The Accidental Spy

by Sean O'Driscoll

  Another week, they visited Windsor Castle and Blenheim Palace.

  “At Windsor, there was a long queue to get in. So the Scotland Yard guys just got out of the car and took us to the exit. They showed their ID and we went in that way, past everyone else. Blenheim I remember very well, it has the bedroom where Churchill was born and we toured around the rooms. That was pretty neat. I was getting to know the Scotland Yard guys too, they were enjoying the days out as much as the FBI.”

  After three weeks of waiting around at the base, news came through that the Queen Mother had died. Britain was in mourning and there was a delay in the case. MI5 said it could take some time and that the barrister for the defendants was in talks with his clients about what to do. The FBI decided it would fly Rupert back to America and wait.

  They flew back again on the Attorney General’s plane. It was a boys’ club outing that had come to an end. Back home in their new farm house, Maureen greeted him with a big hug.

  When Rupert was out on his tractor one day, Lundgren called him. The Slovak Three were going to plead guilty, highly unusual in an IRA case. Rupert would not have to go back to the UK.

  The three men expected to get six or seven years for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. At their sentence hearing, the judge lambasted them for being “at the centre, or close to the centre” of the organisation that caused the Omagh bomb, and they were conspiring with an enemy of the UK, the Iraqi government, to cause more Omaghs and more destruction to ordinary families. He jailed them for 30 years each, a record in the UK for a guilty plea on a charge of terrorist conspiracy.

  The three left the courtroom stunned.

  Over time, they became angry with McKevitt. He had promised them it would only be a light sentence if they were caught. Their lives were ruined. They were transferred to Ireland to serve their sentence. According to a security source, O’Farrell in particular was angry at McKevitt for trusting Rupert, and for assuring them that they would not get heavy sentences if caught.

  MI5 was elated. It was a highly risky, even outrageous, mission. The agency was changing. It was showing that it could come out of the Cold War still relevant. It could get convictions.

  Now the media’s attention turned towards Dublin. Mickey McKevitt, Real IRA leader, would never plead guilty. It was time for him to sit in court and see his old friend, face to face.

  CHAPTER 24

  The royal jet dropped down into the US airbase in Suffolk.

  Rupert was back at the US military base, awaiting transport to Dublin.

  The plane normally used to ferry the Queen and her family on royal appointments was now David Rupert’s private jet.

  One of the agents took a photograph of the royal air hostess as she offered chocolates to Rupert, while he held a drink in his other hand. The royal crest is visible on the headrest behind him.

  Within an hour, they were in Baldonnel military airport outside Dublin and were taken by an army and garda escort to a townhouse on the north side of the city.

  The original plan, made weeks earlier, was to fly him by garda helicopter, but he refused to sit in one.

  “I’ve seen those garda helicopters, those old Alouettes. I’m not interested in that,” said Rupert.

  The entourage gradually broke away. He got out of the car and switched to another. The houses either side of the safehouse were reserved for garda protection and there were plain-clothes gardaí walking up and down the cul de sac, which was not viewable from the road or any nearby housing estates.

  Why give him accommodation in Dublin? Wasn’t that a risk?

  Diarmuid O’Sullivan: “People expected him to be locked in a castle an hour from the city. I can’t get into it, even now, because the devil is in the detail in these things, but you wanted to keep certain people guessing.”

  The gardaí were excited and tense. Rupert wasn’t allowed to leave the house, or go near the windows, but they would get anything he wanted from the shop. The kitchen already had orange juice, coffee, tea and bread. They decided to order in pizza. The gardaí didn’t want anyone coming near the house so they went out to collect it. Martin Callinan called over to wish Rupert well and to ask if there was anything else he needed.

  At the courthouse in the city centre, at the request of the prosecution barristers, gardaí measured the witness box. It had been used for 200 years and was very small. They were concerned that Rupert’s large frame wouldn’t fit in it.

