Stakeknife

Britain's Secret Agents in Ireland

Greg Harkin, Ian Hurst

• Editorial: The O'Brien Press
• Año: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781847174383
• Categoría: Historia
• Categoría: Historia militar y marítima

BESTSELLER

An explosive exposé of how British military intelligence really works, from the inside. The stories of two undercover agents -- Brian Nelson, who worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), aiding loyalist terrorists and murderers in their bloody work; and the man known as Stakeknife, deputy head of the IRA's infamous 'Nutting Squad', the internal security force which tortured and killed suspected informers.

Chapter 1

Inside the Force Research Unit

Ingram

My path to involvement in the British Army’s Intelligence Corps, and subsequently in FRU, was not a straightforward one. In fact, I had no ambitions to become a member of the intelligence services at all, but the Army seemed to know from the beginning that this was where I belonged.

Having had a normal, North of England upbringing in a family that was nominally Protestant, and a school career that was more sports-dominated than academically distinguished, I determined, at the age of seventeen to join the Army. I filled in the application forms, but chickened out at the last minute. Although my father was convinced that I was made for Army life, in truth I was probably too immature at that stage. For two years I worked in a variety of jobs, but the ‘call’ was still there, and at nineteen I took the plunge and walked into my local Army Careers information office.

What did I hope to get out of the Army? Probably an extension of school life: plenty of sport, good fun, a bit of adventure, and I would be paid for it as well. The careers officer recognised my motivation straight away and reassured me that sport played a pivotal role in Army life. The entrance exam was straightforward and at the end a senior officer interviewed me. He congratulated me on gaining the highest score that the career office had achieved to date, then left me to study a folder that detailed all the opportunities open to me in the Army. I quickly rejected the options of vehicle mechanic, cartographer, signals engineer, etc. I already knew what I wanted – to join the Paras. The careers officer was disappointed; he clearly was not a fan of the Parachute Regiment.

At this point he showed me a folder that detailed the role of the Intelligence Corps; this was obviously his passion. He explained that my exam score was good enough for entry into the training system, and he could arrange an interview with the Intelligence Corps’s own careers officer. I turned down the offer. The Paras were still my number one choice. I was given a sum of money, about twenty pounds, and a rail warrant to travel to Manchester Army Careers Offices, where myself, and about ten others, swore an oath of allegiance to our sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.

I lasted all of ten weeks in the Paras. I failed no courses and found the physical side a challenge, but not outside my capabilities, but it was just not what I expected. My section commander noticed the decline in my enthusiasm and conveyed this to my platoon commander, Lt Adams. To cut a long story short, he recommended that I make contact with an Intelligence Corps careers warrant officer. At Templar Barracks in Ashford in Kent I underwent two interviews, a language test and a psychiatric test, and was told I was suitable. Some weeks later I joined 85 Squadron.

The social life at Templar Barracks was hectic, and, given my gregarious nature, it was not long before my coursework began to suffer. Having failed three consecutive weekly tests, myself and my best friend Kev were backsquadded to Squad 90. By the way, the test involved being able to draw a complete motorised regiment of the Russian Army, everything from the number of men, the number of vehicles and the constituent parts belonging to the nuclear, biological and chemical unit!

Second time around, we were prepared for the exams. Kev and I had built up an extensive knowledge of how the training wing worked. We had noted that the keys to the classified storage area were kept in a locked, secure, upright locker; the key to this locker was in turn stored in the Chief Clerk’s desk. Each week, usually on the Wednesday night before a Friday exam, we broke into the offices, dismantled the top to the desk, removed the keys to the locker, opened the locker, removed the keys to the classified waste area and stole the carbon copy which had been used to print the exam papers. Voilà! From being bottom of the class in Squad 85, suddenly we were perfectly placed in Squad 90 – not at the front of the class, because that would have been obvious, but just behind. I suppose we played the game by intelligence rules; we used our initiative and in many ways that experience taught us many valuable lessons. At the end of training, I passed all my exams and was now a lance corporal in the Intelligence Corps.

My first posting was to Northern Ireland in 1981 to a small unit dealing with the input of agent material directly onto the computer system. I then moved to Headquarters Northern Ireland (HQNI), where I worked for 121 Intelligence Section. This section supported the general staff and required a level one access – the highest level of security clearance. In 1982 I applied for ‘special duties’, in other words, to become part of FRU. For anyone involved in the intelligence world, FRU was the cutting edge; if you worked for the FRU you were at the ‘coalface’. After completing my FRU training, I was sent to FRU North, based in Derry. In late 1984 my father became seriously ill with a heart condition and I was posted to a security location close to my hometown in England, to be near him. I was also promoted to the rank of sergeant.

Around that time, Willie Carlin, a former Sinn Féin treasurer and Frank Hegarty, a former quartermaster of the Provisional IRA, were exposed as FRU agents. Because I had a working knowledge of both parties, I was seconded to L Branch of Repton Manor, in Templar Barracks, which was the Special Intelligence Wing (SIW) unit given responsibility for dealing with resettlement of agents. After this I was posted to York Security Section and then seconded for six months to Belize in Central America, where we were keeping a close eye upon the Nicaraguan situation and the flourishing drug trade.

