Careers Advice for Under-cover Operators

PC Huggable

 As the row over under-cover police having sex with activists rumbles on, the Usual Caveats says

prosecutors would decide whether operatives who had sexual relationships were breaking the law.

(source: Daily Mail Tuesday, Jun 25 2013)

This is worth watching because a series of recent cases has shown that obtaining consent by deceit may render the consent ineffective and leave the convicted person open to sanctions such as being on the sex offenders' register.   

The deceit in these cases was of a particular kind: pretending to be male to obtain sexual contact.

First a Scottish case in June 2013, that of  Christine Wilson.   Don't get side-tracked by the age- differences or  the gender identity disorder.  Both of these facets are important but what is being examined here is what constitutes deceit such that it can give rise to a criminal prosecution and conviction.

At a previous hearing, Wilson pleaded guilty to two charges of obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud and was put on the sex offenders’ register. This is a fraud case as it is Scottish law.

An earlier Scottish case in 2010, against Samantha Books was eventually dropped  by prosecutors when a witnesses refused to cooperate, leading another complainant to criticise the prosecutors.

Moving south of the border, in March 2012, Gemma Barker in Surrey used false male identities to have sexual encounters with girls.  She admitted two counts of sexual assault and one charge of fraud. 

Finally, in June 2013 the sentence against Justine McNally was reduced as she admitted six counts of sexual assault by penetration. Her listing on the Sex Offenders Register was reduced to ten years. (McNally is Scottish but the offence was in London, so the case was heard in Wood Green under English law).

As these last two are English law cases, they were tried as sexual assault.  Defendants have usually chosen to plead guilty so the points of law are still open to interpretation if another case happened to go to appeal.  Justine McNally's conviction was upheld but her sentence revised.

.......

Back to the police. I'm going to assume most of the personnel involved are men although there might well have been female under-cover(s) operators.  It is alleged that some of them engaged in sexual intimacy under false identities and for purposes other than those they claimed at the time.

The gender misrepresentation cases put down one marker for what will be regarded as making consent defective because it has been obtained falsely. Another is already unambiguously covered in legislation.  If the complainant had a mental disorder impairing choice such that they can be brought within the definition of  s.34 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, then the person who deceived them can be prosecuted.  
 
A further restriction was defined in 2007 when Giovanni Mola was unable to argue he had consent in order to avoid a conviction based on reckless conduct (Scottish case).  He failed to inform a lover that he had HIV, thus impairing her ability to make an informed decision whether to have sex with him.  A summary of other cases is here

Prosecution of cases around transmission of HIV have abated as a matter of public policy; the emphasis has gone on to prevention as it was feared that the prosecutions were deterring people from seeking treatment. The policy remains controversial.  Opinion is split on whether agreeing to sex means agreeing to factors unknown, or whether it is a conditional consent depending on what is disclosed at the time.

Consenting to sex does not mean consenting to everything even in the ordinary course of events. There is a point at which an act may become abusive and outside the scope of consent.  Normally this is thought of in physical terms but it could be psychological.  But for ignorance that the person was married/had a disease/was a paid infiltrator, the complainant might not have agreed to sexual intimacy.  

It is argued that deception is justified in order to infiltrate organisations "such as environmental groups".  Fat lot of good that did.  Mark Kennedy should have been putting it about in the Climate Unit of UEA, or at least offering Chris Huhne a ride. He has failed to prevent the country being peppered with taxpayer-subsidised bird-mincers. 

As David Morris of the McLibel trial said when it emerged the co-writer of the leaflet which caused all the trouble was Bob Lambert, an undercover policeman, 

"All over the world police and secret agents infiltrate opposition movements in order to protect the rich and powerful...."

Look how well that went. McDonald's ended up paying lawyers millions of pounds, only half-winning a technical case and smashing their reputation.  Whether they asked for the Metropolitan police to act as political agent provocateurs has yet to be examined.  

Careers Advice for Would-be Dictators Part 2

Dictatoring is a job which falls in to two distinct phases: getting the job and keeping the job. They require separate skills. Yesterday: Getting the job. Today, part two

Keeping the job.

