The FRU recruits were also trained in car drill and instructed how to use their car as a weapon if ambushed on the open road. Recruits were taught how to react, usually by accelerating and driving straight towards the gunmen, forcing them to scatter or risk serious injury. They were also shown how to avoid being trapped in a car and how to make an escape in such circumstances. In addition, the SAS instructors taught the FRU recruits the basic rudiments of unarmed combat, how to react if caught in close-quarter battles and how to conduct a fighting retreat in the face of overwhelming odds.
By the time the recruits had completed their course they would be far fitter than when they began. They tackled tough assault courses; endured long-distance forced marches with heavy packs; practised endurance running and faced long, hard PE lessons. To encourage team spirit, aggression and quick thinking, they also took part in five-a-side rugby matches using a heavyweight medicine ball.
Intelligence instructors taught them how to handle touts, how to talk to them, encourage them, persuade them to become informants for Military Intelligence. And they were shown briefing techniques to make sure they not only received all the material their tout brought in but also how to persuade him or her how to go about their undercover work. They were also taught how to pick-up and drop-off their informants in busy streets or main roads without any passers-by being suspicious.
It was not surprising that the fall-out rate during their SAS training was about twenty per cent, and anyone who failed the course was returned to their unit. By the time the new FRU handlers returned to Belfast to begin their thankless and demanding task, though, they had been trained to a high degree of professionalism. Nearly every one of them had an army background, some even came from the SAS itself, so practically all the handlers had some uniformed army background, ensuring that discipline would never be a problem.
One undesirable side-effect of setting up this élite organisation was that jealousies were created in the close working relationships of Northern Ireland. Special Branch officers, undercover specialists, 14th Int personnel and others drafted in to combat the IRA’s terrorist activities soon came to realise that anyone working for the FRU got special treatment: paid the same as those working undercover in dangerous areas, given more privileges, promoted more quickly, allocated better accommodation and flashier cars. Not surprisingly, that didn’t go down too well with the rest, who believed they should be given the same privileges considering they were carrying out similar jobs and were exposed to the same risks.
Until 1979 the army had relied on the RUC and the RUC Special Branch to provide all the information covering both the Loyalist and Catholic areas of the Province. But the army had become increasingly concerned throughout the late 1970s that they were not receiving enough good intelligence about IRA activities, especially about the Provo gunmen and bombers. Army chiefs believed that as the hatred between the Catholic and Protestant communities intensified, the RUC, a police force manned 95 per cent by Protestants, was receiving very little intelligence from the Catholic community which, understandably, had never trusted the RUC. Throughout the 1970s the Catholic community had looked increasingly towards the Provisional IRA for protection, believing that both the RUC and the British Army had turned against the Catholic community and were simply engaged in preserving the status quo with all power resting in the hands of the Protestants.
FRU headquarters was located at Lisburn, the army’s headquarters in Northern Ireland, and comprised eighty officers and a hundred support staff. There was also a high-grade information section situated in the basement at Lisburn staffed by five people. They were responsible for processing and checking top-secret highly sensitive intelligence material which was brought in to the handlers by their agents in the field.
Much thought had gone into setting up the Force Research Unit. The politicos and senior army officers believed the army needed a hard, top-flight group of men, as tough as the SAS, who would be trained to deal with the Provos with dynamic aggression. The FRU would be the army’s eyes and ears, recruiting informants, and, if possible, keeping abreast of the latest Provo plans. What they hoped for was to infiltrate not only the Provo infrastructure but also to track down members of Provo active service units which were making life such hell for the people of Northern Ireland.
FRU handlers had to undergo a strict training programme before being admitted to the secret intelligence unit. Initially the recruits were trained by 14th Intelligence Company, the aggressive army surveillance unit set up in 1978 to succeed the unpopular Mobile Reaction Force. The 14th Int were based outside Belfast, and had a staff of fifty. They were under the direct control of the Director, SAS, a brigadier stationed in Hereford. Many SAS NCOs were seconded to the unit for periods of up to two years. The 14th Int also had the authority to react in certain circumstances, arresting, detaining and even shooting suspects if necessary. Although many SAS men did not look forward to working with 14th Int for a two-year tour of duty, they did lead privileged lives during their stay in Northern Ireland, with top pay, great food, good living accommodation, extra leave and special pubs where they could drink with no fear of meeting paramilitary terrorists from either side of the sectarian divide. One of the reasons many SAS men did not want to work in Northern Ireland was not the danger involved but the fact that they might have been losing out on more exotic postings like Belize which, to many, was like a great holiday adventure with wild parties, cheap booze and beautiful women on hand.
From the outset FRU had a severe problem recruiting reliable informants who could be persuaded to volunteer to act as intelligence agents in the Catholic community. As a result, a screening process was introduced whereby likely candidates could be picked up and held. At that time, the British Army had the legal authority to arrest anyone on suspicion and detain them for four hours, questioning them about their job, their family, their interests and their involvement in politics, including membership of any political parties. Both before and after such interviews the suspect was always examined by a doctor to ensure that no ‘roughing-up’ or ‘intimidation’ had taken place.