  Liz Walsh, a journalist who covered all the trial, remembers a garda telling her: “We’ll get Rupert into the witness box, getting him out’s going to be the fucking problem.”

  Journalists were gathering from all over the UK, the US and Ireland. This, the leader of the Real IRA up against a 6ft 7 New York trucker, was a sensational story and one of the most discussed criminal cases in Irish legal history. Would it hold up? The fact that Rupert was being paid – how could his evidence be admissible? Would MI5 give evidence for the first time in Irish history?

  Back at the townhouse in Dublin, Rupert called home to Maureen to tell her he was OK and that the security was very tight.

  The gardaí and the FBI had explained to Maureen that she should stay in the US and she agreed.

  Diarmuid O’Sullivan: “Nobody knew how long the trial would last and what direction it would go. She probably would have been a help to David Rupert but it was decided between the FBI and gardaí that it would require extra security. There were an awful lot of unknowns at the time and she was going to be sitting in a hotel room, she’s not going to be in the court. What’s that going to do to someone, sitting in a hotel room waiting to see her husband every day?”

  The trial opened on a warm day in late June.

  TV crews had to set up their cameras further down the street. The back entrance to the Green Street courtroom was completely shut off. Army snipers sat on the roof of the court building.

  At the townhouse, Rupert got up, got ready and put on his suit.

  The FBI agents hurried around him and the gardaí got him quickly into a bomb-proof car. There were garda cars and motorbikes waiting for them further down the road, so that they wouldn’t draw attention to the house. Soon there was a large entourage heading into the city centre. Gardaí motorbike riders went ahead, blocking rush-hour traffic at junctions so that the entourage were the only cars on the road. Hundreds of cars were blocked in. People came out onto the street to have a look.

  Rupert snapped a photo from the back of the car at the street ahead of him.

  To his left and right he heard the police sirens and radio signals. In the car around him were armed gardaí carrying Uzi machine guns.

  “I could see all the people out on the street looking at all of us go by, and then this helicopter flying over the courthouse, waiting for us.”

  The barricades opened up at the back of the courthouse and they drove into a yard at the back of the court. The army snipers watched carefully as Rupert was led into the courthouse.

  As they waited, he posed for a photo at the entrance to the court cells. Further down that corridor, McKevitt was pacing up and down. The photo was like a hunter and his catch.

  Then Rupert and the gardaí sat in the courthouse kitchen, made tea, and waited.

  Everyone who entered the Special Criminal Court went through a metal detector and had to sign their name. By 9.30am, there was already an overflow of people. Journalists complained that they were being placed in the public gallery, in a 200-year-old courtroom with bad acoustics.

  Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, the Continuity IRA and Republican Sinn Féin leader, arrived, eager to hear what would be said about his group, and what McKevitt had said about him. Bernadette Sands McKevitt arrived with her supporters, reiterating to pet reporters that her husband was being framed by the British.

  Ordinary members of the public squeezed past the media, curious to see the American spy and the spectacle that would follow. By 10.30, the survivors of the Omagh bomb had arrived, on a rented bus. Like Sands McKevitt and
Ó Brádaigh, they too would come every day of the trial. With them in the public gallery were Real IRA members, MI5 agents and the FBI.

  Never in the history of the court, which had heard hundreds of terrorism cases, had victim and perpetrator, British and Irish, nationalist and royalist come into such close proximity.

  Several of the Omagh victims spotted Bernadette Sands McKevitt when they came in. They had lost babies, grandparents, children, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters and the woman primarily responsible for glibly justifying their deaths was right beside them. The commotion started almost immediately.

  “You fucking murderer,” said one woman. “I hope you’re proud of yourself, you fucking murdering bitch,” said another.

  One of Bernadette’s supporters told her to ignore them and told them to sit down.

  Until now, Bernadette had lived in a bubble, surrounded by Real IRA supporters in Dundalk and South Armagh. For the first time, she was being confronted with the truth of what her group represented, what they had done. She stared ahead and said nothing.

