The JIS was also responsible for all covert actions undertaken in the Republic of Ireland and no such actions were permitted by any agency unless approved by the JIS. In reality, however, the JIS never took those decisions. When any action south of the border was suggested or contemplated by any agency, all details of such an operation had to be passed to the JIS in Belfast. In turn, they would immediately give all the relevant information to the JIC in London, who would make the ultimate decision.
In that way there was no possibility of any JIS operational adventures causing political problems between Dublin and London. But the JIS did run agents in Southern Ireland throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s. It is not known whether the Dublin government was aware that MI5 operators, though not based in Southern Ireland during those years, frequently visited the Republic on operational duties, meeting and debriefing informants. However, it is true to say that, in general terms, there were always good relations between senior RUC and Special Branch officers and their counterparts in the Gardai. Much to the IRA’s annoyance, the flow of information between Belfast and Dublin was constant and helpful. The close relationship was not simply altruistic, for the two forces needed each other and the information they could exchange in their fight to combat the Provos.
MI5 also had other, more down-to-earth, operations to pursue and command. One vital and important on-going job was to ensure the integrity of the men and women in the British and Army Intelligence agencies and all the personnel who became directly involved with informants. Every so often an MI5 officer would conduct on-the-spot, random checks among handlers, arriving without notice to sit with both Special Branch and Army Intelligence officers while they were debriefing an informant or an agent. The principal reason was to check that the handlers were not becoming involved in any criminal activities or overstepping their authority when dealing with informants. Understandably, some handlers bridled at such intervention, which they believed caused problems for them because their touts would be made to feel ill at ease, and therefore become less communicative. Some would complain that the presence of nameless MI5 officers would set back their relationships with touts for weeks and would necessitate a return to the painstaking job of building confidence once again.
Working behind the scenes was also the small army of MI5 administrators, mainly young, unattached female civil servants, who volunteered to work in the Province not only to earn extra pay but also to experience the surge of adrenaline, the thrill of being a part of an active on-going, undercover operation against a ruthless and determined terrorist organisation; all so very different from their rather boring, mundane lives in London’s MI5 headquarters which was often no different from an ordinary clerking job in any big office. All would be volunteers and they would be billeted out singly or in pairs in apartments in and around Belfast.
On arrival in Belfast, all MI5 staff would be taken on ‘familiarisation’ tours of the Province including trips around Belfast City, Derry, Armagh and even the IRA no-go area of Crossmaglen in South Armagh. The staff would be flown by helicopter into Bessbrook Mill, the heavily fortified base where the British Army battalion guarding the border area was based. There, these young women plucked from a dull civilian life in London would see at first hand how the army lived under the constant threat of a mortar, grenade or small-arms attack from the Provos. It was from Bessbrook Mill that many covert SAS patrols would be organised, the four-man units called ‘bricks’ sometimes living rough in the countryside for up to two weeks at a time, keeping an eye on the border and checking the identities of those moving back and forth across the unmarked frontier.
In those areas regarded as ‘safe’, the MI5 operators, accompanied by two FRU handlers, would be taken by car so that they could see for themselves the towns and villages, the districts, the ‘tribal’ areas of the separated Protestant and Catholic communities and the sectarian areas and streets which they would be reading and writing about over the next two years. During their familiarisation tour they would also see the lovely Irish countryside, the rugged coast, the forests and, in summer, the picture-postcard views of Northern Ireland. But even in these idyllic surroundings the villages would often be divided into their respective sectarian communities. All would be explained so that the new recruits would be left in no doubt about the problems the Province faced. During the ninety-minute tour of killing country, particularly in South Armagh, the MI5 staff would be shown the exact location of fire-fights between the security forces and the Provos, of places bombed by the IRA and of Republican pubs and clubs and places where arms dumps had been discovered.
There were no reports of any of these trips being interrupted by any unwanted attention; because most of the incoming MI5 staff were women, there was little suspicion in two couples driving around both Protestant or Republican areas. All would be dressed in civvies, the cars ordinary saloons and none would be armoured. But the passengers would be in constant radio contact with headquarters.
All such familiarisation exercises in South Armagh would be closely monitored by a quick reaction force of two bricks, eight men, in a Lynx or Puma helicopter. The QRF would comprise men from the battalion on duty, armed with sub-machine-guns. The helicopter and the cars below would be in radio contact with the battalion ops room at Bessbrook Mill and the routes to be taken mapped out beforehand and closely adhered to at all times. No chance would be taken that any of these intelligence service operators might fall into the hands of the local Provos. MI5 were under no illusion that if any of their operatives or back-room staff, no matter how junior or inexperienced, fell into the hands of the Provos, they would end up with a bullet in the back of the head.
