Double Agent: My Secret Life Undercover in the IRA

by Kevin Fulton

  I had hoped that my admissions in this book would create a stir. In truth, though, I expected the security services and the intelligence agencies to react as they usually react to damaging revelations – to ignore them. I expected them to issue a firm ‘no comment’, while briefing their slavish coterie of ‘security’ and ‘home affairs’ journalists to the effect that I’m not credible.

  Instead, by arresting me on suspicion of murder, the PSNI unwittingly confirmed that what I say is true. It soon became clear, however, that the PSNI’s motive in arresting me wasn’t to confirm my claims in this book, but to protect themselves on a different front.

  Weeks after the book was published in 2006, I was contacted by the defence team of the man accused of carrying out the Omagh bombing in August 1998. They wanted to know if I would be willing to give evidence at his trial. Sean Hoey, a 38-year-old electrician from South Armagh, faced 56 charges relating to the Real IRA bombing of Omagh on 15 August, 1998 which killed 29 people.

  Of course, I want the world to know what I know about Omagh. That’s why I’ve gone public about the information I passed on to the security services days before the atrocity was carried out. That’s why I’ve gone public about the man I believed carried out this attack. If cross-examined by Hoey’s team about what I knew in relation to the Omagh attack, I would tell the truth. The security services in Northern Ireland couldn’t take that chance. By arresting me for offences referred to in this book, the PSNI was making one point abundantly clear: if I were to confess to crimes in open court during the trial of Sean Hoey, they would charge me over those crimes. In other words, by giving evidence at Hoey’s trial and admitting my part in certain crimes, I would be incriminating myself. This put me in a dreadful bind. Mercifully, in the end, I wasn’t called. I found out why at the end of Hoey’s trial – the case against him was so weak scientifically that his defence team didn’t need to cross-examine the likes of me to get their client cleared.

  Sure enough, on 20 December 2007, after a trial at Belfast High Court lasting 56 days, Hoey was found not guilty of all charges relating to the Omagh bombing. Justice Weir at Belfast Crown Court said police were guilty of a ‘deliberate and calculated deception’ in their handling of the investigation. He criticised the ‘slapdash approach’ taken by the police to some of the evidence, and accused two officers of telling untruths to the court which made their testimony invalid.

  In the absence of eyewitness accounts or intelligence-based evidence, the prosecution relied on a new forensic technique known as low copy number DNA (LCN DNA). This involves using just a few samples with only a few cells to obtain a DNA profile of a suspect. The court was told that the molecules used in this process are the size of a millionth of a grain of salt. However, during the trial, expert after expert attacked the process. UK forensic scientist Professor Allan Jamieson, told the court that LCN DNA was unreliable and that the tests were open to interpretation.

  When Hoey walked free, the victims’ families were, unsurprisingly, furious. Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan died in the bombing, said, ‘I think it is beyond belief what we have had to put up with over the last nine-and-a-half years.’

  He added, ‘There will be at least ten people who will be sitting at their Christmas dinner this year who were involved in the Omagh bomb.’ He said intelligence agencies knew who the people were. The fact is, I know who these people are. ‘We have to face hard facts, the victims of the Omagh bomb will receive no justice. It’s depressing but true and part of the reason for that is the presence of so many informers in this plot.’

  To this day, I’ve never been questioned by police about the Omagh bombing.

  The families are calling for a cross-border public enquiry into the atrocity – and they have received support from an unlikely source – Hoey’s mother. ‘I want to ask the question regarding the Omagh tragedy – who has the most to fear from such an enquiry? What are the authorities north and south trying to cover up?’

  Of course, the public enquiry will never happen. Too many people in too many top positions have too much to hide.

  In my opinion, the whole Omagh non-investigation is a cover-up, orchestrated at the highest levels of the police and the intelligence services. However, it comes as no surprise to me that the people who run these agencies could be capable of such actions to safeguard their careers and their reputations.

  Indeed, I am now of the opinion that perfecting the art of shafting those below you while feathering your own nest is a prerequisite skill if you want to scale the intelligence ladder.

  After eleven years working for MI5, Bob was sent to Northern Ireland in the late eighties to assist the Force Research Unit (FRU), the army’s undercover force responsible for infiltrating Irish terror groups. It was Bob who met me in New York when I purchased infra-red detonation equipment for the IRA. It was Bob who debriefed me in March 1992 about the IRA’s use of flashgun technology to detonate bombs – just hours before this very technology was used to murder RUC officer Colleen McMurray. It was Bob who repeatedly promised me a new identity and a new life if my role as a British double agent was ever exposed to the IRA.

  Currently, I am taking my former employer, the British State, to court. I’ve launched a civil action, in which I’m seeking only what I’d been constantly promised by handlers like Bob – a new identity and a pay-off.

  Already, a number of courageous FRU members have pledged to give evidence corroborating my claims. The Judge has ruled that I can call any witness who can provide evidence as to my value as an undercover agent.

