The Accidental Spy

by Sean O'Driscoll

  The next day, there was a positive article in Time magazine about David. Maureen loved it, but David was still edgy and combative. He was convinced that the FBI was out to get him.

  An Irish Special Branch detective very familiar with David’s case told me, “David was a great agent in the field but we were starting to realise that he was a bit mad, and that opinion was definitely coming from colleagues in America. That was becoming a concern, for sure.”

  And through it all, the Real IRA’s fanaticism continued, even harder now, to show that they could survive without McKevitt.

  On Thursday, 7 June 2001, a gunman opened up with an AK-47 at a polling booth, in their attempt to stop Northern Ireland’s elections for its new parliament in Stormont. He shot a voter and two police officers before fleeing to a waiting car. Noel Abernethy, the man who had flown to Chicago to win over US supporters for Rupert, was arrested in a speeding car 20 minutes later. He had thrown his top off as they sped from the direction of the polling booth. He was put on trial and acquitted for lack of evidence, although the judge made it clear that suspicion or likelihood was not enough – he had to be absolutely sure.

  A week later, David and Maureen drove to Bloomington, Illinois, to pick up their Armed Forces IDs. They would both be members of the military on official documents. It would give them a good cover story and help explain David’s movements abroad. They didn’t want new identities. They would still be Maureen and David, but on official documents, they would be two other people serving in the military.

  Mark had booked them a hotel room for the day, if they wanted to unwind. At 11am they met Mark, Doug Lindsey and “Joe Pesci”, at a TGI Fridays in downtown Bloomington. After lunch, they took them to the state building to a woman who had a portable driving licence machine. She issued two licences for David in his new name, and one for Maureen. They then went back to the hotel with the group for an instruction on how to use their military driving licences and standard warnings on not using, for example, their real names on car rental documents and then booking the car with their new licences.

  Over the following weeks, as members of the armed forces, they were learning the language and the tone of the military and creating a background story.

  *****

  Bud Rupert ran at Chris Fogarty’s car with a gun in his hand.

  He had another six guns inside.

  “I’m going to blow your head off,” he said.

  Fogarty, would-be jeans supplier to Irish republicanism, stopped the car.

  What was said between them is disputed. Fogarty denies threatening that the Real IRA would come after David Rupert. He said he was simply taking photographs of Bud’s house and the houses of Rupert’s two sisters as part of an information collection exercise to discredit Rupert’s upcoming evidence against McKevitt.

  Chris Fogarty: “We took photographs of his house. It was a tar-roofed shack with firewood stacked outside. We were having a last look. We never got out of the car. We were driving by and he jumped out and stopped us with a gun in his hand and said he’d blow my head off.”

  He said he’d blow your head off if you didn’t leave?

  Chris: “No, he just said he’d blow my head off.”

  Fogarty and his wife, Mary, had flown to Burlington, Vermont, then driven to Madrid and Massena, looking for information about Rupert that would help McKevitt’s case.

  Chris: “We went to the local cop, the garage and the police station.”

  Mary: “We went to Charlie’s Tavern, that place Rupert had. Every business he had there, he ran into the ground.”

  They drove to all the local towns: Wallington, Madrid, Roosevelt, Massena, wherever Rupert had lived or worked, looking for negative information – divorces, bankruptcies, the unpaid loans to his two fathers-in-law, broken hearts, closed restaurants, brother’s drug bust, they got it all.

  Mary: “We spoke to the post-mistress there. We got information from a lot of people. We went to an Indian reservation where he was meant to have been sending cigarettes across the border, tax free. At a hotel, one man said to us, ‘We heard the IRA is after him and I hope they get him.’”

  Chris laughs and asks his wife, “Who said that?”

  Mary: “A man who worked at a hotel. I forget his name.”

  Chris: “Was it a hotel where we stayed?”

  Mary: “No dear, another hotel. That’s what he told us, anyway. I have it in my notes some place.”

