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Your<br />
Englishspeaking<br />
radio in<br />
Berlin.<br />
For<br />
adventurous<br />
thinkers.<br />
www.nprberlin.de<br />
56 • MAY <strong>2015</strong><br />
I, SPY<br />
By ANNIE MACHON<br />
Former MI5 spy turned author and activist Annie Machon chronicles her<br />
post-whistleblowing adventures at home and abroad.<br />
My great LEAP forward<br />
As an MI5 whistleblower and therefore persona<br />
not terribly grata with the British Establishment,<br />
I never expected to be invited to No.<br />
10 Downing Street – the London residence of<br />
the British prime minister. Yet there I was, on<br />
a grey day last January, with my finger pressing<br />
the doorbell. Accompanying me were former<br />
undercover police officer Neil Woods and<br />
leading drug reform campaigner Jason Reed.<br />
We were there representing the UK branch<br />
of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)<br />
a global organisation with more than<br />
150,000 supporters in 120 countries around<br />
the world (see page 12). Its members include<br />
judges, police officers, lawyers and prison<br />
governors, as well as DEA and intelligence<br />
personnel. What unites us is our knowledge<br />
that the “war on drugs” is a ruinously costly<br />
failure causing harm on both a societal and<br />
personal level. In fact, drug prohibition has<br />
unleashed the biggest crime wave the world<br />
has ever seen, with a global trade worth up<br />
to half a trillion dollars per year, all of which<br />
is pocketed by crime cartels and terrorist<br />
groups. Whole regions have been devastated<br />
by drug-related violence, governments and<br />
banks have been subverted and corrupted by<br />
drug money and millions of people have been<br />
criminalised merely for using drugs.<br />
So how does an ex-spook become a drug<br />
reform campaigner? I have been aware of<br />
at least some of these issues since the early<br />
1990s, when I was working as an intelligence<br />
officer for the UK Security Service. One of<br />
my postings was to investigate terrorist logistics<br />
– the infiltration and exfiltration of both<br />
people and material to the UK – and as such<br />
I worked very closely with HM Customs.<br />
There is a huge overlap between terrorist<br />
groups and drug trafficking worldwide. My<br />
contacts freely admitted that the “war on<br />
drugs” had been lost and was now merely<br />
security theatre to satisfy the political agenda.<br />
However, I had to push aside the issue in<br />
1997, when I helped my former partner blow<br />
the whistle on the crimes of the UK spies. We<br />
ended up going on the run around Europe,<br />
NEW<br />
COLUMN!<br />
living in exile. My partner<br />
went to prison twice. After<br />
the drama ended, I spent<br />
the next decade rebuilding my life as a lecturer<br />
and writer, now based part-time in the dissident<br />
and decadent capital that is modern Berlin. A<br />
few years ago, in 2009, I was on a speaking tour<br />
across Canada when I was approached by a supporter<br />
of LEAP. I was immediately intrigued<br />
and a month later arranged to meet the founder<br />
of the organisation, former undercover cop<br />
Lieutenant Jack Cole, in the bar at Amsterdam<br />
Centraal. In 2012, I became the group’s European<br />
director after attending the annual Commission<br />
on Narcotic Drugs at the UN in Vienna.<br />
In the years since, on behalf of LEAP I<br />
have done nationwide tours and spoken at<br />
events across the political spectrum, from<br />
“free the weed” type festivals, to parliamentary<br />
debates, to police conferences. And I can<br />
tell you, the tide is turning. Latin American<br />
countries are openly calling for legalisation,<br />
US states are regulating cannabis, and many<br />
European countries have successful decriminalistion<br />
programmes. The prohibition<br />
edifice is crumbling.<br />
Meanwhile, Germany surprisingly lags behind<br />
other countries’ more enlightened drug<br />
policies. That’s why next October we'll be<br />
launching LEAP Germany in the Bundestag<br />
with Representative Frank Tempel and soonto-be-former<br />
North Rhine-Westphalia police<br />
president Hubert Wimber. Together with a<br />
pool of experienced officials, we hope to make<br />
the media case for drug legalisation, regulation<br />
and taxation – and in this day and age, even<br />
Germany cannot afford to dismiss the latter.<br />
With credibility and expertise, we will help<br />
administer the anti-venom to the toxic, failed<br />
50-year experiment that is prohibition. ■<br />
HOW DOES AN EX-<br />
SPOOK BECOME A DRUG<br />
REFORM CAMPAIGNER?<br />
MICHAL ANDRYSIAK
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