Agents of Influence

Britain's Secret Intelligence War Against the IRA

Aaron Edwards

• Publisher: Irish Academic Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781785373435
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Irlande

Recruited by British Intelligence to infiltrate the IRA and Sinn Féin during the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles, they were 'agents of influence'. With codenames like INFLICTION, STAKEKNIFE, 3007 and CAROL, these spies played a pivotal role in the fight against Irish republicanism. Now, for the first time, some of these agents have emerged from the shadows to tell their compelling stories. Agents of Influence takes you behind the scenes of the secret intelligence war which helped bring the IRA's armed struggle to an end.

Historian Aaron Edwards, the critically acclaimed author of UVF: Behind the Mask, explains how the IRA was penetrated by British agents, with explosive new revelations about the hidden agendas of prominent republicans like Martin McGuinness and Freddie Scappaticci and lesser-known ones like Joe Haughey and John Joe Magee. Bringing to light recently declassified TOP SECRET documents and the firsthand testimonies of agents and their handlers, Edwards reveals how British Intelligence gained extraordinary access to the IRA's inner circle and manipulated them into engaging with the peace process.

With new insights into the spy masters behind the scenes, their strategies and tactics, and Britain's international intelligence network in Northern Ireland, Europe, and beyond, Agents of Influence offers a rare and shocking glimpse into the clandestine world of secret agents, British intelligence strategy and the betrayal at the heart of militant Irish republicanism during the vicious decades of the Troubles.

1

THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM

‘It is the Government’s firm policy that we should continue in Northern Ireland to do our utmost to defeat terrorism.’

– Sir Humphrey Atkins, Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland, 2 July 19791

Narrow Water, Warrenpoint, County Down, 4.40 p.m.,
27 August 1979

It was a blistering hot Bank Holiday Monday in Narrow Water, a picturesque townland on Carlingford Lough, which straddles the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. On the main A2 dual carriageway, soldiers from A Company of the Parachute Regiment’s 2nd Battalion were making their way in a convoy from their base in Ballykinlar to relieve their comrades in Newry RUC station. As the rear vehicle, a four-tonne truck, rumbled along, the driver noticed a trailer loaded with hay bales parked in a nearby lay-by. The bales concealed a 700lb fertiliser-based bomb, packed tightly into milk churns and surrounded by petrol cans. The bomb exploded, sending a massive fireball into the back of the vehicle that burnt through the flesh of the soldiers piled into it. Six soldiers were killed immediately.2 Two civilians who had pulled into the lay-by for a picnic on the shoreline felt the initial shockwave pass through them and heard the loud bang that followed. ‘I looked up and saw a large cloud of smoke where the lorry used to be,’ one of them recalled. ‘I saw soldiers running back to the explosion. I thought the bomb had been meant for the soldiers and that they had got away.’3 The scene was one of utter devastation.

Twenty-eight-year-old Captain Tom Schwartz from Farnborough in Hampshire was among the young Parachute Regiment officers in an accompanying Land Rover. He described what he saw after the explosion: ‘I have never seen such a sight in my life and never wish to see it again. Bits and pieces of people were scattered all over the place.’4 He said he was hit by a ‘great rushing wind’, though he managed to escape with his life. After the initial blast, he raised his head and saw that everything was completely enveloped in thick dust. As the survivors began to pick themselves up and brush themselves off, it was clear that some of the young soldiers were wracked with fear, but trying not to show it.

A patrol of Royal Marines from 40 Commando were in nearby Warrenpoint when they heard the explosion. They lost no time in radioing in a ‘contact report’. The senior officer who came over the net was 34-year-old Major Barry Rogan. He immediately rushed out the door of Newry RUC station with reinforcements, arriving at the scene of the bomb blast within minutes. He was accompanied by Major Pete Fursman, also in his mid-30s, whose soldiers had been targeted in the explosion and who had arrived ahead of his men. Back in the Army’s regional Operations Room at Bessbrook Mill, deep inside South Armagh, commanders mobilised an Airborne Reaction Force (ARF). At that time, Bessbrook was the busiest helipad in Europe and the first port of call for the deployment of air support in the southern border region. The ARF was tasked with swiftly responding to incidents and so always included a medic on-board to deal with any casualties. The unfortunate reality was that casualties were a common occurrence in this part of the world. The principal objective of the soldiers rushing to the scene was to preserve life and establish what had happened.

