Vice World has published this extensive report detailing the story of
an undercover law enforcement agent,
who infiltrated an environmental activist community in the UK.
And now with the permission of the police department,
he has been found to abuse his position of power and
he also did untold damage to the climate action movement in the UK.
So let's start with some of these details.
Beginning with the fact that he not only infiltrated the group,
he also slept with some of these climate activists, including Kate Wilson.
When Kate Wilson was 23, she got deceived into
having sex with an older guy who wasn't what he appeared to be.
To her, he was Mark Stone, a radical environmental activist who shared her
taste in country music and her belief that capitalism is destroying the planet.
He wrote poetry for her, went to her grandmother's 90th birthday party,
and helped her organize a massive protest against the G-8 summit in Scotland.
In fact, they even lived together for nearly two years and
even after they lived together they stayed in close contact for years after, right?
Now, within the span of those two years, Stone had used Wilson to
essentially become a trusted figure within the UK's activist movement.
Okay, and seven years after they met, seven years after they met,
Mark Stone was actually discovered to not be Mark Stone,
he was discovered to be Mark Kennedy, too lazy to change his first name.
>> Well, you don't want them to say your name and then you don't look and
then they begin to wonder and they discover your secret.
>> So Mark Kennedy ended up getting outed by a small group of sleuthing
activists as an undercover officer working for the British state.
So a few more details and I wanna get your thoughts, John.
In 2003, Kennedy had been sent undercover by an elite unit in
London's Metropolitan Police Service to
gather intelligence on activists like Wilson.
He spent seven years living a double life.
He was a fearless organizer who had a shadowy backstory as a cocaine runner.
But he was also a cop with a family in Ireland.
So let's keep it real.
He was just a cop with a family in Ireland.
He was not actually, the person.
>> He did have a shidddy history.
>> He definitely had a shady history, there's no question.
His friends, comrades and at least 10 other women he had sex with,
had no idea Kennedy was selling them out to governments and corporations
that had vested interest in keeping the country hooked on fossil fuels.
So there's so much more of this story, John?
>> He was busy.
Some people really do rise and grind to maintain two lives
including one family and a suite of mistresses at the same time.
Let me ask you two serious questions.
First of all, did he do anything wrong or is this not just his job?
>> He did do a lot of things wrong.
>> Okay, good, we can agree on that.
So yes, no, obviously, yeah, they do this sort of thing all the time.
Remember, back in the wake of 9/11 NYPD was infiltrating like Muslim student
organizations and things like that.
>> Yes.
>> Absolutely horrendous, it makes me feel a little bit better to know
that it's happening across the pond as well.
So that's obviously ridiculous.
>> Don't you love it when other countries are failing just like us, feels great.
>> Exactly, yeah.
Yeah, there'll be nowhere left for us to go.
Do you think that he chose the new last name and backstory?
>> I don't know. >> Cuz it's Stone and
I used to be a cocaine smuggler.
That sounds like a lame cop coming up with a cool backstory.
>> Is there a connection with Stones and cocaine?
>> I don't know. It's just no,
it's just like what's a cool name?
I'm Stone, I think that's what's going on.
Did the family, was the family okay with this?
I know that there's families, every undercover cop,
a lot of them have families.
They have to be okay with a certain amount of risk as well as a certain amount
of potential or actual illegal acts.
Do you think they knew about the living for two years with another woman?
>> They had to have known, but
I like how we're trying to incriminate the family members as well.
>> No, I'm just wondering how this entire thing actually goes down because I imagine
when you have the conversation with your wife and
say, ok, I'm going undercover, I am going to live with another woman.
I'm gonna sleep with her for literally years and I know what you're saying.
What's the pro, well, the pro is I get to take down an environmental activist
organization, think about the stakes there.
This isn't an ISIS cell operating in London.
This isn't domestic terrorism, it's environmentalists.
>> It's funny because when you said his family, I didn't think about his wife.
I don't think he's married.
>> I thought he had actually family at the same time.
I believe it he had an actual family.
>> How do you trust anyone?
That's like my real.
>> I assume this is rare, this sort of thing.
I mean, there's grifters.
>> There is a reason.
>> Everywhere they come into online media and make a good name and then take it for
money and stuff.
But you don't expect that environmental organizations that much.
>> Yes, I do. Are you kidding me, of course.
>> Well certainly a protest and things like that, definitely.
Do you believe that Tucker Carlson will be very worried about this,
that an intelligence agent was being a provocateur inside of a group.
Do you think he's gonna do monologues about this one?
>> Probably not.
>> I think you are right.
>> Right, but I mean if this kind of story does help to explain why there's a lot
of paranoia among most groups of leftist activists and why they spend so much time.
I guess going after each other over suspicions that like someone's not
leftist enough for someone's not progressive enough.
And like all of that seems to be like a virus within the leftist movement.
And I can understand why,
it's because leftists have had a long history of being infiltrated.
And this is one of the more, in my opinion, one of the more extreme examples.
So in December of 2011, Kate Wilson and
seven other women launched legal action against him.
And of course the Metropolitan Police for damage that was caused as a result of
all of this, we'll get to that lawsuit in just a second.
Before we do though, I thought it would be important to hear from Mr. Kennedy,
who was known as Mark Stone because he had this interview with the UK's Channel 4.
And it seems as though, just pay attention to the line of questioning here
because it's not about, hey, what you did was wrong and you did that like
you hurt people, you did it on behalf of the worst corporate interests.
