IRA representatives had acknowledged: ‘Woman Says IRA Confirms Murder of Mother’, Irish Times, 5 December 1998; ‘IRA Admits Killing Widow Who “Disappeared” 26 Years Ago’, Guardian, 5 December 1998.
‘admitted being a British Army informer’: ‘Ahern and Blair Join Talks, But Trimble, Adams Hold to Positions’, Irish Times, 30 March 1999.
The children were gratified: Interview with Michael, Susan and Archie McConville.
‘People wouldn’t look at us’: ‘The Bitter Tears of Jean’s Children’, Guardian, 7 December 1999.
Archie wondered: ‘Sons Recall 30 Years of Painful Memories’, Irish News, 24 October 2003.
She was an overworked: Interview with Michael McConville.
‘While they were torturing her’: ‘Disappeared’ (1999 documentary).
the skeleton of a dog: ‘Combing the Sands Where a Mother’s Bones are Said to Lie’, Independent, 2 June 1999.
Sympathetic locals: ‘Digging for the Disappeared’, Irish Voice, 15 June 1999.
‘Where are we going to bury her?’: This whole exchange was captured on video, in ‘Disappeared’, directed by Joanna Head (October Films, 1999).
Helen wanted to bury: ‘Give Me My Mam’, Observer, 30 May 1999. Michael McConville also recounted this in an interview.
‘Them boys who done it’: ‘Disappeared’ (1999 documentary).
‘But it’s tearing us’: ‘The Bitter Tears of Jean’s Children’, Guardian, 7 December 1999.
Inside the IRA, the disappeared: Confidential interview.
‘It is time to allow families’: ‘IRA Victims Campaign Stepped Up’, Irish Times, 27 June 1995.
In 1998, a longtime IRA man: Interview with Anthony McIntyre. In an apparent reference to Storey, the IRA announced at the time that one of its ‘most senior officers’ was working to find the hidden graves (‘“Disappeared” Phone Bid’, Belfast Telegraph, 7 September 1998). Also see ‘Police Forced to Free Ex-IRA Boss Bobby Storey after Learning of Immunity’, Sunday Life, 1 December 2014.
She advised: Interview with Ed Moloney.
But Helen noticed: ‘Jean McConville’s Daughter: “If I Give Up Fighting, They’ve Won”’, Observer, 6 July 2014.
During a meeting: Interview with Michael McConville.
‘During war, horrible things’: ‘Adams Is Accused of Justifying Deaths’, Irish News, 1 June 1999.
‘Thank God I was in prison’: Moloney, Secret History of the IRA, p.125.
‘I got confused about the dates’: ‘Gerry Adams: Unrepentant Irishman’, Independent, 8 September 2009.
‘He went to this family’s house’: H-BC.
‘They should get down here’: ‘The Agony Goes On’, Belfast Telegraph, 31 May 1999.
Also, the topography: ‘IRA Panic Over Lost Bodies’, Guardian, 1 June 1999.
Some nights, she would: The Disappeared, directed by Alison Millar (BBC Northern Ireland, 2013).
‘Where’s my son?’: ‘Kevin and the Pain That Has Never Disappeared’, Belfast Telegraph, 30 August 2013. Also see Phil McKee, ‘The Disappearance of Kevin McKee’, in The Disappeared of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.
‘Put that in the hot press’: Ibid.
She allowed Dolours Price: Anonymous source.
When Eamon Molloy’s body: ‘The IRA and the Disappeared: Tell Us Where Kevin Is Buried and I’ll Shake Hands’, Irish Times, 5 October 2013.
Whenever a baby boy: Ibid.
Peat cutters sometimes: ‘The Dark Secrets of the Bog Bodies’, Minerva, March/April 2015.
Seamus Heaney became fixated: Seamus Heaney, Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968–1978 (London: Faber, 1980), pp.57–58.
The photographs of these gnarled bodies: Ibid., pp.57–58.
‘barbered/and stripped’: Seamus Heaney, ‘Bog Queen’, in North: Poems (London: Faber, 1975), p.25.
Heaney grew up harvesting peat: Anthony Bailey, Acts of Union: Reports on Ireland 1973–1979 (New York: Random House, 1980), p.128.
Reviled though the practice: The British Army disappeared people as well. See Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc, Truce: Murder, Myth, and the Last Days of the Irish War of Independence (Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press, 2016), pp.80–81. See also Lauren Dempster, ‘The Republican Movement, “Disappearing” and Framing the Past in Northern Ireland’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, vol. 10 (2016).
Nobody knows precisely how many people: To take one recent example: ‘Body Exhumed in Clare of British Soldier Killed and Secretly Buried in 1921’, Irish Examiner, 14 May 2018.
