Officer HN65’s true identity is protected

A FORMER special branch police officer has told how he assumed the identity of a grieving husband and used a codename stolen from a dead child to spy on a group campaigning against nuclear weapons.

Officer “HN65”, codename John Kerry, spent four years as a “trusted” organiser and later secretary of the Hampstead branch of CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), while living in a “safe house” in West Hampstead.

He attended dozens of meetings and filed several reports about the group’s workings and membership to the Met’s Special Demonstrations Squad (SDS). His evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry was published for the first time this week.

It is looking into whether a secret taskforce overstepped the boundaries when monitoring mainly left-wing campaigners in what has become known as the “spy cops” scandal. Officer HN65’s true identity has been protected but his statement reveals how he transformed from a clean-shaven suit-wearing police constable to one of the “hairies”, the nickname undercover operatives were given back at Scotland Yard.

He ended up growing a long beard, mugged-up on astrology and considered an ear piercing until he realised it would leave “a permanent scar”.

His assignment later found him rocking out to the psychedelic band Hawkwind at the 1981 Glastonbury festival with his new found comrades, smoking cannabis joints.

He would routinely get caught by actual police while fly-posting for the group around Swiss Cottage at night.

The statement, however, reveals a lasting mental toll on police officers who were sent undercover for years without significant training or support.

“I started having particularly vivid and troubling nightmares after I stopped being an Undercover Officer (UCO),” the officer’s 67-page statement concludes.

The inquiry is already the longest and most expensive in British history. It was launched in 2017 following the revelation that SDS officers had gone so far as fathering children with the activists they were spying on. They also used the name of dead children as codenames.

HN65 invented a “legend” of being a school rebel drop out who had spent time hitch-hiking and travelling before getting into a long-term relationship with a young woman “who had died in tragic circumstances”, leaving him bereft. “I told my managers what my back story would be, and they tested me on certain aspects – including my star sign,” his statement said.

Top: HN65’s statement to the inquiry and his humdrum reports on Hampstead CND

The details of the fake profession he chose are redacted in the reports as it might make his identification easier, but his evidence recalled an “extremely awkward” moment when one member of Hampstead CND “clearly had a number of acquaintances in the same area of work”.

HN65’s statement said: “He immediately quizzed me about whether l knew this or that person, and l was forced to divert the conversation to a different topic.”

On his transformation into the role, he recalled: “I grew a beard and I let my hair grow out. I almost got my ear pierced but stopped when I realised that it would leave a permanent scar – the managers mocked me for a little while because of this.”

He said he only broke the law in a minor way while on his mission, arguing how difficult it was not to smoke cannabis with group members who would often pop round to socialise at his cover flat.   “In my view at the time, a willingness to engage in both of these activities was key to maintaining my credibility with members of the group,” he said.

His statement also added: “When I was out fly-posting there were a number of occasions we were caught red-handed by the local constabulary.” Despite all of this effort, his reports back to the SDS were all rather humdrum. They focus mainly on new members of interest to CND and its role in organising protests. One warns how the St Pancras CND branch had “been taken over by Trotskyists” and also reported that “a number of women with Hampstead CND were active at Greenham Common Peace Camp”.

The Special Demonstrations Squad was set up to monitor political groups intent on violence and disorder, but the statement accepts that this would have been “completely counter to CND’s principles”. One report filed by HN65 is about a Labour councillor whose name is redacted but who had “admitted he leaked information potentially relating to civil defence infrastructure and possibly covered by the Official Secrets Acts to an investigative journalist”.

After four years undercover, “John Kerry” informed the Hampstead CND branch he had “itchy feet and wanted to do more travelling”, adding: “Once I withdrew from the field, I had no further contact with any of the members of my branch.” He said his time undercover came with the “great tension” of holding down two identities “caused me a significant amount of stress” and had “an adverse effect on my career”.

The inquiry, chaired by Sir John Mitting, continues. It is not expected to finish before 2026.

