Sitting on the table beside the computer was the disk he was supposed to give Smyth.
In his haste to get out the door, he had packed the wrong disk. Smyth now had a disk that contained Rupert’s notes that he used before sending emails to M15 and the FBI. He believed they were the ones about his last trip to Ireland.
“I can only describe it as several days of hell about what was on the disk. I was petrified of what I had sent him and had no idea what to do! So I called Smyth and told him I’d made a mistake and would get the right disk to him. But I did it in the middle of a lot of chat about McKevitt.”
Maureen desperately tried to reassure him that there was nothing damaging on the disk. Even if there was, Smyth would never find it in the folders and sub folders. If he did find it, Rupert could always say that it was his note-taking of meetings so he would know what to get for the Real IRA.
Rupert had a long, tense drive back down to Boston to exchange disks with Smyth, telling him he was on his way to a meeting with Joe Dillon and the other Boston IFC supporters.
“I got it back into my car and I was sweating. I hadn’t been able to sleep, I was so worried,” said Rupert. “I didn’t know if Smyth was going to whack me when I got down there.”
In Ireland and Britain, the Real IRA’s attacks were getting more and more daring. They fired a giant barrack-buster mortar at a British army barracks, dropping 80 pounds of high explosives and causing extensive damage.
Then on 9 July, a team drove a car bomb to a British army base. But they thought they were being tailed and security was extra tight, so instead they drove the car bomb into Stewartstown, a predominantly Protestant, unionist town.
The bomb ripped through the town centre, destroying shops and damaging the police station.
McKevitt was furious. The Real IRA had assured members after the Omagh bomb that there would be no more car bombs in town centres. Immediately after Stewartstown, some very skilled members who had defected from the Provisional IRA announced they were quitting. McKevitt and Campbell tried to persuade them to stay. McKevitt wanted everyone involved in the Stewartstown bomb to be court martialed for disobeying his commands. He worked hard to win back members who walked away. They eventually relented. The focus must now be on London.
On 19 July, security forces carried out a controlled explosion of a bomb left at Ealing Broadway train station, sending flames spiralling into the air. Police had to shut down Victoria and Paddington railway stations and stop the London Underground, causing disruption to hundreds of thousands of people.
Then on 21 September, the London cell pulled off a major coup: one of its members fired a shoulder-held rocket-propelled grenade at the Vauxhall headquarters of MI6, the international spying organisation of the British state. The attacker jumped on the back of a motorbike and the two men escaped. The bombing caused extensive damage and generated news around the world. It was a warning to Britain’s vast spying system – we will get you.
McKevitt, watching the scenes on TV from his home in Blackrock, was elated. Those members who had walked away after Stewartstown came back, congratulating McKevitt on his brilliance.
It was embarrassing for MI5 and the gardaí. It was clear that, as director of operations, Liam Campbell was behind those who led the attack. He was kept under almost constant electronic and physical surveillance.
In early October, the Ruperts were getting ready for another big trip to Ireland. On the morning of 3 October, they checked on Irish news sites and found some big news.
That morning, at 5am, the Republic’s Emergency Response Unit broke open the door of Campbell’s house, which was just feet inside the border. Armed gardaí ran to the back of the house to make sure he didn’t dive over the back wall into Northern Ireland.
Inside the house, they found a secret trap-door leading to a storage room. They also found forensic suits for bomb-making and latex gloves and walkie-talkies.
Campbell barely had time to put on his trousers. He was dragged out of the house still in his bare feet and with a shirt barely on over a bare chest.
At Kells garda station, he was reminded that after Omagh, new legislation meant he no longer had the right to silence. Now, a negative inference could be drawn from silence to questions about IRA membership. He still said nothing. He was told that gardaí believed he was a leading member of the Real IRA. He still said nothing. The gardaí wrote it down. For the first time in Irish history, silence was evidence.
The arrest was a blow to McKevitt.
