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Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police

Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police

by Paul Lewis (Author), Paul Lewis (Author), Rob Evans (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2013

    $4.23
Synopsis

"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 gripping stories of a group of police spies - written by the award-winning investigative journalists who exposed the Mark Kennedy scandal - and the uncovering of forty years of state espionage. This was an undercover operation so secret that some of our most senior police officers had no idea it existed. The job of the clandestine unit was to monitor British 'subversives' - environmental activists, anti-racist groups, animal rights campaigners. Police stole the identities of dead people to create fake passports, driving licences and bank accounts. They then went deep undercover for years, inventing whole new lives so that they could live incognito among the people they were spying on. They used sex, intimate relationships and drugs to build their credibility. They betrayed friends, deceived lovers, even fathered children. And their operations continue today. Undercover reveals the truth about secret police operations - the emotional turmoil, the psychological challenges and the human cost of a lifetime of deception - and asks whether such tactics can ever be justified.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 352
 Edition: Main
 Publisher: Guardian Faber Publishing
Published: 25 Jun 2013
ISBN 10: 0571302173
ISBN 13: 9780571302178
Book Overview: A breathtaking expose of a top-secret campaign of surveillance against British citizens, told through the compelling human stories of undercover agents.

Media Reviews
Undercover lays bare the deceit, betrayal and cold-blooded violation, practised again and again by undercover officers - troubling, timely and brilliantly executed. -- Henry Porter Overexcitable publishers like to bandy around words such as explosive and shocking when trying to flog their books, even though generally you could substitute them for ones such as mildly interesting . Not with Undercover, though ... doggedly written and researched by Guardian journalists Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, the revelations in its pages are genuinely explosive ... it's the steady accumulation of detail that's so compelling. 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 Undercover is not just a book; it's a sensation ... it's terrific and important journalism. -- Jenni Russell Sunday Times Were these stories not real, they would read like an airport thriller ... Undercover compels the reader throughout, which is a testament to the investigative and writing skills of Evans and Lewis ... The work of these authors is one of the best arguments in favour of a free press you'll ever read. -- Alan White New Statesman What makes this book so utterly absorbing is not the politics or policing, but the people. -- David Aaronovitch The Times With luck, the grotesqueries revealed in this powerful book will fire some of the old free and radical British spirit again. -- Bernard Porter Guardian
Author Bio
Paul Lewis, the Guardian's Special Projects Editor, is the journalist behind revelations about police involvement in the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests. He is the winner of the Bevins Prize for Outstanding Investigative Journalism and was voted Journalist of the Year and the British Press Awards 2010. Rob Evans, a Guardian reporter since 1999, has won awards for exposing corruption such as BAE's corrupt payments and for his freedom of information work. He is the author of Gassed, a book published in 2000 revealing British chemical warfare experiments on soldiers.