Some nights, the children: ‘Combing the Sands Where a Mother’s Bones Are Said to Lie’, Independent, 2 June 1999.
‘They made a laughing stock of us’: Disappeared, documentary (1999).
This was a cruel twist: Ibid. Asked which of his siblings most resembled his mother, Michael McConville responded, ‘I can’t really answer that. I couldn’t really tell you, to be honest, because I really forget which way my mother looks like.’
Once, Helen took her children: ‘Give Me My Mam’, Observer, 30 May 1999.
The car pulled away: Interview with Michael McConville.
Chapter 24: An Entanglement of Lies
Only twenty or so people: ‘How Three Sharply Dressed Robbers Walked into Belfast’s Intelligence Hub’, Guardian, 22 March 2002.
After decades: Interview with Trevor Campbell.
In fact, four months earlier: ‘“New Era” As NI Police Change Name’, BBC News, 4 November 2001.
Even so, Castlereagh: ‘Who Stole the Secrets of Room 2/20?’ Observer, 23 March 2002.
At the gate: Unless otherwise noted, these details are drawn from ‘How Three Sharply Dressed Robbers Walked into Belfast’s Intelligence Hub’, Guardian, 22 March 2002.
Then they placed a pair of headphones: ‘Raid on Anti-Terror Hub Puts Informers at Risk’, Telegraph, 20 March 2002.
They left behind only one clue: ‘Who Stole the Secrets of Room 2/20?’ Observer, 23 March 2002.
The police immediately: ‘Police Helped IRA Steal Special Branch Secrets’, Telegraph, 28 September 2002.
‘an act of war’: ‘Analysis: Story Behind the Break-In’, BBC News, 19 April 2002.
A man who worked: ‘Castlereagh Break-In Row: Chef “Relieved but Angry”’, Belfast Telegraph, 4 July 2009.
‘mythological status’: ‘Castlereagh Break-In: The Same Old (Bobby) Storey?’ Irish Echo, 16 April 2002.
But the visual implication: ‘The British Spy at Heart of IRA’, The Times, 8 August 1999; ‘Focus: Scappaticci’s Past Is Secret No More’, The Times, 18 May 2003.
‘the crown jewel’: ‘The British Spy at Heart of IRA’, The Times, 8 August 1999.
‘You know this Stakeknife’: P-TKT.
During the Cold War: See David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets That Destroyed Two of the Cold War’s Most Important Agents (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2003).
Between 1980 and 1994: ‘The Hunter and His Prey’, Spotlight.
But not all of them: Martin Ingram and Greg Harkin, Stakeknife: Britain’s Secret Agents in Ireland (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), p.33. See, for instance, ‘Anthony Braniff – IRA Statement’, An Phoblacht, 25 September 1003.
When Brendan Hughes got out of prison: H-BC.
He also secretly worked: Ibid.
The TVs were bugged: Interview with Joe Clarke and Gerry Brannigan.
Before he could be executed: ‘Informant “Killed by IRA Despite Warning from British Spy”’, Telegraph, 11 April 2017; ‘Exposed: The Murky World of Spying During the Troubles’, Irish Times, 11 April 2017.
Hughes found that he was increasingly uneasy: H-BC.
At the most senior levels: ‘Half of All Top IRA Men “Worked for Security Services”’, Belfast Telegraph, 21 December 2011.
But just over a year: ‘How Stakeknife Was Unmasked’, Guardian, 12 May 2003.
‘a golden egg’: ‘Freddie Scappaticci Was Our Most Valuable Spy in IRA During T
roubles: British Army Chief’, Belfast Telegraph, 20 April 2012.
Stakeknife wasn’t Gerry Adams: ‘How Stakeknife Was Unmasked’, Guardian, 12 May 2003.
‘I am not guilty’: ‘Wearing Short Sleeves and Tan, Scappaticci Steps from the Shadows to Say: I’m No Informer’, Independent, 15 May 2003.
He had been a double agent: Ingram and Harkin, Stakeknife, p.61.
It has been suggested: Ibid., p.66.
But as an army-wide internal affairs: This observation is from Tommy McKearney’s remarks in ‘The Hunter and His Prey’, Spotlight.
In fact, when Scappaticci: ‘Wearing Short Sleeves and Tan, Scappaticci Steps from the Shadows to Say: I’m No Informer’, Independent, 15 May 2003.
‘I still can’t believe it’: ‘Double Blind’, The Atlantic, April 2006.
But then, Donaldson was a spy: ‘Adams Says “Securocrats” Out to Create New Crisis’, Irish Times, 17 December 2005.