But sometimes, of course, there were hiccups. Following the arrest in 1984 of the traitor John Bettany, the MI5 spy who worked for the Soviets, all MI5 personnel in Northern Ireland had to be immediately moved from their lodgings, apartments and hotels and rehoused over a single, hectic weekend, because Bettany had been employed in the Province from 1979 to 1981. No one could be sure that he had not inadvertently or deliberately passed on names or addresses of MI5 personnel. The Special Branch and the FRU were furious when they heard of Bettany’s spying activities because when he left Northern Ireland he knew the identities of all IRA informers and agents who were working for the intelligence services at that time. It was further learned that when on remand in London’s Wandsworth jail, Bettany had suddenly, rather curiously, decided to embrace the Catholic religion and struck up a close relationship with a known IRA bomber who was also in Wandsworth. The two would meet and talk for an hour or more every week, unguarded and unsupervised, in the prison chapel. Unbelievably, their conversations were not even bugged, so there is no record of the substance or context of their conversations. What passed between them is still a mystery, unknown to the authorities, but such a liaison alarmed the senior officers of the security services when they learned what had been going on. They were far from happy and believed a gross lapse of security had been permitted, maybe putting some of their people at risk.
Senior officers held talks at the highest level, wondering whether any action should or, indeed, could be taken to ensure the safety of those informants and agents whom Bettany might have put in danger. When no action had been taken by the IRA against any agent, the decision was taken to leave well alone and not even warn the the operatives or back-room staff that their identities may have been leaked to the terrorists. In fact, as far as is known, no names were ever leaked.
Also represented on the Joint Irish Section was the Military Intelligence Unit (MIU), an organisation staffed by thirty officers who were responsible for liaison between Military Intelligence and the RUC Special Branch. Its Northern Ireland headquarters were also at Lisburn and officers would work out of main police stations across the Province.
Most important of all the intelligence agencies was the RUC Special Branch, which formed the backbone of the undercover operations principally battling the Provisional IRA but also keeping an eye on th
e Protestant paramilitaries and any other Republican terrorist groups which were prepared to use violence. Most Special Branch officers were originally recruited from the Northern Ireland crime squads but during the late 1980s and 1990s, between 250 and 300 men and women at any one time were working for the Branch. All were trained, authorised handlers dealing with informants and agents who had infiltrated the IRA network. Without exception, Branch officers worked extraordinarily long hours, week in, week out. One of their more illustrious chiefs was Ronnie Flanagan, who was appointed Chief Constable of the RUC in 1996.
And, of course, there was the aggressive Military Intelligence agency – the Force Research Unit – which was designed and came into force to be the independent eyes and ears of the British Army. When the secret FRU first came into being, nearly all its resources were directed at the Provisional IRA. The FRU handlers, all volunteers, were able to persuade some Republican sympathisers to provide them with information, but it proved an uphill struggle. In those first few years the main task given to FRU officers and handlers by the JIS was to target known Provo gunmen and bombers in and around Belfast as well as near the border, particularly in the hardline Republican areas of South Armagh and Co. Tyrone. The information would be passed to the SAS who would then concentrate their resources on waiting for the Provos to move out on active service operations before hitting them. FRU personnel had been trained to handle informants and agents in exactly the same way as the Special Branch had always dealt with their tours.
There were two further highly important secret organisations involved with undercover surveillance in Northern Ireland: the 14th Intelligence Company and E4A. The fifty members of 14th Int were under the command of an SAS brigadier and were divided into two detatchments, commanded by a major or a captain. Their Northern Ireland headquarters were based near Belfast. E4A was the RUC’s surveillance unit, staffed by 120 police officers of various ranks. Set up in the early 1980s, E4A was an undercover unit with members always dressed in civvies. Their headquarters were at Knock near south Belfast. In operations during the years both organisations proved their worth time and again, their staff being both highly professional and remarkably dedicated to some of the toughest assignments handed out by the authorities.
With the return to Belfast of Brian Nelson, as the Ulster Defence Association’s chief intelligence officer, and with extensive undercover and intelligence agencies securely in place, the British government was ready to launch one of the most dynamic, aggressive secret campaigns ever undertaken since the troubles began to break the back of the Provo stranglehold on Northern Ireland. With Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street there was the political will to drive home a campaign designed to rattle the Provo leadership, cause consternation in their midst, disrupt their bombing campaigns in Ireland and on the mainland and, if possible, force them to the negotiating table. But first they had to be taught a lesson, one which would make them realise that none of their members was safe wherever they chose to run or to hide. Their only way out was to agree to talk terms or face the consequences. What followed was a campaign which would bring fear and more killings into the communities and even into the homes of those people prepared to bomb, kill, maim and injure the people of Northern Ireland for their own political aims. The Provo terrorists were to be given a taste of their own medicine. No one could have guessed that Brian Nelson, an insignificant, streetwise, hardline Ulsterman, who had been thrown out of the British Army, would become the linchpin of this remarkable secret campaign to kill Provo gunmen, Sinn Fein politicians, Republican sympathisers and, unbelievably, decent, ordinary Catholics.
Chapter Six
Violence and Murder
Malachy McIvor was one of those decent, ordinary Catholics. A married man of forty-three with a wife, Rosaleen, his childhood sweetheart, and four children, he lived in the staunchly nationalist village of Stewartstown, Co. Tyrone, an area steeped in the deep-rooted traditions of Irish Republicanism, where the Irish tricolour flew proudly from a number of homes and buildings.
