He spoke to his brigadier, who was surprised but impressed with the planning that went into the operation. The brigadier agreed that a strike on a helicopter carrying the Irish PM was a spectacular show of strength and agreed that whatever happened it was an acceptable risk to run, even if the pilot was killed. Ken’s military contact told him that the floor of the Wessex was fitted with steel plates and the best way of bringing the helicopter down was through the exhaust ducts or the nose. He knew the pilots would be carrying 9mm weapons and Special Branch would be on board, but he had planned for this with the machine gun. None of them would survive the automatic gunfire.
Ken did a practice run at Wincroft House in the east of the city. He ran up and down the emergency stairwell to make sure he was physically fit and he designed a rope and pulley to haul the heavy machine gun in and out of the building.
A week later, at a meeting of the UDA’s Inner Council, Ken’s brigadier told the assembled members about the operation. He also wanted to borrow the munitions. When the brigadier finished speaking there was silence. The Inner Council was split in two. Tucker Lyttle, Jim Craig and the brigadier for East Belfast made the first contribution, saying the operation should not go ahead. Other brigadiers on the Inner Council agreed it was a good operation and gave it their backing. A week later Ken was told the UDA would sanction the operation but wasn’t in a position to supply weapons. Ken’s brigadier insisted the operation needed at least two more weapons.
At a prearranged time and place Ken met the Mid-Ulster brigadier. In the boot of the car were two First World War weapons, Martini Henry rifles smuggled into Northern Ireland eighty years ago, in the time of the famous Unionist Edward Henry Carson. They needed special bullets. The guns were antiques and should have been in a museum, but the brigadier said it was all he could do. Ken was insulted. He said he was going to stiff the brigadier, who had insulted his intelligence. Ken tried to do swaps, short guns for long, and managed to obtain two weapons for seven guns from the UVF in East Belfast. He had a contact who worked as a caretaker in the two blocks of flats, and he supplied keys to the skylights. Ken and a back-up man would be in position in Ardcarn and the second gunman would take up position in Tullycarnet. They would perform a crossfire operation as the Wessex flew between the blocks, but the operation had to be aborted. Ken couldn’t get the munitions he needed.
At seven on the morning of the operation Ken stood in the rough of the fifteenth hole at Shandon golf course. He wanted to see if the intelligence was correct. It was. Right on cue the Wessex appeared. It flew over the golf course and the downdraught blew his clothing away from his body. He watched it turn into the horseshoe and fly through the two blocks of flats on the exact flight path he was given by his Aldergrove contact.
Ken walked back to the wooded area and cried. He even bashed his head against a tree in anger. The UDA had let him down. He said he was insulted because the energy, time and expense that went into researching and planning the operation had been thrown away. But worse was to come. Later that day Ken watched the main evening news. Top of the schedule was the story of the meeting at Castle Buildings. There was footage of the Wessex approaching the building and landing on the front lawn. Charles Haughey didn’t emerge from the craft, but his Justice Minister, Gerard Collins, did. After the meeting the Irish officials were taken to Eglinton airport in County Londonderry. Ken later learnt the Eglinton route was unusual procedure.
Tucker Lyttle had informed his Special Branch handlers about the operation to assassinate key members of the Irish government. Ken also found out that the security forces were waiting at the Ardcarn and Tullycarnet flats to shoot on sight the active-service unit. Tucker Lyttle couldn’t cope with the size of the operation, or the implications of it, so he told everything to his handlers.
I got to hear some stories because men felt they could trust me. Throughout my trial I had no co-accused and men knew they could speak to me in confidence. There was a ritual in the Maze. Every new prisoner would be introduced to the wing, but they were never quizzed on what they did as a Loyalist volunteer. If a man was doing time he was a political prisoner, and that was good enough for me. I didn’t believe in grilling a man who was caught doing his bit as a Loyalist soldier. But prisoners like to talk, to make an impression on one another, and some made a point of wanting to impress me. Some men talk because they can’t help themselves. Others do it because they feel they have something to prove.
There is an old Maze saying: ‘You are only as good as your last job.’ This means if you killed twenty Republicans and were caught on possession, then you were in for possession and other operations didn’t matter. Prisoners doing time for lesser offences like this were called ‘year men’.
Milltown was the reason many prisoners liked to talk to me. They would start the conversation by asking me to recount the Battle of Milltown. I would say it was in the past and they would inevitably answer, ‘I can do better than Milltown, Stoner.’ I made a point of telling the prisoner that he didn’t have to justify to me why he was in prison. I told him I didn’t want to be his bridge to burn, especially if he was a year man and hadn’t been questioned or charged with the operation. But these men would say they really wanted to tell me. They would offload their experience and leave my cell feeling better about themselves.
Year men came and went on the wings, and so did their stories. I had another UDA man – I’ll call him ‘R’ – tell me about a plot to kill the Chief Constable of the RUC, Sir John Hermon. I balked at R’s story and asked him if he was taking the piss. He said no, that at the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement Hermon was a hate figure, chosen as a target because he had let Protestants down by prostituting himself with the British Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher. Protestants had turned on their police force. Some officers were harassed and even burnt out of their homes. All over the province, graffiti was daubed on walls saying things like: ‘Come Home to a Real Fire – Join the RUC.’ It was the early 1980s. Jack Hermon’s wife at the time was dying of cancer. The Chief Constable was burdened with both professional and personal woes.
