.talktofrank.com, celebrates its first anniversary this week. It has received 1.5m visits over the year, with traffic now running at 40,000 visits a week.
The site is a key part of the "Frank" campaign, a rebranding of the national drugs helpline. The site's core message is: "Drugs are illegal. Talking about them isn't." It attempts to provide facts about drugs in young people's language. "Too much sniffing speed and you're sneezing lumps out of your nose into a hanky," for example.
The site disguises its origins by adopting the ".com" domain rather than ".gov.uk". In the small print it calls itself "an independent government-funded website", but nowhere does it mention the Home Office, which runs the project.
Undercover Policing and the Shifting Terms of Scholarly Debate: The United States and Europe in Counterpoint
Jacqueline E. Ross
University of Illinois College of Law
Annual Review of Law & Social Science, Vol. 4, December 2008
University of Illinois College of Law
Annual Review of Law & Social Science, Vol. 4, December 2008
Among investigative tactics, undercover policing is unique in the extent to which it allows the police to shape the events they investigate. Yet this shared feature of undercover investigations produces very different academic controversies in the United States and Europe. European scholars fear the implications of legalizing tactics that had previously been tolerated, if at all, at the margins of legality. By contrast, American commentators seek to unsettle what they view as complacency about a tactic that is used far more widely in the United States than in Europe. In Italy and Germany, a long tradition of scholarship in criminal law treats police infiltration as a problem of government law-breaking. In France, a distinguished sociological tradition views undercover tactics as a privileged terrain of turf warfare between competing government agencies. Because of their interest in the entrapment defense, American academics focus largely on the criminal responsibility of targets, not operatives. More recently, American and European scholars have shifted their interest away from the criminal law, with its emphasis on the individual criminal liability of targets and undercover operatives, toward the exploration of new means for distributing responsibility among complementary institutional actors like police, prosecutors, and judges. Undercover policing has thus increasingly become a problem of criminal procedure, in which undercover tactics have come to be framed as threats to privacy, freedom of association, trial rights, and other civil liberties. As criminal investigations become increasingly transnational, criminal procedure has provided a shared framework of criticism and a familiar repertoire of solutions, facilitating national comparisons and sometimes muting national differences in regulatory norms and approach.
From When the Guards Guard Themselves: Undercover Tactics Turned Inward
A longer version of this paper appears in Policing and Society, 1992, Vol 2, pp.151-172.
Gary T. Marx
You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
- In Los Angeles nine officers from an elite narcotics unit were arrested for the large scale theft of seized funds. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and the FBI staged a phoney drug operation and videotaped the deputies stealing money. (L.A. Times, Sept. 2, 1989)
- In Cleveland FBI undercover agents set up and ran two gambling operations as part of a two year sting directed at local police. Thirty officers were arrested as a result and charged with extortion, obstruction of justice and narcotics and gambling violations. (Law Enforcement News, June 15, 1990)
- A New York prosecutor was arrested after taking money for arranging the dismissal of gun charges against a person he thought was an organized crime figure, but who was actually a federal agent. (Blecker 1984)
- As part of an FBI undercover operation, a Federal district judge in Florida was arrested on charges of obstructing justice and conspiring to collect bribes from a defendant posing as a racketeer. (New York Times, Nov. 29, 1987).
- In 1986 the New York City Corrections Department began placing undercover corrections officers in the city's jails to investigate drug offenses, excessive use of force and theft of weapons. (New York Times, Nov. 6, 1986).
The answer to Juvenal's question for despotic regimes may be "no one." The guards are a law unto themselves, and with respect to the public are relatively uncontrolled.1 But in the United States with its pluralistic system, the executive, legislative and judicial bodies watch and constrain each other. Outside institutions such as the mass media and professional associations (American Bar Association and International Association of Chiefs of Police) and public interest groups concerned with democracy and civil liberties also play a role.
However the guards are also expected to guard themselves. Self-regulation is a central tenet of professionalization. In the case of law enforcement, by careful selection, training, policy, and supervision the guards are expected to keep their own house in order. Day-to-day responsibility lies with self-control on the part of individual agents and bureaucratically defined supervisory roles, internal affairs units and inspectors general.