Nobody could replace Campbell’s enthusiasm for the fight: he had the same energy in his 40s that he had when he was 17. But while McKevitt liked him, he also quietly blamed him for Omagh and began to wonder about him and the reasons for his enthusiasm.
Far worse was to come that month. The Provisional IRA had long tolerated the Real IRA along the border. It was too strong to oppose there. But in Belfast, it kept the Real IRA tightly suppressed, even picketing the homes of its sympathisers. Now, tension was building. A new, restructured Real IRA was bombing many barracks, and even M16 headquarters, and was getting an upsurge of support among disaffected youth in republican West Belfast.
The young mostly looked up to Joseph O’Connor, 26, a Real IRA member who was working on rights issues for the growing number of Real IRA prisoners.
O’Connor was close to McKevitt, who saw him as the man to win over West Belfast.
O’Connor’s grandfather, Francisco Notarantonio, was a leading Provisional who had been shot dead at his home by loyalists 13 years previously. The Notarantonios, one of several Italian Catholic families in West Belfast with several IRA members, were one of the most influential families in the community. The Provisionals hated that O’Connor had gone over to McKevitt.
On the night of 12 October, O’Connor spotted a group of Provisionals out the back of his house, watching him. He and a friend went inside, bolted the door and didn’t come out.
The next day, O’Connor and his friend were in a car outside his mother’s house in West Belfast. Two men ran toward them. O’Connor struggled to free himself from his seat belt as his friend jumped out of the car. The two gunmen ran up to the car window and shot O’Connor several times in the head. His body slumped in his seat.
At the same time that it was happening, Maureen and David were flying into Paris. MI5 had booked them a good hotel, and they decided to take a few days’ holiday.
Maureen: “The Paris hotel was just fantastic. They even had a bottle of champagne waiting for us in the room. Because our value to MI5 was getting better and better, the hotel rooms were getting better and better.”
Maureen, who had lived her entire life within a five-mile radius of the truck stop, was now holding hands with David as they inspected the paintings of the Louvre. The Impressionists were her favourite. She sent a postcard from the museum to her family back home. Then they walked around the Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Coeur.
While Maureen read at a café, David met Paul at the InterContinental Hotel. David was upbeat, even ribbing Paul about the Real IRA attack on M16. Rupert said, “You sure took one up the ass from McKevitt.” Paul laughed back. “Yeah,” he said nodding. “We sure did.”
David and Maureen flew from Paris to Dublin and drove up to Dundalk, to stay at the Carrickdale Hotel.
There were frantic and intense negotiations between M15 and the FBI that day. The FBI wanted arrests as soon as possible. It had a big reason for expediting the case – the Clinton administration was coming to a close, and with it would come an end to the most Ireland-focused administration in the history of the United States. In January, there would be a new president, with a new focus on the justice department.
MI5 explained that its agents had never given evidence in Irish courts, that they wanted Rupert to continue feeding them information so they could disrupt bombings.
To go to court would involve a reworking of everything they did and a new, open and accountable MI5. The argument matched a new thinking in MI5, that in th
e post-cold war environment, they had to make themselves relevant to law enforcement, rather than operating on a level above it.
All of this continued as Rupert met McKevitt on 18 October at the Fairmont Hotel in Dundalk. Maureen stayed in the hotel room, reading and watching TV.
“I used to watch Judge Judy and other shows you could get on Irish TV – it passed the time,” she said.
Rupert and McKevitt drove from the hotel to McKevitt’s house in Blackrock. Rupert dropped off $6,000 in fundraising money, plus a new computer for McKevitt, which he began configuring with software. But this time, McKevitt questioned the money. Why was there only $6,000 this time?
He looked at Rupert fixedly. “He got a little pissy with me, frankly,” says Rupert. “I said, listen, we need money for the El Paso thing and James Smyth’s been buying up weapons.”
Still, McKevitt was happy with the new computer Rupert gave him. His own one was slow and dying.
They drove to a restaurant on the north side of Dundalk, which was McKevitt’s new safe hang-out. It was owned by a supporter.
