Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police

by Lewis, Paul

  Clearly, Lambert was casting himself not as ruthless spycatcher, but a charitable and understanding colleague who had the interests of the SDS at heart. ‘Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families … and if the family doesn’t care for the victim, who else will?’ he observed. ‘And if the casualty is embittered; rejected by the family that once nurtured him, should anyone be surprised if he, with apparent malice, seeks to bring the old family home crashing to the ground?’

  Lambert appreciated the danger presented by dissident, unhappy spies. They needed to be mollified. State secrets were theoretically protected, but the controversy over the publication, in the late 1980s, of Spycatcher, written by the ex-MI5 officer Peter Wright, highlighted the threat of rogue operatives. Nearly every spy had enough knowledge in their head to harm or even destroy the SDS if they chose to go public. That went for Chitty too. Like a true servant of the secret state, Lambert makes clear that ‘the security of the SDS operation must take precedence over other less crucial considerations’.

  At the time Lambert began his investigation, Chitty was on sick leave and in an unco-operative mood. Lambert knew he needed to get close to the ex-spy without inflaming the situation or isolating him further. Lambert wrote he was ‘a strong believer’ in a particular approach to dealing with runaway spies. It was an extension of the old adage about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer: sidling up to rogue operatives to offer them friendship and support.

  ‘At best it helps inhibit further unprofessional behaviour and at the very least it provides access to their schemes and disruptive activity,’ he said. Feigning empathy for Chitty was never going to be hard for Lambert. Duplicity was what Lambert was brilliant at. One Special Branch colleague who worked alongside Lambert around that time says he was ‘able to lie as easily as he breathes’.

  For more than a year and a half, Lambert befriended Chitty, pretending to be a sympathetic and loyal colleague. Lambert calculated that perhaps the ‘old SDS bond still counted for something’ in his dealings with the unrepentant officer. During his many encounters with Chitty, Lambert says he was met with ‘a never-ending stream of ranting against persecution’. The visits to Chitty’s home to check on his welfare he describes as ‘a hazardous affair’.

  On one occasion when Lambert and another ex-SDS spy went to visit Chitty, they ended up having to escort him from a ‘saloon bar in a public house in Redhill when the licensee could no longer tolerate [his] loud profanities’. Chitty was expressing his fury for the senior officer who had confronted him over his expenses claims. Lambert believed the falling-out between Chitty and his senior officer had turned into something of a vendetta by the former SDS spy.

  In his report, Lambert portrayed Chitty as aggressive and ready to snap. He said the Police Federation, which represents officers when they are in dispute with their employers, ‘received short shrift’ from Chitty. He was even angry toward colleagues in the VIP bodyguard unit, whom he accused of treachery, telling Lambert that they ‘dared not go within a mile’ of his home in Surrey. According to Lambert, Chitty had developed a ‘remarkable fixation with a conspiracy theory’ and said he was worried that Special Branch wanted to get him on a trumped-up charge of expenses fraud.

  At first, Lambert did not realise that Chitty had secretly returned to his old friends, unable to relinquish his second life as Mike Blake. But over time Lambert began to piece together the jigsaw.

  Chitty’s appearance and behaviour seemed to be reverting to that of his alter ego. Once, during their long meetings, Lambert picked up a newsletter for a rock band left lying around at Chitty’s home. Formed in south Wales in the late 1960s, Man played a mixture of progressive rock and psychedelia. Lambert knew that the band’s small fanbase included a woman who Chitty had slept with while undercover. When Chitty said that he was going to go to a Man concert, Lambert warned him that he ran the risk of bumping into activists from the 1980s. Chitty replied truculently: ‘So what?’

  Later, Lambert would concede ruefully that the significance of this statement was lost on him at the time. ‘Perhaps a better clue was to be found in his frequent references to his preparedness to go back to his former undercover associates,’ Lambert wrote. ‘This involved a simple but subtle shift from reality. He was keen to make the threat but at the same time to obscure the truth that he had already gone back.’