  I wonder what they think of the Rupert family’s contention that driving up and down past their home slowly, as known dissident republicans, was deliberately intimidating.

  Chris: “We took photographs at a distance. We didn’t take photographs up close to the house, we took them at a distance, specifically not to be obtrusive.”

  They also called to the school, asking if anyone had information about Dale Rupert’s drug bust and if it was related to David Rupert.

  As a pair of amateur sleuths, they did astoundingly well, even applying for Rupert’s bankruptcy documents from the federal government. Then they drove to Indiana, to the Ruperts’ vacated new home, calling around to every business in the area, and calling on Rupert family members.

  The pair flew to Dundalk and met Bernadette Sands McKevitt and McKevitt’s lawyer and passed on everything they had. It was the beginning of a long process of disclosure of Rupert’s past life.

  *****

  Dorie was working as an attorney at a civil law firm outside Chicago.

  One day that week, the receptionist paged through a work call.

  “Hello, Dorie?”

  The man, who had an Irish accent, said he was a journalist from the Guardian newspaper and that he wanted to know when David would testify.

  Dorie said she didn’t know.

  “Where is he now?” he man asked.

  Dorie said she didn’t know and had to work.

  The man’s tone suddenly changed. “If he testifies, we will kill you and your family,” he said. He hung up.

  She looked around the office. Workers were busy with files, in their own world.

  She called the FBI. Two agents were sent immediately.

  She told the partners of the firm and said that the FBI were coming over. They looked alarmed.

  The FBI came, and brought the bomb squad with them.

  They checked around the office, in front of all her workmates, then checked under her car for explosives.

  “I thought it was completely over the top,” said Dorie. “It was more for show – ‘Oh look, we’re going to do something’ – and it was not actually for security. If someone wanted to get me on my way to the supermarket, they could still do it.”

  The FBI insisted on bringing her to work and collecting her in the evening, every day for three months.

  “I was really afraid of getting fired,” said Dorie. “I was trying not to attract attention or look like a danger. Every time someone at work asked me about some guy dropping me off at the office, I would say, ‘Oh my car is in getting serviced.’ I had to invent a lot of car problems for those three months.”

  David’s family in Massena began to see Real IRA everywhere.

  Betty: “One day, we saw a boat come up the river. Nobody came up there that time of year. So we called the FBI. We thought there might be explosives on the boat. Turns out it was just some guy fishing.”

  The following week, Mark called David. He sounded very excited. He had big, big news, he said, but he couldn’t say what it was on the phone.

  “Is it from Ireland?” said David.

  “No,” said Mark. “It’s from western Slovakia.”

  CHAPTER 23

  On 2 July, three Real IRA army council members, Fintan O’Farrell, Declan Rafferty and their leader, Michael McDonald, sat at an Arab restaurant in the Slovakian spa town of Piest’any.

  The Iraqi agents greeted them warmly and invited them to try Arab food.

  McDonald had already promised the Iraqis that they would mount a blaze of attacks on L
ondon and “put a smile on your face” if given the right equipment.

  Rafferty told them that the rocket attack on MI6 would be repeated many times over with Iraqi help, but with far greater destruction.

  Over dinner, McDonald wrote a detailed shopping list on a piece of tissue paper. He wanted hundreds of tons of handguns, explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and detonators.

  He didn’t want the Iraqis to take the note, so it was left on the table. As they were talking, one of the Iraqis picked it up, blew his nose on it and put it in his pocket. His friend kept talking about how much the men would get, and very soon.

  When the three left the restaurant after the meeting, they were immediately arrested and finally learned that their Iraqi friends were in fact MI5 agents.

  The Rupert case had completely changed MI5’s way of dealing with terrorism. Never in the agency’s history had it mounted a foreign sting operation, but now it knew what it wanted – legally accepted evidence. It even brought its lawyers to the towns where the Iraqi meetings were taking place. Capturing a shopping list from the Real IRA members was also learned from the Rupert experience.