This paper focuses on one means of self-regulation which has recently become much more important: undercover tactics.2 The topic of undercover work is rich in complexity and paradox. If we wish to see the guards guarded using these means how is this best done? What are the risks and costs to other important values? If an undercover policy works and is legal, is it therefore necessarily good public policy? Should those in positions of authority be subject to greater restrictions on their liberty because of the greater temptations they face? Can we be sure that the evidence discovered is not itself simply an artifact of the investigation? How should we balance the access to evidence that may be otherwise unavailable, with the invasions of privacy and other unintended consequences that may be present? Will the internal use of covert means lower morale and productivity and mean less risk-taking and innovation? With multiple agencies with overlapping jurisdictions, can authorities avoid ensnaring each other in their traps? Is it appropriate to do good by doing bad? When the state uses deception does it set a bad example, modeling and legitimating the use of deception for its citizens? Given the power of the tactic to tempt and entrap, can political targeting be avoided? These issues run throughout the examples we consider and are discussed in the concluding section.
From Government Cracking Down on Mortgage Fraud
Several federal agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, announced that they had named 24 Chicago-area defendants in indictments for crimes related to mortgage fraud.
"Mortgage fraud often happens with the active participation of professionals in the industry. It is particularly disturbing that the fraud has continued notwithstanding widespread publicity about the real and serious consequences of mortgage fraud," said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, adding that undercover operations such as this one would continue.
The undercover sting, called "Operation Madhouse," involved agents meeting with loan professionals who then assisted them with providing fraudulent financial information. This practice has been blamed for contributing to the real estate meltdown by giving people access to property and loans they ultimately could not afford.
From Police at G20 will be tense, despite months of planning
The security operation to protect delegates attending the G20 conference is far from straightforward. The police have had to prepare for every possibility – from terrorism to riots to green custard incidents and must manage a crowd ranging from novice protesters to hardcore anarchists.
The trick is to create a hostile environment to deter criminal or antisocial behaviour, while at the same time reassuring the public. It is a difficult balance to achieve. Too many police officers can prove to be intimidating or provocative. Too few opens the door to troublemakers.
The first job in preparing for this type of event is to collect intelligence. Officers will have been scouring the internet and other “open sources” for weeks. They will know that the majority of protesters are law-abiding but they will have identified some activists intent on violence.
What makes the G20 demonstrations unique is the range of pressure groups planning to protest. Protesters concerned with climate change, capitalism, war and globalisation are to be represented. It will be crucial to locate the agitators and those orchestrating disorder as quickly as possible. Police spotters will be stationed at key vantage points while undercover officers mingle among the protesters.
From American Muslims and the FBI by Hesham A. Hassaballa.
In February, it became public that the FBI had sent an informant to several California mosques talking of terrorism and jihad, seeking to actively recruit terrorists. His actions prompted members of the Islamic Center of Irvine to report the informant's inflammatory statements to the FBI and ask for a restraining order against him. Muslims accused the man of being an "agent provocateur" and were shocked by this action. In another incident, an FBI agent allegedly told a mosque member that his life would be a "living hell" if he did not become an informant for the FBI.
These "McCarthy era tactics," as they were called by Muslims, prompted a coalition of Muslim groups to consider suspending ties to the FBI. In a statement, the coalition said: "If the FBI does not accord fair and equitable treatment to every American Muslim organization...then Muslim organizations, mosques and individuals will have no choice but to consider suspending all outreach activities with FBI offices, agents, and other personnel." The statement continued, "This possible suspension, of course, would in no way affect our unshakable duty to report crimes or threats of violence to our nation."
From The mini-city the CIA built by Wayne Madsen
(WMR) -- WMR has obtained a copy of a CIA memo, dated April 8, 1971, which indicates the agency had a vested interest in the development of the Rosslyn, Virginia, office complex from its earliest days.
The memo to the CIA's Director of Logistics, subject: Status of Design, Construction, and Zoning Activities -- Rosslyn Area, states: “On 2 April [name redacted] met with Mr. John Baldwin of the Arlington County Planning Staff, Department of Environmental Affairs, to inquire of on-going, pending, and future actions which are expected to occur in the Rosslyn area.”
The memo also states that “approximately 75 percent of anticipated Rosslyn construction has been completed. Ten buildings remain to be built of the original 40 buildings contemplated.”
WMR previously reported on the use of one of these buildings -- 1911 North Fort Myer Drive -- for a number of CIA front companies operated by CIA officers Edwin Wilson, Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines, and Rafael Quintero to smuggle weapons abroad covertly, in addition to other operations.