  In search of clues, Lambert delved back into the past, revisiting Chitty’s undercover deployment. Lambert’s verdict on his rival’s performance infiltrating animal rights activists was scathing. He described the intelligence Chitty obtained as ‘reliable, if largely irrelevant’. Chitty’s intelligence assessments about the ‘ineffectual’ meetings of the SLAM were ‘filed briefly in Special Branch records’. Lambert pulled no punches. He noted how Chitty ‘contributed wholeheartedly to the social and legitimate campaigning activities’ of the animal rights movement ‘without ever once providing intelligence that led to the arrest of any of their activists or the disruption of any of their activities’.

  The intelligence procured by Chitty ‘shed little light’ on the ALF protesters, Lambert added, and ‘certainly had no adverse impact on their criminal activities’. In Lambert’s view, his fellow spy had been so ineffective that, had the activists he was spying on ‘then or now’ been told he was a police officer, they would be ‘inclined to dismiss the claim as absurd’. In another cutting observation, Lambert said his rival’s cover had been ‘entirely sound’, but only because no one would have suspected that someone so inactive was an infiltrator.

  Lambert was not shy in pointing out that his colleague’s apparently lacklustre performance undercover paled in comparison to his own penetration of the ‘more security-conscious’ ranks of the animal rights movement. He believed Chitty had spurned the opportunity to follow his lead. ‘In fairness, Chitty was not unique amongst field officers at the time, in wishing to avoid the risks and hassle inherent in criminal participation.’

  Lambert did have some positive things to say about his former colleague. He conceded for example that Chitty was regarded as being ‘consistently shrewd in maintaining cover’, at a time when paranoia about police surveillance was rife among activists. Lambert also described his colleague as an ‘ideal officer to manage – reliable, punctual, co-operative, never rocking the boat like some of his more outspoken field colleagues’.

  Yet, all told, Lambert’s assessment of Chitty’s deployment was harsh and condescending. From his own knowledge of the animal rights scene, Lambert believed that ALF activists ‘would remember Chitty, vaguely, as one of the many middle-of-the-road campaigners who just didn’t have the “bottle” or the inclination to get involved in direct action, and, thus, by their standards, was of no use whatsoever. Quite simply, he was never aware of their clandestine, criminal activities because they had no reason to tell him and he had no inclination to find out.’

  However, it was when Lambert scrutinised Chitty’s life after his deployment that he came to realise what had happened. Lambert showed no reservation about sifting through Chitty’s personal letters, a search that yielded intimate correspondence with a woman from his days as an animal rights activist.

  Lambert does not say in his report exactly how he came to inspect the ‘pile of long-hidden, treasured love letters’ between Chitty and the woman. He states only that they were secreted inside a padlocked toolbox in Chitty’s garage. Either Lambert persuaded his colleague to let him read the cache of letters, or he broke into the box and read them without permission.

  Either way, the correspondence contained incontrovertible evidence that Chitty was fraternising with the enemy. It turned out that Chitty was socialising with activists long after he was supposed to have resumed life as an ordinary Special Branch officer. One occasion was the 40th birthday party of a campaigner in 1991. Posing as Blake, the ex-spy partied with old friends. Lambert observed how the party was low risk for Chitty. ‘No danger here of Chitty bumping into current SDS operatives who, he m
ight rightly have guessed, were more gainfully employed infiltrating elusive cells [of ALF activists].’

  Using the letters as a trail of evidence, Lambert documented the ebb and flow of Chitty’s relationship with his girlfriend. She was ‘best described as an old hippy whose life is built around trendy causes, cannabis, alcohol and sex’. Lambert added that the woman had a ‘sharp intuition’, not least about Chitty, who she thought was prone to ‘mercurial behaviour and mental instability’.

  Locked in the box beside the letters, Lambert found a collection of 30 photographs which contained further evidence of Chitty’s double life. One recorded what Lambert describes as ‘a dirty weekend’ when the couple’s relationship ‘was very clearly on a high’. What exactly the photographs revealed is not stated, but Lambert said one image showed Chitty’s girlfriend ‘holding up a newspaper in which Margaret Thatcher’s downfall as Prime Minister is headlined’. That was November 1990, three years after he was supposed to have ended his deployment.

