‘Undercover lays bare the deceit, betrayal and cold-blooded violation practised again and again by undercover police officers – troubling, timely and brilliantly executed.’ Henry Porter . . .
The testimony of person after person who was taken in, deceived, gulled, who knew the officers for years – who thought of them as best friends, or lovers, or life partners, or the father of their children, who had no inkling that they were part of an elaborate state-sponsored spy-ring that intruded on the most intimate parts of their lives.’ (Carole Cadwalladr, Observer)
What set the SDS apart was their core tactic: living the life of a protester. SDS operatives gave up their warrant cards (their police identity), changed their names, grew their hair, changed their appearances and sought to establish personal relationships with their targets. While many of us might accept that some level of subterfuge is necessary where the policing of very serious criminal activity is concerned, there is little in the Guardian journalists’ account of their activities to strike readers as even close to acceptable.
The nature and consequences of the deceptions perpetrated are truly frightening. Indeed, theSDS’s informal motto –- “By Any Means Necessary” -– seems all too close to the truth. Staggeringly, it seems to have been tacitly understood that undercover officers (usually male) should target female protesters and form close personal relationships with them. These relationships were by no means casual, in many cases becoming sufficiently serious and long-standing for the officer effectively to become the partner of the person concerned. As such, these were no ordinary betrayals; they were, as one of the women pithily put it, “about a fictional character who was created by the state and funded by taxpayers’ money”. Worse still, and at their most extreme, these relationships led to children being born.
The officers not only deceived the women they formed relationships with, but also went as far as to father children that they knew they would have to abandon when, eventually, they were required to return to other duties. In many cases there were two sets of women (and their children) being deceived at the same time: the activist and the agent’s existing wife or partner. Can anyone in the police service seriously have thought this was justifiable? . . .
The human cost, too, was enormous, primarily falling on the women and children who found themselves caught up in these deceptions. But many officers paid a significant price too. Quite a number appear to have experienced significant mental health problems as a result of attempting to live two separate, but very different lives over many years.
http://nsnbc.me/2014/01/27/shocking-immoral-behaviour-british-secret-police/
Where were the civilian authorities? Where were the politician bosses? This is rape but beyond rape, mind rape but beyond mind rape, it’s life rape. The women thought they had found partners, husbands, children — they thought they had found a life. This kind of betrayal, deceit is acceptable in a democracy, in a country of laws?
Of course, the non-psychopathic officers destroyed themselves psychologically. There is no way they could handle that kind of guilt. But why obey?
When it is said that psychopaths are conscienceless and guiltless I hope this isn’t taken as hyperbole. On this level, it is absolute. The psychopathic officers described above should not be considered human and should be warehoused in mental hospitals for the remainder of their lives.
The Path Whisperer 
I was just thinking of something. If a CIA agent is working deep undercover, he will often marry and then have kids with a woman who doesn’t know his real identity. She would be serving as a “front” or “cover” without even realizing it. It’s all so creepy.
LikeLike
I think the reason these officers obey their superiors is, at least in part, the same reason practically all people obey psychopaths, whether or not they are superiors. Psychopaths lack morals, but the rest of us seem to be lacking a moral code fully developed enough to counter the psychopaths’ manipulative “suggestions”.
No one wants to be the one to stand up against the sociopath, and for good reason – anyone who dares to do so will very quickly find themselves standing alone against the entire company, or simply looking for another job.
There is no defense against a psychopath. If a psychopath decides he wants to infiltrate police officers to go deep under cover and marry and impregnate women within a particular organization, he will use his manipulation skills – bribery, extortion, “whatever means necessary” – to get the necessary clearance and then whoever refuses to comply will be kicked to the side to make room for one who will.
In other words, Why do they obey? Well, maybe they didn’t, and then someone else did. How would we ever know? Blowing the whistle on an undercover sting operation would be nothing short of treason!
Psychopaths are relentless. A better question might be: Why would a psychopath care so much about a cause that he would go to so much trouble to infiltrate an organization at it’s core? The answer is: He wouldn’t! He was probably targeting just one of the women whose children were later abandoned by the “spy” who fathered them.
Just a thought.
-buster
LikeLike
This reminds me of the US COINTELPRO operation. When the government agents infiltrated student protest, and other dissenting groups, they were absolutely convincing. I am convinced that some of the most famous activists, from the 60s and 70s, were probably government agents.
LikeLike
I’m sure it never ended. Also I’m sure Occupy was thoroughly infiltrated, in several different ways. They should have spent some of their money investigating possible police provovateurs and staged ‘crimes’.
I’ve heard of instances of American law enforcement murdering, blackmailing, framing, driving-to-suicide (murder by suicide) individuals. While these are serious crimes and some no doubt involved LE psychopaths, they don’t scream psychopathic origin as this British practice does.
LikeLike