The CIA used 1820 North Fort Myer Drive as its Recruitment Office. Also known as the “Robert Ames Building,” 1820 has since been torn down for a new building. A recruitment advertisement for the CIA's Office of SIGINT Operations (OSO), a separate entity from the National Security Agency (NSA), listed the 1820 address as the CIA Recruitment Office.
The CIA's OSO was convenient to the RCA Building at 1901 North Moore Street, where RCA was engaged in contract negotiations with the CIA's OSO to build a number of signals intelligence “outstations,” including facilities in Iran during the Shah's reign, Pakistan, and the People's Republic of China.
From Secret Wars. One Hundred Years of British Intelligence Inside MI5 and MI6 100 years of a spy-empire
"There's a new world out there. Adjust or die," Gordon Thomas quotes former chief of the CIA, Bob Gates. But fortunately for the Western intelligence, people from the "other side" decide to "walk-in" and offer their help. One of these people was (the late) Vladimir Pasechnik from Russia, who contacted the British service to report about his KGB enterprise Biopreparat developing mass-killing toxins, viruses and bacteria. Asked why he did that, he replied: "I want the West to know. There must be a way to stop this madness." Dr. David Kelly (also late by now), a top British microbiology and bio-weapons expert, told the author after his interrogation of Pasechnik: "The really terrifying thing was that I knew Vladimir was telling the truth."
Thomas dedicated more than one chapter of his book to the tragic plight of Dr. Kelly, whose more than 30 trips to Iraq in search of bio-weapons ended by a conclusion that there weren't any. In spite of that, a "sexed-up" intelligence report to the British PM had been used as an excuse for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the same year, Dr. Kelly, disgraced and left alone by MI6 and MI5, died, or rather was murdered in strange circumstances. Before his death, a number of bacteriologists from several countries, including Britain, Russia and the U.S.A., were killed by unknown perpetrators, allegedly for refusing to share their knowledge with North Korean, Iranian and probably Chinese intelligence.
New threats and at the same challenges to the intelligence services of Britain and the West, described in detail by Gordon Thomas in "Secret Wars", could be summed up as: international terrorism, rogue regimes (North Korea, Iran in particular) and a technological diversion, including professional cyber-attacks, led and developed by some states (Russia and China) and even by members of the Western alliance (Israel). It started in early 1980s with the theft of a powerful tracking software system, PROMIS, invented by a former NSA expert William L. Hamilton and produced by his small Washington D.C.-based company Inslaw Inc.
Of PROMIS a former Mossad operative, Ari Ben Menashe, quoted by the author, said: "PROMIS changed the thinking of the entire intelligence world." And Charles Foster Bass added: "Like any good spy novel, the Cox Report alleges that Chinese spies penetrated four U.S. weapons research labs and stole important information on seven nuclear warhead designs." Only an American citizen and Israel's spy, Jonathan Pollard (still in American top security prison) could do more. Pollard transmitted over 360 cubic feet of U.S. secret documents to Tel Aviv and some were also sold to Russia. A former CIA chief, the late William Casey complained about that to the author: "It was a double blow. It had cost us every worthwhile secret we had. And it had been stolen by a country supposed to be our ally."
But God perhaps rewarded the West and MI6 with a voluntary service of a high-ranking Iranian intelligence general, Ali Reza Asgari from VEVAK, code-named "Falcon", who informed the British intelligence about the nuclear program of Iran and was successfully exfiltrated via Turkey and Bulgaria to the U.K. His motivations were personal and perhaps also monetary, but his services were of top importance to the West.
The spying Great Game goes on undisturbed by moments of failure and agony. The British services, closely cooperating with the American ones, own a big share of the most sophisticated spying technology, including satellite surveillance systems, ECHELON eavesdropping network and the fastest computers in the world. A former CIA chief, William Colby, quoted by the author on the NSA computers, said: "makes lightening look slow. One time there was a program that could translate seven languages at five hundred words per minute. Next time I checked, a month later, it had doubled its capacity and halved its translation time." The various spying technologies like ELINT, SIGINT, IMINT and missile trajectory tracking systems are well described in the book. But all these marvelous inventions are still short of tracking Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan and to follow, like PROMIS, the passage of money to terrorists by an ancient Muslim "hawala" human contact network, based on full confidence of the sender, the receiver and the "hawaladar", the money handler.
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