The line of questioning was, how do we know that the power of the P
didn't persuade you to be against the fossil fuel companies, watch.
>> You fell in love with several of the protesters that you were having to watch
or that was the allegation and that essentially you went native indeed,
you might even have become one of them.
Did you go native?
>> No, I didn't.
>> Not at all?
>> No.
>> Very difficult to fall in love with somebody and
at the same time sort of deal with whether they're plotting to overthrow the state.
>> That's very true and that's something which I battled with a great deal.
I did have some very good friendships.
I met some very amazing people and some very dedicated people and
passionate people to the causes that they believed in.
>> You didn't ever reach a moment when you were able to say to something like,
I love you so much, I'm gonna overthrow the state with you?
>> Absolutely no.
>> That interview was amazing.
It wasn't about like, don't you feel guilty that you've hurt all these
women that you had, you were literally living with one of these women.
No the line of questioning is,
how can we trust that you're loyal enough to the fossil fuel industry.
Did you go native?
There's some suspicion that you might have gone native.
>> Don't like, maybe it's a slang thing.
If you're in the UK don't use that expression.
You've got a long history.
>> Good point.
>> Did you bring a flag, when you went to their organization did bring a flag?
It's a terrible thing.
First of all, why is he outdoors?
Why are you interviewing him on a street corner?
What a bunch of weirdos over there?
Lets listen to the important part clearly.
Yeah, like bring him indoors.
It's already weird enough.
And that guy, what he said, like you're totally right.
The interviewer is asking interesting questions, but for all the wrong reasons,
I'd ask the same questions, but it would be like to the end of, so
did you not ever feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with you?
How could you be this twisted, did you?
But, that's the thing.
This guy said, I've met these passionate people, talented people all this and I did
everything I could to ruin their lives and their careers and get them locked up.
And then the interviewer ends with, did you ever wanna also overthrow that?
No, but they didn't wanna do that.
This guy was trying to instigate them into doing illegal things and violent things.
>> Yes, yeap.
>> You have to do that when they're not gonna do them themselves.
Now, if they do them, they're still liable for that.
There's no like, I got persuaded clause or whatever, but
they had to be persuaded in that direction.
>> Right, I mean, look.
>> This is all a waste of time.
>> This is what I can't stand and I do not agree with that practice at all.
Right, when some federal agent or some person representing the state
infiltrates a group and then encourages them eggs them on to carry out something.
Right, whether it be a crime or some sort of bad actors, bad behavior.
That's a good example, right?
I mean, there could be a good legal argument that that's entrapment,
like don't do that, right?
Don't put the idea in their head.
If the idea stems from someone in the intelligence community or
a cop, if you're egging them on to commit a crime.
>> I think they are still responsible, I think that that agent is also responsible.
>> I agree.
>> They are in accomplish to commit a crime.
>> Yes that's what I mean,
I'm not being an apologist for the bad acts that are committed, but
they were egged on and that should be taken into account as well, anyway.
But let me talk about how Kate Wilson and others.
>> You keep on thinking Winslet.
>> I know.
>> She might play the role in the movie, but she is not actually in this.
>> She is a national treasure, we all know it.
Okay, but let's move on, let's move on.
Kate Winslet did not wanna make an appearance in this story.
Sorry to bring you into it.
All right, so, Kate Wilson says,
in this effort to take legal action against him.
In 2010, I received a phone call from friends in the UK who told me that this
man Mark Stone, who I'd share my life with never existed.
The impact of that, the grief and the paranoia and
the sense of shame really paralyzed me for a very, very long time.
I mean it's absolutely heartbreaking, but what we really need to know is,
did he go native?
Did he go native?
Okay, Mark Kennedy meanwhile,
continued to work in defense of the fossil fuel companies.
Not long after the legal case began, Kennedy updated his LinkedIn
profile to say, he was now a consultant for the Densus Group.
A boutique risk management company that among other assignments,
has advised pipeline companies on how to deal with protests
from indigenous tribes and environmental groups.
>> 50% chance that after serving the administration buddha judge works at that
organization.
Anyway, yeah, the whole thing is messed up.
Let's have this, let's just have a footnote in 50, 75 years,
when we look back, there's nothing left of earth were like
scrambling over the salt flats for like the last rabbit or whatever.
That there were people who were trying to warn us,
telling us to do something about how the climate is changing.
And not only do we not listen, but we actively undermined them and
try to ruin their lives.
>> The only good thing I want to leave it on a somewhat happy note.
It appears that the victims here, the activists will get some justice.
After nearly 10 years of court battles, the legal
authority known as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled last September that
Wilson had suffered grievous human rights abuses at the hands of Kennedy and
the police apparatus that supported him.
Senior officers either knew of the relationship, chose not to know of its
existence or were incompetent and negligent the ruling reads.
So now we just have to wait for this tribunal to decide what the damages will
be and what Wilson and other victims will be compensated.
But I'm glad that he didn't completely get away with it.
And now we all know that dude's a cop.
We all know not to trust that guy.
>> I don't know, he's pretty persuasive it turns out, he might be able to sway us.
>> Ladies, you can do better.
>> He suffered 11 activist in the group.
>> I know.
>> I'm just saying based on the video.
>> I don't know.
>> Don't understand that.
>> Okay I was trying.
>> Why are you defending the cop?
>> Trying to stay away from it?
>> You are realist.
>> Okay.