Stewartstown was considered by the British Army to be one of the centres of ‘bandit country’. It was a village of a few hundred people who made a living from the land, a little trade, and where, in many cases, dole money kept body and soul together. There were some who also enjoyed a little smuggling, buying goods cheap on one side of the border and selling them for a healthy profit on the other, no questions asked. But Stewartstown was also a place frequented by Provisional IRA activists, gunmen and bombers, as well as their staunch supporters, a place where strangers were never welcome and where Loyalists or Protestants were hardly ever seen – and where members of the forces of law and order only visited carrying guns and wearing flak jackets. Indeed, for many months at a time, Stewartstown would be one of the Province’s no-go areas where the the army and the RUC would not set foot without armed support, a helicopter in the sky and their weapons at the ready.
No Brits would find a welcome at the local pubs and clubs; they would be suspected of being a member of the British government’s military machine, whether informants, agents, policemen, soldiers or SAS personnel. In a village like Stewartstown, settled in Victorian times, no stranger could drive or walk down the main street without the inhabitants being aware that an intruder had entered the area, someone to be treated with suspicion if not open hostility.
Malachy McIvor, one of a family of eleven, had lived there all his life. On leaving school at the age of sixteen, he trained as a car and motorcycle mechanic. Indeed, motorcycling became his life and Malachy would travel all over Ireland attending motorcycle race meetings. He would also travel to the Isle of Man for the famous TT races, so keen did he become in the sport. He was skilled as a mechanic and people from far and wide would bring their mechanical problems to the little garage he ran at the junction of Castlefarm Road and North Street in Stewartstown. Nothing was ever too much trouble for the man who simply liked to help his extended family, as well as his friends and neighbours – in fact most of the people who lived in and around the village.
Like many a man from the village, Malachy enjoyed the odd pint at the end of the day; but, apart from his love of motorcycles and racing, he lived for his four children. He was friendly with the young men he had first met at the village school and grown up with in the small, fiercely independent, tight-knit community. Some of them were not simply staunch Republicans but also members of the Provisional IRA, only too happy to go out at night as members of active service units to carry out violent operations against those they looked upon as their enemies. To these Republicans, Stewartstown had become their own fiefdom and they were the unofficial officers of law and order. To many, the only rule of law in the village was that administered by the Provos; if anything went wrong, it was to the commander of the local Provo unit that the villagers would turn for advice and justice and, if necessary, for retribution. Hardly any locals bothered complaining to the RUC, for the residents of Stewartstown realised that the police had little or no jurisdiction in that part of Co. Tyrone.
Unfortunately for Malachy McIvor, he was a well-known man; his reputation as a keen motorcyclist and respected mechanic was recognised far beyond Stewartstown and, as a result, his name was banded about so freely that one day it came to the attention of Brian Nelson and his freelance informants who were targeting Republicans and anyone connected to the Provos or Sinn Fein.
Agent Ten-Thirty-Three knew all about Stewartstown, even though he had never heard of the Republican enclave until he was taken on a tour of the ‘no-go’ areas by officers of the Force Research Unit. Never for one moment would Brian Nelson of the UDA risk going into such areas unless under the greatest protection. The day he toured Stewartstown, Cookstown, South Armagh and parts of the border he was in the safe custody of three armed FRU officers and in the safety of a car which did not stop once throughout its tour. That day Nelson was being educated, shown the staunch Republican centres, the catchment areas of Provo recruits and some of the nerve centres of IRA acti
vities. He was shown pubs and clubs where, the FRU handlers asserted, the Provos held court. As a result, these places became possible targets for Loyalist gunmen. Nelson would later brief his UDA informants of the areas they should investigate in their search for Provo gunmen so that they could be checked out and, if necessary, targeted. Months later, McIvor’s name would be put forward by UDA informants as a man closely connected to the Provos of Co. Tyrone. And, as ever, Nelson asked his FRU contacts about Malachy McIvor.
‘Do you have anything on this man?’ he asked during one of his routine interviews with his FRU handlers.
A week later the FRU informed Nelson that they had nothing on the mechanic but that they would investigate. As a result, a P-card was established in the name of Malachy McIvor. It included details of known Provo gunmen with whom he had been seen having the occasional drink or a chat – even though his relationship with them may have been entirely innocent, simply the result of living all his life in a Republican village. To Ten-Thirty-Three and his UDA colleagues, that was evidence enough, and McIvor’s friends of many years and his occasional contact with them would seal his fate.
The P-card and all other details of Malachy McIvor were handed over to Nelson at a safe-house meeting with two FRU handlers on the outskirts of Lisburn, including the latest passport-type photo of McIvor. On this occasion, however, Military Intelligence went further, handing over a print-out, taken from the highly classified secret computer operated by the intelligence services. It included details of McIvor’s current address, a map reference of his garage, details of the immediate vicinity and up-to-date information of McIvor’s current vehicle, including the registration number. Indeed, no one wanting to target McIvor could have asked for more accurate, detailed information.
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