0:00

Hi, it's Alexei here. I'm the reporter

0:03

on Hoaxed. Thank you so much again

0:05

for listening. I want to tell

0:07

you about a new series my colleagues here

0:09

at Tortoise are launching today. It

0:12

centres around the story of a former

0:14

spy, how he infiltrated

0:16

a campaign group, deceived people

0:18

for years, before, he says, he

0:21

turned double agent. And

0:23

it all plays out in the opaque world

0:26

of corporate intelligence. I've

0:28

got the trailer to play for you now. If

0:30

you like the sound of it, just search for

0:32

Into the Dirt wherever you

0:34

get your podcasts.

0:41

Three years ago, a man called Rob Moore walked

0:43

into our newsroom. I am in desperate

0:46

need of being able to tell my story, which I haven't been

0:48

able to tell yet. He wanted to set the record

0:50

straight on a story that's ruined

0:52

him. And had I been able to tell my story,

0:55

people might have understood. In

0:57

the year since we first met, Rob

0:59

has described himself as many things to me. A

1:02

whistleblower. Destroy this person who clearly

1:04

has come to them as a whistleblower. A journalist.

1:07

He hated me because I said I was a journalist and he said, well have this. But

1:09

over a decade ago when all of this started,

1:11

he was a spy. A

1:13

corporate spy. He worked

1:15

for a corporate intelligence agency.

1:17

And in 2012, he took on the case

1:19

that would define the next decade of

1:21

his life. He went undercover

1:23

posing as a filmmaker to extract information

1:26

from an environmental group. I was

1:28

kind of practiced in the art

1:30

of deception. But his story goes, he

1:33

soon figured out he was working for the wrong side.

1:36

So he decided to become a double agent. He'd

1:38

keep working for the intelligence agency, actually

1:41

be supporting the campaigners. But

1:43

he never told them the

1:46

whole truth.

1:47

He just said,

1:49

Hamida, how do you know Rob

1:51

Moore? Until in 2016, after

1:53

years of being in control of these two disparate

1:55

worlds,

1:56

he was unexpectedly outed. Sounds

1:59

extraordinary now. He just said, don't talk to him, he's

2:01

a spy. He actually caused a huge

2:04

alarm. He was one of us, and finding

2:07

out was a huge, huge shock.

2:10

I didn't believe it. Now the campaigners

2:12

see him as a traitor, someone who's done enormous

2:15

harm to the people he betrayed. I absolutely

2:17

did not believe it. Like I couldn't understand where

2:19

that was coming from. The Rob sees himself as a

2:21

misunderstood whistleblower,

2:23

who believes that if the campaigners only understood

2:25

the full story, they'd see him differently. And

2:28

the terrible wrongs he says he was exposing might

2:30

finally come to light. This

2:35

is what happened, and it's there. And

2:38

I recorded everything, which of course

2:40

is one of the things that got me into trouble, but it's also one

2:42

of the things that means I can prove what really happened.

2:47

For the last few years, I've been asking myself some questions.

2:50

Who really is Rob Moore? And what

2:52

were his motivations? How does he justify

2:55

what he did? This notion that you

2:58

create good from dirt,

3:00

and that it's a noble

3:02

thing to do to go

3:05

into that dirt. He wanted to expose

3:08

what was going on, but

3:10

he was in this very strange position,

3:12

which immediately I

3:13

found intriguing. If you do not

3:16

cause harm, which is the key rule,

3:19

then actually you could use your position to turn poison

3:21

into medicine.

3:23

From Tortoise, this is Into

3:25

the Dirt, a story about truth, spies,

3:28

and the stories we tell ourselves,

3:30

about hidden power in a corrupt and

3:32

dangerous world.