Who Trolled Amber? - Introducing: Into the Dirt

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Over three years in the making, Tortoise introduces Into The Dirt – investigating the extraordinary story of private spy, Rob Moore and the shadowy world of corporate intelligence. Rob was tasked with working undercover to extract information from an environmental campaign group but he ended up turning on his employers and supporting the group he was meant to be infiltrating. Only it wasn’t that straightforward. Neither side knew the whole truth. Was Rob a misunderstood whistleblower or a traitor to a cause?Into the Dirt is a wild story about truth, spies and the stories we tell ourselves.Listen to the full series today. For the premium Tortoise listening experience, curated by our journalists, download the free Tortoise audio app. For early and ad-free access to all our investigative series and daily and weekly shows, subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts.If you’d like to further support slow journalism and help us build a different kind of newsroom, do consider donating to Tortoise at tortoisemedia.com/support-us. Your contributions allow us to investigate, campaign and explore, and to build a newsroom that is responsible and sustainable. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Three years ago, a man called Rob Moore walked into our newsroom. I am in desperate need of being able to tell my story, which I haven't been able to tell yet. He wanted to set the record straight on a story that's ruined him. And had I been able to tell my story, people might have understood. In the year since we first met, Rob has described himself as many things to me. A whistleblower.

Destroy this person who clearly has come to them as a whistleblower. A journalist. He said we'll have this. But over a decade ago when all of this started, he was a spy. A corporate spy. He worked for a corporate intelligence agency. And in 2012, he took on the case that would define the next decade of his life. He went undercover posing as a filmmaker to extract information from an environmental group.

I was kind of practiced in the art of deception. But his story goes he soon figured out he was working for the wrong side so he decided to become a double agent. He'd keep working for the intelligence agency but actually be supporting the campaigners. Only he never told them the whole truth. You know, he just said, I mean, how do you know Rob Moore? Until in 2016, after years of being in control of these two disparate worlds, he was unexpectedly outed. Sounds extraordinary now. He just said, don't talk to him, he's a spy. Naturally caused huge alarm. He was one of us and finding out was a huge, huge shock. I didn't believe it.

Now the campaigners see him as a traitor, someone who's done enormous harm to the people he betrayed. I absolutely did not believe it. Like, I couldn't understand... But Rob sees himself as a misunderstood whistleblower who believes that if the campaigners only understood the full story, they'd see him differently, and the terrible wrongs he says he was exposing

might finally come to light. This is what happened, and it's there, and I recorded everything, which, of course, is one of the things that got me into trouble, but it's also one of the things that got me into trouble, but it's also one of the things that means I can prove what really happened. For the last few years, I've been asking myself some questions. Who really is Rob Moore?

And what were his motivations? How does he justify what he did? This notion that you create good from dirt, and that it's a noble thing to do to go into that dirt. He wanted to expose what was going on, but he was in this very strange position, which immediately I found intriguing. If you do not cause harm, which is the key rule, then actually you could use your position to turn poison into medicine. From Tortoise, this is Into the Dirt. A story about truth, spies and the stories we tell ourselves

about hidden power in a corrupt and dangerous world. Episode one will be released on Monday, June 26th, The Tortoise Minibus.