Double Agent: My Secret Life Undercover in the IRA

by Kevin Fulton

  When I told Conor I didn’t like the idea of hurting or killing innocent people, he assured me that commercial property would be this bomb’s only victim. For reasons I could never understand, crippling Northern Ireland’s economy remained a staple IRA objective. To my intense frustration, he refused to tell me anything else, insisting that it was for my own good. So I was able to tell my handlers that a major explosion was imminent, but that was as far as it went. I couldn’t tell them when and I couldn’t tell them where. For days, I lived in gut-wrenching dread that my handiwork would injure, maim or kill.

  When I finally learned of the catastrophic fruits of my labours, I was stunned. The bomb had literally flattened a massive warehouse in Belfast. To my immense relief there had been no casualties. It had been detonated in the middle of the night, after a warning.

  However, as I was all too aware, the IRA wasn’t always so public spirited. The previous November, during the annual Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, an IRA bomb slaughtered eleven innocent people and injured sixty-three. All these people were doing was remembering British soldiers – Protestant and Catholic – who had sacrificed their lives to fight fascism. IRA bombs would do worse in the future, and I was still grinding out explosive powder. What if one of my bombs caused an Enniskillen? I wanted my handlers to tell me how I was supposed to live with that.

  By now, Andy had moved on. Gerry’s new partner was a man called Alan. It didn’t matter who I got it from, I needed confirmation that we were doing the right thing.

  ‘Look, if you weren’t grinding down that fertiliser, someone else would be doing it,’ said Gerry. ‘These bombs would get made and be set off with or without your help. Nobody’s dying because of you. This is all about saving lives in the long term. The day will come when your information will prevent a really big one. You could single-handedly stop the next big IRA atrocity. You could stop the next Enniskillen.’

  Alan joined in. ‘We won’t make you do anything you don’t want to, Kevin. If it gets too heavy, we’ll pull you out.’

  ‘If you only ever save one life,’ said Gerry, ‘then your work will have been worthwhile.’

  This single belief had to sustain me. Nobody was going to be killed that wouldn’t have been killed anyway. If I save a single life, then it will all have been worthwhile. The idea of preventing an Enniskillen was just the motivation I needed.

  A notorious incident in March of that year steeled me even more to carry on. Even by Northern Ireland’s standards, March 1988 was a black month. First, the SAS shot dead three unarmed IRA terrorists in Gibraltar. The burials of these three took place in Milltown cemetery in Belfast. During the ceremonials, a Loyalist named Michael Stone ran amok, launching a grenade and a gun attack on the mourners. Three men died, dozens more were injured. Amid the carnage, Stone was chased to a nearby motorway. The RUC arrived in time to save his life.

  One of the three men killed by Stone at Milltown was IRA member Kevin Brady. His funeral took place just a few days later on a Saturday afternoon. Amid the highly charged atmosphere, a car containing two men approached the funeral procession at high speed. Television cameras captured the events that followed – events that caused revulsion all around the globe.

  The car was forced to stop and a pack of mourners set about it like savages. They pulled the two occupants out and started punching them and kicking them. A British army helicopter, circling like a hawk over a kill, relayed every sickening blow. The pictures shook as if they could barely cope with the horror of what they were conveying. The mob looked wired and high. Dressed in their Sunday best, they set about the two wide-eyed young men with brutal efficiency. There was a chilling inevitability about what would follow. The two bloodied victims were dragged to a patch of waste ground. There, we later found out, they were shot dead. They were corporals Derek Wood and David Howes, plain-clothes British army soldiers. They were armed, but they had chosen not to open fire on the mob that would later lynch them.

  Their gory fates brought home to me the kind of people I was dealing with. In the darkest recesses of the night, I hovered over my own execution. I saw myself getting dragged to waste ground, not by a baying mob but by Conor and Niall and Hardbap, all laughing hysterically. A black bin-liner is wrapped around my head and a gunshot sounds. Next thing, what is left of me is thrown into the crusher of a refuse truck – discarded like a piece of trash. At least it was only a dream. I wondered how the families of Corporals Wood and Howes coped, seeing it happening to their sons on the telly.