  In Chicago, Mark told Rupert that he was crucial to the case against McKevitt and also against what was now known in the UK and Irish media as the Slovak Three. It was Rupert who had told MI5 that the Real IRA wanted Saddam Hussein or some other foreign dictator to come forward and sponsor them. Also, he would be needed to identify McKevitt’s voice in the 19 phone calls he and McDonald had with the Iraqi agents.

  Just to secure Rupert’s cooperation, the FBI would work on getting his ever-rising tax bill down to the level it was in 1994, when he officially became a spy. From $750,000 it would be reduced to about $30,000. In return, Rupert would give evidence in England against the Slovak Three, who had been extradited, and Mickey McKevitt in Dublin.

  It gave him the financial freedom to say goodbye, finally, to the rented house in Florida and move into a home on a large plot of land in the Midwest, free of the cities, where he could ride a tractor and enjoy the easy life. He also wanted somewhere so quiet that if any strangers came into the local town, or just drove around, they would be immediately noticed.

  Maureen was as excited as he was to be buying a house and starting a new life. They contacted the local sheriff in the area, along with the FBI, and told him their story.

  Rupert: “He was a real nice guy, even said he’d check on our place when I had to be away in Ireland. To be honest, when you’re a rural sheriff, having someone like us move in adds a bit of spice.”

  They were to settle the deal with the FBI at a meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. The gardaí would also be there.

  On 9 July 2001, they flew to North Carolina and Maureen booked in at the Hilton Hotel as Mark Lundgren’s sister-in-law, as instructed. They both loved the room and the view over Charlotte. That evening, Mark took them out to dinner. Maureen had too much wine, and she was in an excited mood.

  The next day, David met Martin Callinan and Dermot Jennings. They had come all the way from Ireland to confirm, face-to-face, that he would give evidence in Dublin. Maureen went downstairs with Mark to give them some privacy. For Maureen, time with Mark was always well spent and time to share their mutual fears about David’s stress.

  In the room, David reassured the gardaí that he would give evidence, that his tax affairs were being settled and that he had nothing whatsoever to do with his brother’s cannabis conviction. No matter what McKevitt’s defence threw at him, he could take it.

  Maureen saw them come out of the room.

  Jennings was wearing a huge grin. He was “100 per cent sure” they would get a conviction against McKevitt, he said. He knew that the Irish prime minister, or Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, had been leaning on the Irish justice department to make sure everything would be ready before the world’s media arrived in Ireland for the trial.

  The next few weeks were given to planning – if Rupert was to testify against the Slovak Three and against McKevitt, he would need some suits.

  Rupert: “I said, ‘You’re the FBI, you sort out the suits. I’ve barely ever worn a suit in my life. You can pay for them ‘cos I’ll never wear them again.’”

  Because of his height and size, nothing fitted, so “Joe Pesci” organised for the FBI to sneak Rupert to an upscale tailor in Chicago. He got three new suits fitted, with tailor-made shirts, in different colours. Mark, getting exasperated, sighed. They would pay for it.

  When it was time to testify in the UK against the Slovak Three, Rupert was taken under escort to the US Attorney General’s Gulfstream jet, which was to take him and the FBI team to an undisclosed location in England.

  Rupert loved the plane. So did the agents. They lined up outside it for a photo. Everyone involved in the case was going: Mark Lundgren; Doug Lindsey; the Chicago field office lawyer, Jim Krupowski; Ed Buckley and several other agents who had worked on his case. The mood was light-hearted: they were all excited to have their own private jet. “Bet you wish you had one of these in the trucking business,” said one of the agents. As they were flying across the Atlantic, one of the agents held up a copy of the Irish Voice newspaper. It was a big, double-page spread showing Rupert and Joe O’Neill at an IFC fundraiser in Chicago.

  The pilot looked back at David. “Is this another Sammy Gravano?” he asked. The testimony of mafia member Sammy Gravano against his former boss, John Gotti, was still huge news in the US at the time.