  Michael Gallagher, leader of the then-titled Omagh Victims Group, lost his 21-year-old son, Aiden, in the bombing. He remembers the confrontations. “It had nothing to do with me. Some of the female members of our group confronted her. I didn’t want anything to do with her, but yes, there was some disturbance – how couldn’t there be?”

  McKevitt was led by prison officers from his cell and up into the courtroom. It was an old-fashioned courtroom, with a dock for the accused that had to be climbed into, with a little door that shut behind it. McKevitt refused to get in. As a republican, he would not be treated as a criminal. He would sit beside the box, but not in it.

  It was the first time that the general public saw McKevitt, except for photos of him with a cap low over his face and his collar cut up over his chin. He was wearing a suit and gold-rimmed glasses and was now balding. He took out a notebook and pen. Every word would be studiously noted and dissected. “He wrote angrily,” one journalist noted at the time.

  Barrister George Birmingham was leading the case against McKevitt.

  Birmingham, a quick-witted and affable veteran of the criminal courts, had a habit of putting his foot up on the seat in front of him and resting his arm on it. He spoke softly and methodically. There was no jury to impress, only the three judges.

  “I now call David Rupert,” he said.

  Rupert was brought out from downstairs and walked up into the witness stand, which was as awkward to get into as the dock. He squeezed in. The wigs and the gowns of the barrister, the old wooden, creaking furniture – it added an air of gravitas, of history, not seen in American courtrooms.

  This was where some of the biggest names in Irish rebel history had been tried – Robert Emmet, Wolfe Tone. Some of the senior garda in the country wanted to move out of the building – too much history, too much historical legacy to which the Real IRA should not be laying claim.

  The gardaí had instructed Rupert on courtroom behaviour in Ireland. No matter who was asking the questions, he must only answer to the three judges and say, “Yes, your honour,” and, “No, your honour.”

  Rupert: “From the beginning, I was determined not to look around the courtroom, because I knew Mickey was there and I knew he’d be staring at me. And I knew there would be a lot of people and I’d get real nervous because I’m not good at public speaking. I tried not to look, but at the corner of my eye, I was taking it all in.”

  Birmingham looked around the courtroom. “And, for the court, could you identify Michael McKevitt?” Rupert was forced to look through the mass of people. His eyes met with McKevitt’s cold stare. McKevitt’s barrister had told him not to react to this moment, so he just looked. Rupert pointed. “That’s him there, in the body of the courtroom, between the two garda.”

  “For the record, Mr Rupert is pointing at the accused, Mr McKevitt.”

  Rupert lingered a second longer and looked away.

  “And, Mr Rupert,” can you outline to the court where you are from?”

  He began to detail his life story, the trucking years and how he met Linda Vaughan in the Harp and Thistle and how she introduced him to the Murrays in Sligo and Joe O’Neill in Bundoran. The media, and McKevitt, wrote non-stop as he described Ed Buckley walking into the truck plaza in Chicago.

  At 1pm, the court broke for lunch. TV and radio journalists hurried from the courtroom to do outside broadcasts. The BBC, Ulster Television, RTE, Channel 4. It was the first time that the public came to hear about David Rupert’s life story and his unlikely meeting with Linda Vaughan. The tale wasn’t just a court case formula, it was the FBI and MI5 and intrigue and deception. It made for a great news story. Rupert’s giant frame and 300 pounds added to the fascination.

  Over lunch, Rupert ate in the dingy kitchen with the FBI agents and his heavily armed garda minders, oblivious to the news outside.

  One of the married FBI agents had already spotted a beautiful, petite MI5 agent in court. He had met her at one of the trial planning meetings in London and he was besotted by her upper-class accent and big, bright eyes. He wanted to find some way to talk to her during the trial. The fact that she was a spy added to the intrigue.

  “Jesus,” said Rupert. “Anything else going on in here?”