  The fate of the two corporals shook me, but it also gave me a renewed determination. These were the good guys – undercover soldiers protecting this IRA funeral from the fate that befell the funeral of the Gibraltar Three in Milltown. Yet again, young British soldiers had stood in the way of Northern Ireland’s warring factions, and paid the ultimate price. At least, that’s how I saw it. I decided it was my duty as a British soldier to do right by my two fallen colleagues. I would make a difference so that their deaths weren’t in vain.

  Steeled with a fresh sense of purpose, I told Conor I had ground enough fertiliser – it was time I learned his entire repertoire of bomb-making skills. Flattery got you everywhere with Conor. Schooling a star-struck student really appealed to his ego. What shocked me most was how easy it was to construct these devices, and how all the component parts could be bought on the high street. For my first lesson, Conor invited me to watch him construct a booby-trap car bomb.

  The ‘up and under’ mercury tilt-switch booby trap consisted of a Tupperware box, two magnets, a plastic tube, a mercury ball and a quarter of a kilo of Semtex. The mercury ball was sealed inside the plastic tube. In effect, the metal ball acted as a conductor which triggered the explosion. The Tupperware box containing the booby-trap device would be strapped under a car, or placed in the footwell of the driver seat. It took just the slightest movement to make the mercury ball roll from one end of the sealed tube to the other – thus sealing the fate of anyone inside the vehicle. Such a small and simple device could blow an average family car to pieces.

  Conor wouldn’t tell me where the booby-trap device he had built that day was going. I was left to draw my own conclusions the next day when a builder in Kilkeel was killed after a bomb exploded under his car. The man’s crime had been to carry out construction work for the security forces.

  There were two other devices favoured by Conor. The so-called gas-bottle bomb was almost self-explanatory. The bottom end of a domestic gas keg would be cut off with an angle grinder. Homemade explosive – such as ground-down fertiliser and nitrobenzene – would be packed into the gas bottle. The bottom would be stuck back on with an industrial sealant.

  Perhaps the most devastating and notorious IRA device was the fertiliser bomb. Whereas Semtex bombs were directional and far easier to control, fertiliser bombs were difficult to get right. As such, they had a tendency to cause far greater devastation than originally intended. Coupled with that, fertiliser dust was highly sensitive – if it got damp or compacted, it wouldn’t go off at all.

  By becoming a bomb-maker, I believed it was only a matter of time before I would become party to a planned atrocity – which I could then prevent. However, to get to this stage, I first had to become a tried and trusted IRA bomb-maker. I had to show that I could tailor any device to suit any situation. A bomb-maker had to show that his bombs could be trusted to achieve the desired result. It was all about judgement and skill and control – miscalculations in the past had cost lives and done untold damage to the IRA’s reputation.

  I got my first chance towards the end of 1988. Like me, a man I am referring to as Johnny was a bomb-maker learning his trade. Johnny was given the chance to construct his first major device. For legal reasons, I can’t reveal my role in this operation. It was a massive squib, a seventy-pound fertiliser bomb. The target: Newry customs post. A small red van had been hijacked for the operation. The bomb was placed in the back of the van, which, just before lunchtime
one weekday, was driven right up to the automated gates of the customs post. The horn was tooted and, to the amazement of the van driver, the gates buzzed open. He drove into the main yard, parked up where the bomb would cause maximum damage, got out of the van and walked up to the security booth. When the security guard heard what he had to say, he hit a panic button that alerted staff to evacuate. I watched it all unfold from a back-up car just across the road. I picked up the van driver and we headed to a designated safe house.

  Driving off, I was relieved to see the customs workers swiftly vacating the building. I prayed quietly that there would be no casualties.

  We got about half a mile up the road when a ground-shaking boom ripped through the air. To my horror, I heard myself emitting a triumphant roar. I had spent weeks grinding away on that device, and hearing the resulting explosion I felt a surge of professional pride. It was a perverse buzz, an unsettling sensation. I hoped I wasn’t becoming one of them.