  The remark stung Rupert. He had been hurt when people thought he must be an organised crime figure, rather than an ordinary Joe who had successfully infiltrated one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups. Any suggestion that he was a “snitch”, rather than a professional spy, really hurt him. “I’m no Gravano,” he shouted back.

  It was now five months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. America was infused with a rage against the abstract noun “terrorism”, of which the Real IRA was a part.

  The Real IRA was placed on the US list of foreign terrorist groups, as was Republican Sinn Féin, a legal political party in Ireland, and the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association, based on Rupert’s evidence of their close association with and cover for terrorist groups.

  Rupert was the centre of the FBI’s attention now. Anything to do with fighting terrorism was far above any other priority. That the IRA had longstanding ties with Arab terrorism just made the importance of destroying them all the more urgent.

  Rupert looked out the window. They were flying in military airspace at 50,000ft – it was the highest he had ever been in his life.

  They flew directly into Mildenhall, an RAF base in Suffolk. There was a US military base within the British base, so it was doubly protected. Rupert would stay there throughout the Slovak Three case, his FBI handlers told him, and, when giving evidence against McKevitt in Dublin, he would stay there on the American base at weekends and fly to Dublin during the week.

  He was led in to the barracks, past American fighter pilots.

  The accommodation was basic military, a long way down from his stays in Paris. He could expect to be living here for months, if not a year. He unpacked in his room and called Maureen. “You’re not missing much here,” he said.

  The FBI agents bunked into rooms all the way down the corridor.

  They had their own kitchen and ate together. Everyone was relaxed and in a good mood.

  The FBI insisted on following Rupert everywhere within their compound. It had to be addressed. It was his old fear of FBI “surveillance” – he worried that he was their captive.

  Rupert: “I told them that if I walk around the airbase and you want to follow me and stay in the shadows, that’s ok, but I’m not asking for permission.”

  He soon discovered that there was a big American shopping centre on the base. It had a Wendy’s and a Pizza Hut, a barber, souvenir shop and a store with very generous discounts on American goods. The FBI agents, and Rupert, weren’t allowed into the shopping centre because they didn’t
have military ID.

  Rupert discovered one day that he could go to the store and buy a newspaper just by putting his hands behind his back and looking like a pompous general in civilian clothes. He simply nodded his head at the military police, as if they should know him.

  “I was playing the big guy with the big attitude,” he said.

  “I was coming back every day with a newspaper and American stuff and my guys, who had FBI IDs, couldn’t buy a candy bar. They would say, ‘Where the fuck are you getting that? You can’t buy anything there unless you have military ID.’ I said, ‘Or unless you look like you belong there.’ Nobody ever questioned me after that.”

  MI5 showed up. They hired a consultant on courtroom etiquette to talk to David on how to address the court in the Slovak Three case.

  “It was just how to address the judges as ‘my lords’ instead of ‘your honour’ and stuff like that. He showed me that in the US you are technically supposed to address your answers to the jury, but in the UK, you speak to the judge.”

  The consultant left him a booklet on how the UK courts worked.

  While there, Paul brought him the tapes of “Karl” setting up the arms shipments with the Iraqis. Rupert listened intently. It was definitely McKevitt. Paul looked very relieved.

  Rupert hadn’t heard McKevitt’s voice since their last dinner together with the spouses. “On the tape, Mickey was getting pissy with the Iraqis because they hadn’t sent the million euros that they promised and he wanted it as soon as possible to escalate things.”

  M15 was now very confident they would get a conviction.

  Rupert and the MI5 agents waited around the base for three weeks. Scotland Yard showed up and took Rupert and the FBI agents for day trips, under very tight security. He remembers it felt like a school field trip.

  “On days out, there’d be two car loads of Scotland Yard and some of the FBI guys came too. Once we went to a military museum. Another time, we went over to the east coast of England and I went walking out on the beach by myself. I had Scotland Yard agents armed to the teeth up there on the wall watching me as I walked. I think that was the only time I had to myself off the base.”