holy crap, I never heard of this, that is ethically unjustifiable due to the suffering of the innocent kid at bare minimum

"Infiltrating animal rights groups" sounds like a plot by the cops to rake overtime and get laid in the meantime. I can't even begin to imagine how they sold it to their superiors. They all must have been in the scam.

Plus, the one dude was married, and this was the perfect excuse to do some extramaritals, under the guise of “I’m on duty, honey“

Thanks for the book recommendation.

And about the news links, since we are talking about environmental and animal rights protest groups, I would say the terrorism here comes from the police. Making a baby for better undercover credibility is very low and in no relationship to the threat of the quite harmles activists. But this is a good indicator, of how willing the secret forces are, when it comes to real terrorists. There were years of investigations into the NSU in germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground) for example and how close exactly the double agents were to the terrorists and how much involved.