The Accidental Spy

by Sean O'Driscoll

  “I always liked Liam, he was polite and well dressed and smart, he was a farmer but he had this college professor look – but I thought a lot less of him after that. Bringing his daughter and leaving her there was a marker for me.”

  In the back room, Rupert met two other men, neither of whom got up to greet him. They both had brush cuts and moustaches but weren’t similar enough to be related.

  The taller of the two, Noel, was a senior member whom they were sending over to the US, to arrive in Chicago in April. Noel would explain to their US supporters that Rupert was now in charge and that he was the liaison to the Real IRA, or, in their language, “the army”.

  Campbell was in an upbeat mood; he needed the US trip to be a success so that the Real IRA could have a true US support wing.

  The meeting broke up soon. It was simply so that Rupert and Noel could recognise each other.

  Campbell called his daughter from the front room. He was a family man, who seemed to love his children.

  They drove back to the Carrickdale in good spirits. Campbell had a big broad smile and laughed easily. Rupert was struck by how Ireland’s most wanted man was so at ease.

  He arrived back at the hotel, turned around and waved goodbye to Campbell and his daughter, who both waved back. He watched her leave, a little girl on a day out with her daddy.

  A source close to Campbell insists that he did not bring his daughter to meetings and that he tried to keep his children separate from the Real IRA.

  A member of the Real IRA army council insists that by now they began to see Rupert as a braggart…

  “McKevitt thought Rupert was the greatest thing ever and was trying to get everyone to meet him. But I could see that he wasn’t delivering. He talked and talked about it but he didn’t bring the goods. That week was a turning point.”

  The next morning, Rupert checked out of the hotel. He had a meeting in the foyer with McKevitt who told him to be imaginative in America and to think big in suggesting ideas to the engineering department. He himself, in the Provisional IRA, had come up with the idea of leaving a bomb in a flashlight beside an army checkpoint. When a curious soldier picked it up, it blew his arm off.

  The flashlight has a special relevance later on – it should have been a warning for Rupert’s MI5 handlers.

  McKevitt told Rupert never to be afraid to suggest something, that nothing was ridiculous. Then McKevitt left, wishing him well.

  Rupert still had one last mission before he left Dundalk.

  He went to visit Colm Murphy, who was suffering from severe depression after he was charged with the Omagh bombing. Murphy, a multimillionaire builder, had always been lively and charismatic, and his bar, the Emerald, was a shrine to fallen IRA heroes. Now he was shunned in Dundalk, and his business was falling apart.

  McKevitt told Rupert that Murphy was suicidal. Seamus McKenna, the man suspected of driving the car bomb into Omagh, told me that he also noticed a profound shift in Murphy, who seemed distant and “quite odd”.

  “I thought I was going to prison for the rest of my life. I wasn’t in a fit state,” Murphy would later recall.

  Rupert had met him briefly in November. He was a small man with brown hair, short legs and tough, builders’ arms. He was suspected of killing over 20 people, on top of the 29 killed in Omagh. He was part of the Provisional IRA’s South Armagh brigade and was a major suspect in the Kingsmill massacre in 1976, in which 10 Protestant workers were taken off a bus and shot dead. Murphy moved to the US and was jailed for five years there in an FBI sting for setting up an IRA arms deal. While he was in prison, he was protected by the Italian mafia, who identified with him as a Catholic.

  He was deported back to Ireland, where he set up a successful construction business that did all the brickwork for Dublin’s financial services centre. He was at the heart of the Celtic Tiger boom and picked up many other government contracts, including the science building at Dublin City University. All the money he made, he put into buying up property, including the Emerald.

  But after Omagh, his natural vigour and excitement was gone. He lay in bed in the mornings, afraid to make business calls. A close relative suggested anti-depressants, but he resisted. He was charged with conspiracy to cause an explosion in Omagh but other charges were likely. He expected to be charged with 31 counts of murder and to be jailed for over 600 years. He wasn’t to know it at the time, but he was to be convicted of conspiracy to cause an explosion in Omagh, but it was later overturned on appeal.