‘blackmailed, bullied, coerced’: ‘Donaldson Admits to Being British Agent Since 1980s’, Irish Times, 16 December 2005.
Like a portal into: ‘Dennis Donaldson: Squalid Living after a Life of Lies’, Sunday Tribune, 26 March 2006.
But a lucky horseshoe: ‘Dead Man Walking’, The Times, 9 April 2006.
Donaldson grew a penitential beard: ‘“Spy” Donaldson Living in Donegal’, Derry Journal, 21 March 2006.
someone arrived at the cottage and killed him: ‘Spy and Former SF Official Donaldson Shot Dead’, Irish Times, 4 April 2006.
It has never been ascertained: ‘Denis Donaldson Murder: The Unanswered Questions That Bedevil Gerry Adams’, Belfast Telegraph, 22 September 2016.
But they allowed that such numbers: ‘Exposed: The Murky World of Spying During the Troubles’, Irish Times, 11 April 2017. On conjectural mathematics, behold the airtight logic in an account by one former Special Branch official: ‘Agents in illegal republican terrorist organisations saved at least 16,500 lives in the Troubles. A former [Special Branch] detective chief superintendent assesses that 15 well-placed agents were active at any one time in the IRA (1:33 ratio when based on an IRA of 500). On a yearly basis, considering a well-placed agent on average saved 37 lives per year, this equates to 555, which over 30 years is 16,650 lives.’ William Matchett, Secret Victory: The Intelligence War That Beat the IRA (Belfast: self-published, 2016), pp.100–101.
As early as 1975: Colin Wallace to Tony Staughton, the chief information officer at the Army Information Service at Lisburn, August 1975. Cited in ‘Death Squad Dossier’, Irish Mail on Sunday, 10 December 2006. For more on Wallace, a fascinating figure, see Interim Report on the Report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings, Houses of the Oireachtas (Ireland), December 2003, and Paul Foot, Who Framed Colin Wallace? (London: Macmillan, 1989).
‘deliberately stirring up conflict’: Letter from Colin Wallace, 30 September 1975, also cited in ‘Death Squad Dossier’, Irish Mail on Sunday, 10 December 2006.
Loyalist gangs, often operating: See Anne Cadwallader, Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland (Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press, 2013.)
‘We were there to act like a terror group’: ‘Britain’s Secret Terror Force’, Panorama.
White’s remit: Interview with Raymond White.
‘But don’t tell us the details’: Ian Cobain, The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation (London: Portobello, 2016), p.186.
After a stint in prison: Ingram and Harkin, Stakeknife, p.25.
but in fact the government did: According to an unpublished autobiographical account written by Nelson before he died, which I obtained, the army did not want Adams to be killed. That would be ‘totally counterproductive’, his handlers told him, because Adams had emerged, even by 1984, as someone who might steer the republican movement away from violence. Nelson maintains that the army knew in advance of the plan to kill Adams and allowed it to proceed – but not before they had tampered with the ammunition, in order to prevent the assassination from succeeding. In 2014, the police ombudsman of Northern Ireland investigated these claims and asserted that the authorities had not known in advance about the attack, and that the bullets had not been tampered with. See ‘Public Statement by the Police Ombudsman Under Section 62 of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 1998 Relating to the Complaints in Respect of the Attempted Murder of Mr. Gerry Adams on 14 March 1984’, Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (2014). But the late journalist Liam Clarke, who was well sourced and highly reliable, maintained, in a 2011 article, that the story about military intelligence doctoring the bullets used to shoot Adams had in fact been ‘confirmed by the Defence Advisory Committee’. See ‘Half of All Top IRA Men “Worked for Security Services”’, Belfast Telegraph, 21 December 2011.
One night in February 1989: Kevin Toolis, Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA’s Soul (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995), pp.84–85.
Members of the RUC: De Silva Report, p.15.
It was Nelson who: Ingram and Harkin, Stakeknife, p.197; Peter Cory, Cory Collusion Inquiry Report: Patrick Finucane (London: Stationery Office, 2004), pp.53–54.
A subsequent inquiry stopped short of concluding: De Silva Report, p.23.
Finucane’s family, convinced: ‘Pat Finucane’s Widow Calls de Silva Report “a Whitewash”’, Guardian, 12 December 2012.
So the FRU devised: ‘Was an IRA Informer So Valuable That Murder Was Committed to Protect Him?’ Guardian, 25 September 2000.
A Belfast Italian: Notarantonio had apparently been involved in the IRA as a younger man but was no longer. See ‘Come Spy with Me’, Irish Times, 17 May 2003.
One morning, Notarantonio: ‘Innocent Victim of Ulster’s Dirty War’, Guardian, 12 January 2001.
