My former PhD Supervisor (former because of completion of PhD not because he turned out to be a spy) has a theory that most left-wing groups are actually run by MI5 agents. That they take on all the onerous responsibilities such as being Treasurer and Secretary and so forth when no-one else wants to, because otherwise they lose a fairly cushy assignment.
It was pretty nasty - Martin really groomed some of the more activisty types in CAAT, and played up divisions between them and other sections of CAAT, often saying different things to different people, with the result that when it all broke, they were inclined to believe him, so some of them left CAAT and concentrated on more direct-activist type organisations, that he's still involved in. There was one really stupid decision by Steering Committee to scale back relations with this anti-arms fair direct-activist umbrella group, that was pretty much the final straw for some of the CAAT activists type, and that Martin himself bemoaned vociferously - turned out he was the one who suggested in to the committee in the first place! He made himself almost like a father to one former staff-member, who had been one of most effective and level-headed guys around, but who when Martin was accused of all this was really messed up by it, didn't believe it of course, and pretty much made an ass of himself in the way he behaved. He wants nothing more to do with CAAT of course.
I didn't get done over nearly so bad, but he played with my head lots. I generally took the side of things that he was pretending to be on in the various disagreements, and there were several occasions where he set me up for a fall, nudging me in certain directions and then backing out of the battle at the critical moment. And I put it down to weakness and forgave him each time. But when the truth started to come out - he made a total schoolboy error by leaving all his emails to the right-wing consultancy that was employing him on the commonly-viewable email system - I realised, "actually that explains a lot".
This is one person I have quite a bit of difficulty forgiving. I pretty much don't give a shit about whatever info he passed on, I doubt it actually did the arms companies a lot of good. It's the head-fucking.
no subject
It was pretty nasty - Martin really groomed some of the more activisty types in CAAT, and played up divisions between them and other sections of CAAT, often saying different things to different people, with the result that when it all broke, they were inclined to believe him, so some of them left CAAT and concentrated on more direct-activist type organisations, that he's still involved in. There was one really stupid decision by Steering Committee to scale back relations with this anti-arms fair direct-activist umbrella group, that was pretty much the final straw for some of the CAAT activists type, and that Martin himself bemoaned vociferously - turned out he was the one who suggested in to the committee in the first place! He made himself almost like a father to one former staff-member, who had been one of most effective and level-headed guys around, but who when Martin was accused of all this was really messed up by it, didn't believe it of course, and pretty much made an ass of himself in the way he behaved. He wants nothing more to do with CAAT of course.
I didn't get done over nearly so bad, but he played with my head lots. I generally took the side of things that he was pretending to be on in the various disagreements, and there were several occasions where he set me up for a fall, nudging me in certain directions and then backing out of the battle at the critical moment. And I put it down to weakness and forgave him each time. But when the truth started to come out - he made a total schoolboy error by leaving all his emails to the right-wing consultancy that was employing him on the commonly-viewable email system - I realised, "actually that explains a lot".
This is one person I have quite a bit of difficulty forgiving. I pretty much don't give a shit about whatever info he passed on, I doubt it actually did the arms companies a lot of good. It's the head-fucking.