Meanwhile, 40-year-old Lieutenant Colonel David Blair, the CO of the Queen’s Own Highlanders, was in a Gazelle helicopter hovering 3,000 feet overhead. Colonel Blair had been on a separate mission when he received a radio report about the attack at Narrow Water. He immediately directed the pilot to the incident. As the helicopter prepared to land in the grounds of the Narrow Water Castle country estate, just opposite where the explosion had taken place, Blair spotted the smouldering military vehicles on the dual carriageway. Along with his signaller, 24-year-old Lance Corporal Victor MacLeod, Blair jumped out of the aircraft and ran towards the scene to begin coordinating the response. As the two Highlanders reached the gateway lodge of the estate, a pair of IRA men lying on a grassy bank on the Irish Republic side of Carlingford Lough flicked a switch on their handheld radio-controlled firing device, initiating a second charge. Colonel Blair and Corporal MacLeod were killed instantly, along with ten other soldiers. ‘I will always remember the chilling silence after that second explosion,’ recalled Tom Schwartz, ‘and the total lack of noise of any type.’5 A police officer who arrived soon afterwards recalled seeing ‘bodies scattered around the area’, which were ‘blackened and some were mutilated’.6 A fireman who had been busy putting out the raging fires was struck by shrapnel that had been hidden beside the keep of Narrow Water Castle to maximise casualties. Most of the soldiers killed in the IRA attack had only been in Northern Ireland a matter of weeks.

Back at Bessbrook, 35-year-old Major Mike Jackson was enjoying a tea break in the Officers’ Mess when he got a call from the Ops Room about the first explosion. Jackson was the Officer Commanding (OC) of B Company of 2 PARA. He and his men had only just returned to barracks after having been out on operations. As his company replenished their ammunition and sorted their kit, he hurried to the Ops Room, where he was joined by Brigadier David Thorne, the commander of 3rd (Infantry) Brigade, who had flown in from his headquarters in Dungannon to take control of the situation. Thorne told Jackson to ‘get down to Warrenpoint and sort it out’. Jackson immediately roused his company and organised an airborne move to Narrow Water. No sooner had his helicopter lifted off than word came over the net of a second explosion. As Jackson neared the scene, he peered down. ‘There was human debris everywhere – in the trees, on the grass verge and in the water,’ he later recalled. ‘Mostly unidentifiable lumps of red flesh, but among them torsos, limbs, heads, hands and ears. I had seen the effect of bombs before but never carnage on this scale.’7

Pathologist Arthur Orr, who arrived an hour later, also said that he had ‘never seen such carnage’. He stated that it was ‘the most distressing incident’ he had ever encountered in his twenty-five years as a coroner. Presiding over the inquests in July 1980, Orr described the deaths as ‘the most abhorrent and gruesome that I have ever had to deal with, and I have no doubt that no other deaths have caused greater public grief in this province’.8 He reserved much of his opprobrium for those responsible: ‘These villains with their lookouts, their signallers and their activator lay in wait and, not satisfied with one death-dealing explosion, they knew that the army would rush to the rescue and they were ready to set off a second and more massive explosion.’9

Two IRA volunteers, Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan, both in their early twenties, were stopped by An Garda Síochána (Irish police) while riding a motorbike in the vicinity. Despite reportedly finding traces of gunshot residue and explosives on their hands and clothing, the Gardaí could not conclusively tie either of the men to the scene and so released them soon afterwards.10

In an interview given by a representative of the IRA’s ruling Army Council at the time, the group commented on its success in ambushing the troops: ‘The first bomb was 1,100lb, the second 800lb. It was the second one which caused most of the deaths. Both were remote-detonated. The British Army has been very, very fortunate in escaping major losses since the sophisticated remote was developed – very, very lucky.’11

In claiming responsibility for the attack on the paratroopers, the Provisionals referred to the regiment’s involvement in the killing of thirteen civilians in Derry seven years earlier. ‘Without apology we republicans are proud of the battle being fought and we unreservedly support the methods,’ the IRA told its newspaper, An Phoblacht/Republican News. ‘The Paras had their Bloody Sunday and they sowed, and now, they have reaped their Bloody Monday.’12

One former RUC Special Branch officer who policed these borderlands characterised the region as being ‘lawless and lacking in any sustained intelligence coverage’.13 The IRA’s ability to cultivate sources inside the Gardaí hindered cross-border cooperation aimed at defeating the terrorists and created difficulties for law enforcement agencies in the North. ‘When I was down with the Crime Squad, working on the murder of four policemen at Bessbrook, [I was] temporarily redirected to Warrenpoint to the murder of the paratroopers,’ recalled CID officer Roy Cairns. ‘We were warned by a uniformed Sergeant in the Garda down there, if we were coming down, not to tell anybody we were coming down. To tell him and tell no one else. And [Officer X] was identified to us as giving information to the IRA.’14 Such leakage inside the Gardaí was compounded by another, perhaps more corrosive problem: the lack of coordination between the RUC and the Army, which made it easier for the IRA to act with impunity along the porous border.

