by Peter Taylor
Grew, from a staunchly republican family, had decided to take up arms – like hundreds of other young men – in the wake of ‘Bloody Sunday’. ‘For him, it was the deciding day,’ said his brother, Aidan, who has himself spent seventeen years in gaol. ‘I remember he was very frustrated at being able to do nothing about it, the fact that people could come over from another country and shoot our people and just leave without being prosecuted.’ The Grews were already a target. In 1976, loyalist paramilitaries bombed the family home, almost killing the six children.
In November 1982 Seamus Grew was arrested and questioned by the RUC about the killing of two police reservists, Constable Ronnie Irwin (24) and Constable Snowden Corkey (40), as they stood at the security gates in Markethill. They were cut down with 45 rounds from automatic weapons. Grew was released without charge. ‘If the RUC couldn’t put him through the courts, then the obvious answer was to shoot him dead,’ said his brother Aidan bitterly.
Putting Seamus Grew under surveillance had not been easy. ‘He was a switched-on kid,’ one of the operators who tracked him said. ‘We had an O.P. in a hedgerow about forty yards from his house and it was very hairy. We stuck with him for months and followed him for three or four days every week. Whenever he stopped at a roadblock, he was very polite and passive and never batted an eyelid.’ But Special Branch also had a wellplaced informer who could lead them to McGlinchey via Grew. His name was George Poyntz (57) and he was connected with a bar in Castleblaney in County Monaghan, three miles from the border. Poyntz was a former chairman of Castleblaney Sinn Fein and had good contacts with the INLA.7 When Special Branch received intelligence that there was a plan for Seamus Grew to cross the border on 12 December 1982, less than a week after the Droppin Well bomb, and pick up McGlinchey from the bar associated with Poyntz for a ‘shoot’ in the North, TCG South based at Gough Barracks, Armagh, arranged for the ‘Det’ to intensify its ‘tail’ on Grew. Contrary to general belief, E4A was not involved in the ‘eyes on’ surveillance operation because it was thought that it was not yet sufficiently experienced to operate in hostile border areas.
As Grew and one of his associates, Roddie Carroll, crossed the border with Grew at the wheel of his Austin Allegro, the ‘Det’ notified TCG via the ‘Det’ ‘ops’ officer that the operation had begun as the intelligence had indicated. ‘Det’ operators in several unmarked cars then followed Grew and Carroll across the border and into the Republic using a complex pattern of surveillance manoeuvres to avoid arousing suspicion. Grew made the rendezvous with McGlinchey at the bar as arranged but when McGlinchey realized that Grew was using his own car, he ‘went ape’ at what he saw as Grew’s carelessness and ordered him to go back across the border and return with a vehicle that was not known to the security forces. Grew and Carroll set off to get another car from the North. The ‘Det’ immediately radioed their base and told the ‘ops’ officer to notify TCG South that, although the Allegro was on its way back across the border, McGlinchey was not on board, the understanding being that the ‘Det’ would wait and then carry on with the operation, tracking the ‘new’ car once McGlinchey was inside.
For whatever reason, TCG either did not receive the message or did not interpret it correctly or decided to ignore it. What the police said then happened and what actually did happen are two entirely different things and bear little relation to each other except for the fact that Grew and Carroll both ended up dead. The following is the true account. By now it was a cold, icy December night and the road surfaces were slippery. In its efforts to stay with the ‘follow’ (the Allegro), one of the ‘Det’ cars skidded and crashed on the Keady Road just outside Armagh. The pursuers knew they had to keep the Allegro in their sights in order to track the ‘new’ car that would pick up McGlinchey. The operators could not hang around in Castleblaney watching their main quarry – who might well move on from the bar – since officially they were not allowed to carry out surveillance in the South. They were not even supposed to be there since such an incursion into a sovereign state was politically highly sensitive. The other ‘Det’ operators did not lose Grew and Carroll and followed them until they turned into Mullacreevie Park in Armagh, the republican estate where Grew lived. There, to their surprise (given their assumption that TCG South had been notified that McGlinchey was not on board), they saw an HMSU roadblock. The fact that it was there at the entrance to a republican estate was not unusual and they assumed that Grew would politely talk his way through it as he had done so many times before. Instead they watched in horror as a Special Branch officer, Constable John Robinson, approached the Allegro and started shooting when Grew opened the door. The ‘Det’ operators were ‘raging’, knowing that the real target, Dominic McGlinchey, was not in the car and that they had lost the opportunity to confront him when he crossed the border. Months of work had been wasted and the operators knew that McGlinchey would kill again. They actually felt for Constable Robinson whom they believed might have been given ‘duff information by TCG South about McGlinchey being on board.
