This is True Spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest

secret missions of all time. Week by week, you'll hear the true stories behind

the operations that have shaped the world we live in.

True Spies. You'll meet the people who live life undercover.

What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position?

This is True Spies. For several seconds, John recalls looking at

the crowd. I think what's going on? Why is everything so quiet?

All the police officers who are standing totally ignorant of what was going on.

They heard this sound and thought that's a firecracker.

I'm Daisy Ridley and this is True Spies from Spicecape Studios.

Beware the men in suits, part one, stray dogs.

It's the 17th of April 1984. On the streets outside the Libyan Embassy

on St James's Square London, police are preparing for a demonstration.

Police were used to dealing with those kind of demonstrations,

particularly police officers who worked in the Westminster area because

demonstrating in central London was commonplace.

Demonstrations tend to be noisy, they tend to be vocal, but violence was quite

arrearity. Even so, the Libyan situation at this moment

is particularly tense. What was happening is around the world,

Colonel Gaddafi, the leader in Libya, had become agitated and quite tired

of the anti-Gaddafi sentiment that was being expressed by

the expatriate Libyans who were living in places around Europe in particular,

...