One of them was Freddie Scappaticci: Ingram and Harkin, Stakeknife, p.218.
‘In almost thirty years’: ‘Shadowy Group Linked to Collusion and Murder’, The Times, 13 September 2005.
In 1990, a fire: ‘Stevens Enquiry 3: Overview & Recommendations’, report by Sir John Stevens, 17 April 2003, p.13; John Stevens, Not for the Faint-Hearted: My Life Fighting Crime (London: Orion, 2006), p.185.
In 2012, the British prime minister: ‘Prime Minister David Cameron Statement on Patrick Finucane’, 12 December 2012.
There was a provision: See the Belfast Agreement (1998), section 10: ‘Prisoners’. The implementing legislation was the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act of 1998.
There was one notable: See Kieran McEvoy, Louise Mallinder, Gordon Anthony and Luke Moffett, ‘Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: Amnesties, Prosecutions and the Public Interest’, paper (2013), p.15.
But it wouldn’t budge: Deposition of John Garland, Inquest on the Body of Jean McConville, Coroner’s District of County Louth, 5 April 2004.
‘There was a single gunshot’: Report of Postmortem Examination on Jean McConville, by pathologist M. Cassidy, 1 September 2003.
A flattened lead bullet: Report of Postmortem Examination on Remains Believed to Be Jean McConville, by pathologist R. T. Shepherd, 28 August 2003.
Four years after: ‘Beach Body “Is Mother Killed by IRA 30 Years Ago”’, Telegraph, 28 August 2003.
The skeleton’s: Postmortem Examination, 1 September 2003.
Tights, underwear: Postmortem Examination, 28 August 2003.
‘Is there a nappy pin?’: Interviews with Michael McConville and Archie McConville.
‘All of our lives’: Archie McConville deposition.
Father Alec Reid … attended the funeral: ‘Waiting Comes to an End As Mother Is Laid to Rest’, Irish News, 3 November 2003.
But some others: Interview with Nuala O’Loan.
When the remains: ‘Daughter Demands Justice for IRA Victim’, Irish News, 7 April 2004.
‘The criminal case’: ‘Forensics May Trap McConville Killers’, Irish News, 24 February 2004.
Chapter 25: The Last Gun
The process had unfolded: ‘IRA Destroys All Its Arms’, New York Times, 27 S
eptember 2005.
The gun was on display: ‘Insults Fly at Decommissioning Priest’s Meeting’, Irish Examiner, 12 October 2005.
The destruction proceeded: This catalogue of weapons is drawn from ‘IRA Destroys All Its Arms’, New York Times, 27 September 2005.
The man seemed very aware: ‘Insults Fly at Decommissioning Priest’s Meeting’, Irish Examiner, 12 October 2005.
With his brother Terry: Interviews with Anthony McIntyre and Terry Hughes.
When he got back to Belfast: Interview with Terry Hughes.
But the family chose not to intervene: Ibid.
For the Sinn Féin leader: Interview with Tommy Gorman.
In the symbolic calculus: Interview with Terry Hughes.
He looked lonely: Dolours Price, ‘Gerry, Come Clean, You’ll Feel Better’, The Blanket, 26 February 2009.
Then he shouldered: The suggestion that it took some doing for Adams to get to the coffin has been widely made. It was confirmed for me by witnesses such as Anthony McIntyre and Tommy Gorman. In an account, the journalist Liam Clarke wrote, ‘In order to be filmed with the coffin, Adams had to push his way past Real IRA supporters who wanted to hijack Hughes’s legacy. Martin McGuinness was more coy.’ ‘A Coffin Adams Had to Carry’, The Times, 24 February 2008.
‘We were there in grief’: Dolours Price, ‘Irish News Report of the Funeral of Brendan Hughes’, The Blanket, 24 February 2008.
‘He was my friend’: ‘Death of Brendan Hughes’, An Phoblacht, 21 February 2008.
But O’Rawe found: Interview with Richard O’Rawe.
‘If you publish this’: Interview with Ed Moloney.
‘If I die before this comes out’: Interview with Richard O’Rawe.
‘No matter how history’: O’Rawe, Blanketmen, p.251.
Bik McFarlane, who had: ‘Former Comrades’ War of Words over Hunger Strike’, Irish News, 11 March 2005.
McFarlane changed his story: ‘British “Had No Intention of Resolving the Hunger Strike”’, Belfast Telegraph, 4 June 2009.
He never missed: Interview with Richard O’Rawe. The book is Afterlives.
‘access to this vital piece’: Dolours Price, ‘A Salute to Comrades’, The Blanket, 18 May 2005.
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