The story the police told at the instigation of senior Special Branch officers at TCG South was largely fabrication, conveniently built around the ‘Det’ car crash on the icy road. The following is the complex lie they wove. It was a mixture of tragedy and farce. They said that the plan had been to establish a vehicle check point (VCP) on the Keady Road to intercept the Allegro as it came across the border. There had been a crash involving an army surveillance car and Constable Robinson, who was involved in setting up the VCP, also skidded and ran into them. In the confusion, Grew and Carroll drove by, followed by an E4A car driven by a Special Branch Inspector from Armagh who was already tailing the Allegro. The Inspector stopped, picked up Robinson and one of his colleagues and set off in pursuit. Robinson, having been given no information to the contrary, assumed that McGlinchey was on board and had every reason to believe, as the HMSU’s briefing had indicated, that he would be armed and likely to resist arrest.8 (This was almost certainly true.) Just as Grew and Carroll were about to enter Mullacreevie Park, Constable Robinson (as he said in court) drew level, made a sign for the Allegro to stop and watched as the Inspector forced it into the verge. According to Robinson’s account, the car started revving and the front passenger door was flung open. As the Allegro broke free from the kerb, the door slammed shut again. ‘As the door shut, there was a loud bang,’ Robinson said. ‘I believed I had been shot at. I immediately opened fire … because I believed my life was in danger.’9 Robinson shot Grew and Carroll dead with several rounds from his Smith and Wesson pistol. Neither was armed.
This cover story was invented by Special Branch the following day to protect the sensitivity of the operation and the crucial source for it, George Poyntz. It was designed for the consumption of the CID who would as a matter of routine be investigating the shooting and taking statements from the officers involved. The public explanation was straightforward. It simply said that Grew and Carroll had driven into a routine police check point and the shooting was the result of a purely chance encounter. It was nothing of the kind. Constable Robinson and his HMSU colleagues were informed by their Special Branch superiors at TCG South that they were covered by the Official Secrets Act and therefore the cover story was legitimate to protect vital intelligence systems. It was only when Robinson was charged with the murder of Seamus Grew that some, but not all, of the true story came out. The involvement of the ‘Det’ and the fury of its operators was never revealed. In court, Robinson admitted the fabrication and said that he had been instructed to tell the cover story by his senior officers. The judge, Mr Justice McDermott, acquitted him with the observation that policemen ‘are not required to be “supermen” and one does not use jewellers’ scales to measure what is reasonable in the circumstances’.10 It was during the trial that the court learned from the cross-examination of the RUC’s Deputy Chief Constable, Michael McAtamney, that HMSU officers were trained to ‘neutralize a dangerous target’ with ‘firepower, speed and aggression
’.11 George Poyntz was a lucky man too and was swiftly spirited away by his Special Branch handlers to be given a new identity and new life elsewhere. He never returned to the bar in Castleblaney. Dominic McGlinchey was finally shot dead on 10 February 1994 as a result of the many, bloody internal feuds that eventually tore the INLA apart.
The other two incidents that John Stalker investigated involved an agent of a much higher order, located within the ranks of the IRA itself. Although it was not widely known at the time, both incidents were linked, which is one of the reasons why they were so sensitive. I understand the agent had originally been recruited by the army, taken over by Special Branch and then put on MI5’s payroll. I will refer to him as the Mole.