At the restaurant, McKevitt went through recent operations. Stewartstown car bomb: a catastrophe that had cost them good volunteers, disgusted that the tactics of Omagh had returned. Those responsible for driving the car bomb into the town centre would be punished. Attack on M16 headquarters: absolutely magnificent and had won back those who had walked away after Stewartstown.
The barrack-buster attack on the military base had caused major damage and showed they were stronger than ever. He seemed very happy with progress.
Rupert felt, in this great moment of bonding, that it would be a good time to raise Dorothy Robinson’s claims that Rupert was a spy.
McKevitt instantly dismissed it. She had met him about Rupert’s alleged spying and he told her it was nonsense. He knew she was a Real IRA supporter but Rupert was on a level way above her and the IFC members in New York and Philadelphia, who were still loyal to the Continuity IRA, anyway. In his emails Rupert recorded McKevitt as saying that Rupert was “solid”. “Don’t worry about the likes of her,” he said.
The arrest of Liam Campbell was a loss, McKevitt said, but Campbell was too trusting of people and may have been betrayed. However, as a result of the arrest, McKevitt had to take over the investigation into the murder of Joseph O’Connor. When he drove up to Belfast, all the Real IRA members in the city wanted to meet him and were demanding revenge, he said. McKevitt insisted on meeting only Maurice and other army council members in the city. Their attacks on the British had big momentum and they couldn’t afford to get into a feud with the Provisionals, who felt weak because they had to give up most of their weapons under the peace agreement.
McKevitt said he had ordered the Real IRA to take the man who had been in the car with O’Connor to a safe house for questioning, where the man swore he had nothing to do with the killing. “If you are lying to us, we will shoot you,” McKevitt said, and let him go.
On James Smyth, he was very, very disappointed. He didn’t give a flying fuck if Smyth’s girlfriend had military experience – she shouldn’t be involved, and he should go to El Paso.
Rupert brought the news that Smyth had moved address.
“Where did he move?” said McKevitt.
“Across town, Worcester,” said Rupert.
It just made McKevitt madder. He put down his drink. “Across town? Is he stupid? I told him to go to El Paso.”
Rupert, trying to lighten the mood, said that in trucking, when a man messes up like that because of a woman, they say he is “drowning in pussy”. McKevitt laughed. He liked that description. No harm would come to Smyth – he was a good soldier.
He leaned in, as he did when he had something big to say. They had real momentum now, and were winning over members every day. What they needed now, though, was a state sponsor, a new Gaddafi to take it to another level.
Rupert suggested Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, who hated the western governments and had huge supplies of weapons. McKevitt dismissed it – it wouldn’t work with Milošević. Someone bigger, like Saddam Hussein, he said. Someone who could deliver.
How would the Iraqis possibly get involved, Rupert asked. “I don’t know,” said McKevitt. “But we’ll just have to keep plugging along until they do.”
In London, Paul and the MI5 team were delighted with Rupert’s news that McKevitt was looking for Saddam Hussein to step in as the new terrorism sugar daddy to replace Gaddafi.
Paul’s emails were never as exuberant as they were on the night of 19 October. He was already talking about the end of Rupert’s deployment – but first, Rupert would have to leave McKevitt with the idea that Rupert was working with him on finding a foreign sponsor.
He shouldn’t over-discuss it, but should drop it into the conversation that he was trying to find the right contacts.
Paul also warned him not to discuss it with James Smyth when he got back to America – this was way above the head of a mere assassin.
“Again, we go back to the issue of not asking too much and not offering too much,” Paul wrote.
At the time of Paul’s response, Rupert was in McKevitt’s home, putting additional software onto the new computer. Mickey and Bernie looked very happy with it. The computer had first gone through FBI and M15 hands, but nothing traceably.
Rupert wanted Bernie to let him install software so that she could lock files on her computer against any police raid, but she resisted. She had an external drive and could pull it out at short notice whenever there was a garda raid.
