With a deployment of 20,000 police in the small region around Gorleben alone, the transport was secured by the biggest police operation post-war Germany has ever seen. A whole region was virtually occupied by an army of police officers and vehicles.

Despite their impressive presence in the region, police could only complete the transport by using extreme force. This included baton-charging peaceful sitting-blockaders on a regular basis; violent raids on resistance infrastructure; evictions of the tent camps, forcing thousands of protesters to disperse over the freezing countryside; the use of pepperspray and acid gel.

Despite this heavy-handed approach, police seemed to loose control of the situation on Wednesday afternoon, when more and more people stormed the tracks, after the train had been held up by environmental protesters chained to the railtracks. In this situation police increasingly used indirect measures of coping with the protests - in addition to brute force. They interrupted the mobile phone network, issued guided misinformation to the press, giving out false plans and reports, and distributed unfounded claims of 'acid attacs' by protesters and of violence by Greenpeace activists. There have been confirmed reports of police provocateurs operating amongst demonstrators and of first aiders being beaten up by police. Several journalists were prevented from accessing the sites of demonstrations and actions. The Indymedia car was also attacked and damaged heavily.

A major part of this strategy was what Indymedia Germany have called "Infowar" - a strategy of misinformation, based on cooperation between police and mainstream media. Police issued false information, usually snappy headlines related to violence by protesters, which journalists happily picked up and used in their articles and broadcasts. Some of these police claims were proved wrong only a few hours after being issued, but at that point the information had already been made public.