There's no getting away from it; there is always an element of performance, a willingness to go on the stage when other people won't. It is sometimes said that this is a product of the media age meaning 'as recently as the 20th century'. Not so. The performance element has always been there. Elizabeth I realized that she had to appear at Tilbury even though it meant some risk to herself. There's no suggestion she used a body-double. Which ever version of the speech was delivered, the main thing is she was there, attempting to say what the forces needed to hear.

The duff speaker who will go on stage trumps the good speaker who hides. You cannot do this job if you aren't prepared to go out and hoof it to the best of your ability. You don't have to be a world-class actor; the benchmark is Delia Smith.



Perhaps the public ought not be so enamoured of performers, but they are, so there's no point in railing against it. Resign yourself to presentation lessons; you, the irresistible force, have just run up against the immovable object of public expectations.

Once you've got the speaking thing nailed there are six things which have to have their bumps felt and, yes, they are all trying to kill you. It goes with the territory.

* Power apparatus: that's the armed forces, the secret police and the civilian police
* The judiciary and the bloody lawyers
* The economy
* Furriners
* Parliament or equivalent council
Lastly, depending on your regime
* Turbulent priests

The modern dictator will usually keep a pet council for the look of it. Like any pet you want it fed properly and brushed but it is is the pet and you are the master, so it can get do tricks when told or it will be put in the naughty cell and have its privileges removed.

Likewise, the flippin' judges and lawyers are necessary for "resolving" civilian disputes but they are reptillian in nature and don't respond to training the way the mammalian councils do. The best thing to do with them is to keep them very cold as they are more docile when chilled, i.e. don't keep pumping public money at them. Warm one up only when you need it.

Think of them as Gremlins which, as you know, must never be fed after midnight or allowed to get wet.



A key mistake with managing the judiciary is to give it the idea that it can rule on your decisions. The first rule you need to establish is

"This is not justiciable because it isn't for you to question me, the duly appointed dictator. Back in your tank."

Let the judiciary do the bottom-sifting job they are supposed to do; making public tutting noises about crime. They can encourage your civilian police force stay in line and not taking kick-backs, although they seem myopic about spotting corruption if it wears a white coat or a blue uniform.

The civilian police force is important because they will keep things profitable. It is vital that they are kept from corruption if at all possible because they tend to attack the economically active part of your dictatorship on account of that's where the money is.

Even Vladimir Putin is fed up with the levels of corruption.

The economically active part of your economy is a mix of people who work and those who finance it. Now, the police will have to hamper some forms of work, usually prostitution and drug dealing, and you will have to take a view on whether you want them to do that or if you want them to regulate and control both those activities. Drug dealing and prostitution are going to happen whatever you do, so you'll just have to decide whether to get involved or not. Dictators need not pay any heed to what anyone else says; that's the point of being a dictator. Ultimately what you will be judged by is if you allow these things to become a nuisance.

The turbulent priests are bound to give you an ear-bashing on this point, though. They are also a useful method of social control so you will probably have to put up with their twittering; they are a flock of bird-brained screaming peacocks. Think of them as the intermediate stage of feather boas, hats and pillows. Watch out for the occasional ostrich. Big buggers, can break your arm with a blow of their beak, but even they can be turned in to fans for strippers.



A word on Furriners. It is impossible to give hard rules about this because, as the lawyers say, so much is fact-sensitive. In general Furriners or their friends will have annoyingly large amounts of money which obviously should be yours, so the first aim is to get that money. This means you may have to be nice to them but an effective dictator knows how to be strategically nice as well as ruthlessly unpleasant. It is unnecessarily restrictive to confine yourself to one or other behaviour; just work out where you want to be and then do what is necessary to get there.

The effective dictator follows the rules laid down by St Geldorf: just give us the fockin' money, although not necessarily in those words. Later there can be a settling of scores. Purely as a rule of thumb, if you have to shoot furriners, try to make it the poor ones. Avoid over-using your armed forces. They are a sentimental lot; their loyalty can be relied on until the day they suddenly turn on you.

Which brings us to the secret police. These are your score-settlers and no dictator manages without them. This means they are very nearly your equals and can be a source of opposition. However, they are by nature 2ic otherwise you'd already be floating face-down.