In fact, the FRU handlers treated the suspects with kid gloves, for their only intention was to instil confidence in those they ‘arrested’ so that at a future date they might be able to recruit them as agents or informants in the field. They would offer them cakes, biscuits and tea, make them feel at ease, crack a few jokes and try to reach a judgement as to whether the suspect might one day be susceptible to persuasion, even prepared to provide information to the army. Before the suspect was allowed to go free, the handler would have tried to arrange a drink, a pint in a pub with no suggestion of recruiting them for intelligence work. And FRU handlers would wear civilian clothes for 90 per cent of their working day to help potential recruits and agents feel more comfortable, less threatened.
But after twelve months of adopting the FRU screening technique, the RUC complained that FRU handlers were taking their undercover agents, ruining years of working with the Catholic community. Whether that was true or not, a decision was taken among the senior British commanders at Lisburn that screening would have to stop and a new recruitment method introduced.
A new, rather desperate, recruiting process was introduced in which FRU handlers would take part in vehicle check points, chatting to motorists when they were stopped, wondering as they talked to each driver whether he or she could perhaps be a potential recruit. If there was the vaguest possibility of a motorist showing signs of being amenable then the handler would invite the stranger for a drink and a chat, sometimes even for a cup of tea, not to answer questions or face an interrogation, of course, but simply as a friendly gesture. The handler might invite this total stranger for a further chat, and when the opportunity arose would suddenly ask him, ‘Do you fancy earning a few quid?’
The stranger would usually look askance at the FRU handler but, living in the cauldron of Northern Ireland’s dirty games, would quickly realise he was being asked to work for one or other
of the paramilitary organisations or, more than likely, the RUC Special Branch. It was at this point that most people simply got up and left. If they didn’t, the handler believed he might have a chance of recruiting a new tout. But the success rate was less than one in ten. The scheme did bring in some much-needed recruits but the great majority proved useless.
There were other recruiting techniques practised by the FRU at that time, some quite bizarre. Handlers would find the name of a Republican or Loyalist sympathiser who may have been interviewed by the RUC for some innocuous offence and the FRU would send him, anonymously in brown envelopes, a hundred pounds cash, in ten-pound notes. If the sympathiser failed to hand in the money to a police station or nothing was heard of the hundred pounds from any other source, the FRU handlers would send the man another mysterious hundred pounds. Handlers might send as much as five hundred pounds spread over five or six weeks. And then the handlers would visit the man – they were nearly all men – who was usually out of work and short of money, and have a quiet, pleasant, friendly chat with the man who, by then, had started to rather enjoy his unexpected weekly cash bonus. It would be explained to the sympathiser that, if he so wished, it could be arranged that the hundred pounds bonus would become a regular weekly payment but, for that to happen, he would have to start supplying sound information to the army. Occasionally, the ruse worked and the success ratio was 20 per cent, one in five agreeing to work for army intelligence.
It was, of course, most unusual – virtually unheard of, in fact – for someone to walk into an army base in Northern Ireland offering to provide information to Army Intelligence. That was the reason why two FRU handlers were bundled from their beds at such an ungodly hour on Boxing Day to come to the base and listen to a man who refused to talk to anyone unless the officer was from Military Intelligence.
The arrival of ex-soldier Brian Nelson at New Barnsley army base at the end of 1985 would provide the FRU, British Intelligence, MI5, the Tasking Co-ordination Group, Joint Irish Section as well as the Joint Intelligence Committee in London with a remarkable, unbelievable opportunity. At that time, the intelligence services knew a surprising amount about the Provisional IRA’s activities, both north and south of the border, but very little about the Loyalist paramilitary organisations which were then flexing their muscles as never before. The intelligence services desperately needed good, sound information from someone inside the heart of the UDA. Nelson would be that man.
Chapter Four
Enter MI5
By the beginning of March 1986 Force Research Unit handlers began to believe that they had wasted too much time and energy on Nelson, a man who, for no good reason, seemed to have a high opinion of himself. The intelligence he brought in, on a weekly or fortnightly basis, sounded more like gossip the local chippy would know rather than the UDA’s principal intelligence officer. At each meeting, his two handlers, Sean and John, would wait for his promised pearls of wisdom, only to be informed of irrelevant nonsense such as a Loyalist club which had decided to instal two fruit-machines rather than one; and even, on one occasion, that the UDA had decided to buy petrol from a particular garage to save 2p a gallon! Indeed, in those first few months, Agent Ten-Thirty-Three brought in not one piece of intelligence upon which the British Army could mount a single operation.
Back at headquarters, Nelson’s handlers decided to discuss the matter with senior officers. They felt certain there were other, more lucrative sources of information which should be followed, rather than wasting the time of highly trained officers talking to a man who believed the cost of a gallon of petrol was of vital importance in the fight against terrorism.