  Once Lambert had established that his former colleague had returned to his activist friends and gone native, the next question was why. When Chitty’s deployment had ended in 1987, he was ordered to tell activist friends he was leaving for good. In keeping with SDS policy, it was imperative that he made a clean break with his undercover romances. Instead, Chitty appears to have given the impression that he might one day return.

  ‘Perhaps she thought he was gone for good or perhaps, as now seems likely, he gave her cause to believe he might return to England if his “business plans” in the States did not work out,’ Lambert said. When Chitty reappeared in August 1989, two years after disappearing, his girlfriend was ‘surprised and bewildered’. She had moved on in her life and, according to Lambert, had got Mike Blake ‘out of her system after a passionate affair’.

  Upset, she confided her intimate feelings in a private letter to Chitty. Of course, she had no idea that he was a police officer – or that her emotional outpouring would later be scrutinised by a rising star in the Special Branch. Lambert analysed her words scrupulously. ‘It is a letter that testifies to a serious romantic liaison,’ he wrote. Chitty and the woman had evidently had a relationship of considerable meaning. Chitty had even asked the woman to marry him.

  The implications of Chitty’s proposal are hard to fathom. He could never have married using his fake ID. As it turned out, there was never any need to commit identity fraud in a marriage registry office. ‘She pondered,’ Lambert noted wryly, ‘before declining.’ Following that rejection, the pair had a ‘slowly cooling’ relationship, Lambert said, but an ‘abiding friendship’ until at least November 1991. Lambert’s conclusion was that Chitty returned to his former life ‘prompted by romantic and social considerations, rather than an ideological attachment to the cause of animal rights’.

  But how exactly had Chitty pulled off such a stunning act of heresy without Special Branch finding out? In returning to his undercover role, Chitty had committed a serious breach of security. In Lambert’s judgment, the SDS officer’s behaviour was ‘totally unacceptable’ and showed a ‘reckless disregard for the safe running of the SDS operation’, but he concluded that the blame should not be placed entirely on his shoulders.

  Lambert felt there had been mistakes in the handling of Chitty, from the moment he was removed from his undercover duties. For a start, he was placed behind a desk doing mundane intelligence analysis – ‘such an enclosed, covert environment is none too healthy for an ex-SDS officer; certainly not for one who is hankering after his old lifestyle,’ Lambert said.

  When he was given a less pressured assignment at a section of the Special Branch in Putney, south-west London, Chitty suddenly had more room to manoeuvre. In Lambert’s view, Chitty had the ‘freedom he was searching for’ and was able to prepare the ‘documentation and logistical backup required to return convincingly to the field’. Lambert added: ‘Suffice to say he appears to have had sufficient “down time” between operations to devote ample time to his “second” life’.

  As Lambert discovered, there was considerable work and perhaps even some premeditation involved in reviving the identity of Mike Blake. When SDS officers completed their undercover tour, they relinquished all the fake documents in the name of their alias. Chitty handed back to managers the passport and birth certificate bearing the name of Mike Blake when his undercover tour ended in 1987.

  However, he had never returned Mike Blake’s driving licence, claiming he had lost it. Then, between 1989 and 1990, he somehow managed to get hold of a new passport and birth certificate in Mike Blake’s name. Once his time undercover had drawn to a close, Chitty appears to have bought a car at an auction and then registered it in the same fake name. Chitty said that the car was not registered in his real name because it was used for official covert duties, an arrangement he said had been approved by his superiors.

  But Lambert was sceptical. He concluded that Chitty had kept the driving licence ‘for future use’ and therefore apparently planned to return to his undercover life all along. He noted how Chitty later went on to acquire a home address in the name of Mike Blake. Lambert said that obtaining the use of a house in his fake name was ‘no doubt the most difficult’ part of Chitty’s deception. Chitty seems to have elicited the help of a friend who allowed him to use a house in Hampshire. If he needed letters sent to Mike Blake, they would be posted there. Elliptically, Lambert wrote that Chitty ‘appears to have been able to take advantage of one of the bedsit rooms for entertaining purposes’.