Think of the secret services as a pitbull terrier. Not too bright, very agressive, with some behaviour problems due to a tendency to perceive attack even when there isn't one, but one heck of a killing machine when under proper control. Your job, like any responsible dog worker, is to keep the animal lean and to heel. The dog will thank you for it.

Yesterday: Careers Advice for Would-be Dictators, Part 1, Getting the Job

Careers Advice for Would-Be Dictators part 1

Catherine the Great. She married in to the ruling family and then the CEO, her husband, suddenly died of someone.
...............

Dictatoring is a job which falls in to two distinct phases: getting the job and keeping the job. They require separate skills.

Today, part 1, Getting the Job

Getting the job depends very much on chance.

Politics, economics, outside events, the behaviour of your opponents, mad bastards on your own side; all these change what we careers advisors call 'the environment'. Many of the world's dictators talk as if they could control these, but that is just their ego talking. An ego the size of Basingstoke is the minimum character requirement for a dictator.

Cuddle-up to power while young, but do be careful not to over-identify with any single source of it. Power-sources such as the military or political parties have an unpredictable habit of self-destructing. People will accuse you of not being clubbable; true, but you also won't find yourself with your career over before it even starts.

At this early point in the dictator's career it is more like being the 2nd-in-charge officer on a complex ship on a choppy sea with a mardi crew and half the stores gone. Even that is a simple job in comparison because at least at sea there is only a limited number of people to contend with, unless the pirates show up.

Several notable dictators claim to have been marked out for greatness from childhood but this is wishful thinking. Had they been recognized young, they'd have been drowned in the bath. Instead, in their larval phase they resemble the weedy specky nerdy type with a grasp of detail which makes them valuable to their elders, and so invited to the big table to do the donkey work.

It's only later that the dictator separates himself - and it nearly always is himself although there are such things as women dictators - from the pack.

That is the first career hurdle for a dictator; looking just useful enough to stay alive but not becoming the natural slave-brain, the one which does all the work but doesn't get credited. At some point you may have to choose: do I want to achieve my aims from this position, or do I want to be Leader?

If you are dictator material this won't even be a question for you. Rather, you'll be worried about recruiting your own reliable seconder and finding all the ways you can be in pole-position when the current leader (or nearest approximation) falls out of the window having decided on a breath of fresh air. Windows are terribly dangerous, architecturally. Almost as bad as lamp posts. That's why the streets are often dark in dictatorships.

In general, dictators don't see being 2ic as tolerable for long, let alone negotiable. It's not something which is open to dialogue. You might as well offer vegetables to a toddler, and for much the same reason; toddlers don't like vegetables and they do like control.

"And I'm President of the United States, and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli!"

Howled George Bush Snr. to the delight of US Teletubbies as one of the most powerful men on Earth got a right cob on, thus illustrating that wiser, better men often don't find themselves in office.

The first quality of a dictator, then, is a certain impervious disregard for rationality, proportionality, or any of the considerations which paralyse brighter mortals. Being terribly clever is not the most important thing. Make the clever-cloggs your 2ic but keep a very sharp eye on them. Don't want them getting ideas about doing your job.

The second quality of a dictator is luck, because with those tendencies there's a fair chance you are going to kill yourself accidentally, and quite young. But then so will your competitor dictators, which is why there aren't that many of them.

The third quality is unlimited energy. This allows you to outpace any enemies who, although not direct competitors, would like to see you out of it. While they are sleeping you will be building networks.

That checklist again:

Ego the size of a market town (minimum)
Not thick but far from clever
Obstinate
Lucky
Energetic

Lastly, you will need the spooky ability to recruit a core of the right sort (i.e. useful) followers early on, when you do not yet have the power to dispense patronage. Even those who are themselves acting as your patrons must think themselves privileged at that point.

This used to be much simper in the days of the aristocracy, using the hereditary principle to attract support. That is rarely allowed now. We have had several effective dictators this way, but unfortunately it also brings out a crop of noxious half-wits. Then again, so does democracy and the secret vote-rigging of the EU. Each claim legitimacy to do the job badly. Why can't they just base their claim to keep their job on the basis of competence?

Still, we don't do hereditary succession any more, except if your name is Bush. Or Benn.

Tomorrow: part II, Doing the Job