I told R I didn’t want to know any more about the plot to kill Hermon but he insisted on recounting the events. He said I would enjoy it. Initially the story sounded like it came straight from a James Bond script and I told R this. But, in truth, even I could see the operation was planned to the finest detail and everything that he said made sense.
He began to gather his intelligence on the Chief Constable and his movements, although because of his wife’s illness Hermon didn’t have much of a life. The couple lived in a special apartment at RUC HQ in Knock, in the east of the city. It was a two-storey building on a gable end and faced out towards the disused Belfast–Comber railway line. There were several private homes opposite the police complex that overlooked the apartment. R initially considered two options: a sniper and a rocket-propelled grenade. He axed both ideas because it couldn’t guarantee the safety of Hermon’s sick wife and her care assistant.
R had a young associate who worked in the RUC kitchens and had access to the food that was prepared for the force. The canteen worker could help him in a plot to poison the Chief Constable. R discovered through this contact that Hermon ate with his wife in their apartment every evening between six and six-thirty. He made a point of sharing a meal with her. The food was brought on a trolley to the apartment and Hermon always chose the day’s special as he liked to eat the same food as his men. R had another contact, who worked in Queen’s University and was willing to supply a colourless, odourless and tasteless toxin. The poison was made by the contact and R did not know what it was, but once it was ingested by the victim, death was swift. R was told to be careful handling it as it was so potent it could cause death if just a tiny drop was absorbed by the skin. He was also told the authorities would have their work cut out for them trying to establish what exactly caused death.
The Divisional Commander of the Mobile Support Unit was to be targeted in the same operation. R ha
d intelligence that he drove a white Vitara 4WD. The spare wheel was housed on the back and had a protective cover with a picture of a rhino on it. The vehicle was distinctive, easy to target. The Divisional Commander was stationed in the barracks at Dundonald. He was to be shot in the head as he arrived for work. I asked R why he was targeting two high-ranking policemen when the RUC were not the enemies of Ulster. He said that at the time he didn’t recognise the RUC as a police force any more. He called them ‘Maggie’s puppets’. The operation was compromised, R believes, by someone on the UDA’s Inner Council. Although R didn’t say his name, I knew there was only one man who fitted the bill and that was Tucker Lyttle. R finished his story by saying the canteen worker was moved to a new job after there was a sudden review of internal security at HQ and the RUC hired a new team of kitchen staff.
Over an eleven-year period, only a handful of these stories came to light. But I did learn that the Irish Prime Minister was to have been the victim of a second murder plot. ‘M’, a volunteer who held rank in the Red Hand Commando, told me the plan was that Charles Haughey would die in exactly the same way as Lord Mountbatten – blown to bits on his boat. He also told me that he went on active service in the Irish Republic.
M had business interests in Dublin, which gave him a legitimate excuse to explore landmarks both commercial and industrial that could be attacked. His business associate had a car and that meant M could travel wherever he liked throughout the island without attracting suspicion. He said he made the most of all opportunities and even took an unsuspecting girlfriend on holiday to County Kerry, where Haughey had a holiday home and a yacht. M said he loved Kerry; it was a beautiful landscape. The couple spent two weeks in a caravan park in Dingle.
It was 1981 and Lord Mountbatten, the uncle of the heir to the British throne, had been dead two years. M had waited two years for retaliation for this crime and knew exactly how to avenge the death of the elderly royal. He was going to wire Haughey’s boat with five pounds of commercial explosive. M described it as a retaliatory strike-in-kind. The plan was to booby-trap the Celtic Mist. He would attach the bomb to the on-board radio using an electrical detonator. Once the radio was switched on, the bomb would explode.
M watched the boat for two weeks. He knew it would be relatively easy to breach its security and plant the bomb once it was berthed in Dingle. All he needed was a window of time. The gelignite for the operation was purchased from a quarry in Scotland and transported, by a sympathetic Ulster freight firm, to the province. Unfortunately, the journey did not agree with the explosives and when the sticks were unwrapped they were covered in beads of liquid. The long transit had caused them to sweat, which meant they were volatile and ready to explode at any time. M disposed of them. He had to go back to the drawing board and look for a new device.
M had seen a massive file on Haughey that detailed everything from his love life to his business affairs and the tapping of journalists’ phones. He described Charlie Haughey as a very ‘bold boy’. There were two other men in the Red Hand back-up unit, but they got themselves arrested just weeks before the operation. The pair did an armed robbery, got arrested and cracked under police pressure. Not only were they done for robbery and possession, but they were also done for membership of the Red Hand Commando and other offences. The two handguns selected for use in the operation were seized by the RUC. The operation was called off. M said it was contaminated.