  When Rupert met him in the Emerald on 20 February 2000, Murphy barely spoke, staring into the distance. He seemed “shy and hard to talk to,” Rupert told MI5.

  When he spoke, it was one complaint after another. He wanted McKevitt to restart a major bombing campaign as soon as possible or Murphy would “lose face” with his own men. The Continuity IRA was ready and wanted McKevitt’s bombs and equipment, and Murphy “couldn’t hold them back” for much longer.

  He wanted a bombing campaign like an old spinster might seek a dance hall – to reclaim something that no longer made sense. He seemed listless and indifferent. What once seemed glorious to him now seemed pointless, and yet his bar was still full from one wall to the next with IRA memorabilia. He was becoming what he hated most about the Continuity IRA – a nostalgia buff.

  Murphy railed against Republican Sinn Féin leader, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, who could have made a powerful army out of the Continuity IRA but had “blown it”.

  The Continuity IRA was a disgrace, he said, and all Republican Sinn Féin were self-serving.

  Rupert tried to keep it sympathetic and said that Murphy had many supporters in the US who knew that he could beat the case.

  Murphy was embarrassed that the subject was even raised. In police interviews, he had confidently claimed he had never been to Omagh and had nothing to do with the bombing. Days later, police revealed that they had analysed phone mast records, which proved that Murphy’s phone travelled up to Omagh and back down to Dundalk at the exact time the bomb was planted. He was compromised and was facing life in prison.

  Rupert talked and talked, pleading with him to think of his sister, Angela, and his family, saying that the Brits had set him up and that it was time for him to fight the case. It was Rupert’s trucking sales pitch brought to a new and tragic landscape.

  Murphy, distractedly, listened and said that he would do what Angela wanted him to do. “That’s great news,” said Rupert. “You can’t let them get you down.”

  Rupert clasped his arm.

  Murphy agreed that he would defend himself in the largest criminal investigation in UK history.

  “Thank you,” he said simply.

  CHAPTER 15

  Back in the US, Rupert was busy repairing the house and doing the garden. He drove a tractor mower up and down the garden all weekend, listening to an audiobook about American forces in World War II.

  As Maureen and Dorie chatted at home, he drove to an Irish pub in Forest Park, Chicago for an IFC meeting and to appeal for weapons. It was Sunday, 19 March 2000.

  He wanted to see Frank O’Neill before the others arrived and to brief him on the trip to Ireland.

  Carl O’Connor [not his real name], an increasingly regular attendee was also there, talking to Frank.

  O’Connor was a business journalist and by the far the most middle-class and educated of the Chicago group. He acquired his Irish republicanism from his good friend, the unfortunately named George Harrison, the Provisional IRA’s most prolific gun-runner.

  The FBI estimated that Harrison moved 100,000 rounds of ammunition and 3,000 weapons, including rocket-launchers and heavy machine guns, to Ireland in the 1970s. The IRA had given him his own unit of men for transporting weapons by sea.

  At his trial on weapons charges in 1982, the prosecutor told the jury that Harrison had been gun-running for six months. Harrison objected.

  “Mr. Harrison is insulted,” Brian O’Dwyer, his lawyer said. “He wants the court to know that there h
as not been a weapon sent to Northern Ireland in the last 25 years without Mr Harrison.’’

  He was acquitted after convincing the jury that his mission was approved by the CIA, which refused to come to court to deny what was obviously an invented story.

  Harrison strongly opposed peace in Northern Ireland without a British withdrawal and sided with Republican Sinn Féin when the split came.

  When I worked for an Irish American newspaper in New York, we would occasionally get letters from him, signed “George Harrison, Continuity IRA”.

  O’Connor was far more discreet and even-tempered.

  Rupert, with army council observer status and having been appointed US coordinator for the Real IRA, was keen to assert that he was now in charge.

  To show his new status, he told Frank and Joe that he had been given a list of weapons that the Real IRA wanted. McKevitt immediately needed two .25 ladies’ pistols, he said.