  Back at the safe house, I switched on the radio. With a knot like a fist in my stomach, I waited to learn if there had been any casualties. I ran all the usual justifications through my mind, just in case. We had given the warning. The panic button had been sounded. We saw the workers leaving. Everyone had a chance to get well away before the device went off. I realised that these would prove facile justifications in the event of an innocent person losing their life. When the news bulletin came on, the bombing of Newry customs post wasn’t the lead story – that was a good sign. Finally, the newsreader got to it. The customs post had been obliterated. Nobody had been hurt – my luck had held out again. As for Johnny, he had passed a major test. I would watch him rise swiftly through the ranks of the Provisional IRA.

  Next it was my turn to prove my worth as a bomb-maker. My target? The Dublin to Belfast railway line in Newry. The objective? Closing the line for a week, thus causing chaos to the largely Catholic local community that the station served – the largely Catholic local community upon which the IRA relied for support. It would be a shame if innocent people – bound to be Catholic – got in the way. Sometimes, the sheer perversity of the IRA’s thinking left me breathless.

  Blowing up the line wasn’t sufficient – that could be fixed in a day. The plan was to blow up a junction box. That should close the line for a week. Late one night, I climbed a fence near the station and made my way up the line. I inspected the junction box as best I could. I realised that blowing it up would require – as we were wont to put it – a good wallop. I reckoned it would need another seventy-pounder. Trouble was, the junction box was just three yards from the station building. If I blew up the junction box properly, I couldn’t see how the station could escape. That meant potentially putting innocent lives at risk.

  I took comfort from the fact that the station was completely deserted. I willed it to be similarly deserted in a few weeks’ time. As I turned off the flash lamp and climbed back over the fence, I couldn’t help smiling at the irony. Had it really been eight years since I had last closed this stretch of rail line with an empty can of Castrol GTX and a Tupperware box? I had come a long way since then. Whether it was in the right direction, I wasn’t so sure.

  I built a seventy-pound fertiliser bomb for the task. It was gone midnight when I parked up a few hundred yards from Newry train station. I had placed the fertiliser bomb and a battery timer in a holdall. I lifted it gently over the fence, then climbed over myself. During operations, I felt strangely unconcerned about getting caught. If an army unit or an RUC unit suddenly materialised out of nowhere, I’d suffer a rough few hours but eventually they would discover who I really worked for. Knowing how leaky the agencies were, I realised that the truth about who I was working for wouldn’t stay a secret. My handlers would have to pull me out and relocate me. Mentally, this was something I had prepared myself for. As I placed the holdall next to the junction box, I wondered where they would send me. I hoped it would be somewhere sunny.

  I set the timer and walked away as quickly as I could without making a noise.

  It was just after one in the morning when the teeth-shattering boom started my wife from her sleep. I hadn’t bothered going to bed. I knew I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep that night. I switched on the TV and waited. In the pit of my stomach, the familiar knot had re-formed. I consoled myself with the groundless presumption that nobody would be hanging around Newry train station at one o’clock on a weeknight.

  Finally, at three o’clock, a familiar stern flourish of brass announced the news. The knot tightened. In the searing rush of adrenaline, I seemed to take in only the words that mattered. Massive bomb; Newry train station badly damaged; shut for days; there are no reported casualties. With that, I exhaled what seemed like every ounce of energy within me. I had played another round of Russian roulette and survived.

  By the time the early-morning bulletin came on, I was only half-listening from the kitchen. The po-faced newsreader seemed to be doling out exactly the same report. Then it cut to a reporter. As I got to the sitting-room door, I noticed the reporter standing in front of a bunk bed. In his left hand, he was holding what appeared to be a blackened lump of metal. He was looking terribly serious.

  ‘This lump of railway line from last night’s explosion came through the roof of the house and landed on the top bunk of this bed. Had the couple’s young daughter been sleeping in that bunk, she would almost certainly have been killed.’