CND said the latest evidence unveiled “a clear and deeply alarming use of political under­cover policing” and the “most explicit example of subverting parliamentary democracy uncovered” by the inquiry so far.

So what did the mole find out about CND? Not much!

SPY cop ‘John Kerry’ filed dozens of reports about anti nuclear campaigners in the Hampstead in the early 1980s.

But his notes back to the Special Demonstrations Squad – published for the first time last week – reveal how his findings were hardly earth-shattering.

For all the resources ploughed into undercover operations, Officer HN65 found himself covering a broad range of peaceful and non-violent activity including a screening of The War Game, an apocalyptic film imagining what would happen in a nuclear bomb attack which the BBC banned in the 1960s.

The event was attended by 200 people in Hampstead Community Centre in 1981 without any threat to anybody.

Other reports filed by the undercover officer were about a plan to launch lantern-lit boats across Whitestone Pond at the start of a CND march from Hampstead to central London, a meeting of Camden Teachers for Peace in Dartmouth Park, an anti-Ronald Reagan meeting in Kilburn, and a torchlight march from Fortune Green Police Station to St George’s Hall Kingsgate.

The reports list descriptions of organisers – for example one new member is described as “a mercurial character who is at present unemployed and has been for some time – Height 5.11 Slim build. Medium brown untidy hair and close trimmed beard. Excitable character.”

Another new member – a solicitor member – is named and reported on as “driving a silver Renault – registration redacted – 5.8. Slim build. Fair hair, short trimmed beard. Gold rimmed glasses.”

“John Kerry” became group secretaries of the organisation and sent National Council reports and documentation to SDS managers, MPS senior officers and also the secret service Ml5.

CND said that many of the reports filed by two separate undercover officers “serve no purpose other than assisting the [Conservative Party’s] 1983 General Election campaign”, CND’s statement.

CND’s chairwoman Kate Hudson, who lives in Tufnell Park, told the inquiry last week: “All the forms of action you have described are not in any sense violent or in any sense dangerous. CND members are deeply committed, very moral, and concerned about the future of humanity.”

A deception just like The Day Of The Jackal

IF assuming the name of a dead child sounds like a spy novel, then look no further than Frederick Forsyth’s epic bestseller The Day Of The Jackal. The book was later turned into a film starring Edward Fox and shows how a mystery assassin contracted to kill French president Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s covers his tracks.

Having assumed a fake identity from a toddler who had died in London aged two, nobody ever finds out who he really was, and he is known simply as the jackal. Over the years, obtaining travel documents in the name of people who died in childhood had been used in real fraud cases.

Officer HN65 did not go that far, of course.

His statement tells how he applied for a job with the Special Demonstrations Squad after a year working in uniform, training for two weeks before hitting the streets of Hampstead undercover.

“I looked for a child with a date of birth approximately two years either side of mine who had died at a young age, so it was unlikely that they had ever had a passport,” his statement to the inquiry said/

“I found an individual called Anthony James Kerry and obtained a copy of his birth certificate from Somerset House as the foundation for my cover identity.”

He drove a brown Cortina, you say?

HAS a Hampstead Heath pond mystery been solved by the Under Cover Policing inquiry? A brown Ford Cortina was discovered at the bottom of the boating lake when it was dredged in 2015. The question on everybody’s lips back then was: How did it get there?

The Ford Cortina found in the dredged pond on Hampstead Heath – a prankster later added the ‘No Parking’ sign and a clamp

Now the New Journal may have spent too many hours reading through the files released by the Undercover Policing Inquiry and put two and two together and made five but the statement by special officer “John Kerry” reveals he was driving a “brown Ford Cortina” while posing as a member of Hampstead CND in the early 1980s.

While not mentioning what happened to the car, it does reveals the huge concerns he held about being exposed after quitting his undercover role.

A brown Ford Cortina found in the ponds – thought to be a late 1970s model – has become part of Hampstead Heath lore. Speculation about how it got there includes a story of a furious woman who took revenge on her ex boyfriend by driving it to the water’s edge and taking the hand brake off.