There was one other computer matter – Smyth had inspected the rocket-launcher software and given it back to Rupert to give to the engineering department for Hamas-style rocket attacks on British barracks.
The software was still in his hotel room and he wanted to hand it over to the army council as soon as possible, Rupert said.
McKevitt replied that he’d send someone around the next day to pick it up.
He was delighted with this new technology. He left the house in a good mood while Rupert stayed there, working on the computer.
Things were very different when he came back an hour and a half later. He was in a foul mood. There was tension throughout the house. He just stood around Rupert, waiting for him to leave. He was flushed and clearly stressed.
The meeting, with other Real IRA chiefs, was likely about Campbell’s arrest.
Bernie looked concerned. Rupert packed up quickly but couldn’t find his hat. He had never seen such tension in the house. Perhaps somebody at the meeting had said something about him?
He found his hat in the home office and left quickly.
“It was kind of a cluster-fuck night,” he wrote to Paul from his hotel room.
On 21 October 2000, he went as usual to the Fairmont Hotel, to pick up McKevitt, who was back to his jovial self. Whatever had happened at the meeting was forgotten, or at least put aside.
The mood change was noticeable, but also puzzling.
McKevitt asked Rupert to drive to Carlingford Lough, between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
“Look,” he said, pointing over at the clear view. “The navy ship is gone.”
Rupert looked across at the unrestricted view to Northern Ireland. The navy ship had been moved miles out to sea.
He froze.
On his last trip to Ireland, the army council said it wanted marine magnets to blow up the ship, and McKevitt lamented the lack of suicide bombers to do the job. Now, the ship was suddenly gone. It was clear MI5 had told the navy to move it. He felt betrayed.
McKevitt told Rupert to drive south, through Drogheda and then out to Newgrange, the megalithic tomb where, only on the winter solstice, light comes in through a chamber window. It was built before the giant pyramids of Egypt, when the Irish were a high civilization, before the Brits came and ruined everything, McKevitt said.
Next, there was a short drive to the site of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, where the Irish were defeated by William of Oran
ge, signaling the end of Irish control of their own country, and the plantation of the country into English, Protestant estates.
Rupert nodded. McKevitt liked explaining things to him. They were genuinely good friends. They trusted each other.
“I just put everything else aside when I was with him. With Mickey, I was army 100 per cent and I didn’t think about my other life, except to gather information as it came,” said Rupert.
McKevitt was adamant – they had to find a foreign sponsor now that things were going well. Some members had gone to two left-wing “human rights” conferences, one in Tbilisi, Georgia, the other in Geneva, Switzerland, hoping that state agents would make contact, but they hadn’t.
McKevitt said he needed Rupert to help him find foreign agents, to think big and come back to him, that they could work on it together.
They drove back to the hotel. Along the way, Rupert said that a journalist loyal to the Real IRA, and an IFC member, wanted to interview McKevitt. He thought it was a good idea that Rupert guide her in what questions to ask.
Rupert said he’d see him for dinner in a few days’ time with their wives.
Back at his hotel room, he contacted Paul. Paul was pleased. He would supply his own questions to Rupert to give to the Real IRA-supporting journalist. It was the first time that MI5 would be able to ask questions to McKevitt.
*****
On the following Tuesday night, Maureen and David prepared themselves for their dinner with the McKevitts at the Ballymascanlon House Hotel. Rupert told Maureen: “Remember, this is just for you to get a feel of the controls. Just relax into it.”
Maureen was to bond with Bernadette as much as possible but the conversation should be between the four of them.
When they got there, there was an electrical outage in the area and they moved the dinner to the other restaurant in Dundalk where McKevitt met contacts.
Rupert is still convinced that MI5 had something to do with the electrical outage at the hotel.
My MI5 source is adamant that would never happen. “Cause an electrical outage in the Republic of Ireland? Risk destroying relations with the Republic, carefully built up over years by both sides? Again, it’s the goblin stuff that people think we do, but we don’t.”
The Accidental Spy Page 20