He told me the Red Hand’s leadership also sent two highly trained and experienced bomb makers to look at commercial and industrial targets in the Irish Republic. One included a plan to blow up the fuel depots in Ringsend. M said the shopping districts in the heart of the city were also on the list. The Jury’s network of hotels was also a target, as were Shannon Airport and Dublin’s Connolly Station. The Red Hand leaders saw much to be gained from striking the Irish Republic. It meant the Irish government would sit up and take notice, like it did with the Monaghan and Dublin bombings in May 1974.
M’s story proves what I have known for a very long time: that Loyalist active-service units regularly made incursions into the Republic. Irish people thought they were safe, so long as they stayed on their side of the border and didn’t stray into Northern Ireland. How wrong they were. They were constantly at risk; in fact they ran a daily risk for years. In truth, that risk has never really gone away. The Irish government also displayed a staggering naivety. They thought that Loyalists wouldn’t dare stray into Irish soil because they had no support network in situ. M’s story proves otherwise.
Throughout my Maze years I got to know many prisoners, and many were, and still are, die-hard Loyalists. One was a lifer from a rival Loyalist paramilitary organisation. We had managed a few grunted acknowledgements to each other over the years but never had a proper conversation, so it was a surprise to me when he actually initiated a conversation one evening in the recreation room. There was an item on the local evening news recalling the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. It was an important anniversary: twenty years had elapsed since the no-warning blasts and the families of the thirty-three civilians killed were calling on their government to hold an inquiry.
The lifer watched the broadcast without saying a word and, when the report was finished, turned to me and said the Irish government would never hold an inquiry into the attack because it would be ‘too embarrassing to both governments if the truth ever got out’. He then said that both Ireland and Britain knew who planted the bomb, and that the British knew it was one of their own – SAS soldier Captain Robert Nairac who set up the entire operation and provided the explosives and timer units for the Loyalist squad. He said the Irish were too ashamed to tell their people the truth – that they have long known the atrocity was planned and executed with the collusion of the intelligence services and Loyalist paramilitaries.
Initially, I thought this man was talking a load of bullshit and was trying to impress me but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. There was a chance he was genuine and wanted to unload something that had been on his mind for many years.
I asked him did he know Nairac and his answer astonished me. He said Nairac was a ‘typical Sandhurst type but a true Brit, a real soldier’, before continuing with the rest of his story. What he revealed was amazing, and I have never forgotten what he said that May evening. I will now recall the story as the lifer told me:
‘I first met Nairac in North Belfast. He was in uniform and, come to think of it, so was I. He was all spit and polish, with a posh accent, but when I met him several months later in a security base in County Armagh, I barely recognised him. He was shabbily dressed and bearded. He was wearing a dirty duffle coat and had the worst Northern Irish accent I have ever heard.
‘I told him his accent was an insult and Nairac just shrugged his shoulders and said to me, “Don’t worry about it, Paddy.” I hated that nickname. I hated that he called me a Paddy. I wasn’t Irish, I was British.
‘We had a few drinks together in the base Naffy and got talking about the Northern Irish situation. We discussed the escalating situation all over the province and the bombing campaign the Provos were carrying out from their safe bases in the Irish Republic. Nairac knew that I had dual membership of a Loyalist paramilitary organisation because he told me he had read an intelligence file on me. He said he liked what he read and had a proposal to put to my paramilitary associates and me. By the end of our drink, we both had an understanding and a new working arrangement was about to be forged. We agreed we had a common enemy and agreed that we had to fight PIRA.
‘Nairac loved to sing Irish ballads including “Danny Boy” and the rest of those awful songs, and I had to keep explaining to him that Republicans, not Loyalists, sang those tunes. I told him Loyalists would take great exception to having anything to do with Provo songs. Again he laughed and said, “You Irish are a rare breed.”’
I was fascinated by this man’s story. I asked him did he know anything about Nairac and did he think he was being set up by the intelligence services.
The lifer said no and continued his tale:
‘I met Nairac several weeks after our drink and he outlined an operation he called “a headline grabber”. He said it would be so big it would frighten the Dublin administration into tightening border security, which had been non-existent for years. He said the operation would force Dublin into clamping down on southern-based Provos who carried out their indiscriminate attacks and fled to the safety of the Republic.
‘The headline grabber that Nairac spoke off was the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 1974. Nairac organised the entire operation from start to finish. The Dublin government know the Brits have covered it up.’
I asked him was he joking because, if what he said was true, this attack was an act of war on another country. I thought he was taking the piss but, as he continued, I had to concede he knew too much detail and the man was a player with a number of high-profile assassinations under his belt. He continued his story.
‘North Belfast provided the men and transport – four cars bought at four separate auctions and garaged for eight weeks leading up to the operation. They were then checked and rechecked to make sure they were fit for the journey. Nairac supplied the explosives and it was A-grade stuff, none of this home-made crap. It was the best gelignite with quality timer units to detonate the devices. Dressed as civilians, we crossed the border and reconnoitered the towns to be targeted. All journeys were timed, from north to south and then south to north. Dublin city centre was the first target. Monaghan town was the second choice. The blasts would go off ninety minutes apart.
‘Nairac insisted on priming the bombs on the northern side of the border prior to delivery in southern Ireland and that is why he took the journey timings – to get the time of detonation down to the exact second.
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