  Rupert had discussed weaponry with the IFC many times before, but nobody had ever volunteered to go out and buy them. It was always seen as something that Ireland sorted out directly.

  Frank O’Neill was too old for gun-running anyway, so Rupert could discuss the subject knowing nothing would come of it.

  O’Connor, the business journalist, said he would go to Fetlaws, a gun dealership in Indiana, and buy the guns.

  Rupert was in real trouble if he did. The FBI had repeatedly warned him: do not buy any weapons for the Real IRA. The case against its US fundraisers could be thrown out if he did. It was bad enough that he had given the Real IRA personal organisers with long delay timers.

  Rupert tried to dissuade O’Connor by telling him that it was a bad idea, that any guns would have to be off the street and untraceable.

  He thought that was the end of the problem.

  Three days later, O’Connor emailed him, saying he wanted to see him for breakfast that morning. It was usually Rupert who prompted the meetings with IFC members. He was concerned.

  Rupert contacted Mark Lundgren in the FBI. Mark told him that if it was about the guns, Rupert should try to dissuade O’Connor as best he could.

  Rupert drove to a diner for breakfast with O’Connor, who had already made a deal to buy two .25s and needed $400 from IFC funds to get them. This was bad news.

  Rupert had the money, because he was on the way to the lumberyard to buy wood for home repair. He was stuck – if he didn’t give O’Connor the money, it would arouse immediate suspicion and show Rupert up as a bragger rather than a real army man. He had requested the guns, so why wouldn’t he want them?

  Across the table, he gave the $400 to O’Connor who put it in his wallet.

  O’Connor said he would email Rupert with a place to pick up the guns.

  Rupert had prompted a very respected business journalist to buy specialist handguns to be used by the Real IRA, probably to help a mass breakout of prisoners.

  He tried one last attempt to scare O’Connor out of the purchase. “How do you know they are clean?” he said. “They’re clean,” said O’Connor. “Or at least they will be because the serial numbers are being removed.”

  Rupert contacted Mark in the FBI again and told him what happened.

  Lundgren was furious.

  He couldn’t believe that Rupert had just handed over the money like that – this was clearly enticing someone to procure weapons, someone who wouldn’t have bought any weapons if Rupert hadn’t opened his big mouth about being the big fucking man in Ireland.

  It was the angriest Lundgren had ever been with him. Lundgren contacted his superiors, and the FBI lawyer, Jim Krupowski. More and more superiors got involved, including the head of the Chicago office. They were all mad. Rupert’s instructions were clear – leave the gun-running to the gun-runners.

  Rupert: “We had an awful row about it. They wanted me to go back and get the money from O’Connor and make sure he didn’t go through with it. I said I just can’t do that. I have to have some opening to do weapon deals otherwise I’m going to be uncovered.

  “When I said that, they got into a big tizzy. They were all back and forth about it to each other – if O’Connor got the guns, how were the FBI going to deal with it?

  “I knew this was a mess. This was exactly what the FBI had told me not to do, that a prosecution would not hold up, that the whole bureau could be in trouble for entrapment. O’Connor should be left out of the picture. He wasn’t one of the big players.”

  Rupert apologised by email to both the FBI and MI5, saying he didn’t see the problem arise as O’Connor did not fit the profile of a gun-runner. “He is college-educated, not someone that I could have dreamt of getting me this type of thing,” he emailed the FBI. Rupert was uncharacteristically apologetic, while warning that it was inevitable in the world in which he was operating. “So, though I am sorry it happened, it is bound to happen again. All I can do is try to be more careful,” he wrote.

  There was an even bigger problem. Noel, the mysterious senior Real IRA figure, was coming to the US from Ireland on 22 April, just a month away. O’Connor would likely boast to Noel about his role in getting the specialist pistols for the operation. That would immediately show that Rupert hadn’t delivered the weapons.

  Rupert told the FBI by email that he would warn O’Connor to keep his mouth shut to Noel about this top-secret operation that only a few people should know about. The FBI were unimpressed.

  Lundgren worked through the day to sort out a solution as soon as possible.

