Jack Lawrence

as some of these officers in some cases proposed marriage or even fathered children with protesters who were unaware their partner was a police officer in a role as part of their official duties.

Various legal actions followed, including eight women who would take action against the Metropolitan Police, stating they were deceived into long-term intimate relationships by five officers.

Do you think people understand or realise how much that they are being sort of, I mean, use the term spied on?

Do you think people understand how much access that these organisations can have on your day-to-day life and your communications?

Yeah.

Yeah, just putting it all over social media.

How did you feel about, you know, while you were working there doing that, did you suddenly, were you of the mindset that, you know, I'm loving this, this is, you know, obviously as you said it starts off weird and then it becomes just everyday job.

Did you find yourself really enjoying the work you were doing or were you already a bit sort of like, oh, I'm not sure about this, about how much, you know, we are looking into people?

David Shaler was born in Middlesbrough in the United Kingdom on December 24th of 1965 and even from a young age was described by one of his teachers as a born rebel who sailed close to the wind and did not suffer fools gladly.

David's early life was actually in journalism and at university he would take on the role of editor of the student newspaper, where he would in fact publish excerpts from the book Spycatcher from another MI5 officer, Peter Wright.

This book was in fact banned in Britain at the time.

David would graduate university with second class honours at the upper division with a degree in English and would later take a job at the Sunday Times newspaper.

In 1991, he would join MI5 after responding to an obscure job advertisement calling for people with an interest in current affairs, common sense and the ability to write.

Believing it was some form of media-related position, he applied.

Much like Annie, David began his career in F Branch and counter-subversion, where he worked vetting Labour Party politicians prior to the 1992 election.

He would later be transferred to T Branch, which handled the threat of Irish terrorism, which is also an area that Annie worked, and again would find herself in a situation which troubled her.

I would imagine that's extremely high pressure because obviously when you're dealing with a terrorist organisation, especially one who was as active as the IRA was around that time with bombings and all the rest of it, was there that sense of, as I said, pressure with making sure that you were on top of everything?

And I know you've mentioned that there was a bombing that happened that shouldn't have happened or could have been avoided.

The column of smoke rising above the city skyline left Londoners in little doubt about the size of the blast.

The shockwave was felt over a wide area.