  My legs and hands rattled. The knot in my stomach wanted out. I ran to the bathroom and dry retched into the sink. I splashed water over my face. It felt hot. I rubbed my eyes and thought hard. That lump of rail travelled a quarter of a mile. A child could have been killed because of me. Because I fucked up the mix. What was I thinking? ‘You fucking idiot!’ I bellowed into my shaking hands. I had miscalculated. I had put the lives of complete innocents at risk. I looked up and I looked hard at myself in the mirror. This was my lucky escape.

  ‘I am a British soldier,’ I told my reflection. ‘I am a British soldier. I’m doing this to save lives. I’m saving lives. I’m a British soldier and I’m saving lives.’

  Many more times in my career as a double agent, I would feel the need to stand in front of a mirror, take a long hard look at myself and repeat this mantra.

  I got into the car and headed to Conor’s in Dundalk. There was work to be done.

  ‘Fuck me, what did you put in that mix?’ said Conor in a mock-accusatory tone.

  Clearly, a child narrowly escaping death was a great laugh for him. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I walked past him into his sitting room and flopped on to the sofa. At that precise moment, I thought, Fuck it, I’m jacking this in.

  ‘Ach, look, nobody’s been hurt,’ said Conor, ‘you didn’t plan for it to happen that way.’

  ‘Jesus, though, Conor, a little kid, I mean …’

  Conor’s mood turned. What I saw scared me. ‘Maybe you’re not cut out for this,’ he said sharply, ‘because I can tell you now, you’ll have closer shaves than that.’ He turned to leave the room. ‘Either pull yourself together now or go home. We’ve work to do.’

  We were halfway through building a bomb for another operation in Newry. The target this time was a garage owned by a Protestant in Shandon Park; the device, another monstrous fertiliser bomb. A few nights later, I lay awake again waiting for the explosion. It never came.

  Two days later, the development team was debriefed about what went wrong. The bomb had been planted inside the garage as planned, and the timer set. The team got away and a warning was rung in to the owner. Then nothing. For some reason, it didn’t blow. The garage owner called the police, who in turn called the army’s bomb-disposal unit. An army technical officer (ATO) went in to defuse the device. To IRA bomb-makers, ATOs are their nemesis. According to Conor, this was really who we were at war against. ATOs defused our bombs and thereby wiped out months of hard work at a stroke. An ATO getting blown up was the best possible news Conor could hear.

  Apparently, the ATO was inspec
ting the bomb when it suddenly went bang. The detonating chord had gone off. However, it failed to detonate the bomb. The fertiliser dust must have been damp or compacted. By all accounts, the experience scared the ATO half to death.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Conor, ‘what a shame. We could have blown the fucker to kingdom come.’ For days, he seemed wracked with regret over this missed opportunity.

  Conor decided it was time the IRA hit back at the ATOs. He formed a special development team to figure out the best way of doing this. The team comprised myself, Johnny and Dermot Finucane (Pat’s brother), the Maze Prison escapee.

  We knew that, when they were called in to defuse a device, each ATO shared the same modus operandi. First, he checked the box timer to see how much time remained before detonation. Clearly, if it was a matter of seconds, he needed to start running. However, if he had any more than thirty seconds, he knew he could prevent the bomb going off simply by placing a piece of rubber or wood – his finger if it came to it – between two terminals inside the box timer. This stopped the box timer ticking down, which in turn stopped the bomb from detonating – just like in the movies.

  The simplicity with which an ATO could defuse a bomb prompted the development team to research new detonation systems with the specific aim of slaughtering ATOs. Using their collective barbaric cunning, they came up with a new double-switch system of detonation. Under this system, as soon as an ATO touched a box timer, a highly sensitive micro-switch would be triggered. Unbeknown to the ATO, the micro-switch would override the box timer and set a new time frame for detonation – a much shorter time frame. The ATO would think he was well ahead of schedule when the device would blow up in his face. The double-switch detonation system effectively meant that the box timer was booby-trapped.