Secret police

“ But it was at this period that the detection of crime was undertaken for the first time as a distinct branch of police business, and it will be seen in a later chapter how Vidocq did great things, although often by dishonest agents and unworthy means. In the Second Empire the secret police over-rode everything; Napoleon III. had been a conspirator in his time, and he had an army of private spies in addition to the police of the Château, and these spies watched the regular police at a cost of some fourteen millions of francs. ”

“ These men, seventy-five in number, form what is known as the political branch of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Police. They go about in disguise, and their sole duty is to shadow Suffragettes and other political workers. They follow certain political workers from their homes to their places of business, to their social pleasures, into tea rooms and restaurants, even to the theatre. They pursue unsuspecting people in taxicabs, sit beside them in omnibuses. Above all they take down speeches. In fact the system is exactly like the secret police system of Russia. ”

“ A secret police, or rather, a number of secret agents of the police, organised on the French system, is what we must institute ere long, and the sooner it is taken in hand the better. Those who require their services do not hesitate to employ ‘Private Inquiry Offices’ and other similar establishments ”

“ You know, Scotland Yard, or the F.B.I., or Russia's secret police, or the French Sûreté, or Interpol. This world is so deep in police, counter-espionage outfits and security agents that an alien would slip up in time, no matter how much he'd been trained. ”

“ Were all these spies, now called police agents, or agents of the secret police, paid regular salaries, your objection would stand, but most of them have no other reward than the protection of the police; being employed in gambling—houses, in coffee—houses, in taverns, at the theatres, in the public gardens, in the hotels, in lottery offices, at pawnbrokers', in brothels, and in bathing-houses, where the proprietors or masters of these establishments pay them. ”

“ It is a perfect hot-bed of political intrigue, and it is under police protection."
"Police protection! A place like that!" Duncombe exclaimed.
"Not as you and I understand it, perhaps," Spencer explained. "There is no Scotland Yard extending a protecting arm over the place, and that sort of thing. But the place is haunted by spies, and there are intrigues carried on there in which the secret service police often take a hand. In return it is generally very hard to get to the bottom of any disappearance or even robbery there through the usual channels. ”

“ The word "spy" being obnoxious in all languages and at all times and in all places, the myriad smaller particles of the Secret System were called "Agents."
The Paris "agent" of this class has, happily, no counterpart in the American government. Our "detectives," or "plain clothes men," are limited to legitimate police duties in the discovery of crime and prosecution of criminals. They are known, are borne on pay-rolls, usually have good character and some official standing. ”

“ The Secret Police attached to the Russian Embassy in London are ever-watchful and untiring in their efforts to discover the plans and movements of our Party. It is, therefore, our constant endeavour to lead them upon false scents and direct their attention to quarters in direct opposition to that in which we are working.
No monarch possesses such a prodigious organisation of police spies and agents provocateurs as the Tzar. His emissaries are in every European city, and it must be admitted that for cunning and astuteness they are unequalled. ”

“ The task of the Secret State Police is to discover these crimes and offenses, to find the perpetrators, and to bring them to trial. The number of criminal proceedings continually pending in the People’s Court for treasonable acts against Land or Reich is the result of this work. The second important field of operations for the Secret State Police is the preventive combatting of all dangers threatening the State and its leaders. ”

“ I said one evening when the veteran of the United States Secret Service appeared to be in one of his story-spinning moods, "you've told me of cases that have to do with smuggling and spies, robberies and fingerprints and frauds, but you've never mentioned the one crime that is most common in the annals of police courts and detective bureaus."
"Murder?" inquired Quinn, his eyes shifting to the far wall of his library-den.
"Precisely. Haven't government detectives ever been instrumental in solving a murder mystery?" ”

“ A PAINFULLY prominent feature of presentday Russian life is the frequency of provocaton to violence by the secret agents of the Government, which has attained an extraordinary development during the last few years, since public money is lavished upon the three or four different and rival sections of the State's secret police: as also has the participation of various police officers in all kinds of crime, of which many striking instances have been discovered of late. ”

“ In the name of security the police state justifies its arbitrary oppressions on evidence that is secret, because security might be prejudiced if it were brought to light in hearings. The plea that evidence of guilt must be secret is abhorrent to free men, because it provides a cloak for the malevolent, the misinformed, the meddlesome, and the corrupt to play the role of informer undetected and uncorrected. ”

“ The detective, he says, who stands alone and fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves' kitchen, is the original and poetic figure, and the criminals surrounding him represent cosmic conservatism. But in "The Man Who Was Thursday" each one of the six detectives, separately commissioned by the mysterious head of the secret police to enter the inner circle of seven anarchists, believes himself to be fighting single-handed for law and order against a criminal conspiracy to destroy civilization. ”

“ No person employed in the secret police could be charged with felony or theft, nor could any civil action be brought against its agents but by their immediate superiors; no one had such facilities of travelling as they: the services of the gendarmes were absolutely at their disposition, and they could always demand an escort of Cossacks if necessary. ”