The Mole was a superlative source of information. By the late summer of 1982, he had already proved his worth by identifying the IRA’s explosives supply route from Dundalk. On 20 August, officers from the HMSU swooped and, in the guise of a routine checkpoint, stopped a hay lorry on the main Banbridge–Gilford road, having let the IRA ‘scout’ car drive on ahead. When the hay bales were removed as part of the ‘routine’ search, the police officers found sixty plastic sacks of home-made explosives (HME) – ‘blowie’ – manufactured from chemical fertilizer. They also found detonators and fuse wire. The RUC announced that it was ‘one of the biggest, if not the biggest, explosives finds during thirteen years of violence’.12 The Mole would have been given a bonus for his efforts.
A few weeks later, around the end of September, he gave his handlers another tip-off about another huge consignment of ‘blowie’ coming from the South, along with information about the place where it was going to be stored – a hayshed located just off Ballynerry Road North outside Lurgan. This time TCG South chose to let the explosives ‘run’ in the hope of catching a unit from the IRA’s North Armagh Brigade red-handed. E4A kept the consignment under surveillance until it reached the hayshed. At this stage, E4A wanted to mount a Static Observation Post (SOP) close by so they would have what they regarded as the best form of surveillance of all, the human eye – ‘Mk 1 Eyeball’. However, it was decided that this was too dangerous given the hayshed’s proximity to the road and the cottage where its owner lived. There were also concerns about the SOP being sniffed out by republican-minded dogs, which had happened before. (It appears that the ‘Det’ was never consulted about ‘eyes-on’ surveillance because Special Branch wanted to run the operation itself. ‘Det’ operators later said they could have carried it out with no great problem as they had done so in far more difficult situations.) TCG South therefore decided that the hayshed should be placed under ‘technical’ surveillance, in other words MI5 should install a listening device inside the hayshed itself. This, it was thought, would be a fool-proof way of monitoring the explosives without any risk to undercover personnel.
One night in October, an MI5 technical officer and a specialist technician from another branch of the ‘Det’ based at HQNI Belfast entered the breeze-block and corrugated-iron hayshed where the 1,000 pounds of ‘blowie’ was now concealed in sacks under the hay bales. The Security Service officer carefully planted a listening device – expertly crafted to fit in with its surroundings – in one of the rafters of the roof and started reciting ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’ to check that the signal was being received at the listening post some distance away. As back-up, the ‘Det’ expert from Headquarters set up his own ‘technical trigger’, designed to send a signal when the IRA removed the hay bales to get to the explosives. The listening post, located in a Portakabin some distance away, was manned by an RUC officer and regular soldiers from the army’s 2 SCT unit, the Special Collation Team that worked closely with MI5’s technical operations. The team recorded on tape any sounds or voices that were emitted from MI5’s device. By this time, there were similar operations in place all over the province, primarily designed to gather intelligence. The tapes would then be transcribed by a group of women police officers (known to the more macho ‘Det’ operators as the ‘Hen Shed’) and then routinely destroyed once the intelligence had been gleaned. The hayshed and the explosives remained under technical surveillance for several weeks.
TCG South believed that the ‘blowie’ was to be used to pull off an IRA ‘spectacular’ and was anxious to ensure that no unnecessary risk was taken by RUC and army personnel. Therefore when the van that had taken the explosives to the hayshed was spotted in the vicinity of the neighbouring Kinnego embankment, the area was placed out of bounds. Normal policing went on as far as possible so as not to arouse suspicion, since the IRA would become wary at any change in regular policing patterns.
On 27 October 1982, the RUC received a telephone call from a farmer about the theft of a battery from a farmer’s tractor in the vicinity of Kinnego. The call was orchestrated by the IRA and the ‘theft’ was pure fabrication. A check was made to see if police could investigate and Special Branch enquired if MI5’s ‘bug’ had registered any movement in the hayshed. When Special Branch had been assured that all was well and the explosives were undisturbed, the uniformed police were authorized to investigate the report of the theft. Three RUC officers, Sergeant Sean Quinn (37) and Constables Alan McCloy (34) and Paul Hamilton (26), then got into their armoured Cortina and headed for the Kinnego embankment. At 2.19 p.m. their vehicle was blown seventy feet in the air by a 1,000-lb bomb, leaving a giant crater forty feet wide and fifteen feet deep. The RUC officers died instantly.