  But first I have to make it to court. My case against the British State has been dragging on for five years now, with no sign of it actually coming to court. If you think spying is the most duplicitous, immoral and dirty game in town, then you haven’t encountered our wonderful legal system. My nemesis, the British State, has tirelessly exploited every conceivable legal loophole to obstruct and thwart the process. Clearly, someone in power thinks they can starve me or bore me into giving up. Or maybe they’re counting on some sort of third party intervention to make me go away. After all, every day that I am denied my due is another day when I could get whacked – and that would suit them fine.

  It sounds melodramatic, until you consider the fate of other men who’ve served as double agents for the British in Northern Ireland. Take Sinn Fein party official Denis Donaldson. On 4 April 2006, Donaldson was found shot dead inside a remote cottage in County Donegal. Donaldson had taken refuge here after his exposure as a British spy five months earlier, in December 2005.

  Donaldson’s murder scared me because, like me, he’d been hung out to dry by his former employers at MI5 and Special Branch. Donaldson’s murder scared me because, like me, once his usefulness ran out he was abandoned and left for dead. I believe that whoever set Donaldson up to be murdered could do the same to me any minute of any day. Donaldson’s murder made me realise just how dispensable we agents are, now that we’re no longer of any value to the intelligence services.

  Donaldson’s career in the IRA and Sinn Fein spanned the entirety of the Troubles – from the rebirth of the IRA in 1970 to Sinn Fein’s growth into Northern Ireland’s largest nationalist party. He was from old Republican stock, and had been party to crucial events in Republican history. In 1970, he was fêted as a hero for defending the vulnerable Catholic communities in the Short Strand district of Belfast against loyalist attacks. When he served time in Long Kesh for terrorist offences, he became close friends with IRA icon Bobby Sands.

  Later, Donaldson travelled the world for the IRA, visiting Europe and many parts of the Middle East. In Lebanon, he was closely involved in negotiations to secure the release of Belfast-born hostage Brian Keenan. He was also sent to the United States, where he served as a contact point with the crucial Irish-American community. Through all his international travels in the eighties, Donaldson’s role was symbolic of Sinn Fein’s ‘ballot box in one hand, a hand grenade in the other’ hypocrisy. Outwardly, he sought legi
timate political support; secretly he procured weapons and finance to help the IRA continue ‘the armed struggle’.

  Incredibly, all this time, he was supplying MI5 and RUC Special Branch with intelligence. His information helped the British authorities strangle the supply of crucial aid from the United States and to intercept arms shipments from the Middle East. Donaldson maintained his cover because no-one in the IRA dared question a man so imbued with Republican credibility. That said, for every minute of every day of all those years, Donaldson must have lived by the seat of his pants just as I had done. Every time he walked out of his front door, he must have dreaded ‘a tug’ from an armed stranger or a bullet in his head. Every time the doorbell rang or someone called his name in the street, he must have wondered, ‘Is this it? Has the time come?’

  When the Good Friday Agreement held and democratic power-sharing returned to Northern Ireland in the late nineties, Donaldson must have thought he’d run his race. Then, in 2000, he became a vital cog in Sinn Fein’s political machine, and his double life resumed. I believe that once they’ve got you, the spooks, they don’t let go until they’ve squeezed every last calorie of use out of you. They’re a bit like the people they’re supposed to be fighting, the terrorists, in that way. Donaldson was appointed Sinn Fein party office administrator. For MI5, this meant it had someone inside the very heart of an organisation it still deeply distrusted.

  Then came his bizarre unmasking as a spy – and his death sentence. In October 2002, he was arrested in a raid on the Sinn Fein offices as part of a high-profile police investigation into an alleged Irish republican spy ring – an affair known as Stormontgate. The police accused Donaldson and others of amassing large amounts of confidential documents from both the Northern Ireland office and from local political parties. The implication was that this confidential information could be used by Sinn Fein to smear or intimidate political rivals. To the outside world, it appeared that Sinn Fein had failed to give up its old terrorist tricks.

  These raids brought down the power-sharing agreement. Northern Ireland’s uncomfortable peace fidgeted ominously.

  It turns out that the IRA – oblivious to the fact that Donaldson was spying on them for the British – had ordered Donaldson to start spying on political opponents at Stormont. He was instructed to co-ordinate the collection and photo-copying of confidential documents - something he had been doing for British intelligence for almost two decades. In other words, the IRA ordered the British spy to start spying on the British.

  Then, Donaldson was exposed as being a double agent. In December 2005, the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland dropped the spy-ring charges against Donaldson and two other men on the grounds that it would not be in the ‘public interest’ to proceed with the case. On 16 December 2005, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams announced to a press conference in Dublin that Donaldson had been a spy in the pay of British intelligence. Donaldson confirmed this in a statement to RTE, the Irish state broadcaster. It was what

  Donaldson didn’t say that pricked my interest. Donaldson said he was recruited after ‘compromising himself’ during a ‘vulnerable’ time in his life. He didn’t specify why he was vulnerable or how this resulted in him ‘turning’. I know from my days as an agent that the usual methods include entrapment, assistance with criminal charges, financial inducement or – if all else fails – blackmail. One of my former handlers tells me a story involving Donaldson and a woman who was married to a senior figure in the IRA. He insists that this relationship proved pivotal to Donaldson’s decision to risk his life and become a British mole.