“ The magistrate listened with attention and then said—
'I have long been aware of the existence of the secret, subterranean Vaults of which you allude, and so have the officers of the police; yet the fact is known to very, very few of the citizens generally. Now you propose that an efficient and armed force of the police and watch, make a sudden descent into the den, with the view of capturing the villains who inhabit it. Ridiculous!—why, sir, the thing is impossible: they have a mysterious passage, unknown to any but themselves, by which they can escape and defy pursuit. ”

“ The spy system of France is largely based nowadays, as in the time of Fouché, on the Dossier. In France any person who has had, or even who is likely to have, anything like a career which is of a public nature is duly taken cognisance of by the police, and all and everything in the way of private information or gossip or documentary evidence and the like is collated against all possible eventuality and upshot, the result being forthwith archived in the offices of the chief of police. ”

“ As in Germany, so in France, that type of inferior spy who is known by the term mouchard is generally to be found among the municipal inspectors of lodging-houses, the supervisors of night-houses, those detectives whose business is the watching of the street-police, all of which individuals have opportunities for picking up clues to more or less important crime. ”

“ One flat on his face (he had been in this position when the constable found him, and had been restored to that position when the methodical P. C. Habit found that he was beyond human assistance) and the other huddled on his side.
The police kept the crowd at a distance whilst the head of the secret police (T. B. Smith's special department merited that description) made a careful examination. He found a pistol on the ground, and another under the figure of the huddled man, then as the police ambulance was backed to the pavement, he interviewed the shivering Mr. Farrington. ”

“ The secret police, the system of spies, bribery of the Press, railways, telegraphs, telephones, photography, prisons, fortifications, enormous riches, the education of the younger generations, and above all, the army, are in the hands of the Governments. ”

“ Those notorious but substantial rumours, which occasionally ran through England, of Zeppelin raids upon Newcastle and Colchester, and which were subsequently proved to be groundless, all emanated from servants of the chief of the Berlin Secret Police operating in Britain. The French writer, Elme Caro, has drawn the attention of his countrymen to this form of espionage in the following words:—
"There is above all one especial ruse in which our enemy excels, and that is in spreading false reports and rumours. ”

“ If any man of influence and authority in the land could be present at a ‘business’ meeting of English, French, and a few German thieves in some of the lowest haunts of ‘Foreign London,’ an efficient system of secret detective police would very soon become established in what has been foolishly called ‘the safest city in the world.’
In England, we have a curious but very erroneous idea that if a policeman wears a suit of plain clothes instead of his regular uniform, he is fully able to find out all about any crime that has ever been committed. A greater mistake was never made. ”

“ Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, "conscience," watches over every motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a "matter of conscience," i. e. police business. ”

“ In carrying out their duties, the military and police authorities would expect that persons having information of cases of suspected espionage would communicate the grounds of the suspicion to local military authority or to the local police, who are in direct communication with the Special Intelligence Department, instead of causing unnecessary public alarm, and possibly giving warning to the spies by public speeches and letters to the Press. ”

“ Preserving the public peace against the machinations of a secret band of conspirators who succeeded temporarily in deluding a portion of the people, and in partially alienating them from their legitimate rulers, is a duty too nearly allied to the police service to be a favourite one with soldiers. ”

“ There will be a little money in it—according to the man's standing, and all he is required to do is to forward once or twice weekly a letter detailing conversations, opinions expressed by others, various acts, trysts and so on of any or all of those with whom he works and consorts. The prospective spy does not know, nor will he ever know, what object the police have ultimately in view, or how important it is, or for what stakes they are playing. ”

“ The only thing I've discovered by myself is that he has been making use of that man privately. Who could blame him? He's an old police hand. He told me virtually that he must have tools to work with. It occurred to me that this tool should be surrendered to the Special Crimes division as a whole, instead of remaining the private property of Chief Inspector Heat. I extend my conception of our departmental duties to the suppression of the secret agent. But Chief Inspector Heat is an old departmental hand. He would accuse me of perverting its morality and attacking its efficiency. ”

“ After the establishment of the Republic the spy police was reorganised and a special brigade of secret-service agents was formed whose object was—and still is—to spy upon all those political sects at the head of which stand pretenders like the Duke of Orleans, or Prince Napoleon, or the late General Boulanger. At any grave political crisis in France these political sects display more than their usual energies, trusting more or less, as they do, in the star of their particular candidate, and at such times the corps of spies become correspondingly active. ”

“ The public of the whole world believe we have a thoroughly active and efficient Home Secret Service Organisation, working as a separate independent unit. That is just what we ought to have had and for which there has ever been an [Pg xvii] urgent want. This omission is a defect in our armour which has been directly responsible for the undoubted loss of valuable lives and the destruction of vast property.
Much too much is left in the hands of the police. It is true our British Police Force is the best, the most efficient, and the least corrupt in the whole world. ”

“ The political corps d'espionnage in France numbers, it may be said, some 1000 paid agents of all grades of society, men and women. They are expected to earn their living among the class of people upon whom they report to the police, so that being in regular employment their movements shall not be open to suspicion. When the chief-of-division requires the service of a particular spy at an established point, the individual chosen is requested formally to present himself at district headquarters. ”