I returned to England in 1987 and went to Templar Barracks for another FRU course, which was required before I could be sent back to Northern Ireland. I was then posted to FRU West, in Enniskillen. During my tour of FRU West, I met a young lady who was to become very important to me. She was a native of the Republic, working and living in Northern Ireland. I had carried out background checks on her, using the computer and local police, and discovered that she had family links with known or wanted republicans. Being a person who works from instinct and my own wits, I was reasonably certain that she herself posed no security risk, either to the unit or to me. We formed a relationship and she became well known to the other members of the local FRU.

About twelve months later, in late 1990, I applied for, and secured, a plum post at the Ministry Of Defence in Whitehall, London, whereupon I left FRU. On my posting to the MOD I informed the vetting authorities, as I was required to do, that I was living with this lady and that I intended to marry her. They carried out their own checks and found the same family links to republicans as I had some twelve months earlier. My vetting was due for a five-year review, and it was made clear that while my vetting outside Northern Ireland would not be affected, any future posting back to Northern Ireland would not be in a sensitive role. That posed big problems for me; the MOD job would be a two-year stint, after which I would be put back into the ‘mixer’ with everyone else, and could be posted to an unrewarding job in Germany or elsewhere. My expertise was in Northern Ireland; I enjoyed the work and the people, and it was where I felt I could best advance my career. So, I had to make a choice – give up my girlfriend or give up the Intelligence Corps.

I chose my girlfriend, who is now my wife. I applied for, and after some difficulty was granted, the right to buy my way out of the Army, leaving for good in 1991 with an exemplary record. The Army and myself parted on good terms. It had been a good employer. But, in the light of what follows, I would issue one caution to any soldier of the Intelligence Corps: evil only requires decent people to turn a blind eye for a moment to flourish.

The Force Research Unit (FRU) was a British Army Intelligence Corps unit working in Northern Ireland, recruiting, developing and controlling the Army’s ‘human intelligence’ assets in Britain’s secret war on the IRA. Its motto was ‘Fishers of Men’. It was sponsored and funded by the Director of Special Forces (DSF). The FRU operated from 1980 up until the early 1990s when its name was changed to the Joint Services Group (JSG). The name change was necessary for political and symbolic reasons after the arrest of Brian Nelson by the Stevens Inquiry, the long-running investigation into collusion between British security forces and paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland, being led by Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, and the subsequent conviction of the former agent. That said, neither the role nor operating methods of the FRU were affected either by the name change or by the exposure of its methods during the short court case. There had, of course, been similar military organisations involved in intelligence-gathering in Northern Ireland prior to the FRU, for example, the Mobile Reconnaissance Force (MRF). However, a lack of control and problems of centralisation meant that these units were deemed by both politicians and the military to be largely inefficient. They did not achieve significant successes in either preventing or frustrating the operations of terrorist organisations.

The Intelligence Corps performs intelligence-gathering operations in every operational theatre in which the British Army works. It also gathers intelligence in places where there are no troops on the ground. In the case of the Troubles, that means the Republic of Ireland. The operating methods of the FRU are not unique – the principles of handling human intelligence are the same, whether it be in Belize, Kosovo, Baghdad or on the streets of Derry.

The Army’s Intelligence Corps has, from the early 1990s, been based in Templar Barracks, Ashford, Kent. The FRU was based at Repton Manor, within Templar Barracks. ‘The manor’, as it was known to operators and students alike, was a medieval building, in many ways unsuitable for conventional military training. However, the FRU is not a conventional unit, and the manor – tucked away in a far corner of the large military establishment – was an ideal location for the purpose of training the Army’s elite band of human intelligence. It became a sort of home-from-home to most handlers.

During my FRU training it became obvious that there was no textbook in existence that could show you the right way to cope with the many different situations and scenarios that you would be involved in as a handler. Experience was a major asset and every detachment had a fair share of the ‘old guard’ – operators with, ideally, more than two FRU tours of service – alongside new recruits. This made for a good blend of youthful enthusiasm and the reliability of more experienced operators.

The place had a certain aura about it. In a small garden area to the front of the manor was a large oak tree that had reputedly been used to hang ‘witches’ during the Cromwellian era. There were many stories of ghosts and strange sightings, and there were very few who would volunteer to be the last person out of the building in the evening. Having turned the lights out on the upper floors, it seemed an eternity before you arrived at the large and imposing front door.

The FRU was manned by officers of the Intelligence Corps and by soldiers from all the British services. The operators, or handlers, were themselves recruited from all three services – Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force and included both men and women. Approximately forty percent of FRU handlers were drawn from sources other than the services’ intelligence corps. Initially a prospective handler would apply for ‘special duties’. The applicant would be invited to a preliminary interview where his or her suitability would be assessed. Should the interviewer recommend the applicant, he or she would be allocated a place on a three-day pre-selection course, designed to show the service person what ‘special duties’ work entailed, and giving either the applicant or the FRU the opportunity to halt the process at that stage.