  What really intrigues me, though, is who would have benefited from Donaldson’s murder. Not Sinn Fein. Sure, the old procedure would have been to dispatch Donaldson with a bullet to the back of the head. The IRA murdered at least 50 people it alleged worked as ‘touts’ for the police or British intelligence. But for Sinn Fein in 2005, whacking Donaldson would have made a mockery of their solemn and historic pronouncements about decommissioning and the move away from terrorism towards democratic politics. Besides, the hierarchy had allowed him to go free, in disgrace. Donaldson himself believed this. That is why he relocated to an old derelict family holiday home just a few miles across the border. If he thought his life was in danger, surely Donaldson would have done what I have done and fled abroad?

  The general public had no idea where Donaldson was hiding until 19 March 2006. On that date, Dublin-based weekly tabloid The Sunday World published a story by journalist Hugh Jordan revealing the whereabouts of Donaldson’s hideout – a ramshackle cottage without electricity or running water in the remote townland of Classey, 5 miles from the tiny village of Glenties on the road to Doochary in Donegal. This is truly the middle of nowhere. Less than three weeks later, Donaldson was dead.

  The last person Donaldson spoke to – apart from his killers – is Tom Cranley, a census taker who chatted to him at the cottage at about 8.30pm the previous evening. His body was found by Gardai at about 5pm the next day after a passer-by reported seeing a broken window and a smashed-in door.

  Two shotgun cartridges were found at the threshold of the cottage. Two shots had been fired through the front door, apparently as he attempted to bolt it. Another two cartridges hit him as he fled inside. A post-mortem revealed he died from a shotgun blast to the chest. His right hand was badly damaged by the other gunshot. Donaldson died in his pyjamas.

  On 8 April 2006, Donaldson was buried in Belfast City Cemetery, rather than at the republican Milltown Cemetery. The provisional IRA issued a one-line statement saying that it had ‘no involvement whatsoever’ in the murder. Could Donaldson’s murderer have worked for someone else? Was Donaldson sacrificed to protect other agents implanted at even more strategic levels within Sinn Fein? It seems to me that this is becoming a familiar pattern.

  In February 2008, MI5 took one of Gerry Adams’ personal drivers into protective custody when he too was unmasked as a British agent. MI5 advised Roy McShane to leave his west Belfast home after it emerged that an internal IRA investigation found he had been working for the British for more than a decade.

  McShane was one of a pool of drivers working for leading members of Sinn Fein since the first ceasefire of 1994. He drove Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein President, during the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, one of the most crucial periods of the Irish peace process.

  McShane is understood to have worked as a pool driver for Adams at the same time that the security services were bugging a car which transported Martin McGuinness to and from negotiations. The late Mo Mowlam, then Northern Ireland secretary, had authorised the bugging of a car driven by an IRA intelligence officer throughout 1997 and ’98.

  I have no doubt that the identity of more ‘British moles’ who were embedded in the highest echelons of the IRA and Sinn Fein will emerge. Each unmasking of a double agent, tout or grass begs the same old question – who was running this murky, dirty war in Northern Ireland?

  It was a Dirty War, and I was treated like dirt. But I won’t stand for it.

  All I want is for my government to do right by me. If they don’t, then I will keep talking and fighting until I die. That’s the way it is.

  I was among the spectators at the Remembrance Day parade in Whitehall in November. I stood there, closed my eyes and remembered colleagues in the Royal Irish Rangers – my regiment – who were killed by the IRA. Later, I laid a poppy cross in the regimental plot at the Garden of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey.

  I can’t take part in the parade itself. I can’t march shoulder to shoulder with the men from the Rangers because the Ministry of Defence refuses to recognise my service as a soldier.

  But that’s all I ever was. A soldier.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KEVIN FULTON was brought up in Newry, County Down in Northern Ireland. At 18 he became a British soldier and was soon recruited to be an agent. He infiltrated the terrorist organisation and remained there for 15 years, supplying inside information to
the security forces. So integrated was he, even his wife and family believed that he was working for the Provos. Abandoned by his military chiefs when he most needed them, Fulton fled to Northern Ireland in 1994, lying low in England and Thailand. He returned to Northern Ireland in 1997, when the ceasefire seemed to hold.

  JIM NALLY is a documentary producer and director for the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Before that he was a free lance writer for a number of Fleet Street newspapers.

  IAN GALLAGHER has been a national newspaper journalist fro the past 15 years and has covered the conflicts in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by John Blake Publishing,

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  First published in hardback by John Blake Publishing in 2006 as Unsung Hero.

  First published in paperback in 2008.

  This paperback edition first published in 2019.

  Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78946 134 3

  Ebook ISBN: 987 1 78946 200 5

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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