  They told Rupert to go to lunch with O’Connor and tell him that Rupert already had the pistols from another source and to get the money back.

  “Make sure to get the money back,” said Lundgren.

  Rupert invited O’Connor to lunch the next day and told him he already had two pistols. “Really?” said O’Connor, always well mannered. He agreed to cancel his own deal, after Rupert told him he had found the exact match for McKevitt’s request.

  O’Connor seemed undisturbed and was happy to help out. He handed Rupert the money back and called someone to cancel the deal.

  Rupert was extremely relieved and put the money in his pocket straightaway and kept talking over lunch.

  What would prompt a business journalist like O’Connor to go out on the streets of Chicago to buy untraceable pistols for foreign terrorists? Boredom? Suburban ennui? Breaking out of the clichés and euphemism of bland business journalism and living the gritty language of the streets? All of the above?

  When I asked O’Connor for an interview, he googled me and read about my various escapades reporting in the Middle East.

  “That sounds rather staid compared to what you usually work on,” he wrote. He never did do an interview, but his emails to Rupert and Rupert’s recording of the meetings are still intact.

  Rupert saved the FBI from the mess he had created. Still, in email after email he raised the same point – how was he to be the Real IRA’s representative in the US without buying weapons? It was a question the FBI could not answer. It was one that prompted them to reconsider this project. At some point there would have to be a discussion with MI5 about pulling Rupert out of the field. He already had enough evidence to convict McKevitt and some of the major Real IRA players for directing terrorism, and was soon to meet the Real IRA senior representative flying into Chicago. How long could he keep up this ruse without supplying a single weapon or bomb component from the long list the engineering department had given him?

  He also had another concern. Michael Donnelly had written to the Irish Freedom Committee in New York and Chicago, expressing his concerns that Rupert was a spy. Some of the anti-Rupert faction had sent the letter to McKevitt, demanding his opinion. He sent word back that it was nonsense, that Rupert was solid and that Donnelly was bitter that he was being kicked out of the army for insubordination. It was very lucky for Rupert that Donnelly was viewed so negatively by the Real IRA leadership. Donnelly was right, of course, but he was also a loose talker. His very habit of denouncing spies was sa
ving Rupert’s life.

  *****

  On 23 April 2000, FBI agents positioned themselves in an unmarked van at O’Hare Airport in Chicago.

  Rupert drove in, parked in the airport car park and walked to arrivals, without looking at the van. Bernadette Sands McKevitt had supplied him with the flight number.

  As he waited in arrivals, he realised he had left his FBI-supplied recorder at home and didn’t have time to go back and get it. It was a serious error. He would just have to take notes.

  Noel came into arrivals and Rupert nodded at him before walking out of the airport alone. Noel followed a few hundred metres behind as Rupert walked to the car park.

  The FBI spotted them. An agent lifted up his camera and snapped furiously. Now past the airport security cameras, the men were talking. Rupert, much taller, in knee-length shorts and T-shirt, Noel in jeans and long shirt, walking to the car.

  Rupert realised immediately that there was a serious problem. He couldn’t understand a word Noel was saying. He had a very thick Tyrone accent, spoke very lightly and his moustache appeared to hide a cleft palate because his voice was so indistinct.

  Rupert: “Half of Tyrone was in Bundoran during the summer so I was used to the accent. It’s a thick accent, but he was way beyond that. I didn’t understand one word.”

  He consoled himself for forgetting the recorder – the man’s accent was so thick that there was no way the FBI would understand the tape even if he had it.

  As they drove into the city centre, he began to acclimatise to the man’s voice. The man’s full name was Noel Abernethy, he was 30 and from Dungannon in Tyrone. He joined the IRA when he was 15 and was jailed in the early 1990s for possession of explosives.

  He was also tied into Liam Campbell’s cigarette smuggling operation, which moved tens of millions of cigarettes every year, to both Britain and Ireland.

  The father of Abernethy’s girlfriend, Orla, had been shot dead by loyalists just a few years before as indiscriminate revenge for the murder of one of their leaders.