The pre-selection course would involve many tasks. For instance, the prospective FRU student would be asked to go to a designated public house and engage a total stranger (of the same sex) in conversation. During this conversation, the student would attempt to extract from the unsuspecting member of the public various pieces of information, for example: name, address, date of birth, family details, home telephone number, job, place of work, hobbies, vehicle type, etc. The information extracted could be authenticated by the directing staff using local knowledge, electoral registers and, of course, the local police. This exercise was a reliable gauge of whether the prospective student could strike up a ‘cold relationship’ with a member of the public and gather intelligence, much as a handler would when targeting a prospective agent. The failure rate on the pre-selection course was approximately four out of five.

Successful applicants would next be offered a place on the full eight-week FRU course at the manor. Servicemen from the normal ‘green’ Army would now be joined by other students, such as myself, from the Intelligence Corps. An average course would comprise ten students, of whom approximately three to five would successfully complete the course.

The manor was home to many courses, on subjects such as interrogation, covert method of entry, aerial reconnaissance (photo recognition), etc. The building was an absolute labyrinth of many small rooms, some hardly bigger than a large toilet. Some of these rooms were turned into ‘interrogation’ rooms; they were soundproofed and programmed with ‘white noise’, a low emission noise made up of a combination of all the different frequencies of sound, which effectively masked other noises, causing sensory deprivation – useful for isolating and disorientating the person being interrogated. The whole complex, from photographic rooms and classrooms to observation rooms, was fitted with CCTV, fed to a staff control room. The cameras were invaluable to the directing staff – every action and every word could be analysed, helping to determine a student’s suitability for FRU work. It was a bit like the modern-day ‘Big Brother’ television programme.

Possibly the most important facility in the complex, a facility essential to any military establishment, was located in a very old, long barn adjacent to the main house. This building was known to operators by the not too subtle cover name ‘the Barn’. It was, of course, the bar, a vital cog in the Intelligence Corps social scene. In military and police circles the bar is invaluable. It is a place of business, where failures of the day can be discussed and relationships and personalities can be developed or analysed. On the flip side, I know of many students who earned a ticket back to their home unit because of their failure to understand that even in the bar, pitched into the middle of a riotous piss-up, you were still under the microscope of the directing staff, still being evaluated for suitability for the FRU. Perhaps this explains why the failure rate for students was so high. Other than Intelligence Corps applicants, a student was extremely unlikely to be granted two bites at the cherry. Failure meant that a student was given a Returned to Unit (RTU) notification and a free train ticket; normally they were escorted off the manor grounds within minutes of being notified of the RTU instruction.

The FRU was established with unique terms of reference – unlike other intelligence units operating in Northern Ireland, such as the Special Air Service (SAS) or 14th Intelligence Company, it did not have an RUC officer commanding operations. Essentially, the authorities wanted to have an independent ‘eyes and ears’ coverage of the changing situation in Northern Ireland. A member of MI5 who was based in the FRU operations office (HQNI), saw all the material generated by FRU and channelled it upwards. Because of the way it was structured, the Force Research Unit had unprecedented room for flexibility within the field of operations. And make no mistake about it, that field of operations extended to every county in Ireland, not just the six which make up Northern Ireland.

A major difficulty in Northern Ireland for all sections of the security forces has been the multi-agency approach. The old saying about too many cooks spoiling the broth was never truer than it was in Northern Ireland. The relationship between the FRU and RUC Special Branch was frosty. The Army has far more experience at operating in a counter-terrorist role than either MI5 or RUC Special Branch. Nevertheless, the RUC fought hard over a long number of years to restrict the Army’s involvement in intelligence-gathering, or at least to operations the RUC did not control and direct.

People might imagine that the intelligence community worked like a piece of well-oiled German engineering, but this perception is entirely wrong. The internal squabbles could be childish at times. Without doubt they led to inefficiency, and sometimes to loss of life. One of the primary principles of intelligence-gathering is central coordination, but this principle was totally overlooked. The RUC had ...

Índice

• Cover
• Reviews
• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 : Inside the Force Research Unit
• Chapter 2 : Recruiting and Running an Agent
• Chapter 3 : Human Intelligence
• Chapter 4 : The Agent Stakeknife
• Chapter 5 : Fear and Hypocrisy: The Nutting Squad
• Chapter 6 : Murders in the Republic and Northern Ireland
• Chapter 7 : ‘Get Danny Morrison’
• Chapter 8 : The Real Brian Nelson
• Chapter 9 : A Litany of Death: Agent 6137
• Chapter 10 : The Murder of Pat Finucane
• Chapter 11 : Collusion and Conspiracy
• Chapter 12 : Notorantonio: The Watershed
• Chapter 13 : Double Standards: The Use and Abuse of Agents
• Chapter 14 : Face-to-Face with Scappaticci
• Chapter 15 : Fallout for a Whistleblower
• Glossary
• Plates
• About the Author
• Copyright
• Other Books