  However, even equipped with ID documents, a car and an address, Chitty still needed a new cover story to explain to his activist friends how he could afford to live a ‘comfortable and highly mobile lifestyle’. Lambert noted how his former colleague told activists that he was making a living as a racing driver. It is true that Chitty was an accomplished driver and a handy mechanic.

  Chitty appeared to have pulled the wool over the eyes of his bosses in the SDS and was soon enjoying his double life. But he began to run into difficulty in 1990. Recalled from his assignment in Putney, which was relatively close to where his activist friends lived, Chitty was placed on more routine duties at Scotland Yard in central London.

  Colleagues in Special Branch recall how much Chitty resisted being moved away from south London. ‘One can see how, for example, a three-month stint as reserve room controller must have cramped Chitty’s style!’ Lambert wrote. ‘He was notable for his poor work return and frequent absences from the office “on enquiries”.’ Not long after, Chitty secured his job protecting VIPs, a move that Lambert said must have made him feel ‘a mixture of relief and anticipation’.

  Lambert continued: ‘Here again, was a posting that would allow him unlimited time away from home, and if he was clever, scope to give free rein to his alter ego’s lifestyle. Another important factor which the officer would not have overlooked was that the posting was likely to boost his overtime earnings – an essential ingredient in his activities.’

  It was a job which did indeed give Chitty more room for manoeuvre. Perhaps too much. It was the conspicuous 100-mile journeys from Wiltshire, where he was supposed to be protecting a VIP, to his home in Surrey that were Chitty’s undoing in 1992. Chitty had become ‘too clever and careless’, according to Lambert.

  By that time, Lambert calculated that the former spy ‘had enjoyed leading a secret double life without being found out by his employers or his wife’ for more than two years. Remarkably, Chitty had been able to do his official police work without it being hindered by his second secret life. By February 1994, the Metropolitan Police’s internal investigators had separately decided that Chitty should face a disciplinary hearing. They had interviewed hotel managers in Wiltshire and petrol station staff in Surrey. They had no idea precisely why the officer was claiming expenses in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it didn’t smell right.

  Chitty took the pressure badly. Soon afterwards, he vanished from his home for a week. For at least some of that p
eriod, Chitty was suspected to have travelled to Scotland to seek advice from another former SDS officer who had fallen out with the squad – a man who was much despised by Lambert, who described him in his report as ‘selfish, arrogant, disloyal’. The reality is probably rather different. Not much is known about the SDS man, other than he left the unit for a life as a successful hotelier.

  The trip to Scotland to seek advice from this exiled SDS officer was, in Lambert’s view, another sign that Chitty was going off the rails. He confronted Chitty about his decision to ask for help from the former SDS man and recorded his reaction in the report. ‘When challenged as to the propriety of seeking such counsel, he countered colourfully: “Who the hell else am I supposed to talk to when the whole fucking organisation is out to screw my arse to the floor?”’

  A month later, the alarm was raised when Chitty’s Ford Sierra crashed by the promenade in Worthing. Chitty was missing. Despite the considerable operation to find him, there was no sign of him on the beach or in the sea. He was found, alive and well, later that night, in the town.

  Lambert was left with a vivid memory of Chitty sitting in an interview room in Worthing police station: ‘Distracted, almost haunted, a broken man obsessed by persecution and his own professional guilt (not the guilt of betrayal of animal activists but of letting down the SDS). As the wise old duty officer observed, “He’s not a well man, is he?”’

  Chitty had undoubtedly reached a low point, but it is important to remember that Lambert had a stake in the rival spy’s tragedy. Lambert must have known that if Chitty went over the edge, and talked to the newspapers, the future of his own career was in doubt. And for all his vulnerability, Chitty still conjured the strength to take on his bosses at Special Branch.