Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [65]
[Beat.]
REPORTER: We did ask questions. And what we’ve learned goes beyond party politics. In fact, it goes right to the heart of the British establishment, an establishment which is, bizarre as it may seem, riddled with cults: cults with their own codes of ethics, their own initiations, and their own items of worship. What’s alarming is not that these groups exist, but that they’ve existed for so long without being noticed, simply because they disguise their activities in the jargon and bureaucracy of ‘free trade’.
[Close-up of the REPORTER.]
REPORTER: To coin a phrase used by an ex-President of the United States, this is voodoo economics.
[Cut to Seeing Eye opening titles.
[We then return to the freeze-frame of Peter Morgan.]
REPORTER [voice]: The claim that people like Peter Morgan will supply anything to anybody seemed to be backed up when I contacted him posing as an agent for a company called IPS. Later on, we’ll hear about IPS’s role in procuring electric-shock weaponry for a multitude of foreign governments. But, having already introduced myself to Morgan, the following telephone conversation should shed some light on his attitude towards ‘free trade’.
[Cue a recording of the conversation, played over the freeze-frame of Morgan.]
REPORTER: Hello, Mr Morgan? It’s Sarah. Sarah Bland.
MORGAN: Oh, hi. Yeah. Listen, ah, sorry you had to leave like that last time –
REPORTER: Um, doesn’t matter. I just wanted to ask you about those, those riot shields you showed me.
MORGAN: Oh yeah. The shields. Thought you looked, you know, kind of interested…
REPORTER: Yes. Yes, I was. I wanted to know Was it true, what you told me? About them being tested by the British police?
[A subtitle appears on-screen: THE HOME OFFICE DENIES THAT ANY BRITISH POLICE FORCE USES, OR EVEN OWNS, ANY FORM OE ELECTRIC-SHOCK WEAPONRY.]
MORGAN: The Met, yeah. But they’re… they’re the big thing right now. They’re a popular design. We shift ’em all over the world.
REPORTER: Like…?
MORGAN: I think the last… you know, the last really big shipment we did was to Colombia. They wanted the voltage turned up, but…
REPORTER: Colombia? The Colombian police?
[Subtitle: COLOMBIA HAS BEEN AN AREA OF CONCERN FOR INTERNATIONAL CIVIL-RIGHTS CAMPAIGNERS FOR SOME TIME. ITS DEATH-SQUADS’ ARE KNOWN TO BE SPONSORED BY THE COUNTRY’S GOVERNMENT]
MORGAN: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
REPORTER: And the voltage on those shields would be… what?
MORGAN [sharp intake of breath]: You could take it up to a hundred and fifty thousand if you wanted. That’s, you know, they’re not likely to get up after that. [Laughs.] If you’re interested, though… we could send you the literature. It’s a good product, good and solid. They’ve been testing them in Ireland for years. All kind of on the quiet.
REPORTER: The government’s trying to keep this quiet, you mean?
MORGAN: Yeah. You know. Political bad news, but the police love this kind of stuff, and… the RUC can get away with murder, pretty much, but on the mainland, you’ve got to be careful. A lot of the hardware’s been tested by the UN. UN troops.
REPORTER: UN…?
MORGAN: Well, there’s a couple of UN paramilitary bases in Britain, so you know what the bureaucracy’s like. Nobody’s sure who’s supposed to be running what, whether it’s British or international or whatever. You can slip some of the, erm, some of the dodgier stuff in the cracks. You know. Nobody asks questions.
[Scene change. We see an old government building, presumably in England, surrounded by a wire fence. There are no signs of life inside.]
REPORTER [voice]: ‘Nobody asks questions’. Again, this is the key to all these suspect operations.
[We see the reporter strolling around the perimeter of the fence, alongside a middle-aged woman in a fashionable business suit.]
REPORTER [voice]: Today, this building on the outskirts of London belongs to the British civil service, nothing more than a storage facility for government paperwork. But in the 1970s, it was the headquarters of a paramilitary task force, under the jurisdiction of the United Nations.