Unknown to Special Branch, MI5 and TCG South, all the explosives had been removed from the hayshed. MI5’s listening device was not working properly and had failed to register any movement or voices. There had, however, been a signal from the ‘Det’ technician’s trigger on the hay bales but it had been dismissed by the 2 SCT monitors as something like a dog chasing a chicken as there had been no corroboration by MI5’s ‘bug’. Had there been ‘Mk 1 Eyeball’ surveillance on the hayshed by E4A or the ‘Det’, the three policemen would not have died. Removing 1,000 lbs of explosives was not something that the IRA could have done in five minutes. That night, the handlers of the Mole are thought to have met the agent and demanded to know who was responsible. The Mole named two people, Sean Burns (21) and Eugene Toman (21), both IRA men ‘on the run’. They were immediately placed under E4A surveillance. At one stage, an E4A officer actually got so close to them and their IRA accomplice, Gervaise McKerr (31), that he lit one of their cigarettes. The ‘Det’ regarded this as unnecessary bravado.
A fortnight later, the Mole told his handlers that the men he had named were planning to kill an off-duty member of the security forces. On the evening of 11 November, Toman, Burns and McKerr drove off in a Ford Escort for what TCG South believed to be the murder bid. In the now-familiar pattern, the HMSU had been instructed to set up a ‘routine’ vehicle checkpoint to intercept the IRA car. With McKerr at the wheel, the Escort drove through the VCP and a high-speed car chase ensued, with the HMSU officers firing at the car in front. The Escort crashed, more shots were fired by the Special Branch officers and Toman, Burns and McKerr were killed. None of them was armed (though the HMSU officers maintained they opened fire first). The police had fired 109 bullets. Immediately there were allegations of ‘shoot to kill’ as a cover story was devised, once more featuring a ‘routine’ VCP. The three HMSU officers who did the shooting were subsequently prosecuted for murder and acquitted. In his judgment on 5 June 1984, Lord Justice Gibson heightened the controversy by saying the officers were ‘absolutely blameless’ and commended them for bringing three IRA men ‘to the final court of justice’.13 To republicans and nationalists alike, the verdict and the judge’s unfortunately chosen words indicated that there was a ‘shoot to kill’ policy underwritten by the highest levels of the judiciary. Three years later, on 25 April 1987, the IRA took its revenge by killing Lord Justice Gibson (74) and his wife, Cecily (67), in a carefully planned landmine attack as the couple were crossing the border on their way home from holiday.
But the hayshed story was far from over
. When the covert units carried out their search in the wake of the Kinnego explosion, they found that three old German Mauser rifles, without ammunition, had been left behind. It was assumed, therefore, that the IRA would return at some stage to collect them. MI5 installed a second device and the ‘Det’ technical expert re-set his trigger, this time under the weapons. The 2 SCT unit then waited with tape recorders at the ready and the HMSU on standby. On 24 November 1982, a fortnight after Toman, Burns and McKerr had been brought ‘to the final court of justice’, there were sounds of movement in the hayshed. This time, MI5’s bug was working. The HMSU moved in and shot dead seventeen-year-old Michael Tighe, who had no IRA connections, and seriously wounded his friend, nineteen-year-old Martin McCauley. Again, senior Special Branch officers at TCG South invented a cover story, with HMSU officers saying they were conducting a ‘routine’ anti-terrorist patrol when they noticed a gunman moving to the hayshed from the nearby cottage.14 McCauley was charged with possession of the weapons and found guilty and given a two-year sentence suspended for three years. The members of the HMSU were never charged. At his trial, McCauley said that he had been asked to keep an eye on the cottage whilst the owner was away and he had entered the hayshed with Michael Tighe out of curiosity when he saw ‘a metal object rising from the top of the hay’. He then said they went inside and found the three rifles. He claimed that the police opened fire without warning and then discussed finishing him off on the ground. The HMSU told a different story. They said that when they heard the sound of a rifle being cocked and ‘muffled voices’, they shouted, ‘Police. Throw out your weapons.’ They said they then repeated the warning and were confronted by two men pointing rifles whereupon they opened fire. The critical question is, who was telling the truth?