Then, much to the relief of Sean and John, their new recruit announced without warning that he was leaving the Province for a job overseas. One of his friends had found a firm in West Germany that needed competent floor layers to work in factories around the Bavarian town of Regensberg, north of Munich. It was a job Nelson could do well and, at the same time, earn good, regular money. A flat in Regensberg had been found where the Nelson family could live together. It would mean a respite from the bombs and bullets of Belfast. In April 1986 Brian, Jean and their children headed for a new life in West Germany, handing over the keys to their rented house in the Shankill. Sean and John would celebrate Nelson’s departure with a couple of pints of beer, happy to be rid of the UDA’s useless chief intelligence officer.
On the Northern Irish political scene, however, changes were occurring at a rapid rate and the security services were worried. In November 1985, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Taoiseach, Garrett Fitzgerald, urged on by President Ronald Reagan, had signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which broke new political ground in two major areas. Firstly, Britain handed the Irish government a role to play in Northern Ireland, inviting them to establish a secretariat at Maryfield, Co. Down, staffed by Irish government officials, and permitting those officials to oversee certain aspects of the running of the Province. Secondly, in return, the Irish government for the first time recognised the existence of Northern Ireland and that its legitimacy was based on the will of the majority of the population to remain within the United Kingdom. Thirdly, Britain made a commitment to the gradual redress of Catholic grievances concerning the administration of justice in the Six Counties.
Protestant politicians and the Loyalist community at large were outraged that Dublin had been granted a say in the running of the Province’s affairs. Many Ulster politicians, thousands of ordinary God-fearing Protestants and every member of the Loyalist paramilitary organisations believed that they had been sold down the river by the British government. Massive protest demonstrations were held throughout Northern Ireland, a one-day general strike received widespread support, and Loyalists confronted the RUC in pitched street-battles. There were even attacks on the homes of RUC officers. An ‘Ulster Says No’ campaign was launched; it would last for years, dividing the two communities as never before.
But there were two further aspects of the Anglo-Irish Agreement which caused consternation among the RUC, the security services and the various intelligence-gathering organisations. The surprise agreement had galvanised Ulster Defence Association chiefs into action. They had suddenly realised that in the very near future the ordinary people of Ulster, the Protestant families, might need to defend themselves against all-comers, not just the Provisional IRA but the forces of law and order – the RUC and the British Army – which might be ordered by their political masters in London to crack down on the hardline Loyalist paramilitaries. The more they compared their military capability with that of the Provisional IRA, let alone the RUC and the British Army, the more the UDA realised their military wing was little more than an amateurish, Boy Scout set-up.
The dramatic displays of anger and violence displayed by the Loyalists following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement convinced the security chiefs that the Loyalist backlash which they had always feared was now a serious reality. They believed it was only a matter of time before the Loyalist paramilitaries took the law into their own hands, and that the possible outcome of such action could be civil war.
Sectarian killings by Loyalists had gradually died away by November 1985 and had indeed reached a low point that year, with only four murders that could be linked to the terrorists. The signing of the agreement changed that almost overnight. Both the UDA and the UVF decided to take the law into their own hands and during the following decade the number of sectarian killings by Loyalists rose dramatically until the Protestant paramilitaries were killing more people than the Provisional IRA.
The intelligence and information that had been dribbling into the RUC Special Branch and the Force Research Unit for the last few years came to an abrupt halt. Those few undercover contacts on the ground stopped phoning, refused to take calls or attend meetings. This dramatic turn of events caused immediate concern because, over the years, contacts at all levels had always been maintained between the RUC, the RUC Special Branch and UDA personnel. Many were clos
e friends and drinking partners, on first-name terms; some were family. Information requested by the security services had always been happily supplied by the UDA. But those were the days when the UDA believed the RUC and the army were fighting on their side against the hated IRA. Now, all had changed and the UDA realised they had to adopt totally different tactics. Never again would the Loyalists put their trust in the Westminster government, the RUC or the British Army.
Urgent talks took place at the TCG on how to tackle a situation which appeared to be rapidly escalating out of control. The mood on the streets had deteriorated dramatically and the RUC was taking the brunt of the violent Loyalist reaction to the accord. More worryingly still, the quality of intelligence material being gathered was lamentable, with neither the security services nor the intelligence units receiving any reliable information whatsoever.
It seemed to the RUC and the army that they had become little more than reaction forces, unable to gauge where the next Loyalist violence would occur and unable to warn the security forces. They no longer knew what determined the new Loyalist strategy nor the identity of the men who had taken control of the organisation. But the situation on the streets was becoming increasingly grim and there seemed little that could be done to counter or control the new hardline policy of the Loyalist hierarchy.
As the Protestant backlash gathered pace, demands were made of the security services by the TCG who were now under political pressure from London to get control of the deteriorating situation. Each weekday morning the TCG would hold an intelligence briefing in Lisburn to discuss the current situation and any known forthcoming operations. At any one time the four TCG teams in Northern Ireland might have been involved in thirty or more operations throughout the Province, all of which required first-class organisation among numerous agencies and security services as well as extraordinary attention to planning and detail. And the paucity of intelligence from the Loyalist side was becoming not only highly embarrassing but potentially dangerous as security appeared to be slipping from their grasp.
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