  In the afternoon, Hugh Hartnett, the senior defence counsel, was arguing about how Rupert’s huge volume of emails to the FBI and MI5 should be introduced to the court. He also wanted MI5 agents to give evidence and be cross-examined. The prosecution objected. The gardaí had taken statements from Paul and the other MI5 agents and the British ambassador to Ireland would give evidence that they were genuinely MI5 agents. It was the first time in Irish legal history that the British ambassador would take the stand in a criminal case.

  Hartnett, tall and bearded and sharp, was known as a furious battler in court and one of the best legal minds working the Special Criminal Court.

  Rupert watched him intensely as he spoke.

  “I could see this guy was going to be tough. He was good at his job. I just tried not to be nervous,” Rupert said.

  Hartnett had discovered that Rupert had planned to write a book with Abdon Pallasch, a journalist with the Chicago Sun-Times who had a keen interest in Irish affairs. He was seeking disclosure of all of Pallasch’s interview notes and tapes, to see if Rupert’s version of events were different on tape to his official statement in court or to the gardaí.

  It had opened a separate legal battle in Chicago, with Pallasch and the Sun-Times arguing their First Amendment right to free speech, free from government interference. They lost and were forced to hand over the tapes and notes.

  Hartnett told the court he would be introducing the interview notes to test contradictions in Rupert’s evidence.

  When court broke at 4pm, Rupert was exhausted from all the legal argument. The convoy drove out again at speed, breaking into smaller and smaller groups until one unmarked, bullet-proof car reached the safehouse.

  Rupert watched the 6 O’Clock News with the FBI agents and the gardaí. They were the first item on the news. “There you are!” said Mark of the entourage of cars and motorbikes driving towards court.

  Early the next morning, one of the gardaí brought the newspapers over to the house.

  The Irish Times headline ran, “All Eyes On the Spy from the FBI”, about how the courtroom was transfixed by David Rupert’s tale of spying.

  Again, the roads were blocked off all the way to court. He looked out of the window to the hundreds of people watching the entourage drive by. When they got to the court, there were barriers blocking the back entrance. A junior garda was at the gate. He refused to move the barrier because he had been told not to let anyone through. One of the Emergency Response Unit gardaí shouted at him to “move that fucking gate now”. He refused. In front of the media, the car sped forward, smashing the barrier out of the way. “We all thought it was hilarious,” said Rupert. “This garda telling us, ‘But I’ve been told that
nobody gets in.’ A little too eager in his job.”

  After three days of the entourage going back and forth to the court, with ever-increasing crowds packed into the public gallery, David Rupert had finished giving direct evidence.

  Now the cross-examination would begin. It was already shaping up to be the longest cross-examination in Irish legal history. There was a lot for Hartnett to discuss – seven years of spying, four wives, two bankruptcies. Volumes of statements – Rupert’s 40-page written statement to the gardaí versus his direct evidence to George Birmingham, all measured against everything dug up by private detectives and what he said to the book’s author.

  Rupert is adamant that he supplied most of the material for cross-examination himself. “The media think that the defence dug up all this negative stuff about me. They didn’t. I had to write a disclosure statement and I had to include every bad thing I’d done – anything that would damage my reputation, any illegal act, anything that would make me look bad. I included everything about my marriages, about the bankruptcies, nothing was left out. I wanted to make sure that there were no surprises.”

  For the cross-examination, there were more reporters than usual. Everyone wanted to hear what dirt the defence had on Rupert.

  Hartnett knew this was the biggest moment of his career.

  “Mr Rupert,” he began. He had a habit of looking sideways, as if addressing some incredulous, invisible jury.

  A stack of documents lay on the table in front of Hartnett – Rupert’s garda statement, his company records, hours of transcripts of his interviews with Abdon Pallasch, Rupert’s disclosure statement.

  Hartnett’s greatest asset, which he was determined to keep, was that nobody had any photographic evidence that Rupert and McKevitt had ever met.