***

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was working on official correspondence at her private residence in Chequers in Buckinghamshire when a member of her staff broke the news about Narrow Water to her.15 She had already been informed earlier that day of the assassination of the former Chief of Defence Staff Lord Louis Mountbatten, his 14-year-old grandson and a local teenager at Mullaghmore in County Sligo. Reports of the deaths touched a raw nerve in her. As soon as she had finished composing a letter to the Royal Family expressing her condolences on Mountbatten’s death, she asked her Private Secretary, Sir Clive Whitmore, to furnish her with the addresses of the next of kin of the eighteen dead soldiers. Thatcher was eager to write to their families personally.16 She then asked Whitmore to arrange her return to Downing Street before assisting her with the drafting of a statement on the day’s dramatic developments. The language in her statement was uncompromising: ‘The Government will spare no effort to ensure that those responsible for these and for all other acts of terrorism are brought to justice. The people of the United Kingdom will wage the war against terrorism with relentless determination until it is won.’17

Thatcher arrived back in London the next morning to convene a high-level meeting with her Cabinet colleagues to discuss the government’s response. In attendance were Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw, the Lord Privy Seal, Sir Ian Gilmour, and Defence Secretary Francis Pym, all of whom returned later that evening for a second crisis meeting to decide on what steps to take. Further cooperation with the Irish government was seen as a top priority, along with, perhaps, ‘more vigorous use of the SAS [Special Air Service]’. Thatcher, however, felt that the best step forward for longer-term success against the terrorists was to improve cooperation between the RUC and the Army, particularly in the intelligence field. It was clear to everyone, from Thatcher in Downing Street to senior military commanders in Lisburn, that there was ‘distressing evidence of mutual distrust at the highest levels of the RUC and the Army’.18 Thatcher considered the appointment of an overall Director of Operations to ‘exercise control of operations both by the Police and the Army’, an essential first step in dealing with the breakdown in police–Army relations.19 She made arrangements to visit the front line herself in order to obtain an overview of how precarious the security situation was on the ground.

The next day, Thatcher travelled to Belfast aboard her personal RAF jet. Upon arrival, she was driven to Musgrave Park Hospital to meet the survivors of the Narrow Water attack. After speaking with the injured soldiers, she visited Belfast city centre to meet the public. ‘I shall never forget the reception I received,’ she later wrote. ‘It is peculiarly moving to receive good wishes from people who are suffering. One never knows quite how to respond. But I formed then an impression I have never had reason to revise that the people of Ulster will never bow to violence.’20 Her next stop was Mahon Road Barracks in Portadown, where she received a briefing from Brigadier Thorne, who informed her of a ‘deterioration of the situation, the level of casualties, the number of incidents’. There was ‘nothing new in what I was saying’, he later recalled.21 To emphasise his exasperation, Thorne placed David Blair’s rank epaulette, the only trace of the late colonel that remained at the scene, on the table beside Thatcher.22

Emboldened by what she had been told, Thatcher donned military fatigues and boarded a short helicopter flight to South Armagh to experience for herself the challenges facing the Security Forces. ‘I saw the bomb-battered Crossmaglen RUC station – the most attacked RUC–Army post in Northern Ireland – before r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Dramatis Personae
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Prologue: In the Zone
• 1. The War against Terrorism
• 2. Inside the Stormont KGB
• 3. Operation ARTICHOKE
• 4. The Oldfield System
• 5. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• 6. The Derry Falange
• 7. An Honourable Course
• 8. Project 3702
• 9. A Soldier’s Mentality
• 10. Championing the Bullet and Ballot Box
• 11. Fighting Britain in her Own Home
• 12. The McGuinness Half Hour
• 13. The Frank Murray Show
• 14. Agents Within
• 15. The Man in the Arena
• 16. The Button Job
• 17. Gripping the IRA
• 18. Fools Handling Fools
• 19. Not an Absolute Science
• 20. ‘The madness was so real you could touch it’
• 21. A 3D War
• Epilogue: Collecting People
• Acknowledgements
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates